Heartache With Hard Work

A list of things that the Democrats ought to do in the next four years, even though some may not be in their own best interests:

1. Pass the minority bill of rights for Congress. Pelosi pushed this in 2005 when the Republicans were in charge but it was (rightly) regarded as little more than a political ploy. However, if they actually implemented this from a position of power, it would do a lot to cement the proper functioning of the legislative branch and would create a powerful norm requiring future Congresses (whichever party is in charge) to operate the same way.

2. Replace Joe Lieberman as Chair of the Homeland Security Committee with an actual Republican. I’m all for punishing Lieberman, but I think Sandy Levinson is correct that government really runs into trouble when the oversight capacity of the legislative branch is completely subsumed by party loyalty. In fact, it ought to be standard practice for the opposition party to hold one seat which grants them an oversight role.

3. Reform the Electoral College. No need to do this on a national level. Just get states to pass National Popular Vote bills. Every one that does builds momentum for others to join. And once states worth 270 Electoral Votes get on board, the bills kick and it becomes very easy to get everyone on board for an actual amendment to settle this once and for all. I mean, seriously, electoral votes? C’mon America.

4. Fix Election Day. It’s preposterous that we vote on a Tuesday. It should either be on the weekend, or Election Day should be declared a national holiday. Voting on Tuesday is an anachronism from an agrarian society.

5. Fix the lengthy lame duck period between the election and inaguration. Quoting Sandy Levinson again: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if President-Elect Obama appointed a commission to study whether the US can any longer afford the “mere” 2-1/2 months of transition and to pledge to support an amendment, should the commission so suggest, that might actually reduce his term from a full four years to, say, 3 year, 10 months (if the next inauguration is on November 20, 2012)?” This is another tradition lost in time. Campaigns last two years these days. No one is elected without intense and thorough examination of all relevant details. Obviously there is classified information they have to digest, and various other details that prevent the president-elect from taking office the day after the election. That said, two to three weeks should be sufficient. A month at most. Things move quickly these days. We don’t operate based on the Pony Express any more. Three months without a leader is a LONG time.

6. Close Guantanamo and everything like it. Walk back the expansions of executive power implemented by Bush. I never got that worked up about FISA and wiretapping but neither do I think it’s sound policy to support stuff like that. I’m willing to concede that dealing with terrorism may require some flexibility in reconceptualizing executive power. The world changes and government must change to deal with it. But that absolutely cannot become a free license to do anything and everything, like it was with Bush and Cheney.

The basic premise is that government ought to be more responsive to the will of the people. It should be transparent and fair. And the process of governing ought to be about doing what is right more than it is about doing what is personally beneficial.

Look, I am as firm a partisan as you’re going to find. But I’m a partisan because I believe in progressive ideals, not because I support the Blue Team like a sports franchise. If we’re going to be serious about improving this country we have to hold ourselves up to the principles that we claim to stand for. Lincoln famously identified the great task before us: “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” The Democrats in charge would do well to remember that, and to remember that they are merely the caretakers of a government that operates in the name of the people, not their own interests.

Sun Will Set – Zoe Keating

I discovered Zoe Keating through Radio Lab, an often brilliant, always interesting, and occasionally hilarious podcast produced by WYNC. They talk about science, the world out there, bizarre phenomena that almost defy explanation – and they do it all in a way that keeps you on the edge of the seat. Seriously, if you’ve never heard it and are even remotely interesting in amateur science or life or things like that, head over there and give it a listen. They’ve got (I think) the whole archive of shows available to download.

Two I’d recommend are Emergence and Memory and Forgetting. But really, you can’t go wrong.

Anyways, one recent mini show they did was an interview with Zoe Keating, who used to play in Rasputina – a band I vaguely enjoyed but haven’t thought of in quite a while. Her solo work, it turns out, is truly stunning. She works with only a cello and a looping laptop, but what she can produce with those simple instruments is a layered landscape so finely grained that it recedes beyond all capacity to judge.

It’s that rarest of things: a song that you are positive sounds different to every person who hears it. What do you draw out of it? Do you glide along with the main theme? Do you hide yourself in the hidden valleys? Do you loop endlessly on top of the sound – always dancing just a step beyond the sound?

The interview really helps that come through, too. She talks about how she gets lost in the shape of the sound – slightly out of tune. And also emphasizes how much room there is to develop the loops, to turn mistakes into serendipitous new pathways.

Put another way: her music is the aural equivalent of watching Twin Peaks.

Yes we still do talk about music here. If you’re sick of all the political chat, well, it’s probably not going to stop. But I can promise more actual music-centered posts in the upcoming weeks.

One of the big breakout artists of 2007 for me was Kate Nash. As much as I love sophisticated music, and as much as I want indie cred, I have no problem admitting how much I love a well-crafted and idiosyncratic pop song. And last year Kate Nash had three or four of the best entries in that genre in a long, long time. Sadly, there has been very little this year to follow in her footsteps.

Forty Five 45s – Shrag

Until this little track from Shrag, that is. A bit more lo-fi and punk rock, but that same awkward swagger remains front and center. And in terms of content, it’s pitch perfect: a track about a stack of ruined records torn apart by some failed relationship or another.

[Nietzsche Family Circus]

Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum both ponder the Fairness Doctrine this morning, and ask variations on the question: what in world are these people freaking out about? Turns out, I wrote a fairly long post about this a couple weeks ago, but then figured it was a little too esoteric and not particularly relevant in the broader context of the election. So I didn’t post it. But two folks I enjoy reading are asking about it, so what the heck. Here it is:

>>>

If you only got your news from a certain slice of the media, you would think that Democrats are on a rampage to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine (dead for nigh 20 years). One Democratic Senator (Jeff Bingaman, from New Mexico) recently made a quick comment in support of it. He has since clarified that while he does support it, he has no desire to introduce it as legislation.

Meanwhile, there’s article after article which asserts that this constitutes absolute proof that the Democrats will institute it. The same goes for other attempts to demonstrate the threat. Obama says explicitly that he doesn’t support the Doctrine, but he’s probably lying. Democrats make an entirely entirely separate argument about media consolidation, net neutrality, and other issues. Conservatives declare that it’s all pretty much the same.

This is a perfectly representative specimem (beware – it’s a link to WorldNet). The evidence for the massive Democratic effort to push the Doctrine is…
1. The Democrats won’t allow a vote on a bill to make it slightly harder to bring back the Fairness Doctrine (which, remember hasn’t existed in two decades and which Clinton, that noted lover of right wing media, could have reinstated at any time if he had wanted to)
2. Far right pundits speculate that they really really want to reinstate it
3. There is no #3

And it’s not just blogs and freepers. That preposterous Wall Street Journal editorial I wrote about last week includes an obligatory “OMG Fairness Doctrine” reference. And Peggy Noonan wrote her version this week.

In fact, after spending 10-15 minutes of searching I failed to find one single example of a news story or commentary on the subject that wasn’t from someone raising the issue solely for the purpose of going after the doctrine. The few references to specific Democrats who support it invariably come from places like Human Events, Newsmax, Fox News, etc. who cite the (always passing) reference as proof of the basic threat to humanity. See for yourself with a quick Google News search. In short, as Jack Balkin points out: “Many, many people on the left, myself included, think it is bad policy and oppose it. Perhaps more to the point, so too do major contributors to both political parties. And if virtually all the major players in the telecommunications and media industry are against it, it’s unlikely that Congress would revive it.”

So what’s the deal here? Why all the madness? I think there are two reasons why they’re all going nuts on this issue. First, it lets them win an argument (since there is no one trying to defend the other side). And second, it plays into their impulse to presume the absolute worst about the opposition. The fact that there is literally no evidence that the Democrats care about this in the slightest only *helps* your case. See! you get to say they’re lying about their real interests! Sure, Obama has promised he won’t re-impose it. But are you going to trust that one? They may claim to not care about this at all, but it’s really a ruse to trick us.

The question ceases to be what might actually happen if Obama wins. It becomes what their worst nightmare might be. And it’s rooted in the premise that Obama (and the Left in general) have utterly no interest in improving the state of the country at large. Rather, they are small-minded, power-hungry, and vindictive. Rather than pursuing the broad policy changes that they have run the campaign on, they will instead pursue a series of irrelevant (except in the minds of the far, far right) issues for which they have no mandate.

I’m tempted to say this is simply a case of projection. It’s the sort of thing they would do if they were ever in power, so they assume everyone must think the same way. And I do believe there’s some truth to that. But I also think there’s something larger going on here. For example, this is decidedly not a uniquely right-wing phenomenon. Some of the wackier elements of the Left, for example, went truly off the deep end in their hatred of Bush (as if there weren’t plenty of perfectly mainstream reasons to dislike him). There are, however, two significant differences.

First, those people were (generally speaking) considered to be distinctly radical elements. No one in the mainstream (even at the far left edges of that field) took them (or their arguments) seriously. Democratic strategists didn’t sit around talking about how to best structure “Bush = fascist” campaigns. This time around, however, these folks are playing a huge part in the general GOP messaging. William Ayers, ACORN, “Obama is a Marxist,” and so on. This is the core of McCain’s strategy right now.

Second, in 2004 the country was relatively divided on the issues. Which means that there was plenty of ammunition for a broad-based progressive case against Bush. This time, however, the public has expressed a clear desire for genuine health care reform, progressive tax policies, preserving the moderate position on abortion, etc. Which explains why the Right seems to have gone off the deep end. It’s a tacit admission that on fights of any significance the right has very little to stand on. The traditional “reasonable” attacks are toothless right now. So you retreat into your corner, work harder and harder to convince yourself of all of these lunacies, and then emerge into the daylight occasionally to harangue 6o million-plus for their (in your mind) insane embrace of a Black Panther Stalinist. Meanwhile, the country shrugs, and goes back to watching their 401k shrink or their employer warning of cutbacks.

It’s a weird dynamic and I can’t think it’s a helpful one for the GOP. I’m sure they don’t need me concern-trolling for them, but that’s just my opinion.

Stephanie Says – Velvet Underground
Call It Clear – Halloween, Alaska

So seriously, WTF Alaska. Based on the ballots so far, the polling wasn’t just off, it was catastrophically wrong here. And not just for the Stevens race. According to Chris Bowers, all three races there have shattered records for polling inaccuracy.

Nate Silver attempts to shed some light on the situation, noting that early and absentee votes very well may make up the difference (at least in the Senate race). And that may well be true, but there still remain two unanswered questions. First, what exactly is taking so long? They’ve been sitting on the same numbers for like three straight days now. Where are these ballots and why aren’t they being, you know, counted? Second, even if it does tilt things back and Begich wins in a squeaker, that still means that almost half of the voting population in the state wants to return a seven-time convicted felon back to the Senate.

Some folks would argue: “they’re not really voting to bring back Stevens. It’s just a strategic vote to allow him to resign and force a new run-off, thus preventing a Democrat from de facto winning the seat.” I have two responses.

First, that is just a little too cynical for me to deal with. I’m all about the idea that the institutional effects of elections are more important than which particular suit takes office – and the correlative idea that you make a strategic decision to vote for your party even if the candidate is terrible simply to deny power access for the opposition. That said, there has to be a limit, doesn’t there? And surely multiple felony counts is well beyond it.

Incidentally I feel the same way about, say, William Jefferson. And I agreed with publius’s take on why it wouldn’t be so bad if Murtha got booted.

Second, it’s not like they didn’t have a chance to choose a different guy to run in this race. This whole scandal was all over the place when the primary was going on. If Alaska Republicans wanted to run someone else, they had every opportunity to actually do so. It’s not like the primary was 12 months ago or something. It was at the end of August.

Anyways, I love the idea of Alaska. Open spaces, snow, Northern Exposure, etc. but I can’t say I’m in favor of the politics there.

While I’m on the subject of Prop 8, let me take just a moment to rail against the ridiculous countermobilization myth that inevitably pops up whenever anything socially regressive happens.

The latest of this is (no surprise) Jeffrey Rosen, who inexplicably writes:

I expressed concern that the California Supreme Court’s decision to impose gay marriage by judicial fiat might trigger a backlash that would overturn the decision by popular initiative. Now that the California anti-gay marriage initiative has passed, I take no pleasure in seeing that prediction vindicated. With their overreaching, the California justices have set back the cause of gay marriage across the country. I have students and friends who were married in California since June, and who returned to the state to fight against the initiative.

Here’s the thing. Those marriages were only possible in the first place because of the Court taking action. There was a prior initiative prohibiting them. So how exactly has the cause been set back? One year ago, gay marriage was impossible. It remains so today. And that happened by an extremely narrow margin. If just another percentage point or two could have been swayed then it would be legal, and enshrined that way probably for good.

As it is, the new recourse is simply to pursue another Proposition to overturn Prop 8. And that’s what would have been necessary regardless of what happened with the courts. Voting no on Prop 8 was a guarantee of gay marriage only in a world where the Court had declared the right. In Rosen’s hypothetical world where the judiciary refuses to do its job and strike down unconstitutional denials of rights, gay couples would be 0% better off right now.

The real point is that people like Rosen have a vested interest in a narrative of backlash against court decisions, and they’ll go to any length to fit the facts of a situation into that story. Any judicial decisions that they personally disagree with are derided as “activism.” The paradoxical effect is to accuse judges of playing with politics – while simultaneously demanding that they make political decisions about when the majority will support their findings. It’s an attempt to erase the significance of the judiciary, to turn it into a body that ratifies the beliefs of the current majority and has no role to playing in guaranteeing unpopular (but constitutionally valid) perspectives.

I could go on and on here, but instead I’ll just refer you to Scott Lemieux who has done more than anyone to shut down this silly meme.

Columbia is Bleeding – Nellie McKay
Nailing Descartes to the Wall / (Liquid) Meat is Still Murder – Propagandhi

Okay, let’s get one thing clear. I am angry about Prop 8. It sucks. It’s a cruel reminder that on a day when the nation made a powerful gesture against one long history of discrimination, the largest state in the nation (a liberal bastion, one would believe) enshrined yet more discrimination for another group.

It lends a certain bitterness to what should otherwise be a joyous occasion. It’s one of my top priorities to help get this country to a place where laws like this are torn apart and those who supported them are made to recognize their bigotry for what it is. That means fighting this all over again in two years when the arc of justice has brought us just a little bit closer to equality. It means not giving up. It means not accepting that a bare majority has the power to deny the worthiness of love shared between two people.

That said, I had an interaction which troubled me this evening. It’s a material example of a phenomenon I’ve seen online in a number of places (here, here, here, and here for example). The general sentiment was anger that Californians appear to “care more about the rights of chickens than of gays and lesbians.” Now, I know why people latch onto this rhetorical technique. I get it. But I really wish people were a little more self-aware about just how horrific we are as a nation toward farm animals.

Look, I care intensely about gay rights. In 2004 I almost gave up on America because of how much it hurt to see all those marriage bans pass across the country. I’ve talked for years to anyone who would listen about how this issue will make future generations regard us as barbarians, as intolerant buffoons.

But the thing is that all of the reasons why discrimination based on sexual orientation is allowed to continue are at work in our relationship with animals. And while I would never say that “a chicken matters more than a person” I do think there’s a question of scale in what is being discussed. Denial of marriage is hateful and hurtful and depressing and awful. But the horrors of factory farms make me sick to my stomach. It’s cruelty on a scope that transcends description. It’s terrible and depressing and sad and far beyond the scope of what any society that claims to be interested in establishing a moral order.

I know they’re not people, but there really ought to be a bare minimum of exploitation we’re willing to unleash on other sentient beings, especially when the sole advantage is to make it 2% cheaper. Factory farms are horrific precisely because they displace all responsibility for caring about this stuff. They let people consume away with no thought about the disgusting conditions that undergird their dietary habits. It’s a question of putting crass convenience over suffering beyond imagination.

Put another way, factory farms only function because they let people ignore the horrific conditions made possible by the boring routine of daily economic choices. They create barriers that let people remain comfortable in their own place, never having to consider who or what is hurt by their unthinking actions. And in that sense, it’s actually very similar to the problem of gay marriage. Millions of people voted yes on Prop 8 because they couldn’t be bothered to put a human face on the ballot. They felt comfortable treating it as an abstract issue. It didn’t matter that it wouldn’t help them in any measurable way – those that it hurt simply didn’t seem real, or worthy of consideration.

Prop 2 passed not because “people care more about chickens than about gays and lesbians” but rather because it imposed a tremendously small burden on people, while doing small but measurable good for living beings in conditions that are unutterably depressing.

And that’s why it’s so weird to hear people denigrating it. In particular, it’s truly bizarre to hear someone upset about the unfairness of Prop 8 in the next breath declare that they voted against Prop 2 because “it would make eggs cost more.” Because the attitude that lets practices like this and this and this and this continue unabated are just different manifestations of the ones that let people continue to practice discrimination based on sexual orientation.

I’m all for being up in arms about sexual equality. But we can’t pretend that the struggle for a progressive future is over if we achieve that any more than we should think it’s over because one out of 44 presidents is black. There’s still a long way to go, and while we have a lot of things to worry about the way we interact with all the other living beings on this planet needs to be a part of it.

I wrote last night about my feelings in that moment when it was officially declared. I’ve been pondering it all day today, too. Struggling to explain, even to myself, why this has affected me so much.

Because I know that governing isn’t powered by hope and that the Obama presidency is going to involve a lot of difficult times and failed initiatives. I know that this historic moment will quickly become just that: history. And that it won’t truly come good unless it follows through on the promises. And I know that we have to quickly get back into the muck. The economy hasn’t improved because of how people voted yesterday, our soldiers are still in Iraq, our health care system is still broken, CO2 emissions continue apace, and on and on.

All of these problems need immediate attention, which leaves little time for misty eyes.

But, for just a little while longer, I’m going to pretend that none of that is true. I’m going to rewatch his speech from last night and the one from New Hampshire all those months ago. I’m going to watch this video and try my hardest to imagine what it must be like to have been on the bridge in Selma, putting your life at risk just for the right to vote, to wake up this morning in an America where a black man has been elected president.

And I’m going to believe with all my heart that November 4, 2008 is a date that will sing in our history. In my life there have only been a few such days. The fall of the Berlin Wall, I wasn’t quite old enough to truly understand the significance. 9-11 will last forever, but while my most powerful memories are of the response – the way people came together – it is of course a memory of tragedy. The same is true of Katrina.

But this moment, right now, the feeling of last night and today: this is pure. Whatever may come. However transformative or insignificant the Obama presidency. Whether it ends in glory or mediocrity or tragedy, for this one shining moment all things seem possible. And most importantly, this is true not because of Obama (who is simply an intelligent, motivated, talented politician – nothing more, nothing less) but because of the American people who voted for him.

The symbolic power of November 4th will always derive from the fact that Obama did not run as a symbol. His race mattered, of course it mattered, but it was not decisive – in either direction. If he had won just because he was black, it would have been important to be sure. But it would not have been transcendant. Instead, he won simply because he was the best candidate. In that sense, the day is truly characterized by absence. The way intolerance did not prevent this from happening. The way it all worked as it was supposed to. The way that the collective consciousness of the most powerful nation in the world’s history rose up and said: no longer will this divide sustain itself, no longer will good people be denied access for reasons that should not matter, no longer should any of our citizens be led to believe that the highest position in the land is forever beyond their reach.

There is a powerful resonance, built deep into the bedrock of this nation. The highest ideals, the most grandiose dreams, everything…it all comes back to the most mundane of premises. To truths that really are self-evident. To the idea that every person ought be allowed to make of their life whatever they choose. It may take a black man being elected president to provide a concrete form, but the true power comes from the dream underneath.

And that means that the cynicism must return. Obama cannot be all things to all people, and the romanticism of this election will fade. But just as it would be a mistake to ignore these facts, it would similarly be wrong to treat today as simply another day. The basic facts do not change overnight, but every once in a while the sky clears and we are granted a glimpse of the perfection that will always remain just beyond our reach. When such opportunities are granted it is our responsibility, I think, to make good on them.

And so, on this day, I do not ask for anything more. The fights, the recriminations, the troubles and battles of daily life. The endless struggle of politics. All of this will return soon. But for now, I am satisfied to remember how it felt to watch a young man from Illinois speak about a 106 year old woman, born without the right to vote (twice over) who was watching at home. And to think about everything that came before him, and all that is to come after. And to think, full of wonderment: that is my president speaking.

Not Alone Any More – Traveling Wilburys

For one of my graduate seminars this week we read a number of articles about Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. I’ve got a number of criticism of his thesis (that declining membership in social organizations produces a decline in civic engagement) that don’t bear getting into here. But for at least one powerful data point, it’s worth mentioning that his thesis about declining voter turnout has been shattered in the past two presidential cycles.

Putnam was writing in the late 90s, when turnout was at record lows. However, in 2004 we saw turnout hit around 60% – a level not seen since the 60s. And this year, by all accounts, looks set to go even further.

Turns out people may be bowling alone, but they’re playing WoW in communities. So there’s that.

Also, since it’s unlikely I’m going to post on the subject any other time: how cool were the Traveling Wilburys? No one would say it’s the best music any of those guys created by any stretch. But there’s something to be said for listening to people genuinely having fun. I’ll take a goof-off record from the Pettys, Harrisons, and Dylans of the world any day. Their stuff was out of print for a long time, but it got re-released last year. Head here to get yourself a copy.

Presumably the newspaper industry could anticipate the demand for hard copies of the paper today. And yet, I just went downtown and could not find a single place that wasn’t sold out. More than that, I ran into a number of other folks with the same problem.

I returned home to discover that this was a national phenomenon. For a struggling industry, wouldn’t you want to get every cent possible out of this? You can take an electronic look at a compilation of tons of papers at the Newseum (for my money the best is from the Statesman Journal for their EPIC WIN headline), but it’s not quite the same as having a hard copy of your very own to put on the wall.

Still, I did get my xkcd poster in the mail, which is not exactly the same, but is very awesome in its way. So there’s that.