John McCain and American Foreign Policy

I've been eagerly awaiting John McCain's contribution to the Foreign Affairs Campaign 2008 series, and I'm not disappointed. I've long considered McCain the most qualified candidate among both parties, especially on national security. Here's McCain's statement on the contemporary international challenges facing the United States:

Defeating radical Islamist extremists is the national security challenge of our time. Iraq is this war's central front, according to our commander there, General David Petraeus, and according to our enemies, including al Qaeda's leadership.

The recent years of mismanagement and failure in Iraq demonstrate that America should go to war only with sufficient troop levels and with a realistic and comprehensive plan for success. We did not do so in Iraq, and our country and the people of Iraq have paid a dear price. Only after four years of conflict did the United States adopt a counterinsurgency strategy, backed by increased force levels, that gives us a realistic chance of success. We cannot get those years back, and now the only responsible action for any presidential candidate is to look forward and outline the strategic posture in Iraq that is most likely to protect U.S. national interests.

So long as we can succeed in Iraq -- and I believe that we can -- we must succeed. The consequences of failure would be horrific: a historic loss at the hands of Islamist extremists who, after having defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and the United States in Iraq, will believe that the world is going their way and that anything is possible; a failed state in the heart of the Middle East providing sanctuary for terrorists; a civil war that could quickly develop into a regional conflict and even genocide; a decisive end to the prospect of a modern democracy in Iraq, for which large Iraqi majorities have repeatedly voted; and an invitation for Iran to dominate Iraq and the region even more.

Whether success grows closer or more distant over the coming months, it is clear that Iraq will be a central issue for the next U.S. president. Democratic candidates have promised to withdraw U.S. troops and "end the war" by fiat, regardless of the consequences. To make such decisions based on the political winds at home, rather than on the realities in the theater, is to court disaster. The war in Iraq cannot be wished away, and it is a miscalculation of historic magnitude to believe that the consequences of failure will be limited to one administration or one party. This is an American war, and its outcome will touch every one of our citizens for years to come.

McCain offers some interesting propasals. For example, he backs the formation of a new international organization of the world's leading democracies. He notes that such a body wouldn't replace the United Nations, but founded on a common set of interests, it would act with more dispatch toward global problems. McCain also speaks to strengthening America's existing great power alliances in Europe and East Asia. Here are his comments on America's alliance partnerships and East Asian security:

Power in the world today is moving east; the Asia-Pacific region is on the rise. If we grasp the opportunities present in the unfolding world, this century can become safe and both American and Asian, both prosperous and free....

North Korea's totalitarian regime and impoverished society buck these trends. It is unclear today whether North Korea is truly committed to verifiable denuclearization and a full accounting of all its nuclear materials and facilities, two steps that are necessary before any lasting diplomatic agreement can be reached. Future talks must take into account North Korea's ballistic missile programs, its abduction of Japanese citizens, and its support for terrorism and proliferation.

The key to meeting this and other challenges in a changing Asia is increasing cooperation with our allies. The linchpin to the region's promise is continued American engagement. I welcome Japan's international leadership and emergence as a global power, encourage its admirable "values-based diplomacy," and support its bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council. As president, I will tend carefully to our ever-stronger alliance with Australia, whose troops are fighting shoulder to shoulder with ours in Afghanistan and Iraq. I will seek to rebuild our frayed partnership with South Korea by emphasizing economic and security cooperation and will cement our growing partnership with India.

Read the whole thing. McCain is concise and to the point. To his credit, he doesn't propose an unending array of policy propsals designed to involve the U.S. in every possible international problem of the day, unlike Hillary Clinton in her Foreign Affairs essay from the series.

Note something important here, though: I don't back McCain's suggestion that we need to repair our image around the world. This is an apparent buckling to negative public attitudes regarding the U.S. internationally, not to mention antiwar opinion in the U.S. Here you can see how McCain trumpets America's traditional moral leadership, while simultaneously calling for renewal:

We are a special nation, the closest thing to a "shining city on a hill" ever to have existed. But it is incumbent on us to restore our mantle as a global leader, reestablish our moral credibility, and rebuild those damaged relationships that once brought so much good to so many places.

McCain's absolutely correct to situate contemporary American foreign policy in our robust history of promoting human dignity, progress, and universal values. He's made the point eloquently many times. But we don't need to make apologies for acting in our interests on Iraq in 2003, or on issues issues such as global warming or missile defense. Our interests are legimate. Leave the apologies (and appeasement) to the Democrats.

McCain understands the dangers facing the U.S. amid the present correlation of world forces. Sure, we might face some challenges of image-building, but I think the point's more a matter of good public relations rather than wholesale policy change. Indeed, international opinion in the advanced industrial democracies has rebounded from earlier lows following 2003. I believe continued success in Iraq will work to further consolidate these gains in the years ahead. Thus, we must not slacken our commitment to defeating the terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere. I propose that John McCain provides the best set of skills to further these objectives.

See the other essays in the Foreign Affairs series, in the order they first appeared: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, and Hillary Clinton.

See also my post yesterday making the case for a second look at McCain's candidacy.

A Democratic Electoral Revolution?

Markos Moulitsas, of Daily Kos fame, has a new essay up at Newsweek, "We Say We Want A Revolution":

On Nov. 4, Barack Obama will be elected as the next president of the United States. The real excitement won't come from watching that foregone conclusion come to pass. No, the big question is, will Democrats nationwide simply "win" the night—or will they deliver an electoral drubbing so thorough that it signals the utter rejection of conservative ideology and kills the notion that America is a "center-right" country?

The theme of the essay is a kinder, gentler version of a series of Kos posts with the recurring message of "Break Their Backs," which includes this menacing tone:

This isn't about winning. It's about destroying the conservative movement, and their dangerous incompetence has given us an historic opportunity to deliver a killing blow.

Destroying? Killing?

This man's not nice, which is why I'm glad that this year - in the event of an Obama election - will represent a temporary diversion from the longer-term foundations of the nation as the very center-right polity that Moultisas so detests.

Notice how Kos saves his demonizing language for the mouth-foaming partisans at his blog (not Newsweek readers). There's good reason for that: Most Americans do not abide by the kind of rank polarization and demonization that is standard fare among the far left-wing netroots.

Indeed, in the event of an Obama presidency, the Democrats will need to find a way to suppress the most radical elements of their coalition, so as not to alienate the broader electorate, which is generally conservative, as Jon Meacham explains:

It is easy—for some, even tempting—to detect the dawn of a new progressive era in the autumn of Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency....

But history, as John Adams once said of facts, is a stubborn thing, and it tells us that Democratic presidents from FDR to JFK to LBJ to Carter to Clinton usually wind up moving farther right than they thought they ever would, or they pay for their continued liberalism at the polls. Should Obama win, he will have to govern a nation that is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal—a perennial reality that past Democratic presidents have ignored at their peril. A party founded by Andrew Jackson on the principle that "the majority is to govern" has long found itself flummoxed by the failure of that majority to see the virtues of the Democrats and the vices of the Republicans.

The pattern has deep roots. FDR had a longish run (from 1933 to 1937), but he lost significant ground in the 1938 midterm elections and again in the largely forgotten wartime midterms of 1942. After he defeated Barry Goldwater in 1964, LBJ had only two years of great success (Ronald Reagan won the California governorship in 1966) before Vietnam, and the white backlash helped elect Richard Nixon in 1968. Jimmy Carter lasted only a term, and Bill Clinton's Democrats were crushed in the 1994 elections. The subsequent success of his presidency had as much to do with reforming welfare and managing the prosperity of the technology boom as it did with advancing traditional Democratic causes.

Republican presidents, too, are frequently pulled from the right to the center....

So are we a centrist country, or a right-of-center one? I think the latter, because the mean to which most Americans revert tends to be more conservative than liberal. According to the NEWSWEEK Poll, nearly twice as many people call themselves conservatives as liberals (40 percent to 20 percent), and Republicans have dominated presidential politics—in many ways the most personal, visceral vote we cast—for 40 years. Since 1968, Democrats have won only three of 10 general elections (1976, 1992 and 1996), and in those years they were led by Southern Baptist nominees who ran away from the liberal label. "Is this a center-right country? Yes, compared to Europe or Canada it's obviously much more conservative," says Adrian Wooldridge, coauthor of "The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America" and Washington bureau chief of the London-based Economist. "There's a much higher tolerance for inequality, much greater cultural conservatism, a higher incarceration rate, legalized handguns and greater distrust of the state."

This "tolerance for inequality" and distrust of the state" - as well as all the other elements of American conservatism - are exactly the foundations of American society that the Kos revolution hopes to overturn. In foreign affairs, the Kosocrats seek the destruction of Israel and Kos himself said he wanted to see American private contractors in Iraq dead and on the cover of every newspaper in the country.

I'm convinced that Kos and his netroots-brethren are radically out of the mainstream of American society.

More importantly, I'm convinced that Barack Obama - who has welcomed the support and has even openly cooperated with Daily Kos - is also well outside the mainstream of the American political culture, and an Obama administration will push an extreme-liberal policy agenda of tax hikes, spending windfalls, economic stimulus, spread-the-wealth redistributionism, universal health care, infrastructure investment, fairness doctrine, global warming legislation, restrictions on gun rights, abortion on demand, embryonic stem cells, foreign importation of prescription drugs, union card-check voting, trade protectionism, precipitous Iraq withdrawal, ban on domestic wiretapping, opposition to mandatory prison sentences for sex offenders, sex-education for kindergartners, race-based affirmative action, expanded welfare entitlements, radical education pedagogy, and enemy appeasement diplomacy with no preconditions (and more).

This is a policy agenda not of the America I know, and come the revolution, I'll be relentlessly fighting in resistance to the Kospierre-Obama program of domestic and internationalism radical-leftism.

'Realists' Misjudged Ukraine

From Jamie Kirchick, at the Daily Beast, "How the ‘Realists’ Misjudged Ukraine":

2014 will now forever be bound with the years 1956 and 1968, when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia, respectively. Then, as now, Russia used phony pretexts to violate other nations’ sovereignty. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union justified its sackings of Budapest and Prague by claiming to rescue socialism from “counterrevolutionary” forces. Today, Russia intervenes to “protect” Russian minorities from “fascist” elements in Kiev. In all these episodes, Moscow was confronted with popular, democratic revolutions against its domination.

The Russian invasions of the past and present share another similarity: defenders in the West. Whereas Soviet imperialism could only rely upon the support of orthodox communists (and not even then could Moscow depend on all of its adherents to follow the party line; the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia instilling a fatal disillusionment with the Soviet project among many Western communists), today’s apologists for Russian imperialism span the political spectrum. These foreign policy “realists,” identifiable by their abjuring a role for morality in American foreign policy and the necessity of US global leadership, locate the real imperialists in Washington and Brussels, not Moscow. For years, they have been proven embarrassingly wrong about Russia and its intentions, and in the unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine, their failure of analysis is now laid bare for the world to witness.

The most noxious of these figures is New York University professor and Nation magazine contributor Stephen Cohen. His recent opus, “Distorting Russia,” will go down in history as one of the most slavish defenses of Putinism. “Mainstream American press coverage of Russia,” Cohen writes, has been “shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory.” Western readers, he complains, have been subject to a “relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts.” Putin—a man who presides over a rubber stamp parliament, subjects his political opponents to show trials, dispatches riot police to beat peaceful protestors, and has restricted freedom of speech and association by banning pro-gay language and demonstrations—is unfairly portrayed as an “autocrat,” Cohen says (scare quotes original).

On the contrary, the Russian president is something of a hero. Cohen lauds Putin for granting amnesty to 1,000 prisoners in December, failing to note that some of those individuals—most famously members of the punk band Pussy Riot and opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky—would never have been jailed in a democratic country with an independent judiciary. Cohen cites Putin’s 65 percent approval rating as evidence of his legitimacy, as if such a metric is a valid indicator in a country where every major media outlet is state-run and political opposition invites harassment and physical abuse. Rather than isolate Putin and stand with these beleaguered Russian democrats, Cohen asks, “Should not Obama himself have gone to [the] Sochi [Olympics]—either out of gratitude to Putin, or to stand with Russia’s leader against international terrorists who have struck both of our countries?”

As for Ukraine, Cohen believes Russia is protecting a set of legitimate interests in that formerly sovereign nation and the West is engaging in imperialist meddling. To engage in such sophistry, he has to portray the criminal former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych—who ordered the murder, in broad daylight, of dozens of his own citizens—as a decent ruler. In January, without any public hearing or parliamentary debate, the Ukrainian legislature adopted, and Yanukovych signed, a set of 10 laws that collectively smothered freedom of speech, press and association, a draft of regulations that led Yale University professor and Ukraine expert Timothy Snyder to conclude that, “On paper, Ukraine is now a dictatorship.” Cohen furiously defended Yanukovych, writing that, “In fact, the ‘paper’ legislation he’s referring to hardly constituted dictatorship, and in any event was soon repealed.” Like Putin releasing the prisoners he should never have jailed, Cohen wants us to give credit to a dictator for (temporarily, and only to save his own skin) undoing a trapping of dictatorship. The dictator giveth, and the dictator taketh away.

For the realists, the seeds of today’s antagonism between Russia and the West are found not in Putin’s KGB mentality, but in the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to include former members of the Soviet-era Warsaw Pact. For the past 25 years, they have been warning that NATO is an outdated alliance with no purpose other than to “antagonize” a Russia that wants nothing more than peace and which deserves to have “spheres of privileged interests,” to use Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s phrase, in the lands it occupied for over four decades. Responsibility for today’s crisis, Cohen writes, can be laid at the feet of “provocative US policies,” namely NATO enlargement, a process that stalled, perhaps irreversibly, in 2008, when the body, caving to Russian pressure, voted against Membership Action Plans (MAP) for Georgia and Ukraine. Both of these nations, incidentally, are now home to Russian occupation forces.

For anyone paying the remotest bit of attention to Russia since Putin took office, the events of the past week should not have come as a surprise. Five years after he came to power in 2000, Putin remarked that the collapse of the Soviet Union “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Slowly but surely, he has gone about attempting to right that tragedy, the invasion of Ukraine—which, he remarked to George W. Bush in 2008, is not a real state—being the latest gambit. Demonstrating his utter credulousness about Putin’s intentions, Cohen scoffed last month that, “Without any verified evidence, [Snyder] warns of a Putin-backed ‘armed intervention’ in Ukraine after the Olympics.” Oops.

Russia and the West do indeed have competing interests in the post-Soviet space. The problem with the realists is that they fail to see the moral, tactical and legal disparities that exist between the aims and methods of East and West. When Brussels and Washington propose EU and NATO membership, they are offering association in alliances of liberal, democratic states, achieved through a democratic, consensual process. Russia, meanwhile, cajoles, blackmails and threatens its former vassals into “joining” its newfangled “Eurasian Union,” whose similarity to the Soviet Union of yore Putin barely conceals. The right of sovereign countries to choose the alliances they wish is one Russia respects only if they choose to ally themselves with Russia. Should these countries try to join Western institutions then there will be hell to pay.

Despite all this, Cohen complains of a “Cold War double standard” in the ways we describe Western and Russian approaches to the former Soviet space. The West’s “trade leverage” to persuade Ukraine is treated benignly, Cohen writes, while Putin’s use of “similar carrots” is portrayed as nefarious. A crucial difference, however, is that when a country turns down a Western diplomatic package, as Ukraine did at the November Vilnius Summit (thus sparking the massive protests in Kiev that ultimately overthrew Yanukovych), the EU does not invade.

It should not come as a surprise why countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and other former Warsaw Pact nations that lived under the heel of Russian domination for so long might want to join the NATO alliance, which, according to its charter, is purely defensive. NATO has no designs on Russian territory and never has. But in the fervid and paranoid minds of the men running the Kremlin (and, apparently, in that of Stephen Cohen and other opponents of NATO expansion), the alliance’s defensive nature is irrelevant. If Russia were a healthy, liberal, pluralistic society at peace with itself and its neighbors, it would have nothing to fear from America, the EU, or NATO. Indeed, as crazy as it may sound today, in the 1990s, some Russian and Western leaders spoke optimistically of Moscow joining the latter two institutions. But these hopes of a European Russia were dashed when Putin came to power.

In the world of Cohen and the other realists, it is “Washington’s 20-year winner-take-all approach to post-Soviet Russia” that has brought us to the present impasse. He describes NATO expansion in martial terms, writing of “the West’s ongoing, US-led march toward post-Soviet Russia, which began in the 1990s with NATO’s eastward expansion and continued with US-funded NGO political activities inside Russia,” civil society organizations, gay rights groups, and democracy promotion programs described as if they were the equivalent of CIA political assassination plots. Indeed, while Russia’s open meddling in the politics of its neighbors goes unmentioned by Cohen, he condemns anything the US and its Western allies do to promote democracy in the former Soviet Union. Commenting on a leaked telephone conversation between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the American Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, in which the two diplomats hashed out scenarios for the creation of a coalition government to replace the faltering Yanukovych regime, Cohen says that, “the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to ‘midwife’ a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—that is, a coup.”

Washington’s alleged engineering coup d’etats has become an oft-repeated accusation of realist critics of robust American involvement overseas. “Is it the job of the American ambassador to act as a local potentate, choosing who does, and does not, get to serve in a coalition government?” Jacob Heilbrunn asked in The National Interest, the premier realist journal. In that same publication, David Rieff observed that Nuland was behaving like “a British resident agent in one of the princely states of India during the Raj” who “conspired with the US ambassador to Kiev to overthrow the current president of Ukraine.”

For many realists, American “restraint” now means not just withdrawing America’s overseas troop presence and drastically cutting the defense budget, but curtailing diplomacy itself.

This indictment of American meddling was also echoed by uber-realist Stephen Walt, a professor at Harvard. “Amazing thing re #Ukraine: US & EU colluded to help oust corrupt but pro-Russ leader, yet expected Moscow to do nothing about it,” he tweeted the other day. According to Walt, who in a single tweet distilled a week’s worth of Kremlin propaganda, it was not hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians braving the harsh Kiev winter and rooftop snipers who deserve credit for overthrowing Yanukovych, but rather their US and EU puppet-masters. (This paranoid and illiterate analysis of the situation in Ukraine, by the author of The Israel Lobby, is of a piece with his theories of a Jewish cabal controlling American politics).

Herein lies a paradox at the heart of foreign policy realism: that same, all-powerful US and EU octopus which is capable of overthrowing governments with the flip of a switch is somehow incapable of confronting Russian hard power. Any attempt at repelling Moscow’s aggression is quickly derided as “warmongering,” with requisite references to the mistakes of Iraq thrown in for good measure. Perhaps we should stop calling these people “realists.” “Isolationist” seems more apt.

Looks like Kirchick's settling some scores on this one, heh.

No matter. Stephen Walt's a vile Israel-hating asshole, and don't get me going about the Stalin-coddling idiot's at the Nation. (Keep reading here.)

And here's the Cohen piece --- he's even attacking the far-left New York Review for bashing Putin (and he loathes Julia Ioffe, my favorite Russia expert who is herself ethnic Russian).
Read the full thing at the link.

PHOTO: At Huffington Post, "Obama, Putin Tensions Signal Tough Times For U.S.-Russian Relations."

Sarah Palin's Working Class Appeal

There's debate in the media today on whether Alaska Governor Sarah Palin will attract working-class voters to the McCain-Palin presidential ticket. Particularly interesting is the gender angle. The Los Angeles Times, for example, offers a front-page report entitled, "Sarah Palin's Appeal to Working-Class Women May Be Limited":

Palin, a little-known 44-year-old mother of five, burst onto the scene just days ago, presenting herself as the woman to finally shatter the glass ceiling cracked by the Democratic New York senator's historic candidacy.

But now, after a chaotic introductory week that sparked national debates on McCain's judgment, Palin's experience and even her teenage daughter's pregnancy, the initial signs are not entirely positive for the reinvigorated Republican ticket.

Interviews with some two dozen women here after Palin's convention speech found that these voters were not swayed by the fiery dramatic speeches or compelling personal biographies that marked both the Republican and Democratic conventions. Instead, they were thinking about the price of milk - nearly $5 a gallon - or the healthcare coverage that many working families here cannot afford.

Even if they admire Palin's attempt to juggle political ambition, an infant son with Down syndrome and a pregnant unwed daughter, these women say that maternal grit is not enough to win their votes.

The Times piece actually says little about how well Palin may pull working-class voters into the GOP column. The article cites some polling data indicating the Alaska Governor's generic support in public opinion (and on the abortion issue, in one example), but after that most of the evidence for estimating working-class support comes from a roughly two-dozen focus-group panel.

In contrast, Carolyn Lochhead reports that the McCain campaign sees huge potential in Palin's working class appeal, and the organization is sending Todd Palin, Sarah's husband, out onto the hustings to rally the blue-collar vote:

Democrats do not think that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's arrival in the enemy camp changes Sen. Barack Obama's path to the White House. As far as they're concerned, Republican John McCain's running mate is President George W. Bush.

As Obama told voters in Pennsylvania on Friday, "This race is not a personality contest."

That bet is about to be tested.

Independent observers in Ohio think Palin does change the race, enhancing the GOP's appeal - not among the women who supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but among white men. They say Palin's most potent weapon may even be her snowmobiler, union husband, Todd.

"If you see him turning up in Appalachian Ohio and up in Canton and Warren and the old steel towns, I think he would play very, very well," said Ken Heineman, an Ohio University political analyst. "If they try to go after his DUI conviction, jeez, his whole up-from-the-blue-collar thing? He's going to resonate very well among swing voters and among male Democrats, the blue-collar Democrats that Obama did not win in the primary. He would be an incredibly appealing figure, and of course, she is herself."

Discussions are underway to deploy Todd Palin, a McCain aide said, even though he has taken leave from his oil-field job to care for the couple's five children. He joked at an event Thursday, "If I had a crystal ball a few years ago, I might have asked a few more questions when Sarah decided to join the PTA."

I'm inclined to think that McCain may gain ground not only with working class voters, but with working-class women as well, many of whom do not fit the emerging Democratic demographic of appealing to highly educated "knowledge workers" and "bobos," and that's not to mention the Democrats' traditional appeal among urban minorities and racial identity groups. As Susan Page notes:

The nation is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, a diversity that has spread across the country. Aging Baby Boomers remain the biggest generational group in the electorate, but second in size are the Millennials — 18- to 31-year-olds who have distinctive attitudes toward race and politics. In the space of a generation, Americans have seen dramatic changes in the roles of women, the structure of families and the nature of the workplace. There has been a revolution in the technology that delivers information and knits communities.

Presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama personify that changing nation in striking ways. In age, race and life experience — even in use of innovative technology in the campaign — they mirror a nation in transition.

Some analysts are predicting that the 2008 election — like the one in 1980 that brought the election of Ronald Reagan as president and set the nation on a more conservative course — looms as a landmark contest in which the country is receptive to change.

"This is a pivotal moment in the sense that the politics is catching up to the demographic changes," says William Frey, a Brookings Institution scholar who analyzes population trends.

Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin calls Democrat Obama — who's 47, biracial and multiethnic — "the face of the new generation" who has mobilized millions of younger voters this year.

But Garin notes that some, especially older white voters, find Obama's message and background — he is a first-term Illinois senator who spent nearly as long as a community organizer as he has in Congress — unpersuasive and even discomfiting.

If the clear demographic differences between the party constituencies become even more prounounced over the next two months, then the McCain-Palin ticket may end up demonstrating the kind of traction with the working-class that marked the later stages of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

But note Michael van der Galien's take on the GOP's working class appeal:

... with ‘their nomination of Barack Obama, the Democrats have intensified their image as the party of minorities and the upper part of white America. Among whites, Democrats increasingly draw their votes from the educated, from those who have enjoyed success in a destabilizing postmodern culture and global economy.’ Republicans, on the other hand, have, by choosing Sarah Palin, ‘reasserted their identity as the party of white working-class America - of those who worry about cultural and economic threats to their families.’

The result may very well be that Republicans will once again succeed in getting the support from working class America; quite possibly to the great regret of Democrats, who may find it qutie hard to win elections without it.

That's sounds like a pretty good analysis to me.

Cartoon Credit: Cincinnati Enquirer

Democrats Know Why Clinton Lost

Democrats know why they lost. Even Bill Clinton was warning of impending disaster, and thus he was all the more pissed once the results came it. It was the ultimate I told you so moment.

But autopsies continue to pour in, and if they've got some supreme pedigree, some establishment authority and gloss, the updated spin sort of excuses base Democrats of their stupidity. If they'd only known this before the election!

At McClatchy, "Democrats say they now know exactly why Clinton lost" (via Memeorandum):

A select group of top Dem strategists know why Clinton lost. Will the rest of the party listen to them? https://t.co/QnHAeYwdnw

— Alex Roarty (@Alex_Roarty) May 1, 2017

A select group of top Democratic Party strategists have used new data about last year’s presidential election to reach a startling conclusion about why Hillary Clinton lost. Now they just need to persuade the rest of the party they’re right.

Many Democrats have a shorthand explanation for Clinton’s defeat: Her base didn’t turn out, Donald Trump’s did and the difference was too much to overcome.

But new information shows that Clinton had a much bigger problem with voters who had supported President Barack Obama in 2012 but backed Trump four years later.

Those Obama-Trump voters, in fact, effectively accounted for more than two-thirds of the reason Clinton lost, according to Matt Canter, a senior vice president of the Democratic political firm Global Strategy Group. In his group’s analysis, about 70 percent of Clinton’s failure to reach Obama’s vote total in 2012 was because she lost these voters.

In recent months, Canter and other members of Global Strategy Group have delivered a detailed report of their findings to senators, congressmen, fellow operatives and think tank wonks – all part of an ongoing effort to educate party leaders about what the data says really happened in last year’s election.

“We have to make sure we learn the right lesson from 2016, that we don’t just draw the lesson that makes us feel good at night, make us sleep well at night,” Canter said.

His firm’s conclusion is shared broadly by other Democrats who have examined the data, including senior members of Clinton’s campaign and officials at the Democratic data and analytics firm Catalist. (The New York Times, doing its own analysis, reached a similar conclusion.)

More.

'Trumpism' and the GOP

Not sure exactly what "Trumpism" is, but if WaPo's Ashley Parker means populist nationalism, then she's on to something.

An interesting piece, "How Trumpism has come to define the Republican":

How Trumpism upended long held Republican orthodoxy. My Sunday take: https://t.co/2frvCLtPmy

— Ashley Parker (@AshleyRParker) March 25, 2018

Over just a few days last week, the essence of Trumpism was on global display: The president ignored his advisers by congratulating Vladi­mir Putin, took the first steps toward imposing tariffs on billions of dollars in Chinese goods and signed a huge $1.3 trillion spending bill that will balloon the federal deficit.

In each case, President Trump cast aside years of Republican orthodoxy — and most of the party followed right along. The raw, undefined brand of populism that Trump rode into office is now hardening into a clearer set of policies in his second year, remaking the Republican Party and the country on issues ranging from trade and immigration to spending and entitlement programs.

Even amid persistent unpopularity and the chaotic din of his White House, Trump has used a mix of legislation and unilateral actions to successfully push ahead with key parts of his vision — tariffs that have rocked global markets; harsh crackdowns on illegal immigrants; a nationalistic foreign policy that spurns allies while embracing foes and costly policies with little concern for the growing national debt.

The spending legislation — which puts the deficit on track to pass $1 trillion in 2019 — faced little meaningful opposition from Republican lawmakers despite years of GOP complaints that federal expenditures were out of control. Trump called the bill “ridiculous,” but focused on issues other than the amount of spending.

It was another example of how Trump seems to have overtaken his party’s previously understood values, from a willingness to flout free-trade principles and fiscal austerity to a seeming abdication of America’s role as a global voice for democratic values.

“While the president’s vision of pro-American immigration, trade and national security policies may not have had widespread support in Washington, they are widely supported by the American people,” said Raj Shah, a White House spokesman. “This is President Trump’s Republican Party.”

A tweet Friday, in which Trump threatened to veto the spending bill, also underscored another tenet of Trumpism — a state of continuous uncertainty about where he will land on key policies. In the tweet, Trump said he was frustrated with the legislation both because it “totally abandoned” young undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers” (long a Democratic priority) and because it failed to “fully” fund his controversial border wall (now a Republican priority).

“There has certainly been a wholesale repudiation of many core principles that have guided the Republican Party’s thinking over the years,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University. “Their willingness to accept certain victories on their agenda in return for the acceptance of Trumpism more broadly — that seems to be the guiding principle of Republican Party leaders.”

Trump allies and advisers say that while he has in some ways reshaped the Republican Party, he rose to power by understanding where the party’s base already was and channeling those existing worries and desires.

“I would argue that Trump is more a reflection of where the voters are today,” said Barry Bennett, a former Trump campaign adviser. “I don’t think he persuaded them into these stances. That’s where they were. He’s merely being a mirror to them. . . . He heard what the voters were talking about, what they feared, the pain that they had, and he immediately championed it.”

White House officials also stressed that Trump’s professed “America First” theme serves as a kind of connective ideology, whether in prioritizing American workers over foreign workers on immigration or calling for NATO members to spend more on a shared defense. They said that on many regulatory and economic issues, such as last year’s tax cuts, the president and Republican lawmakers remain naturally aligned.

For many pro-Trump voters, one senior White House official said, the actual policies are less important than the principle — and the principal, Trump himself, promising to stand up and fight for them...

Keep reading.

Democratic Economic Incompetence

President Barack Obama warned the nation today of economic "catastrophe" if Congress fails to pass the disastrous economic stimulus package under consideration in Washington.

Perhaps we'll see more sky-is-falling desperation from the administration, given that the public is quickly souring on this larded-legislative boondoggle. Gallup's new poll finds huge public consensus on the need for government action, but only 10 percent of Americans believe Obama's plan "will improve the economy in 2009" (source). Nancy Pelosi's rank dishonesty certainly can't be helping the Democratic agenda either:

So, what's a hard-left partisan do? Why, cry wolf and blame the GOP, of course:

Behind all the back and forth over the Stimulus Bill is a simple fact: the debate in Washington is rapidly moving away from any recognition that the US economy - and the global economy, for that matter - is in free-fall ...

The other key into the current debate is that the Republican position is ominously similar to their position on global warming or, for that matter, evolution. The discussion of what to do on the Democratic side tracks more or less with textbook macroeconomics, while Republican argument track either with tax cut monomania or rhetorical claptrap intended to confuse. It's true that macro-economics doesn't make controlled experiments possible. And economists can't speak to these issues with certainty. But in most areas of our lives, when faced with dire potential consequences, we put our stock with scientific or professional consensus where it exists, as it does here. Only in cases where it goes against Republican political interests or economic interests of money-backers do we prefer the schemes of yahoos and cranks to people who study the stuff for a living.

Of course, at some level, why would Republicans be trying to drive the country off a cliff? Well, not pretty to say, but they see it in their political interests. Yes, the DeMints and Coburns just don't believe in government at all or have genuinely held if crankish economic views. But a successful Stimulus Bill would be devastating politically for the Republican party. And they know it. If the GOP successfully bottles this up or kills it with a death of a thousand cuts, Democrats will have a good argument amongst themselves that Republicans were responsible for creating the carnage that followed.

It's not too smart to deny the reality that this legislation is the Democrats' folly. They passed it in the House, and they'll be thanking the GOP from saving them from utter disaster if it fails in the Senate.

The real pleasure of seeing the extreme incompetence of this administration, and so soon, is only surpassed by the equally-extreme mortification on the radical-left that their historic moment of revolutionary transformation is evaporating faster than one of candidate Obama's ethereal post-partisan stump speeches.

Partisan Realignment After the 2016 Election

This is the best piece I've read on our current crisis of political polarization.

It's not a crisis of governmental institutions. It's a crisis of the party system. What a great read.

From Stanford political scientists David Brady and Bruce Cain, at National Affairs, "Are Our Parties Realigning?":

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE GOP

The election of Donald Trump was even more of a blow to any expectations of a new equilibrium than the back-and-forth elections of the prior decades. Not only was he not a standard Republican on free trade, taxes, entitlements, and so on, but the Republicans in Congress did not expect him to win. Their reaction to his victory was to try to pull together and pass the legislation they thought mandated by their 2010 wins six years earlier: end Obamacare, reform taxes, cut regulation, and increase energy production, among other longstanding Republican agenda items.

But the narrow Senate margin and Trump's lack of policy knowledge and legislative skill left Republicans with only a tax-bill victory. Obamacare is still the law of the land; immigration reform and budget policy remain problematic; and Trump is a more divisive president than either Bush or Obama. Thus our system — already burdened by partisan divisiveness, close elections, and few incentives for parties to cooperate on public policy — is saddled with an inexperienced, chaotic president and a governing party with no clear sense of what it wants or what voters want.

One result has been a struggle to define the GOP, which has sometimes seemed like a fight between the party's longstanding priorities and some of President Trump's particular emphases. But the battle lines have not been very clear — especially since neither the practical and contemporary meaning of the party's longstanding priorities nor Trump's beliefs are actually all that clear at this point, and since disputes about the president's character often overshadow internal policy debates.

If Republicans lose one or both houses of Congress in 2018, then the battle lines could be drawn more clearly, because those congressional Republicans who have held back criticism of Trump in order to pass legislation will no longer need to restrain themselves in the battle for the party. The 2018 and 2020 election cycles will, by and large, shape what Republicans become post-Trump. Republican incumbents might buy into Trump's views on immigration, deficits, trade, and so on to appease the Trump base, and thus change the party. Or the battle between Trump-like candidates and traditional Republicans could yield a new set of internal divisions and patterns. Or traditional Republican views might come to be reaffirmed.

The dimensions of the battle are revealed in survey data that YouGov has collected over the past few years. Starting in May 2015, they interviewed a panel of 5,000 Americans 17 times, with more interviews scheduled prior to the 2018 elections. The results have shown that Trump voters, compared to those Republicans who voted in the primaries for other candidates, are older, whiter, less well-educated, have lower incomes, and are disproportionately from the Southern, border, and Midwestern states. They are also, on average, angrier about politics, more likely to believe that many in the government are crooks, and  more dissatisfied with government. They are very anti-trade and anti-immigration and favor taxing the rich (those making over $250,000).

When asked about illegal immigrants living in the U.S. now, 70% of Trump supporters said they should be required to leave, while less than 35% of other Republicans agreed. In fact, a slight majority of other Republicans thought that they should be allowed to stay and acquire citizenship. On social issues such as gay marriage and the death penalty, Trump supporters were much more conservative than their fellow Republicans; in fact, a majority of other Republicans opposed the death penalty. In the post-election surveys, by a two-to-one margin, Trump Republicans favored a Muslim ban, while other Republicans opposed the ban. The battle for the heart and soul of the party is underway.

While these issues will be important, perhaps even more important is the extent to which Trump Republicans and other Republicans differ regarding the president. The August 2017 YouGov re-contact survey showed that 92% of early Trump supporters liked him, with 72% liking him a lot; Republicans who weren't early supporters, however, liked him less, with only 29% liking him a lot. The president's ability to retain the support of his base means those Republicans running for Congress must face the delicate task of appealing to that base in both the primary and general elections. Ed Gillespie's run for governor of Virginia in 2017 was an excellent example of such balancing. As one Washington Post article put it a few days before the election, "Gillespie is at the center of a civil war that is dividing his party, one pitting the Republican establishment he personifies with his four-star credentials against the anti-Washington forces that propelled President Trump's rise."

The battle between the Trump wing and other Republicans will play out numerous times over the next two election cycles, and the future of the party hangs on who wins. Crucial to Republican success will be suburban independents and Republican women who chose Trump over Hillary but today do not like the president. Off-year election turnout numbers in Virginia and Alabama confirm the importance of these voters.

THE RACE TO REALIGNMENT

In American political science, the standard party-change model has focused on "realigning elections," wherein one party achieves dominance that lasts long enough to resolve the key issues generated by the instability of the era. Those issues, in our time, appear to be challenges like immigration, inequality, family and social breakdown, worker insecurity, automation, trade, America's role in the world, and environmental challenges, among others.

Some observers suggest that Democrats have the best chance to arrive at a formula that captures a durable majority on most of these issues. As of this writing, the 2018 generic congressional poll favors Democrats by seven points (according to the RealClearPolitics average), and Trump's popularity is low. Historically, presidents in their first term often lose seats at the midterm election. And winning the House, the Senate, or both in 2018 would be seen as a harbinger of winning control of the government in 2020.

Control of all the elected branches would give Democrats a base of support from which to reduce inequality, reform the immigration system, and restore American leadership in the economic realm, on the environment, and in other respects. Nice scenario, if you ask any progressive. But there are many reasons why the Democrats are likely to fail in their efforts to create a new stable majority. The first and most obvious is that Democrats, like Republicans, are badly split on how the party should respond to both the Trump presidency and the dominant issues of our time. The result is that the number of Democrats running for president in 2020 may well be in the double digits, creating divisions that resemble those the Republicans faced in 2016.

Second, potential candidates are already favoring policies, like Medicare for all and free tuition, that even Californians know are not affordable. These views don't actually represent today's Democratic coalition all that well. In YouGov surveys, Democrats, by over two-to-one, favor cutting spending over raising taxes to balance the budget, and by almost two-to-one, they believe that quite a few in government do not know what they are doing. In regard to free tuition, 40% of Democratic voters are either against it or are not sure that it would work. Thus, the Democrats have not achieved agreement within their party regarding policies that deal with today's core challenges, and a multi-candidate presidential primary is not likely to resolve the issues and create a stable majority. That leaves the Democrats, like the Republicans, divided and not unified, and, just as with the GOP, the necessary changes seem more likely to occur in primary and general-election contests over the next few electoral cycles. The Democratic Party does not look ready to step up; the Republicans don't either.

Here again, a student of history would be reminded of the closing decades of the 19th century, when there were pro-silver Republicans and pro-gold Democrats (like President Cleveland) and the same intra-party mix on tariffs and immigration and many other prominent issues. Control of the government shifted back and forth between these unsteady parties over and over again. But by 1896, the sorting of the parties had occurred, and Republicans were pro-gold, pro-tariffs, and so on, while the Democrats under William Jennings Bryan were the opposite. The electorate, in that case, chose Republicans, and the ensuing stability gave rise to economic growth and a period of prosperity.

A broadly similar transformation is very likely in our future. The sorting process in the Republican Party has begun, with the Democrats to follow in 2020. This time the sorting will not be conservatives to the GOP and liberals to the Democrats, since that has already occurred and has defined the very order that is growing exhausted. Rather, the coming era will be defined by questions like what do conservatism and liberalism mean to Republicans and Democrats, and which vision will the American people support? Whichever way it turns out, the parties have finally begun the process of adjusting to the realities of the new global economy.

The shapes our parties are likely to take might be easier to see if we consider their most extreme possible forms — which aren't where we will end up but can show us the contours of possibility. For Republicans, these are the possible alternatives on either pole: a Trump-like Republican Party that is anti-immigrant, protectionist, anti-gay marriage, dependent on entitlements, white, old, not well-educated, and concentrated in the southern and central United States; or a party that favors markets and smaller government, and is not anti-immigration per se but is, rather, more libertarian and diverse in membership.

The Democrats, likewise, face a similar polar choice: a Bernie Sanders/Elizabeth Warren Party that pushes socialist-leaning policies (Medicare for all, free tuition, a smaller military, higher taxes, and more regulation) joined to an identity politics that excludes moderates from swing states; or a Democratic Party more like that envisioned by the Clinton-era Democratic Leadership Council, which is center-left on economic policy, inclusive on social issues, relatively moderate on defense and immigration, and somewhat resistant to identity politics.

The battles between these alternatives have already begun in some primaries. And the likely outcome is not any of the polar opposites, but a shuffling of the issues that gives shape to complex coalitions...

RTWT, at the link.

No Enemies on the Left? Progressives for Barack Obama

I've been having a debate with Repsac 3, a far-left partisan who blogs over at Wingnuts & Moonbats, over the degree of radical support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Sure, I no doubt throw out terms like nihilist and Stalinist quite frequently, perhaps imprecisely. But one point I suggest has been that folks like this - however defined - are prominent members of the Obama coalition. In response, Repsac 3 claims that there's no evidence that hardline activists of this sort back Obama (for the debate thread see, "Where's the Revolution? Wait Until November").

I generally know what I'm talking about, so radical support for Obama's presidential bid's really just a matter of common sense to me. But Repsac's one to demand concrete evidence for claims (as are others, no doubt), and that's fine, so in that spirit I'll be documenting the degree of hardline radical support for the Obama campaign in my writing, beginning with this post.

First, let me be specific in what I'm referring to when I say "hardline left-wing radicals." A good definition is found in Leon Baradat's Political Ideologies, where he notes:

...a radical may defined as a person who is extremely dissastified with the society as it is and therefore is impatient with less than extreme proposals for changing it. Hence, all radicals favor an immediate and fundamental change in the society. In other words, all radicals favor revolutionary change.

Baradat also notes that the criteria to distinuish one type of radical from another is by examining the methods they advocate to bring about transformation.

Also, a good brief definition is also available from Wikipedia:

The Radical Left, an umbrella term to describe those who adhere explicitly and openly to revolutionary socialism, communism or anarchism — the "radical" qualifier tends in this case to denote a revolutionary fervor, and is a subset of, but should not be confused with, the far left.

Note Wikipedia's reference to the "far left," which is a term used more commonly with reference to political competition in European parliamentary democracies (with the extreme left being represented by neo-Stalinism), but is still valid in U.S. political discourse when discussing extreme left-wing partisans.

Now, it's frankly not common in mainstream media commentary to note how substantial is radical left influence on today's Democratic Party. Yet there's considerable evidence that after the Clinton years of DLC centrism, a far-left wing version of Democratic Party liberalism has definitely made a comeback (a good case can be made that Ned Lamont's defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman in the 2006 Connecticut Senate primary was based in the radical politics of the online netroots faction).

It's hard to deny the degree of essentially radical mobilization taking place today in American electoral politics, especially in the netroots, which I contend is replacing more traditional street mobilization as the main channel for fundamental change.

In any case, Tom Hayden, a prominent social and political activist and politician, who's still known for radical advocacy, has issued a major statement of far-left political support for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, "Progressives for Obama":

This call has been drafted for immediate circulation, discussion, and action.

All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grass-roots participation drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives. We believe that Barack Obama's very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below.

As progressives we believe this sudden and unexpected new movement is just what America needs. The future has arrived. The alternative would mean a return to the dismal status quo party politics that have failed so far to deliver peace, health care, full employment and effective answers to crises like global warming.

During past progressive peaks in our political history - the late Thirties, the early Sixties - social movements have provided the relentless pressure and innovative ideas that allowed centrist leaders to embrace visionary solutions. We find ourselves in just such a situation today.

We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined.

Now some might argue that Hayden's mellowed from his prominent 1960-era radicalism - for example, when he was a member of the Chicago Seven - and, well, he may have to some degree.

But he maintains today, on his personal website, the full-text version of "The Port Huron Statement," which is widely considered the most important political document of new left revolutionary socialism of the 1960s era, and Hayden was the statement's primary author.

The document's worth a good read, especially for people wondering what the progressive movement would do today, should they gain power (the term "progressive" has been appropriated by far-left activists in order to make their radical policies appear more mainstream, and hence politically acceptable).

But note this passage, near the conclusion of The Port Huron Statement outlining an agenda for dramatic social transformation:

A new left must transform modern complexity into issues that can be understood and felt close-up by every human being. It must give form to the feelings of helplessness and indifference, so that people may see the political, social and economic sources of their private troubles and organize to change society. In a time of supposed prosperity, moral complacency and political manipulation, a new left cannot rely on only aching stomachs to be the engine force of social reform. The case for change, for alternatives that will involve uncomfortable personal efforts, must be argued as never before. The university is a relevant place for all of these activities.

We see striking similarities when comparing Hayden's positions in his current essay, "Progressives for Obama," to those in "The Port Huron Statement."

Of course, Hayden's not a spokesman for any major political advocacy group or political party, but his essay is going out as a general call to action among all left-wing progressive forces. Indeed, the language of his essay seeks complete mobilization, which we can infer as including the various left-wing factions that would normally be considered under the notion of the "radical left" as identified by Baradat.

So, whereas while some progressives would abjure revolutionary violence (and I assume Hayden's does), some would not. Indeed, some of the most prominent antiwar progressive organizations today, like World Can't Wait, are indeed revolutionary hard-left organzations, implacably committed to "driving out the Bush regime."

The World Can't Wait list of endorsers includes everyone from prominent left-wing actors like Susan Sarandon and Marin Sheen to neo-Stalinist organizations such as International ANSWER (a review of the listing gives some credence to the notion of "no enemies on the left").

So, while the exact degree and nature of Obama's support among the various hardline organizations is uncertain, we know without a doubt, from Hayden's essay, that many on the contemporary left see the Obama campaign as the electoral vehicle to operationalize their program for radical, revolutionary change.

I'll have more on this in upcoming posts.

**********

Also see the follow-up entries in the "No Enemies on the Left" series," starting with the most recent:

* "Left-Wing Establishment Cheers Wright's "Brilliance."

* "Responsible Plan? Antiwar Groups Endorse Unconditional Iraq Surrender."

* "Ecoterrorism and the Democrats: More on the Radical Left."

* "Democrats Hijacked by Hard-Left Base, Lieberman Says."

* "Muslim Students Association Seeks U.S. Destruction."

* "Imagine, Obama a Liberal: It's Easy If You Try."

* "Barack Obama's Antiwar Coalition."

* "What's a Radical?"

* "Palestinians See Obama as Close Ally."

* "Anti-McCain Mobilization Rooted in Hardline Anti-Iraq Constituencies."

* "Obama's Circle of Friends: The America-Hating Left."

* "Code Pink Bundling Contributions for Obama."

Digby's Hullabaloo Rejects Afghanistan as Just War: Joins Neo-Stalinists in Protest Against U.S. Neo-Colonial Project

Okay, here's a follow up to AOSHQ, "Liberal Blogger Admits: We Claimed to Support 'The Good War' in Afghanistan as Political Strategy to Prove Our "Macho" Credentials; We Never Meant It," and Jim Geraghty's, "Democrats Never Meant What They Said About Afghanistan."

After Geraghty sent the NRO comment trolls over to swarm Digby's page, she closed comments and posted an update. Check this part especially:

I have always believed that The Good War was a myth and that the Democrats used it as a political weapon. I've written about it plenty in the past. But why these bloodthirsty wingnuts should take issue with that and conclude that I'm therefore responsible for the deaths of American soldiers is beyond me.

After all, the Democrats were all for the war --- just like they were. The only problem the right had with it was that the Democrats criticized George W. Bush for not being enough of a warmonger on Afghanistan. They weren't pacifists. They were just liars and political opportunists. And now the Republicans and the Democrats are all potentially on the same team, pulling for a bigger and better and longer war in Afghanistan. Huzzah! Post partisan comity is at hand.

Notice something here: Diby's essentially saying that (1) don't freaking link me in with the Democratic war party, because (2) I'm way out further on the left than almost everyone in Congress. That is to say, obviously, by rejecting the "Good War," Digby aligns with the one-and-only Representative Barbara Lee, who in 2001, was the sole Member of Congress to vote against the the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists (AUMF) --- i.e., the Afghan deployment. It may be recalled that Representative Lee chairs the Hip Hop Caucus Advisory Board, which is the White House-linked group behind plans to desecrate the historical memory of September 11. It all fits together like a puzzle.

Interestingly, Digby's basically in solidarity with the International ANSWER forces who are staging their 8th anniversay Afghanistan protests on October 7th in Los Angeles:

U.S./NATO Out of Afghanistan!
End Colonial Occupation: Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine...
Money for People's Needs, Not War!

Notice the classic Marxist-Leninist agitprop, "End the Colonial Occupation."

And so, yes, Digby's right --- she did oppose the war all along, just like the hardline neo-Stalinists looking to topple global capitalism. Digby's a major player in the "progressive" netroots, but as I've long pointed out, "progressive" is the political-correct contemporary term for "neo-commmunist." Where Digby's not correct is by suggesting today's Democratic Party is simply politically expedient, a shadow war party. The fact is, from the top leadership in Congress, to President Barack Obama, the current U.S. goverment is infiltrated with neo-communists and fifth-column terror enablers. The only reason they support anything resemble mainstream foreign policy views is constituency pressure and the need to keep up the cloak of secret moderation. (We'll see how that works out November 2010.)

The stakes are clearly high for the forces of good in this country. Great job by Ace and Jim Geraghty in hammering Digby, but it's not just that Democratic-leftists "misreprepresented" themselves. It's all part of the larger plan to turn over the U.S. to the world's forces of moral decay and collectivist destruction.

(P.S.: If all goes well, I'll be infiltrating the October 7th ANSWER protest to photograph and report on the antiwar agitation and revolutionary anti-Americanism. Stay tuned ...)

Gay Rights and the Postmodern Agenda

I did not know Steve Clemons was gay. In fact, the only thing I knew about Clemons, from reading his columns occassionally, was that he seemed like one more classic leftist nut spewing BDS across the blogosphere. The erudition of Clemons' essays did nothing to disguise his representation of the essential nihilism of today's postmodern left.

Clemons' Thanksgiving essay, where he discusses his sexual orientation, and his frustrations with Barack Obama, is one more example of how radically left is the progressive agenda of today's Democratic Party base:

Yes, like everyone - I'm pleased that Barack Obama won the White House. But it is only a small beginning in the right direction. But with Barack Obama, we also got Proposition 8. We have him talking about Iraq as the "bad war" and Afghanistan as the "good war". We have political appointments in both security and economic policy that either will be the height of brilliant personnel and policy maneuvering or alternatively could end up as a paralyzed cabinet and government disaster. There is only fog ahead, much yet we don't know.

We have wars going on in the Middle East that shouldn't be going on. I have friends there now being shot at - and helping to kill others - and this wasn't what the 21st century was supposed to be about.

I have been writing here for some time -- far before the National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2025 report came out chronicling America's global decline - that America's mystique as a great nation had been punctured by the invasion of Iraq. We showed key limits in our military and economic capacity, leading allies and foes respectively to count on us and fear us less. The economic crisis is the punctuation point in America's fall from its once significant global perch. I'm worried about all of this - making a traditional thanksgiving very uncomfortable.

Our new president preaches inclusion, which is a good thing -- and I think he has the potential to be one of the great stewards of the White House and the executive branch authority we have given him.

But how could people who helped deliver this man to the White House also spit on my decision to enter into marriage with someone I have been with for 17 years? Europe has embraced adjustments in marriage easily and in a socially healthy way, and yet we still stoke embers of nativism and fundamentalism in this country. Barack Obama's voice was used on anti-gay marriage robocalls to African-American and Hispanic voters in California. To my knowledge, he didn't ask for his voice not to be used.

I think intolerance is what undermines the glue of a nation, stirring up fear and violence at home and in wars abroad. We have a lot of intolerant Americans who helped elect George W. Bush twice to the White House, and now we have many other intolerant Americans who have come into their civic responsibilities as voters and have tainted the hope that people like my partner and I have for a better and more just nation that recognizes our relationship in the ways it should be recognized.

I'm going to see the movie Milk today starring Sean Penn reprising brilliantly the life of the assassinated first gay elected politician in the United States - and no matter what Proposition 8 thought it achieved, I'll be wearing my ring.

So, this is an uncomfortable Thanksgiving holiday, and I hope that those who read this today do embrace their family and friends - all of them, gay ones too - and remember that this nation needs to stop dragging when it comes to bigotry.

I've written much on gay rights and the unhinged left's backlash against the majority vote on Proposition 8 (which Clemons conveniently omits).

Here I'll simply refer readers back my post on marriage and tradition, "Marriage and Procreation: Bodily Union of Spouses."

As for the rest of Clemons' rant, I'm a little surprised he's resorting to the same smears of intolerance and bigotry used by every other 9th tier leftist on the web.

Or, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised: The gay marriage movement has nothing more to argue for it than to demonize those who oppose them, which is essentially a temper-tantrum masquerading as argumentation. Leftists may indeed win the battle over marriage in the long run - with all the intimidation and claims of "rights" - as society proceeds along the path to hegemonic secularism. What's interesting here is how Clemons' gay marriage advocacy fits right in with all the other outrages against GOP governance over the last eight years.

For every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, or so they say. Conservatives are planning now for their comeback, and 2010's not too soon to make the case that the push for gay marriage is just one pillar of the larger radical program intent to destroy center-right traditionalism in this country.

French Exhibition to Commemorate 9/11

MEMENTOS: Keys from the World Trade Center are among the items representing the 2001 attacks to be shown in the French city of Caen.

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Like many Americans, I wasn't pleased with the French pursuit of narrow national self-interests in the run-up to Iraq. On the other hand, I wasn't so pleased with all the French-bashing we saw on this side of the Atlantic in the aftermath.

France, for all it's aspirations to international grandeur and puissance, is one of the world's great nations, with contributions to Western civilization too numerous to recount. French politics veers much too far to the left on occasion, but there's a history and culture to the nation that remains one of the world's most fascinating.

The French people, moreover, do indeed appreciate their centuries-old partnership with America. The strength of those ties seem to wax and wane at times, especially amid periods like the backlash against Iraq, but the fundament's still there, sturdily under the surface.

French respect for the United States will be on display this summer, when a new historical exhibition opens in city of Caen, on the coast of Normandy. The exhibition, "A Global Moment," is covered in today's Los Angeles Times:

On the shores of Normandy where thousands of Americans died in the cataclysm that was D-day, a museum that aims at being more than a collection of rusting relics is preparing to commemorate another day that changed the world: Sept. 11, 2001.

More than 120 mementos, including building keys and a smashed-up vehicle, are being shipped from New York to the French city of Caen for the first exhibition outside the United States, and the largest anywhere on the attack, its roots and aftermath.

That France is playing host to the exhibition might surprise Americans who remember the "freedom fries" uproar that greeted Paris' opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, which the Bush administration tied to its war on terrorism. But the director of the Caen Memorial, a museum of conflict and peace, said the show would have neither an American nor French take on events surrounding Sept. 11, but rather a global view.

"The people who died in those buildings were from 16 countries and every religion," Director Stephane Grimaldi said. "It was an attack against America. It was an attack against democracy and human rights. We want to tell that story."

The exhibition, titled "A Global Moment," is expected to open June 6 at the museum, which was built to remember those who died on that date in 1944 and in the Battle of Normandy that began with the landings.

Grimaldi said that although the relationship between the French and Americans has been complicated by post-Sept. 11 politics in recent years, museums that try to explain the meaning of war are valuable as a way to discuss peace and shared democratic values.

"The American troops' coming to Normandy to free Europe was a turning point in World War II," he said during an interview in Paris. "While we still don't know the historical significance of 9/11, we know it is a turning point and it is time to begin to understand and explore it together."

Grimaldi said he chose the 9/11 exhibition to mark the 20th anniversary of the French museum because the act of terrorism that day in 2001 is so important to contemporary politics and everyday life around the world.

"The world today is the world of 9/11," he said, "and our museum is here not to be just another collection of things from the past, of old tanks and helmets, but to understand the world of today that is so marked by terrorism."

Read the whole thing.

The article notes the stress of relations surrounding the Iraq war, but notes as well that French President Nicolas Sarkozy 's getting Franco-American relations back on track.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times

No, Farmers Don't Use 80 Percent of California's Water

From Representative Devin Nunes, at National Review, "The statistic is manufactured by environmentalists to distract from the incredible damage their policies have caused":

As the San Joaquin Valley undergoes its third decade of government-induced water shortages, the media suddenly took notice of the California water crisis after Governor Jerry Brown announced statewide water restrictions. In much of the coverage, supposedly powerful farmers were blamed for contributing to the problem by using too much water.

“Agriculture consumes a staggering 80 percent of California’s developed water, even as it accounts for only 2 percent of the state’s gross domestic product,” exclaimed Daily Beast writer Mark Hertsgaard in a piece titled “How Growers Gamed California’s Drought.” That 80-percent statistic was repeated in a Sacramento Bee article titled, “California agriculture, largely spared in new water restrictions, wields huge clout,” and in an ABC News article titled “California’s Drought Plan Mostly Lays Off Agriculture, Oil Industries.” Likewise, the New York Times dutifully reported, “The [State Water Resources Control Board] signaled that it was also about to further restrict water supplies to the agriculture industry, which consumes 80 percent of the water used in the state.”

This is a textbook example of how the media perpetuates a false narrative based on a phony statistic. Farmers do not use 80 percent of California’s water. In reality, 50 percent of the water that is captured by the state’s dams, reservoirs, aqueducts, and other infrastructure is diverted for environmental causes. Farmers, in fact, use 40 percent of the water supply. Environmentalists have manufactured the 80 percent statistic by deliberately excluding environmental diversions from their calculations. Furthermore, in many years there are additional millions of acre-feet of water that are simply flushed into the ocean due to a lack of storage capacity — a situation partly explained by environmental groups’ opposition to new water-storage projects.

It’s unsurprising that environmentalists and the media want to distract attention away from the incredible damage that environmental regulations have done to California’s water supply. Although the rest of the state is now beginning to feel the pinch, these regulations sparked the San Joaquin Valley’s water crisis more than two decades ago. The Endangered Species Act spawned many of these regulations, such as rules that divert usable water to protect baby salmon and a 3-inch baitfish called the Delta smelt, as well as rules that protect the striped bass, a non-native fish that — ironically — eats both baby salmon and smelt. Other harmful regulations stem from legislation backed by environmental groups and approved by Democratic-controlled Congresses in 1992 and 2009. These rules have decimated water supplies for San Joaquin farmers and communities, resulting in zero-percent water allocations and the removal of increasing amounts of farmland from production.

One would think the catastrophic consequences of these environmental regulations would be an important part of the reporting on the water crisis. But these facts are often absent, replaced by a fixation on the 80 percent of the water supply that farmers are falsely accused of monopolizing. None of the four articles cited above even mention the problem of environmental diversions. The same holds true for a recent interview with Governor Brown on ABC’s This Week. In that discussion, host Martha Raddatz focused almost exclusively on farmers’ supposed overuse of the water supply, and she invoked the 80 percent figure twice. The governor himself, a strong proponent of environmental regulations, was silent about the topic during the interview, instead blaming the crisis on global warming.

That is no surprise — President Obama also ignored environmental regulations but spoke ominously about climate change when he addressed the water crisis during a visit to California’s Central Valley in February 2014. Indeed, for many on the left, the California water crisis is just another platform for proclaiming their dogmatic fixation on fighting global warming, a campaign that many environmental extremists have adopted as a religion.

You don’t have to take my word for it; just listen to Rajendra Pachauri, former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the United Nations’ foremost body on global warming. After recently leaving his job amid allegations of sexual harassment, Pachauri wrote in his resignation letter: “For me, the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma.”

Utterly convinced of the righteousness of their crusade, environmental extremists stop at nothing in pursuing their utopian conception of “sustainability.” The interests of families, farmers, and entire communities — whose very existence is often regarded as an impediment to sustainability — are ignored and derided in the quest for an ever-more pristine environment free from human contamination. In the name of environmental purity, these extremists have fought for decades to cut water supplies for millions of Californians...

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