Paranoid about the paranoics

I've been remembering the frustrating conversation I had at a wine tasting a while back.  One thing this annoying person said is that he has a gun in his house to defend himself against the government when they try to take away all his rights.

Even though the Berkeley world in which I am now so immersed does not trust the government, I don't live in an environment where the government is seen as a threat to be armed against.  But I know there are many parts of the country where government is so mistrusted, so hated, that people would like it to go away, and they proudly maintain their guns for the opportunity to return to the natural order of things.

This is the source of the Tea Party movement.  Every morning I wake up and hear on NPR about the (potential for, and now real) government shutdown.  It frustrates me because of the premise embedded in the discussion: that government should not be shut down.  The disconnect between this premise and that of the Tea Party frightens me for the future.

The Tea Party wants radically smaller government.  And they've won.  The sequester: we are still functioning under radically reduced government funding.  The government shutdown: radically reduced government funding.  Support for food programs is vanishing.  NPR presents this as a terrible impact of the shutdown.  The Tea Partiers are cheering: they do not believe in food programs.  Go down the list of what the media presents as an impact of the government shutdown, and you will see a list of the items that the Tea Party does not want funded by the government anyway.  Eight hundred thousand federal workers: that's their win.  Food safety inspection.  National Parks.

Fox News calls it a government slimdown.  The term isn't just a way for them to play down the impact of the shutdown -- it's a way to celebrate that government is getting smaller.  Who doesn't want to slim down?

The Tea Party has been clever to focus on Obamacare as the item they want to negotiate on.  If for some reason the Democrats begin to discuss this law, they win.  If, as the Tea Party knows, this law is a done deal, then they can confidently hide behind the impenetrable shield of the issue and radically reduce the size of the government.  It's win-win for the Tea Partiers.

I am a diehard Democrat, and I have wanted to give the President the benefit of the doubt for his five years in office.  But someone on his team doesn't get it.  It's not just the economy, stupid: it's jobs, stupid.  It's not about programs, because that plays into Tea Party hands.  It's about individuals and their paychecks.  As the countdown to the shutdown began, the President should have had a daily news conference, each day talking about jobs.  In the second person: make it immediate.  On the first day, he could talk to the 800,000.  On the next day, he could pick one ripple effect and warn another segment of the population about their paychecks.  And so on.  If the shutdown occurred, he should keep going.  He could have a different cabinet member speaking each day to a different segment under his or her purview.

He could declare that he would fund the Bureau of Labor Statistics as a critical government function, sending the message that he cares more about tracking the jobs of the citizens than the Tea Partiers.

Instead, the Democrats are gleefully watching the Tea Party tear the Republicans in half, not realizing that they are all in the same sinking canoe.  However, the premise we hear in that is that the Republicans have a problem, but the Tea Partiers have no issue tearing their own party in half, tearing the government to pieces. Their goal is not to become the majority power in the Republican Party.  If Tea Partiers no longer exist because there is no functioning government of the United States, then they win.

This is my paranoia.  We are dealing here with something much bigger than a movement within government: we are dealing with a movement that is truly trying to destroy government.  When the debt ceiling is not raised, and the economy tanks, and more people lose their jobs, the people will say, "The government messed this up," not "The Tea Partiers, the Republicans messed this up, so I think I'll vote Democratic."  Having the people turn on the government means that we no longer have government by the people, for the people.  We just have a world where those with the biggest guns win.

Depends on what you think heaven is like

From Rick Warren's invocation at the inauguration: "Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven."

From C-SPAN's closed captioning: "Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shopping in heaven."

Framing the discussion

I have so many Hillary topics, but I wanted to write them as analytical, not elegiac. So some brief thoughts before her speech today.

I think, and hope, that Democratic Obama-supporters will finally believe what I have believed, that Hillary is not a vicious, self-interested party-splitter. In the March 17 issue of Time, David Plouffe of the Obama campaign said, "The Clinton campaign strategy is simply going to be to try to run a scorched-earth campaign, which would be catastrophic for the party." I will honor how smart this was: Obama's team demonized Hillary by addressing process rather than content (or by nitpicking). They hoped in fact that the fear of dividing the party would cause voters to choose Obama (because he wasn't the party-divider, Hillary was). And I'm sure in many ways it worked. Certainly this idea was parroted by pundits in the media and in coffee shops.

Once again: I think this was clever. And ironic. In a year when the Democratic candidates rewrote the history books not just on gender and race but on process, Obama's campaign, a campaign whose content invoked hope, figured out how to get the dimension of fear into voter's minds. We Democrats feared that this particular break in process would cause Democrats to lose in November. Even very intelligent Democrats were so frightened that they didn't see the hope embedded in the dual campaign.

Hillary's process has not feared having two candidates who command powerful loyalty. As far as I know, she never accused Obama of splitting the party. (Ironically, and to her detriment, she in fact invoked fear in more traditional ways.) We should never sell her short: Hillary can and will take the loyalty she commands and use it for good. (And I have no doubt, had results gone the other way, that Obama would have used it for good as well.)

I'm sad that Democrats who repeated this fear began to write off Hillary. Listening to her speech to AIPAC on June 4 (in tears), I was reminded that she is a powerful and effective speaker who will absolutely support the party. And, once we hear her speech today (in tears), I look forward to Obama finding another way to run an inspiring campaign on hope and still find any way possible, including fear, to win in November.

The great Democratic plan

For everyone who is frustrated with the Democratic primaries, who is worried that the party is damaging itself by having two candidates to continue to duke it out, keep in mind the following:

1. Americans love a competition. By taking the campaign to all 50 states, the Democrats are taking the motivation to participate to all 50 states. 
   
2. If the Democrats get out the vote, they win. There are more Democrats in this country than Republicans. In Texas, on March 4, almost three million Democrats turned out to vote, to the Republicans' 1.4 million. And this was when it was still a race: Mike Huckabee did not drop out of the race until that evening. 
   
3. The longer we have a Democratic competition, the more likely we are to have Democratic voter turnout in the red states of Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, Idaho, and, if this keeps going, Puerto Rico, Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska; as well as in the perceived battleground states of Pennsylvania, Oregon, and New Mexico. 
   
4. If people vote in primaries, they are more likely to vote in the general election.
   
5. The rhetoric between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama reflects that they know this, and that in this home stretch they are going to work for party unity as they continue to compete.
   
6. Airing Democratic candidates' dirty laundry early enables the clothesline to be clear in time to focus on McCain's dirty laundry in the general election.
   
7. Enlisting new Democratic voters for this election could have effects that reach far beyond 2008.

I am very excited that the Democratic candidates continue to campaign, and I am optimistic about the process and the results.

Chris Matthews is prerecorded

One of the few political gabfest shows I watch (TiVo) is Chris Matthews. Turning it on today, the main topic was about how Bill Clinton's attacks on Barack Obama seem to be working, that Clinton has gotten into Barack's head. I double checked to see that I was watching the right week's show, and I was. Sadly, it's prerecorded. It's like looking two days into the past: how much things have changed after yesterday's rout of Clinton and Edwards in South Carolina.  I'm disappointed: I wanted to see Matthews gnaw on Barack's win.