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The DCCC, an incompetent organization

Thursday, October 18, 2018

A few weeks ago I got a fairly suspicious voicemail from a recorded voice stating it was calling from the D-C-C-C. It did not use the term “Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. It advised me that I would soon be getting a absentee ballot and that I should make sure to fill it out and return it right away. Needless to say I found this email somewhat misleading, as I had not applied for an absentee ballot, nor am I eligible to do so. The voice provided a telephone number but I was in no position to write it down so I was unable to call it. I did notify someone I know who works at the secretary of state’s office, as it seemed like voter suppression to me. I figured that even the people at the DCCC couldn’t be so stupid that they’d call a Connecticut resident with information that was clearly inconsistent with Connecticut state law.

Turns out I was wrong. A couple of days ago they called again, this time leaving a voicemail. I have tried to embed it below, and hopefully this will work.

voicemail.wav

I forwarded it to my contact at the Secretary of States’s office, and received a phone call from a nice person there who told me she would follow up. A few minutes ago she called to ask me if by chance I had been registered recently in another state, say, North Carolina. Well, as it turns out I had not been, but a relative, who lives in France but votes in North Carolina has, on occasion, used our address and phone number as a contact. So, in fact, it was the DCCC, calling numbers outside of North Carolina with North Carolina specific information, not even bothering to make that clear and, no doubt, potentially confusing as many people as they might enlighten. How hard could it be to tailor the message in such a way that it would not potentially confuse the legions of non-North Carolinians likely to get this robocall? How hard could it be to notice that there were calls going to non-North Carolina area codes and that might cause a problem? Leave it to the DCCC to counter Republican voter suppression tactics with unconscious voter suppression of their own.

This, of course is only a minor example of the sundry ways in which the DCCC is doing it’s best to blow the upcoming election, or, at the very least, stock the House of Representatives with DINOs that will vote with the Republicans 80% of the time.

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More whining about messaging

Thursday, October 18, 2018

This postat Hullabaloo caught me eye. In it, Digby states the obvious about Republican tax cuts:

It’s a simple scheme, really. Whenever they control the government they immediately pass massive tax cuts and massive increases in military spending, always promising that the wealthy and the corporations will pour all that money back into the economy and it will end up increasing revenues because of all the growth it will stimulate. But it never does.

It’s actually quite brilliant because the real goal isn’t just to give tax cuts to the rich and spend huge sums of money on the military. It’s also to run up the debt so Republicans can turn around and wring their hands over the need to be “fiscally responsible” and force the government to cut spending on programs they don’t like. They are specifically hostile to what they call “entitlements”: the big-ticket items of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It should be a simple matter to come up with a simple, coherent message to expose this con game, particularly because, as Digby points out, they’ve done it again and again with the same results each time. Yet, the Democrats can’t seem to be able to do it. Nor can they come up with a counterattack when the Republicans blame them for failing to deal with the deficits that Republicans created.

This kind of con game goes on at every political level. Last night I attended a debate between our incumbent Republican Senator, Heather Somers, and our candidate, Bob Statchen. Heather has no problem advocating for reduced taxes on the rich (her first move as a state senator was a proposal to repeal the Connecticut estate tax and the business tax), which she takes as a given that we can afford, but immediately whines about our inability to pay for anything, such as paid family medical leave, that benefits normal people. The latter just couldn’t be done, she assured her listeners. To his credit, Bob insisted we could do it, as have so many other states. Of course, Heather insists that increased revenue is off the table. We can’t have tolls, she insists, while she lies about various aspects of that revenue source. And of course, we can’t raise the minimum wage, because it would destroy the state if we stopped exporting the money Walmart is saving by paying slave wages to Arkansas and the pockets of the Waltons. 

But I rant.

This particular race is extremely important, by the way. Heather is vulnerable, and Bob is a good candidate. If the Senate remains tied, or goes Republican, and Lamont wins, the Senate Republicans will do to him what the US Senate Republicans did to Obama. 

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Friday Night Music

Friday, October 12, 2018

This video raises the question: Why are the songs protesting the very stable genius being sung by 76 year olds. Maybe there are others out there, but I haven’t heard about them. I hope that’s the case. I do know that the Vietnam War, as bad as it was, was nowhere near the existential threat to democracy than is the current administration.

Anyway, to the music. A video by Barbra Streisand.

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In the unlikely event that the Democrats don’t blow it…

Friday, October 12, 2018

Let me direct your attention to this thought provoking post at Naked Capitalism. The thrust of the argument made is that, should the Democrats not blow it, and they take one or more of the Houses of Congress this year, they should avoid investigations into Trump’s crimes and corruption, instead concentrating on promoting a legislative agenda, with the following suggested as composing part of that agenda:

[code language=”plain”][/code]

The argument is that while none of these things could be passed, they are all popular, and would set the agenda going into 2020.

I’ve made a similar argument. I believe I’ve made it here (too lazy to look), and I know I’ve made it ranting at Drinking Liberally. It’s simply not enough to be the not Republicans, we need to be the party of something. In part, by the way, that means forgetting this “pay-go” crap that Pelosi has used to hamstring the Democrats. If they can run deficits to give money to rich people, we can run deficits to help real people. The argument is simple actually. It is not reckless to borrow money to buy a house (i.e., make an investment); it is reckless to borrow money to give a party. Republicans do the latter, we can do the former.

I do differ with the author of the piece at Naked Capitalism. I think we can do both. That is, we can investigate Trump and promote progressive legislation at the same time. The problem is that it would require some strategizing and some party discipline, both of which the Democratic Party lacks. The investigations can be done in a sort of low key manner, with the Democrats talking very little about them, but just doing them. When they open their mouths, it should be to talk about health care, free college, etc. Sure, the media will cover the investigations, but with proper planning the Democrats could develop talking points to shift attention to policy.

The impediment to my approach, or that of the fellow at Naked Capitalismis the Democratic Party itself. It lacks the vision to do what he suggests. The people running the show will, no doubt, refuse to embrace a progressive agenda. They will want to prove to the DC punditry that they are responsible, which means occupying a middle ground that exists only in the Twilight Zone. They will pursue the investigations. They have no choice about that. Buy they will occupy themselves, on the policy side, with marginalizing the progressive wing of the party. After all, why make it easy to win in 2020 when you can make it a real challenge?

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Friday Night Music-Jefferson Airplane

Friday, October 5, 2018

Marty Balin died last week, which made it easy to pick a band this week. This performance of Somebody to Love is clearly not lip synced. It’s from the Dick Cavett show, and David Crosby is apparently pitching in. I realize that Balin plays a sort of secondary part in this song, but I like the song, so that’s that.

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Told you so, but it was easy

Friday, October 5, 2018

The Kavanaugh thing has unwound pretty much as I predicted, a fact from which I take no satifaction. I think it is entirely likely that future historians (if they are allowed to write honest histories) will date the final downfall of our form of government to this date. It is most probable that this Supreme Court will overturn any progressive legislation passed from this day forward, and may well go back and strike down some of the legislation we’ve taken for granted.

We are an oligarchy now, or may very well be. It’s possible that we can avoid that fate if we take both the House and Senate, but that requires good turnout, so we can’t let our probable fate discourage us. Vote now, or we may never get a meaningful vote again.

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Yet another in a long series of modest proposals

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

The focus so far as the Kavanaugh vote goes has been on Flake, Collins and Murkowski, the so-called moderate Republicans. (That phrase is now officially an oxymoron.) Not much attention has been paid to the DINO Democrats, Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp, who have expressed varying degrees of openness to voting for Kavanaugh.

They fear, apparently, that voting against Kavanaugh will discourage the people who would never vote for them in a million years from voting for them, while, as all good Democrats do, they show no concern about the numbers of potential votes they throw away by convincing potential Democratic voters that there’s really no point in voting at all.

Presumably, they would like to vote against the guy, but they’re afraid. A lot of that fear stems, as it always does, from pathetic Democratic messaging. The ideological opposition to him has focused almost solely on abortion and women’s rights; the political opposition almost solely on his treatment of women.

The Democrats don’t seem to notice, or don’t want to notice, that the anti-abortion judges that the Republicans appoint are not being appointed for their anti-abortion views. In their heart of hearts (if they have hearts), they don’t care about abortion. Those views are featured to appeal to their own base, because, after all, even the nutjobs might have a problem if the Republicans were upfront about the fact that the real reason these guys are being advanced is because they are reliable pro-corporate, anti-people votes. A subset of people is “working people” and it would be no exaggeration for Joe Manchin to justify a negative vote by saying, in effect, that the lies Kavanaugh told the Judiciary committee were troubling in and of themselves, but what really pushed him toward a no vote was that Kavanaugh never met a corporation he didn’t like, or a worker that he did. His judicial record amply supports such a statement. The people of West Virginia would get that, but they have to hear it from someone. Democrats being Democrats, they probably never will.

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Jeff Flake: it doesn’t take much to make a hero these days, does it?

Sunday, September 30, 2018

In light of the Times puff pieceyesterday, and the Times was not alone (my wife says Twitter is full of folks praising his principled actions), I think it’s time to, as Randy Newman’s devil sang,“inject a note of reality on this festive occasion”, for, as Randy went on to sing, “I don’t believe I’ve ever heard such bullshit”. I’m not the first to point all this out, but I do want to add my voice to the somewhat drowned out chorus of naysayers.

Flake is a fraud, as are all the other so called moderates in the Republican caucus. He has cultivated an image of “moderation”, while, along with Corker, Murkowski, Collins, et. al., he has enabled Trump at every turn.

Here’s what I think we can expect.

It is practically a given that the FBI will be unable to confirm Dr. Ford’s story. We all know it’s true, but other than her word, there is no hard evidence, unless Mark Judge decides to confess, but he’ll say he doesn’t recall. This is no surprise; she’s been upfront from day one about the lack of any contemporary witnesses.

So, even if the FBI truly does go beyond Trump’s original limitson the investigation, and looks into Kavanaugh’s perjury and other crimes, Flake, Murkowski, and Collins will limit their personal inquiries to whether the FBI establishes Kavanaugh’s guilt of attempted rape of Dr. Ford. They will disregard all other disqualifying factors, whether the FBI exposes them or not. His lies have been called out and cataloguedfor what they are, or, in the case of the New York Times, catalogued while tippy toeingaround the word “lie”. He lies even when he doesn’t have to. His testimony at the hearing demonstrated beyond doubt that he lacks the temperament and personal qualities that should be required of a Supreme Court justice. 

None of this will matter to Flake. Should the FBI fail to find Kavanaugh guilty beyond reasonable doubt of attempting to rape Dr. Ford, which it surely must, Flake will vote to confirm, as will Collins and Murkowski. He will nonetheless reap the benefits of his courageous stand for principle. It’s amazing how low the bar is for a Republican to qualify as a principled moderate. 

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Friday Night Music, a bit topical

Friday, September 28, 2018

The Very Stable Genius has to be considered the very acme of liars, lying even when he has no need to, so he certainly puts Brett Kavanaugh in the shade. But, Brett is still up there, since, yesterday, almost every word he uttered was a lie or a statement meant to misdirect. The atrocities are documented elsewhere. I would just submit that in my humble opinion there’s enough to warrant a perjury charge when next we take the White House. That saves the time and trouble of an impeachment, and avoids the impossibility of getting the majority needed in the Senate to convict.

Anyway, I originally intended to try to find *Liar, Liar*, by the Castaways. I ultimately rejected that, because the available videos of that are fairly crappy, and, anyway, in the song, it’s the girl that’s the liar. But I stumbled on *Liar*, by Queen, and it seems perfect. Queen came along just as I was tuning out the most current stuff, so I had never heard this before, but it’s not bad, and I think we can all imagine that good Catholic boy Brett will be running to the confessional tomorrow (the confessionals were open Saturday afternoon at Our Lady of Sorrows, and I think it’s like that everywhere) to get his slate wiped clean. Now, the priest should actually require him to divest himself of his ill gotten gains. Brett should be saying, to paraphrase Hamlet’s uncle:

Then I’ll look up
My fault is past.
But, O, what form of prayer
Can serve my turn? ‘Forgive me my foul lies’?
That cannot be; since I am still possess’d
Of those effects for which I told the lies,
My robes, mine own ambition and my entitlement.
May one be pardon’d and retain the offence?

But, he’ll get off with a few Hail Mary’s and an Our Father or two, so “all may be well”.

Anyway, here’s Queen

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Installment 9999 of “What if Obama had done that?”

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Yesterday the delegates to the United Nations laughed at the person who currently holds the position of President of the United States. In the three papers I get each morning, it is barely mentioned, and in one the laughs are referred to as “chuckles”. Of course, Fox didn’t even let its viewers know about it. The fact that the world laughed at the president will be forgotten by tomorrow. Once again ask yourself, what if this had happened to Obama, or any Democrat.

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