Obsidian Wings

Are There No Prisons?

by hilzoy

"1) The poor don't need more food. Obesity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get food stamps (because they don't have an address), food insufficiency is not."

-- Megan McArdle, from a post called "Why Not Food Stamps?"

***

"How Many People Lived in Food-Insecure Households?

• In 2006, 35.5 million people lived in food-insecure households, including 12.6 million children.
• Of these individuals, 7.7 million adults and 3.4 million children lived in households with very low food security.
• Children’s food security is affected to some extent in most food-insecure households (see the ERS report, Food Assistance Research Brief—Food Insecurity in Households With Children). However, children are usually protected from substantial reductions in food intake even in households with very low food security. In 2006, 430,000 children (0.6 percent of the Nation’s children) lived in households with very low food security among children."

-- USDA: Food Security in the United States: Conditions and Trends

***

"'At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, 'it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.'

'Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge.

'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

'And the Union workhouses.' demanded Scrooge. 'Are they still in operation?'

'They are. Still,' returned the gentleman,' I wish I could say they were not.'

'The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge.

'Both very busy, sir.'

'Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'I'm very glad to hear it.'

'Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,' returned the gentleman, 'a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?'

'Nothing!' Scrooge replied.

'You wish to be anonymous?'

'I wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. 'Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.'

'Many can't go there; and many would rather die.'

'If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.'

'But you might know it,' observed the gentleman.

'It's not my business,' Scrooge returned. 'It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!'"

-- Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

***

Megan McArdle could have looked up the figures on food insecurity before announcing its nonexistence. As the gentleman said to Scrooge, she might have known it -- and a lot more easily than Scrooge, who didn't have the internet at his disposal. And it's certainly more her business than it was Scrooge's, even on Scrooge's narrow understanding of that term, since she undertook to write about it.

Though personally, I've always agreed with Marley's ghost:

"'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'"

Lies And Democracy

by hilzoy

I think it's more or less beyond question that Hillary Clinton, and her husband, have told a series of lies about Barack Obama. (I've put some familiar examples at the end of this post: anyone who wants to consider the evidence can do so, but it won't be as distracting to those who have already seen it.) I basically agree with what publius said about it:

"What’s so infuriating is that, in doing so, they assume their audience is too ignorant to learn the truth. It’s not so much that they’re attacking Obama – after all, that’s politics. It’s that Clinton’s attacks illustrate a deep contempt for voters. Call it “the rube strategy” – we’ll say what we want and most people will be too ignorant to ever figure out the difference."

However, I don't think the problem is exactly that they are assuming that most people won't follow the news closely enough to know who is telling the truth and who is lying. As far as I can tell, that assumption is accurate. The problem is that they are playing on that ignorance in a way that displays a different sort of contempt for voters: not the assumption that most people do not follow the news closely enough to be able to say what's wrong with criticizing Obama's 'present' votes on anti-abortion bills, which is probably true, but the idea that it is OK to manipulate them into casting votes they might not cast if people were not telling them lies.

Consider, for instance ...

Prognosis Negative

by publius

As a sidebar to the imminent Democratic surrender on telecom immunity, note that five of the twelve pro-immunity Dems are on the Senate Commerce Committee. These include: (1) Inouye (Chairman); (2) Rockefeller; (3) McCaskill; (4) Nelson (FL); and (5) Pryor.

This matters because the Commerce Committee is where all things telecom start. So, as if FISA immunity weren’t depressing enough, this vote also indicates that the chances of a progressive telecom bill coming out of the Democratically-controlled Commerce Committee is about zero. That means no net neutrality, and no anything that the Bells don’t like.

For obvious reasons, telecom lobbies generally lavish Commerce Committee members with lots of money. I would love to see an enterprising journalist determine how much money the Bells gave these five Senators (and how those figures compare with other non-Commerce Senators). I feel like I’ve seen numbers of Rockefeller, but not necessarily the rest.

If this information is on the Internets, please let me know in the comments.

[UPDATE: One objection to this argument, though, is that several Commerce Committee Dems voted against immunity. The fact that these are mostly Red State Dems suggests that they feel exposed on the national security front, not necessarily that they're being legally bribed. Inouye, however, isn't a Red State Dem -- and he's also the guy that matters most.]

[UPDATE 2: For a more thoughtful (and darker) view, check out commenter Adam in the thread below -- it's the first one.]

Best Ad Ever

by publius

Fighting Fire With Fire

by hilzoy

Writing about Paul Waldman's latest column in TAP, Ezra Klein writes:

"The overarching theme of Waldman's column -- that Clinton is "running like a Republican" -- almost pushes me to her side on the issue. The winner of the Democratic primary, after all, will have to run against a Republican."

I think it's beyond argument that the Clinton campaign has lied about Obama's positions and record. Personally, I don't find that this so much as begins to push me over to her side. I will, of course, support her over any of the Republicans in the race: she would have good domestic policies, and while her judgment on foreign policy worries me a lot, it doesn't worry me nearly as much as, say, John McCain's. But the idea that I should find her willingness to lie about her opponents to be a plus is pretty baffling to me.

Maybe the idea is this: as Ezra says, the winner of the Democratic primary will have to run against a Republican. Republicans use revolting smear tactics. Therefore, we have to be willing to use them too. If we aren't, we'll get nailed.

This sounds like it makes sense, but it doesn't. I remember hearing similar arguments back in the 1980s, when I was (briefly) an arms control geek. People who favored our developing chemical weapons used to say: well, the Soviets have chemical weapons, so we have to have them too. I thought: that doesn't follow at all. If the Soviets had chemical weapons, as seemed overwhelmingly likely, we needed a defense against chemical weapons. For instance, we needed chemical protective gear, ways of disabling or destroying those weapons (e.g., well-aimed missiles), and some threat to deter their use. Those were the things that would enable us to counter the threat of Soviet chemical weapons. But we could have all those things without developing chemical weapons ourselves. Moreover, chemical weapons were in many ways worse than other things at performing these protective functions: even as deterrents, their tendency to waft about, killing people on all sides indiscriminately, often made them much worse, from a purely military standpoint, than plain old bombs. So even though it sounded plausible to say: they have chemical weapons, therefore, we had better get some too, this made no sense on closer examination.

Similarly here. The fact that the Republicans will, in all likelihood, turn some weapon on us does not mean that we need to be willing to turn that weapon on them if we want to win. What we need is to be able to defend against that weapon, and (preferably) turn the fact that the other side uses it to our advantage. That's a different matter entirely.

[Update: Just to be clear: it might be that the only way to fight a dishonest smear is to smear right back. But I think that needs to be argued for, not just assumed. Moreover, it would be really unfortunate, if true: it would mean that once one side begins to lie, the other faces a choice between losing and lying back. That's not a conclusion we should accept without a lot of argument.]

Ground Game

by hilzoy

This is interesting. I've been reading around on various topics related to the Democratic primaries, and found two stories about the Obama campaign that made quite similar points about two different states. First, of all places, the WSJ on South Carolina:

"In early voting states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, campaigns use rallies and personal appearances to get votes. Now, the nominating races have moved to bigger states, including much of the South. Candidates here rely on endorsements from powerful politicians and preachers. It is a tradition that has evolved since the 1960s to garner support among poor blacks who look to their preachers for both spiritual and political guidance. And it is the way Mrs. Clinton, like countless Democratic politicians before her, is running her campaign in South Carolina.

Mr. Obama, in contrast, is trying something many observers say has never been done here: He is circumventing entrenched local leadership and building a political machine from scratch. His staff consists largely of community organizers -- many from out of state or with no political experience -- who are assembling an army of volunteers. It is a strategy often used by labor organizations and in neighborhood and town politics.

Some evidence suggests the strategy may be working. After lagging far behind Mrs. Clinton in state polls for much of last year, Mr. Obama has jumped ahead. According to an automated poll conducted Monday by Public Policy Polling of Raleigh, N.C., Mr. Obama leads Mrs. Clinton 44% to 28%, with about 12% of respondents undecided. As late as October, Mrs. Clinton had a 20-percentage-point lead in many surveys. Nationally, Mrs. Clinton remains in the lead."

Next, the Las Vegas Sun on northern Nevada:

"Credit the Obama campaign for creating a new playbook for rural Nevada, Trigg said. While Clinton nabbed the backing of traditional Democratic Party leaders, Obama went outside that apparatus, reaching into parts of the state where in the past Democrats had often feared to tread.

Six months before the other candidates, for example, Obama opened an office in the city of Elko, a somewhat more accessible stand-in for the rest of rural Nevada. He also visited Elko before other candidates, and, in November, he came out with an extensive plan geared to rural Nevada. That plan included support for Nevada’s mining and ranching industries, creation of a better communications network and help for small businesses.

“They had an incredible ground game that was really unprecedented for this area,” said Lance Whitney, who helped Obama in his final weeks of the campaign in Elko. “What they found is that people in rural areas see themselves in Barack Obama. They see him as a true American success story. They see him as representing something new and fresh.”"

So: in both cases the Obama campaign found itself locked out of the normal Democratic party structure, and in both cases it went on to build very impressive organizations from scratch. I think this is interesting in its own right. But it also helps me with a question someone asked in comments a while back, namely: would Obama be good for the Democratic Party as a whole? Would he be a charismatic figure who left the Democratic Party structure either unchanged or weakened, or would he help to reinvigorate it, and leave it stronger and more effective than he found it? At the time, I didn't answer, because I had nothing better than hunches to go on. But these articles suggest an answer. From the Sun piece:

"For state Democratic Party leaders, the challenge is to build on the work of Obama’s campaign, as well as the efforts of organizers such as Trigg from the state party that threw together a caucus in places where, in some cases, there had been almost no party at all. This year, five rural counties that had been dormant will hold party conventions, Trigg said.

That’s good news for people such as Jill Derby.

When the chairwoman of the Nevada Democratic Party ran for Nevada’s second congressional district in 2006, she often found herself struggling to throw together barbecues and town hall meetings in out-of-the-way counties where there were no Democratic supporters to call on.

Today, the party is “organized out in the rurals down to the precinct level in a way that we haven’t been in the past,” Derby said. “This is going to be a very big lift” for Democrats in future elections."

Whether or not he wins, will Obama help the party? Signs point to yes.

Scott Lemieux: Man ...or Machine?

by publius

Let me join the chorus and heartily recommend Scott Lemieux's Roe series (one, two, three). It brings back old memories because he mentions an old Legal Fiction post where I laid out my own thinking on Roe. (I actually used to write about law sometimes).

I'm tied up for the moment, but I will join in on this when I can. But it's a good series -- well worth the read.

The Fine Art of Misrepresentation

by publius

I caught most of tonight’s schizophrenic Mortal Kombat/Kumbaya debate. I know you’ll be shocked, but I came away irritated with the Clinton campaign – more precisely, with certain tactics that I dare call Bush-esque. Hear me out.

To back up, and to echo Josh Marshall, HRC had actually been growing on me lately. The new wave of sympathy hit me one day as I listened to her talk confidently – and with such clear mastery – of some random policy point. I thought, “God, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone that smart and that wonky in the White House.” Her policy mastery didn’t so much win me to her side, as it cooled my opposition. It made me step back, get some perspective, and realize that an HRC administration would be a welcome relief – and would actually be cool in some wonkerrific respects.

But then I listened to the debate. And, ugh. What bothered me was not any of the silly things you usually hear about her personally. What bothered me was her tactics – and in particular, her misrepresentations. They were a particular type of misrepresentation that rang disturbingly familiar.

Josh Marshall got me thinking about all this when I read his scattered reactions to the debate:

I still think Hillary is just intentionally misrepresenting what Obama said about Reagan. It makes me cringe. As much I like her, it makes me cringe. …

Just when I'm seeing Hillary's side of things, she comes back with crap like this 'present' stuff. Anybody who's looked into this knows the whole 'present' thing is garbage. It's a standard thing in the Illinois legislature.

Both of these attacks – i.e., Reagan and the “present” voting – are clearly factually false. And everyone who pays attention to the news knows it. And Clinton knows it too. Obama’s invocation of Reagan had nothing to do with praising Republican ideas, and the “present” thing has already been debunked too.

But still, she and her campaign keep harping on this -- dishonestly. What’s so infuriating is that, in doing so, they assume their audience is too ignorant to learn the truth. It’s not so much that they’re attacking Obama – after all, that’s politics. It’s that Clinton’s attacks illustrate a deep contempt for voters. Call it “the rube strategy” – we’ll say what we want and most people will be too ignorant to ever figure out the difference.

My Last Word On Electability

by hilzoy

Jonathan Chait makes a point I've been wanting to make, and he makes it clearly enough that I'm just going to quote him:

"In the Washington Post yesterday, Paul Starr argued that it's really difficult to determine whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would fare better in a general election. Ezra Klein made the same point, as did Kevin Drum. I find this maddening.

Look, it's obviously true that any guess about general election viability is speculative. You're predicting a future event, and you could be wrong. I think the New England Patriots would have a better chance of beating the New York Giants than would the Detroit Lions, but I can't be sure.

That said, the available data here is not very ambiguous. Hillary Clinton is a highly unpopular figure. In the last Gallup survey, 50% of respondents have a favorable view of her, and 46% negative. Sometimes her averages goes higher, but sometimes it veers into negative territory. Obama has very high ratings. In the most recent poll, 59% view him favorably, 32% negatively. The difference between plus 4 and plus 27 is enormous--a Detroit Lions v. New England Patriots-size gap.

On top of that, independents who vote in the primaries and caucuses have shown a very strong preference for Obama over Clinton. That is the closest available approximation of a swing voter. (Some Clinton supporters have pointed to her strength among lower-income Democrats in the primary, but a low-income Democratic primary voter is not the same thing as a working class swing voter.)

In 2000, Clinton ran five points behind Al Gore in the state of New York, and it's not like Gore was the most popular politician who ever lived. That's who she is--a figure who is disliked by pretty much everybody who isn't a sure-fire Democrat, and even some people who are. You can imagine Obama running a horrible general election campaign and becoming less popular. No doubt his favorable ratings would drop a bit in the face of Republican attacks, as would hers. But for him to become as unpopular as Clinton already is--without months of nation-side attack ads--is a worst-case scenario."

Chait links to Obama's favorable/unfavorable ratings in his post. Here are Clinton's. Compare and contrast.

I suspect that what's going on involves two mistaken lessons from 2004. The first is just that a lot of Democrats nominated John Kerry based on the thought that he was electable, and they were wrong. But that doesn't show that it's impossible to figure out which of two candidates will do better in a general election; it only shows that back in 2004, a lot of people didn't figure it out right. Moreover, if memory serves, a lot of them made a pretty obvious mistake: concluding that Kerry was electable on the basis of the fact that he had won the Democratic caucusses in Iowa. There's no earthly reason why we need to make a mistake like that again.

Second, also relying on memory, I think a lot of people concluded from the Swift Boats controversy that the Republicans can attack anyone, even on that person's area of greatest strength, and prevail. In comments on Clinton's negatives and their implications for the general election, someone will usually say: well, the Republicans will slime anyone; they can convince the electorate that anyone is a scumbag; and if you think they can't, you're just being naive. I think this is also a very serious misreading of what happened.

Kerry had served in battle, and been decorated for his service. But there was also a fair amount of lingering hostility towards him in the military, and in some conservative circles, over the Winter Soldier hearings. Democrats might have thought that his military service would make him immune to the sorts of attacks that were launched on him; in fact, in nominating Kerry, we were nominating someone whom a number of people on the right already believed had slandered his fellow servicemembers, sacrificed their honor to his own political ambitions, and contributed to what they saw as the liberal stab in the back that did us in in Vietnam*.

That is: we thought that by nominating Kerry we were inoculating ourselves against a particular attack; in fact, we were making it much, much more likely**. And one moral of 2004 is: we should do our homework, and know our adversaries.

But 2004 absolutely does not show that the Republican attack machine is invincible, or that it can magically transform literally anyone into an object of ridicule, contempt, or hatred. They are very good at what they do, but they do not have magical powers that make resistance futile. Acting as if they do -- which is, after all, what people who say "ha ha, if you think that anyone will be proof against the Republican slime machine, you're just naive" seem to think -- will get us nowhere.*** Thinking seriously about how to prevail in the face of it will. And taking seriously the possibility that different candidates might affect how many people believe those attacks, and how hard the Republicans have to work to convince them seems to me like plain common sense.

***

* I hope I don't have to say that I think all this is unfair.

** And note: we did this by nominating someone who already had a place of honor in the stories some conservatives tell themselves about how liberals betrayed America. I do not, myself, want to repeat this mistake.

*** I suspect that seeing Republican attacks as irresistible also accounts for the number of people who read my previous two posts on this subject and took them to show that I thought the Republicans were going to play nice this time. My entire argument was about which nominee would be most likely to cause people to see through Republican attacks; it literally makes no sense on the assumption that I didn't expect them to attack at all. On the other hand, I did think it was worth asking how we might best defeat them. I suspect that the fact that I do not think that we will be hit with irresistible attacks before which literally any candidate will be simply helpless registered, to some people, as my not expecting the kinds of attacks Republicans actually deliver.

***

On a completely unrelated note: this is very funny.

And on another unrelated note: I am trying to assess Hillary Clinton's legislative record. If anyone knows of any good accounts of it, just let me know. Thanks.

Bling Bling? Bling Bling???!!!

by hilzoy

Via Andrew Sullivan, Mitt Romney makes a play for the African-American vote:

"Governor Romney paid tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. when speaking to a group of employees at Gate Petroleum today and then shook hands and posed for photos with African-American families at a parade.

The presidential hopeful met a friendly crowd at the Martin Luther King, Jr. parade here. The former Massachusetts governor often runs back and forth across streets during parades to greet people and today was no exception. He shook hands with ROTC members, tiny beauty queens, police officers and many parade-goers, including children screaming his name. He jumped off the Mitt Mobile to greet a waiting crowd, took a picture with some kids and young adults and awkwardly quipped, ”Who let the dogs out? Who who.”

He took pictures with many in the crowd and greeted one baby wearing a necklace saying, “Hey buddy! How’s it going? What’s happening? You got some bling bling here!”"

Mitt Romney: just when I think I've taken his measure, he surprises me all over again.

[UPDATE: Via Digby: video!]