What Brown can do for Dems

 I've been running around with my hair on fire about Obama not fighting for the issues he ostensibly cares  about.  Now, it seems, so are some Senate Democrats: 

...Senate Dems privately lit into Obama yesterday (Thursday) at a tense caucus meeting, complaining that he was not showing enough passion and was being overly compromising in the face of Republicans who are determined to destroy him.

(Sherrod) Brown didn't comment directly on what happened at caucus, but he confirmed that the general sense among Senate Dems is that Obama needs to be more confrontational towards Republicans, in order to make the difference between the parties clearer. "The caucus broadly wants to see the president stand up and fight and make the distinction clearer than any of us have so far," Brown said.

Brown warned that reaching a compromise on extending the Bush tax cuts temporarily would only further set back Dem efforts to draw a sharp contrast with the GOP. "He needs to articulate every day that he's fighting for the broad middle class, while Republicans are for the rich," he said.

Brown also suggested it would be a setback to such efforts if Obama and Dems embrace cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as Obama's fiscal commission leaders have suggested.
"The president has to make clear whose side we're on," Brown said. "The Republicans want to privatize Social Security and cut Medicare. Democrats are on the other side, advocating for the middle class. We need to affirmatively and strongly make that contrast."

We'll see.  These are more than just words to senators like Sherrod Brown and Al Franken, who aren't afraid to make noise and break furniture to bring about progressive change, even if it means jeopardizing their careers.  As for Obama and his former colleagues in the caucus meeting? Let's hope they have similar fire to stand up against the rightward assault of the GOP and the beltway punditry.  Otherwise, we're goners.

Of cojones and ponies

As usual, Paul Krugman says it like no one else can:

The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it’s doing the governing. And that party now controls one house of Congress, which means that the country will not, in fact, be governable without that party’s cooperation — cooperation that won’t be forthcoming.

Elite opinion has been slow to recognize this reality. Thus on the same day that Mr. Simpson rejoiced in the prospect of chaos, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, appealed for help in confronting mass unemployment. He asked for “a fiscal program that combines near-term measures to enhance growth with strong, confidence-inducing steps to reduce longer-term structural deficits.”

My immediate thought was, why not ask for a pony, too? After all, the G.O.P. isn’t interested in helping the economy as long as a Democrat is in the White House. Indeed, far from being willing to help Mr. Bernanke’s efforts, Republicans are trying to bully the Fed itself into giving up completely on trying to reduce unemployment.

He quotes Alan Simpson gleefully imagining a debt-ceiling lift in exchange for harsh spending cuts. "And boy, the blood bath will be extraordinary," said the "moderate" former senator, blood dripping from his lips like Edward Cullen feasting on a mountain lion.  Yes, this is the "center" David Gergen and his ilk want Obama to move towards.   What they don't say is who lives in this mythical center -- Far-right Republicans passing as centrists; Fox Democrats charading as progressives; Rubinesque figures fattening the administration; and Gergen himself, hoping for a tax cut on helium, for media gasbags everywhere.

Buffett: The rich want more money, because they want more money

Obama won't listen to us, but maybe he'll listen to billionaire friends like Warren Buffett:

"...I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it."

...The billionaire brushed aside Republican arguments that letting tax cuts expire for the wealthy would hurt economic grow

"They say you have to keep those tax cuts, even on the very wealthy, because that is what energizes business and capitalism," anchor Amanpour said.

"The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on," Buffett explained.

I would say it hasn't work for closer to -- ever, but that's just me.

It's typical, and sad, that the hoary rules of journalism -- a homonym could have worked as well -- require that Amanpour give the obligatory "other side":  "But they say they really need it and they say it really works and I know they're lying and I could check it, but this is easier" -- when the evidence, and the man directly in front of her, prove otherwise.  If the Republican "argument" -- and that's giving it way more credence than it deserves -- is pure bullshit, it should be treated as such, and not accorded the respect of a valid, sincere position.  In his insightful piece on the Senate last summer, George Packer quoted Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet on an anecdote he heard after he was appointed to fill the Colorado Senate seat of Ken Salazar: 

Bennet repeated a story he had heard about a new congressman giving his maiden speech: “And then some more veteran guy came over and said, ‘Son, you’re talking like this place is on the level. It’s not on the level.’ As the fifteen months or so have gone by that I’ve been here, the less on the level it seems.”

If it's not on the level, and everyone knows it, why can't journalists adapt to this realization, and report the distilled truth of a story, and not the propaganda one side in particular keeps slinging? It's not like journalists aren't cynical or aren't afraid to say what they think is really going on, despite what some politician is saying.  They have no trouble reading eyes or minds or cod pieces to derive what they perceive to be true, beyond mere words.  And that's not even based on anything real, just some novel they think they're writing,  like mini Maureen Dowds colorizing their gray worlds. So why can't they use the brains god gave them for a higher purpose? Yes, yes, I know: because that would be hard.

Taibbi triggers Gergen F-bomb. Sort of.

Matt Taibbi really ruffled David Gergen's feathers in this Rolling Stone post-election Q&A that also included Democratic pollster Peter Hart. This part is too, too, too, too funny:

Gergen:  ...(T)here's a tendency in today's Democratic Party to turn away from someone like Bob Rubin because of his time at Citigroup. I served with him during the Clinton administration, when the country added 22 million new jobs, and Bob Rubin was right at the center of that. He was an invaluable adviser to the president, and he is now arguing that one of the reasons this economy is not coming back is that the business community is sitting on money because of the hostility they feel coming from Washington.

Taibbi: I'm sorry, but Bob Rubin is exactly what I'm talking about. Under Clinton, he pushed this enormous remaking of the rules for Wall Street specifically so the Citigroup merger could go through, then he went to work for Citigroup and made $120 million over the next 10 years. He helped push through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which deregulated the derivatives market and created the mortgage bubble. Then Obama brings him back into the government during the transition and surrounds himself with people who are close to Bob Rubin. That's exactly the wrong message to be sending to ordinary voters: that we're bringing back this same crew of Wall Street-friendly guys who screwed up and got us in this mess in the first place.

Gergen: That sentiment is exactly what the business community objects to.

Taibbi: Fuck the business community!

Gergen: Fuck the business community? That's what you said? That's the very attitude the business community feels is coming from many Democrats in Washington, including some in the White House. There's a good reason why they feel many Democrats are hostile — because they are.

Taibbi: It's hard to see how this administration is hostile to business when the guy it turns to for economic advice is the same guy who pushed through a merger and then went right off and made $120 million from a decision that helped wreck the entire economy.

Quite an achievement to get David Gergen to say "fuck." Saying "Fuck the business commuity?" is better yet, even if intoned with proper incredulity.  It could be a Drudgeworthy lie wrapped in a headline, if only that other Matt cared to smear him.

I thought Gergen was just an overpaid candyass with a squishy caramel center. Who knew he had such fire in him?  It reminded me of election night when Gergen snapped at Eliot Spitzer on CNN for supposedly hogging the limelight.  Gergen is so used to his clique of millionaire milquetoasts -- blathering on endlessly about deficits and uncertainty -- that he always seems stunned to hear a different point of view.

Gergen's "pivoting back to the center" shit usually earns nods and grave looks on CNN.  But Taibbi was having none of it:

Gergen: If Obama is going to govern as well as prosper politically, he has to pivot back toward the center. He must embrace some sort of Social Security reform, just as Clinton did with NAFTA, even though his base will scream about it. He must also enlarge his inner circle by bringing in people who have the trust of the business community. One of the surprises for me has been that even though Obama rescued the banks, the alienation of the business community has reached a point that is threatening the recovery. Business people are sitting on a lot of money and not investing it because there is so much uncertainty about taxes, health care, financial regulations and energy. Obama's got to be more of a partner with the business community.

Taibbi: I have to disagree. The notion that the business community is disappointed with Obama because of what he's done in the past two years, I just don't see that. They're sitting on a lot of money, but they're sitting on it because he gave it to them.

Gergen: You don't think they're disappointed?

Taibbi: I'm sure they would have preferred the Republican agenda, where they would get 100 percent of what they want. Under Obama, they only got 90 percent. He bailed out the banks and didn't put anybody in jail. He gave $13 billion to Goldman Sachs under the AIG bailout alone and then did nothing when Goldman turned around and gave themselves $16 billion in bonuses. He passed a financial-reform bill that contains no significant reforms and doesn't really address the issue of "too big to fail." FDR, in the same position, passed radical reforms that really put Wall Street and the business community under his heel.

Gergen: If you talk to many CEOs, you'll find that they're very hostile toward Obama.

Taibbi: Who cares what these CEOs think? I don't care — they're 1/1,000th of a percent of the electorate. They're the problem. Obama needs to get other people's votes, not their votes.

 I'm not sure if there's a video of this, but I'd love to see it, if only to see Gergen blasted out of his comfort zone.  "Fuck" did seem to trickle readily off his tongue, though, so maybe in his off hours he's a mad cusser.

Presidencies, big and small

Greg Sargent keeps asking, OK, tough guys, if you're tired of Obama's wuss-laden rhetoric of concilation and compromise, what, exactly, do you propose he do instead?  What can the guy do in the face of Republican resistance and defiance? He is, after all, only one man (albeit the most powerful man in the world). The Congress could take the lead on issues like enacting middle class tax cuts and repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, so why is he alone expected to lead on these issues?  (Uh, because he's the leader of the free world?) Whaddaya think the guy is, Superman?

Turns out, yes, he is Superman, if only he'd flick the kryptonite:

First, go full throttle where he can on his own -- executive orders, rulemaking powers, and so forth. And second, lay down a clear vision and agenda in the full expectation that Republicans will oppose it, and use the presidential bully pulpit to wage a massive communications offensive hammering them relentlessly for their opposition and intransigence.

Armando at Talk Left has repeatedly challenged the insistence among progressives that Obama can't be expected on his own to move mountains and part seas, although I do vaguely remember promises of that sort from '08.  But, to diminish the power of the presidency is not only short-sighted, but foolhardy and self-flagellating, like monks batting themselves with planks.  As Armando wrote in a post titled "Obama's still big, it's the presidency that got small":

...Folks are again trotting out the poor Obama, "if only people had President Obama's back" line. Earlier this week, it was about Obama's powerlessness regarding the Bush tax cuts. Today, Balloon Juice argues the Obama Administration can't try Khalid Sheikh Mohammad in a federal court in New York...

These "defenses" of Obama are not helpful, to the discourse or to Obama. As I previously wrote:

...But suppose it is true [--] Then why should we care much if he is reelected? Shouldn't we then just focus all our attention on the Congress?

Of course, it is not true. In fact, the very reason many of these same Obama apologists hated the bad Clinton Triangulation so much is it is not true. Bill Clinton was able to "triangulate" because the Presidency is in fact the most powerful political office. Stupid to act as if the Presidency became small when Obama became President.

It's also not historically accurate.  As Eugene Robinson says:

We don't define periods in American history by who held the majority in Congress. It was the Reagan Era, not the Tip O'Neill Era - just as we're now living in the Obama Era, no matter what John Boehner or Mitch McConnell might hope. 

Or what the Obama apologia-sphere may tell itself.

There are many levers of power Obama can pull even without Congress' help, says Robinson

 ,,,Obama has the power to help jump-start the real estate market by issuing orders that could speed the untangling of the foreclosure mess - and also begin to move the vast inventory of foreclosed properties that weighs so heavily on home prices.

He can shape the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the implementation of health-care reform in ways that will produce the quickest and greatest benefits for working families... This wouldn't just be good policy, it would be good politics as well. Demonizing "Obamacare" and financial reform as abstract concepts worked well for the Republicans in the midterm campaign, but it won't be a viable strategy if people see - and like - the concrete results.

Bush didn't act like his powers were limited, by any means, and progressives didn't run around with their hair ablaze and eyes agape because Bush didn't pour every drop of power from his waterboarding jug. And don't tell me there wasn't a small, still part of yourself that didn't admire him for it, not the policies or practices or full-on thuggery, but his day to day ability to get his way -- or at least look like he did.  As Armando says:

I always return to the George W. Bush example in 2001, where Bush LOST the popular vote, faced a 50-50 Senate and still got his agenda through the Congress. That the agenda was disastrous is not the point. The point is what people like Yglesias are saying is that in terms of dealing with Congress, George W. Bush was much more effective than Barack Obama can possibly be. And that is just sad.

At this point, excusing Obama's possible failures on health care reform seems the most important goal for many. If that is the new focus of progressive blogging, that speaks volumes about Obama . . . and progressive bloggers.

 Being bold and wrong is nothing to aspire to. We lived through eight years of that.  The higher power progressives seek pairs good policy with audacity, something we thought we were getting in Obama, but so far has been just a very good sales job.

Cocktail Party pulls Tea Party strings

Here's a great new ad by Americans United for Change, an organization that promotes progressive ideas in the media, arguing against extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich.  It shows two prosperous bankers toasting their success in duping the Tea Party into doing their work for them.  It is the latest illustration of FDR's famous line from 1936, "It is an old strategy of tyrants to delude their victims into fighting their battles for them."

Debt: When usual rules no longer apply

Paul Krugman has been talking about  this since the economic crisis began.  But now, with Gauti Eggertsson of the New York Fed, he has created a new model that, he says, bears out his view that the old rules no longer apply to today's crisis of debt and deleveraging:

(L)arge deleveraging shocks land the economy in a world of topsy-turvy, where many of the usual rules no longer apply. The traditional but long-neglected paradox of thrift – in which attempts to save more end up reducing aggregate savings – is joined by the “paradox of toil” – in which increased potential output reduces actual output, and the “paradox of flexibility” – in which a greater willingness of workers to accept wage cuts actually increases unemployment.

Where our approach really seems to offer clarification, however, is in the analysis of fiscal policy.

...In the current policy debate, debt is often invoked as a reason to dismiss calls for expansionary fiscal policy as a response to unemployment; you can’t solve a problem created by debt by running up even more debt, say the critics. Households borrowed too much, say many people; now you want the government to borrow even more?

What's wrong with that argument? It assumes, implicitly, that debt is debt – that it doesn't matter who owes the money. Yet that can't be right; if it were, debt wouldn't be a problem in the first place. After all, to a first approximation debt is money we owe to ourselves – yes, the US has debt to China etc., but that's not at the heart of the problem. Ignoring the foreign component, or looking at the world as a whole, the overall level of debt makes no difference to aggregate net worth – one person's liability is another person's asset.

It follows that the level of debt matters only because the distribution of that debt matters, because highly indebted players face different constraints from players with low debt. And this means that all debt isn't created equal – which is why borrowing by some actors now can help cure problems created by excess borrowing by other actors in the past. This becomes very clear in our analysis. In the model, deficit-financed government spending can, at least in principle, allow the economy to avoid unemployment and deflation while highly indebted private-sector agents repair their balance sheets, and the government can pay down its debts once the deleveraging crisis is past.

In short, one gains a much clearer view of the problems now facing the world, and their potential solutions, if one takes the role of debt and the constraints faced by debtors seriously. And yes, this analysis does suggest that the current conventional wisdom about what policymakers should be doing is almost completely wrong.

Krugman uses his blog as a mental scratch pad for his columns, so I bet he'll have more on this tomorrow.

In a letter delivered to Pelosi on Tuesday, Boehner identified the tactic Pelosi might use. "Using the suspension process - which requires a two-third vote in the House to pass legislation instead of a simple majority vote - as the vehicle for a vote on legislation that would stop President Obama's tax hike on all tax-paying Americans would be an obvious attempt to circumvent the will of the House by denying Republican and many Democratic members their right to offer an alternative proposal," Boehner wrote.

Dark age of economics, catfood edition

Why is this so hard to understand?

This is important background—because the economy’s current problem has nothing, zero, nada to do with deficits. Its problem is a lack of demand. If there were more demand, more people would be employed. The government is the only force capable of creating demand right now, since the housing bubble wealth that had been fueling the economy has largely disappeared. This means that if our commission co-chairs had ever bothered to look at the current deficit in the context of the economic crisis, they would be complaining that the deficit is too small rather than too large.

Their ignorance of basic economics also leads them to hype unfounded fears about the longer-term picture. If they understood the fact that the current deficit is a support for the economy, rather than a drain on the economy, they would not be concerned about the buildup of debt taking place at the moment. There is no reason that the Fed can’t just buy this debt (as it is largely doing) and hold it indefinitely. (The Fed has other tools to ensure that this expansion of the monetary base does not lead to inflation.)

That way, the debt creates no interest burden for the country, since the Fed refunds the interest to the Treasury every year. Last year the Fed refunded almost $80 billion in interest to the Treasury, nearly 40 percent of the country’s net interest burden. This means that the fears raised by Simpson and Bowles of an exploding debt reaching 90 percent of GDP by the end of the decade have no foundation in reality.

 Neither Simpson nor Bowles are economists.  But even if they were, and even if they understood these facts, they'd find a way to unknow them.  If you're trying to mug an old lady for catfood, and lavish a rich lady with pearls, then it's very inconvenient knowing all this.

But economists who should know better don't know better. Or pretend not to.  As Paul Krugman said last year, we really are entering a dark age of economics. But sadly, economics is not the only discipline under attack.  From science to history to the Constitution, Americans no longer hold a common set of beliefs based on evidence and truth.  Instead, their beliefs are divorced from fact, floating along unbuoyed and unburdened by anything real or true. This, of course, is no accident.  It is a by-product of our "Thank You for Smoking" culture that allows corporate interests to fake facts and blur debate -- or buy politicians or reporters to do it for them -- to obscure information that could hurt their bottom lines. Just free-associating here, but I'm thinking Koch brothers, give people more of their own money, you gotta fight 'em over there to fight 'em here, climate change, "deficits don't matter" ... Yes, of course, Cheney -- that human fog machine. In case it's not obvious, almost all this smoke emanates from conservatives.

What's most maddening is when people, especially so-called experts, unlearn things they once knew.  As in many fields, economists live in their own narrow realms studying arcane areas their whole careers and -- hard to believe -- forget the basic facts they learned as freshmen.  As Brad DeLong said:

Given their understanding of macroeconomics, and I mean the basics not the hard stuff, it's becoming a lot easier to understand how financial economists missed the developing bubble and the effect it would have on the macroeconomy. We specialize mightily in academic economics ... (s)o we rely and depend upon the expertise of others to inform us about areas in which we don't normally work. One thing I've learned from the current episode is not to automatically trust that the most well-known economists in the field have done due diligence before speaking out on an issue, even when that issue is of great public importance, or even to trust that they've thought very hard about the problems they are speaking to. I used to think that, for the most part, the name brands in the field would live up to their reputations, that they would think hard about problems before speaking out in public, that they would provide clarity and insight, but they haven't. In fact, in many cases they have undermined their reputations and confused the issues. People have been deferential in the past, myself included, and these people have been given authority in the public discourse - even when they are demonstrably wrong their arguments show up in the press as a "he said, she said" presentation. But, unfortunately for the economics profession and for the public generally, the so called best and brightest among us have not lived up to the responsibilities that come with the prominent positions that they hold.

But sometimes it's willful ignorance, making the dark ages even darker. Krugman:

Remember, what defined the Dark Ages wasn’t the fact that they were primitive — the Bronze Age was primitive, too. What made the Dark Ages dark was the fact that so much knowledge had been lost, that so much known to the Greeks and Romans had been forgotten by the barbarian kingdoms that followed.

And that’s what seems to have happened to macroeconomics in much of the economics profession. The knowledge that S=I doesn’t imply the Treasury view — the general understanding that macroeconomics is more than supply and demand plus the quantity equation — somehow got lost in much of the profession. I’m tempted to go on and say something about being overrun by barbarians in the grip of an obscurantist faith, but I guess I won’t. Oh wait, I guess I just did.

In a letter delivered to Pelosi on Tuesday, Boehner identified the tactic Pelosi might use. "Using the suspension process - which requires a two-third vote in the House to pass legislation instead of a simple majority vote - as the vehicle for a vote on legislation that would stop President Obama's tax hike on all tax-paying Americans would be an obvious attempt to circumvent the will of the House by denying Republican and many Democratic members their right to offer an alternative proposal," Boehner wrote.

For health's sake, ditch bipartisanship

 Progressives aren't making it up when they say Republicans keep moving the goalposts rightward.  Every time Democrats try to meet them half way on an issue, they end up going the whole way, as the policy at hand, and the country as a whole, shift further down a conservative path.  Yet, somehow, the issue remains unresolved.  Hmmm, see a pattern here? Ezra Klein does on health care policy over the past 60 years:

The original idea, of course, was a national health service run by the government. Harry Truman proposed it and fell short. Lyndon Johnson got it for seniors and some groups of the very poor. But Republicans said that was too much government, and it was unacceptable for the whole country. They proposed, through President Richard Nixon, an employer-based, pay-or-play system in which the government would set rules and private insurers would compete for business.

That didn't go anywhere, because Democrats, led by Sen. Ted Kennedy, weren't ready to give up on a national health service. By the 1990s, they were. President Bill Clinton proposed an employer-based, pay-or-play system in which the government would set rules and private insurers would compete for business. Republicans killed it. Government shouldn't be telling businesses what to do, they said, and it shouldn't be restructuring the whole health-care market. Better to center policy around personal responsibility and use an individual mandate combined with subsidies and rules making sure insurers couldn't turn people away...

I think we know how that turned out.  Obama and the Democrats did, in fact, propose that last plan, and pass it, but, true to form, Republicans still wouldn't go along with it.  In the process, they managed to turn Mitt's Romney's mild little plan into StalinCare. 

It stumps me how a Harvard guy like Obama doesn't detect a trend here, or, if he does, refuses to change his tactics in response.   I always hated his bipartisan spiel and hoped it was just that, a political song and dance  he would abandon as mere campaign blather. He did that with so many of the progressive issues I care about, but the bipartisanship? That he clings to.

All the talk about Axelrod's "We have to deal with the world as we find it" quote has missed the point:  Obama was elected to change "the world as we find it," not learn to live with it.  That, more than anything else, shows how little Obama & Co. believed the "change" message they evangelized in 2008. You pick Rahm to deal with the world as you find it.  You pick Larry Summers to deal with the world as you find it.  You pick Tim Geithner and court Wall Street and dine lobbyists to deal with the world as you find it.  But you don't change it. Unfortunately, the world as we find it may be this: Obama is a conventional politician surrounded by conventional people with conventional ideas.  How you escape a near-depression that way escapes me.

In a letter delivered to Pelosi on Tuesday, Boehner identified the tactic Pelosi might use. "Using the suspension process - which requires a two-third vote in the House to pass legislation instead of a simple majority vote - as the vehicle for a vote on legislation that would stop President Obama's tax hike on all tax-paying Americans would be an obvious attempt to circumvent the will of the House by denying Republican and many Democratic members their right to offer an alternative proposal," Boehner wrote.

In a letter delivered to Pelosi on Tuesday, Boehner identified the tactic Pelosi might use. "Using the suspension process - which requires a two-third vote in the House to pass legislation instead of a simple majority vote - as the vehicle for a vote on legislation that would stop President Obama's tax hike on all tax-paying Americans would be an obvious attempt to circumvent the will of the House by denying Republican and many Democratic members their right to offer an alternative proposal," Boehner wrote.

Progressives: Vote only on middle class tax cuts

Three organizations that support Democrats are among those calling for the House to hold a vote on extending the middle class tax cuts only -- and not tax cuts for the rich -- before Republicans take over in January.

The AFL-CIO, Democracy for America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee see mostly gain, little downside to putting Republicans on the spot. Voting down the middle class tax cuts on "principle" -- the principle that the rich need a tax cut more than average Joes -- could be perilous for the GOP.  Of course, this assumes they face an opponent that knows how to cash in their political chips  -- a very large assumption with Democrats.

Another pitfall: Republicans could counter with a procedure called a "motion to recommit," which could force  a vote on the upper-end tax cuts that just might pass, given the political incompetence referred to herein.

To prevent this, Democrats could use the "suspension process," which would require a two-thirds majority to pass. Given the stakes, the cowardly lions in the House just might find "the noive" to vote for it. Then there's the Senate, where good legislation goes to die. Republicans and Conservadems will threaten to filibuster, but, again, Dems should say: Dare 'ya.  See who blinks first. (Um, Democrats?) As Greg Sargent says:

Proponents of this argument point out that Republicans have struggled to respond in the past when faced with a possible vote on just the middle class cuts. Recall, for instance, that John Boehner signaled openness to supporting such a move, if it came to it, before quickly walking it back.

 It should come as no surprise that Nancy Pelosi may be the one behind this idea in the House.  That's why John Boner really really really hoped Wolf Blitzer and his Beltway conventionistas would spread the word that Pelosi was a washed-up loser who should take her ball and go home to gaytown.  But it looks like the only balls she'll be taking anywhere are Boner's, judging by this letter he sent her on Tuesday:

"Using the suspension process - which requires a two-third vote in the House to pass legislation instead of a simple majority vote - as the vehicle for a vote on legislation that would stop President Obama's tax hike on all tax-paying Americans would be an obvious attempt to circumvent the will of the House by denying Republican and many Democratic members their right to offer an alternative proposal."

Take a breath, boner.  That is rich, though:  "An obvious attempt to circumvent the will of the House." Pretty much describes the last two years of his life.

Hardball tactics like this are the reason Nancy Pelosi is the only woman for the job of minority leader, and why Republicans and Conservadems are fighting so hard to keep her from it.  But unlike most Democrats, including our president, Pelosi believes in standing and fighting.  And, though Boner/Blitzer - a new talk show on CNN? -- will never tell you this, she's the person most responsible for passing much of the 2008 Democratic agenda closest to it's original form. Or, if they did tell you, they'd say that's why she's no longer House speaker. But progressives know the real reason: The Senate bungled the ball she passed them, and Obama stood and watched.

Here's what DFA had to say about a vote on just the middle class tax cuts:

"It's hard to imagine a smarter fight for Democrats to pick at this moment than forcing every Republican to vote up-or-down on a clean middle-class tax cut that benefits 98% of Americans. Force them to vote, dare them to vote no, and the end result will be good policy and good politics for Democrats. Saying 'We don't have the votes' and never forcing people to show their cards is how leaders in Washington often avoid doing the will of the people. If Speaker Pelosi announced this strategy, it would change the entire debate and finally put Democrats on offense."

Meanwhile, more than 100,000 liberals have signed a petition at the PCCC asking -- begging! -- Obama not to extend the tax cuts for the rich.  It says:

"President Obama, ARE YOU KIDDING?  Democrats lost in 2010 because they caved instead of fighting on popular progressive issues. Americans strongly oppose more tax cuts for millionaires and nearly a trillion in new debt. If you don't fight on this issue, Democrats may lose even more seats in 2012 - and possibly even the White House."

That's right, hit him where he lives -- or won't, if he doesn't fight for the things he says he believes in.

Yoo hoo, John, call your wife

With John McCain for a husband, I'm not sure I'd be such a huge fan of marriage. But unlike her rudderless partner, Cindy McCain has held firm to the principal of marriage equality for everyone, straight or gay.  Still, if anyone has reason to waver, it's her.

Now she is lending her voice to an anti-bulllying video that is part of the "it gets better" movement aimed at stemming the rash of gay teen suicides that has spread across the country.  Woven among other celebrity cameos, McCain chastises the government -- if not her husband himself -- for failing to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, making it clear that if the government will discriminate, so will bullies.

The video is sponsored by NOH8, whose last campaign featured Cindy McCain and daughter Meghan, among others, in ads protesting California's Prop 8 ban on gay marriage.

The stars, in staccato fashion, lay out the grim statistics:  Nine out of 10 LGBT students have reported being bullied in school, and two-thirds say they feel unsafe.  Of these, 28 percent have dropped out.  According to the video, LGBT youth are six to nine time more likely to attempt suicide than straight teens, with more than 25 percent of transgender and a third of lesbian, gay and bisexual teens saying they have tried to kill themselves.

 "What's convincing these kids things won't get better?" asks Gene Simmons of the heavy-metal band KISS.

McCain, in a line sure to infuriate many Republicans, responds: "Our political and religious leaders tell LGBT youth that they have no future."

• "They can't get married"
• "They can't donate blood"
• "They can't serve our country openly," adds McCain, taking aim at DADT a second time. 
• "They can't adopt."

Then, she hammers home her point: "Our government treats the LGBT community like second-class citizens, why shouldn't they?"

Any one of these celebrities, who also include Denise Richards, Dave Navarro and Dr. Drew Pinsky, could have read these words. But to have them come from Cindy McCain -- whose husband is leading the fight in the Senate against DADT repeal -- adds fire and credence to the charge of government failure on this issue.

The clear message is that if the government can't get it's act together, kids won't, either.  It's saying adults need to start acting like adults, and learn to get along, and work problems out, and be kind to each other, and accept differences, because lives are at stake. It could be any one of our kids.

There's another clear message in there, but I'm not sure John McCain will get it.

Olbermann: You rock, progressives

In his just-released statement to viewers, Keith Olbermann takes a swipe at his MSNBC colleague, Joe Scarborough, who gave campaign funds to several friends but apparently tried to hide one of them under his wife's name. He also attended a Republican fund-raiser, um, retirement party. Or something.

You should also know that I did not attempt to keep any of these political contributions secret; I knew they would be known to you and the rest of the public. I did not make them through a relative, friend, corporation, PAC, or any other intermediary, and I did not blame them on some kind of convenient "mistake" by their recipients.

In the letter, Olberman explains that he wasn't aware of NBC's prohibition against political donations and assumed when he made his three donations they would become public at some point.

He acknowledges the power of the progressive community in coming together, separately yet in unison, "to correct injustices great and small."  From Twitter to Facebook to the liberal blogosphere, progressives made enough noise apparently to catch the attention of NBC executives and spur them to reinstate Olbermann quicker than many expected.
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When Olbermann's donations became public, Scarborough's own contributions came to light, causing his sidekick and chief enabler, Mika Brzezinski, to try to deflect the heat.  She defended Joe's $5,000 donation to his friend, John Merrill, who was running for a seat in the state legislature in Alabama, saying, yeah, Joe made the donation, biiiitches, but it should have been in his wife's name. Subtle, Mika. About as subtle as a triple espresso mocha soy latte -- with a caramel swirl -- sashayed to the set by a Chippendale's dancer.

According to Politico:

That contribution should have been in the name of Scarborough’s wife, Susan Scarborough, according to Scarborough’s co-host on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Mika Brzezinski, as well as John R. McGregor III, a representative from the Scarboroughs' Pensacola, Fla., bank. POLITICO was provided a copy of the bank transfer, which was dated April 9 and signed by Susan Scarborough.

“The Scarboroughs expect John Merrill will amend his campaign report to accurately reflect that reality,” said Brzezinski. “If he does not, I will recommend they file an ethics complaint against him.”

Brzezinski also challenged Merrill’s recollection of having brought Scarborough to Tuscaloosa for an August 2009 fundraiser for the county Republican Party, which Merrill said “was unbelievably successful. We raised a ton of money that we used to help local candidates.”

That event was “was billed as a tribute to Gov. Bob Riley on his retirement from politics,” said Brzezinski, noting that Riley and Scarborough served together in Congress and asserting, “Any suggestion that Joe Scarborough went to the University event to raise money for a political party is false. Sadly, many politicians try to elevate their standing by exaggerating their connection to Joe. This is one of those cases.” 

Friday evening, Merrill issued a chastened statement to POLITICO asserting that the $5,000 donation — his biggest individual donation of the campaign — was “from Susan Scarborough ... I am very appreciative of her support.”

 So sad. Even Joe's friends have become mini-Mikas to him, willing to do anything just to shine in his halo. As for Mika herself, she's just Alan Colmes in a skirt -- spineless "liberal," insipid suck-up artist. She looks a little like him, too.

Welcome back, Keith.

UPDATE:  Jon Stewart had a funny line Monday night that sums up the whole silly affair:  "It was a stupid rule, but at least it was enforced poorly."

Google maps an invasion

I'm no general or anything, but I wouldn't rely on Google Maps to get me to Grandma's house, no less dredge a river without checking my borders first:

Google officials have apologized and promised to fix a flaw in a map that exacerbated a territorial dispute and triggered a Central American invasion. "We determined that there was indeed an error," said a statement from Google after a Nicaraguan commander used the flawed map as justification for last week's incursion into Costa Rica. The erroneous map showed more territory belonging to Nicaragua than actually exists, according to US State Department maps of the area. When Costa Rica complained that Nicaraguan troops were encamped in their nation, Nicaragua's commander pointed to Google's map during a newspaper interview to prove he had done nothing wrong, and refused to move the soldiers.

 Of course, this was a very convenient mistake for Nicaragua, involving a border they have been fighting over for at least 150 years. Most of us, though, are not as grateful when Google trips us up.  I can't tell you how many times I've mapped a route to a new location and found Google directing me the wrong way down a one-way street, to a road that's no longer there, or showing an arrow several blocks from the correct spot.

The lesson is: only use Google to show what you already know. Like Nicaragua?

NBC's rules don't rule

Josh Marshall makes an interesting point about MSNBC's Olbermann fiasco.  If NBC has a policy against hosts giving to political candidates, why grant permission on a case-by-case basis?

...MSNBC's policy forbids employees from making donations to political candidates, unless they ask for permission to do so, in which (case) it seems usually to be granted. That seems to me to undercut the principle behind the policy. 

...Olbermann's job at MSNBC is to be an extremely opinionated commentator on politics. And he's the centerpiece (along with Maddow and more equivocally, Matthews) behind the business strategy of making MSNBC the liberal cable news/chat network. (How they square that with simultaneously having a more traditional and by the books NBC News is something they clearly have yet to work out.) But when you take that all into account, seeing him now all but canned over a handful of individual political contributions because he's compromised the objectivity he's supposed to bring to the job sounds like a bit of a joke.

This doesn't mean I don't see the point of rules barring people in the news business from giving money to politicians. I do. I think they usually make sense. And whatever the rules, organizations have the right to their rules and if you want to work there you need to follow them. But against the canvass of the media and political world we're living in and everything that's happening in it, the scale of MSNBC's response this seems bizarre, arbitrary and excessive. 

A reader amplified Marshall's point that a waiver undermines the original rule:

 "The strangest thing about MSNBC policy is the asking for permission part. Either you can give or you can't. Requiring permission implies that certain candidates or parties are acceptable and certain candidates or parties are unacceptable to management. Isn't it illegal for employers to go down that road?"

As the reader suggested, this exposes NBC executives to the charge that it may favor one kind of donation over another.  Either have a rule, or don't, or at least differentiate between employees, i.e., news and opinion anchors or contributors.  This way it's open and shut, not equivocal.

As in most things, I tend to be fairly liberal on this.  Let opinion journalists contribute, but require that they disclose it, particularly when interviewing that candidate. Open advocacy for a candidate may be less acceptable, but, in general, it's not unreasonable to assume that a liberal appearing on Maddow or Olbermann has at least their tacit support, so overt support is just a little further along the spectrum. Straight news reporters perhaps should be able to contribute as well, following the same guidelines about disclosure and, obviously, advocacy.  We "let" them vote, and we assume that, if they're doing their jobs, it won't get in the way of their reporting.  Why not let them contribute as well? Disclosure would make this transparent.  Of course, this is less clear-cut than allowing opinion hosts to contribute, but a case can be made for it.  Media companies have the right to determine these policies, but they should be clear, coherent and fair.

Corporate grifters

The next time you see Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan or some other Republican suckass on TV saying we're taxing corporations to death, taking away their incentives to create jobs and wealth and propel America to a new dawn of prosperity, bear in mind the fate of one such entity described in Matt Taibbi's new book, "Griftopia" (via tristero):

(After) securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in the year 2008?

Fourteen million dollars.

That is what the firm paid in taxes in 2008: an effective tax rate of exactly 1, read it, one, percent. The bank paid out $10 billion in compensation and bonuses that year and made a profit above $2 billion, and yet it paid the government less than a third of what it paid Lloyd Blankfein, who made $42.9 million in 2008.

How is this possible? According to its annual report, the low taxes are due in large part to changes in the bank's "geographic earnings mix." In other words, the bank moved its money around so that all of it earnings took place in foreign countries with low tax rates. Thanks to our completely fucked corporate tax system, companies like Goldman can ship their revenues offshore and defer taxes on those revenues indefinitely, even while they claim deductions up front on that same untaxed income. This is why any corporation with an at least occasionally sober accountant can usually find a way to pay no taxes at all. A Government Accountability Office report, in fact, found that between 1998 and 2005, two-thirds of all corporations operating in the United States paid no taxes at all. 

 Be ready to spit back those numbers, $14 million and 1 percent, when a Republican huckster on TV or down at the bar tries to tell you how besieged our corporate denizens are and how Obama  is trying to take away their money and property and throw them into collectivist communes.  As Taibbi pointed out, that's less than a third of what just one person, albeit an extremely well-compensated person, paid in taxes at Goldman.  The story of how much -- or little -- Blankfein himself paid is probably equally depressing.

And keep in mind that 1 percent is a model of responsibility compared to the two-thirds of corporations that pay no taxes at all.

They have been getting way with this for too long, and it's time liberals were armed with at least some facts to counter it, because Wolf Blitzer ainta gonna do it. This view of the aggrieved corporation is so prevalent, yet so far from the truth, that when you see the real numbers -- and this is just one typical example -- it would be a Colbert-worthy joke if it weren't so sad.  The tax code is so far in their favor, so not a grievance but a grift, that it's one of those opposite-day or up-is-down or "breadlines? what breadlines?" sandstorms kicked up to deny that you're seeing what you're actually seeing, just the mirage of an overheated brain.

We may feel like we're in a desert sometimes, but we know what we see, and it's no illusion. It's a royal fuckfest, with the corporation prince to our pauper.

NBC buttboys up to their old tricks

So, the Republicans win the House in a landslide on Tuesday, and three days later,  Keith Olbermann is out, if only temporarily.  Could there possibly be a connection?  Digby thinks so:

Am I the only one who finds it just a little bit interesting that every time the political zeitgeist turns, MSNBC seems to shift ideological direction? I guess there's a reason why their new slogan is "Lean Forward" (which could be interpreted as something a little bit cruder...)

I have no idea what really went on with Olberman but I suspect it may have had at least something to do with our one-sided obsession lately with "civility." He did, after all, suspend his "worst person in the world" segment last week although that may have been entirely his decision. I sense that there are misgivings about the strong anti-rightwing slant of an Olbermann or Shultz (as opposed to the populist, pox-on-both-their-houses approach of Uyger or Ratigan) and that they may be afraid of the financial consequences of being too hostile to the GOP.

Given the mores of the Village, I also expect that they do not like being seen as the liberal answer to Fox. ...   They don't have the guts to stake out a real position and when they see uncomfortable comparisons between themselves and "the crazies" they back off. It's the oldest working the ref play in the book.

 ...Sadly, all the MSNBC hosts will undoubtedly be aware -- if only subliminally -- that regardless of Olberman's eccentricities, the fact that the bosses are clipping his wings over something they could have technically overlooked ("it's an opinion show") is a message, particularly since he was getting good ratings. They don't have a whole lot of rope and I'm sure they know it.

 NBC has always sailed the political winds, and this one might be heading starboard again. Back when Jack Welch ran the show, he groomed "talent" like Chris Matthews, Brian Williams and Tim Russert who cozied up to power and curried favor with anyone who could help their careers.  They did more to promote Clinton hate than any other news organization -- any organization at all, including the Republicans -- and didn't give up even after he was impeached.  Gore inherited this animus, and, throughout the 2000 campaign and recount, he was a prisoner of the media and its lockbox of contempt. NBC, keeper of the box, buried the key. This is how Welch and his boys ushered in the age of Bush and cheered him on after 9/11 straight through to the Iraq war. Long before Matthews felt those first tingles of love for Obama, it was George Bush in full camouflage who kindled his man-lust. As the war dragged on and the economy flagged, the buttboys soured on the Bush boys, and turned their flirtations leftward, or  -- maintaining our nautical metaphor -- to port.  Two years later, another lurch to the right is not only possible, but likely.

We've seen this show before, and it didn't end well.

Tighty righty screws leftie loosie

Leave it to Politico.  It pairs its story on Keith Olbermann’s suspension from MSNBC with a photo of him looking like a loonball – pinching his spectacles like a British squire, his eyes startling, his lips pursing. Tighty righty screws leftie loosie.

Politico broke the story this morning of Olbermann’s donations to three Democratic candidates, and was back later today with its denouement, an indefinite suspension of the anchor of the top-rated “Countdown”on MSNBC. With its usual lopsided equivalence, Politico compares Olbermann’s maximum $2,400 donation to each candidate -- Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway, and Arizona Reps. Raul Grijalva, and Gabrielle Giffords -- to his criticism of News Corps giving $1 million each to the Republican Governor’s Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. News Corps is the parent company of Fox News. Let’s see:  $7,200 in three donations that adhere to the spirit and letter of campaign finance limits, versus a $2  million bonanza that a year ago would have been illegal but for the activism of the Roberts court.

Yeah, that’s close.  Way to compare apples and oranges and get kumquats.

UPDATE: OK, so, before I was able to post this item, Politico apparently thought better of its judgment on two of the points I made above, and a few others I hadn't gotten to yet.  They now have a more appropriate, if equally unflattering, photo of Olbermann up on their website, this time of a pimple-faced fat head, not a haughty elitist. It also downplayed the association between Olbermann's and News Corps' donations, moving Rupert's rupees further down. Other omissions since amended: whether anyone else in Olbermann's position inside MSNBC has given to campaigns and been spared (Joe Scarborough) and whether the host of an opinion show should be judged the same as a newsman.

Politico wanted to use this photo, but thought it would be too obvious:

Looking at election with an international eye

James Fallows, who has lived in the Far East on and off over the past three decades, writes in The Atlantic about the election as seen through an international lens.  Appearing on a number of foreign broadcasts, Fallows heard this again and again::

There is a deeper question that some foreign interviewers kind of danced around, but which boiled down to this: We outsiders understand that a two-year period of standoff and stalemate makes sense within the logic of American politics, and that the 2012 presidential campaign starts today. But (they went on), can you really afford this? Are you so confident that the big issues for America's economic, technological, educational, and strategic future are so minor and so postponeable that a two-year hiatus doesn't matter?

 It must be perplexing for outsiders to try to understand our schizophrenic political system, the way voters zig and zag from election to election, with no coherent theme except economic distress or a meaningless wedge issue trumped up to drive turnout.  Once in office, the parties do everything they can to keep the other from gaining ground, especially Republicans, for whom this is a particular art form and point of pride. But the interviewers got to the heart of it: how can we waste two years in the middle of the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes?

Stressing to them America's political resilience, Fallows couldn't shake the fear of political and economic stasis as expressed by John Judis in The New Republic:

Like the depressions of the 1890s and 1930s, this slowdown was also precipitated by the exhaustion of opportunities for economic growth. America's challenge over the next decade will be to develop new industries that can produce goods and services that can be sold on the world market. The United States has a head start in biotechnology and computer technology, but as the Obama administration recognized, much of the new demand will focus on the development of renewable energy and green technology. As the Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans understand, these kinds of industries require government coordination and subsidies. But the new generation of Republicans rejects this kind of industrial policy. They even oppose Obama's obviously successful auto bailout.

Instead, when the U.S. finally recovers, it is likely to re-create the older economic structure that got the country in trouble in the first place: dependence on foreign oil to run cars; a bloated and unstable financial sector that primarily feeds upon itself and upon a credit-hungry public; boarded up factories; and huge and growing trade deficits with Asia....

This, in turn. will lead to further power flips and political instability, according to Judis. Comparing our situation to Japan's, he concludes:

America needs bold and consistent leadership to get us out of the impasse we are in, but if this election says anything, it's that we're not going to get it over the next two or maybe even ten years

 If that doesn't depress you, nothing will.

Please don't punch the hippies

After Russ Feingold lost his Senate seat last night, a political blogger on Twitter harrumphed:  "So, did Russ Feingold lose because he wasn't progressive enough?" Oh god, here we go again. Punch the hippies. Blame them for the coming Republican apocalypse. Chasten them for believing progressive policies would work if Democrats would just give them a try. If they would just go out and sell them, take their own side in a fight, maybe they'd defy the midterm odds.

But was Feingold's loss a rebuke to this belief?

"No, he lost because the Senate wasn't progressive enough," I told the blogger, named Yeggo. "He's just the scapegoat for failed policies."

Joan Walsh of Salon apparently agrees:

Strangely, I watched Democrats including MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell try to blame the blowout on whiny progressives. O'Donnell asked Rachel Maddow why Wisconsin stalwart Sen. Russ Feingold lost, if the diagnosis of many lefties was that less wimpy Democrats might have done better in this sad midterm, given that he was arguably the least wimpy Democrat in this cycle.

My answer would have been: Russ Feingold and other progressives who lost weren't really tested fairly. They weren't able to run on the results of their own political priorities, like a robust stimulus that might have created more jobs, or more aggressive healthcare reform that might have solved more people's real-life problems and reined in insurance company abuses before 2014. We never saw the practical or policy promise of the Democratic class of 2008, and the party will suffer for its inability to make a palpable difference for its constituencies despite the margins it had in the House and Senate.

What she said.

Conservatives' five flavors of fear

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Fear for All Pt. 2
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election March to Keep Fear Alive

I alluded to this video in an earlier post but wasn't able to embed it. It's the second of two parts in which Colbert tackles the "five basic fear groups" -- the most prominent fears harbored by conservatives and the people who embody them, including Mexicans, gays and muslims.  "You are my fears," he said in the first segment, bravely sitting there with "no blast shield between us, not even a sneeze guard. So I'm less protected than lettuce at a salad bar from these guys here." He quickly gets down to it, asking the Latino man "When did you sneak into this country and when are you leaving?" He moves on to the gay man, starting out all business then wilting to his charms. "You're weakening my defenses, I grant you, by being attractive and slim and British." He asks the tree hugger in the group: "Are there gay bears? ... Are you happy about that? You made our bears gay" and wonders why he's so pro-bear.  It goes on in that vein.  The second part is just as funny. Watch it. No, I mean, watch it. It's scary out there.

From whimper to tsunami, vote forecast varies

Adding to my earlier post, Nate Silver provides some pretty serious caveats to his prediction that Democrats will lose the house 233-202.  While this is the most likely outcome, his forecasting model carries a large margin of error that makes it possible for Democrats to lose anywhere from 23 to 81 seats. While the probability lies closer to the middle, just a 1- or 2-percent difference in support for either party nationwide could mean the difference between the Democrats losing the house, or holding it.

Suppose that our forecast is biased against the Democrats by one point across the country as a whole, perhaps because pollsters are overestimating the enthusiasm gap very slightly. Just one point. Well, there are 6 seats in which we have the Republican candidate projected to win by less than 1 full point (it might be a very long election night, by the way). If Democrats hold those 6 seats, the projected Republican gains would be down to 46.

 Now suppose that the forecast understates Democratic support by 2 points. There are 8 seats in which we project the Republican candidate to win by a margin of between 1 and 2 points; now these would also be wiped off the board. Now the Republican gains would be reduced to just 38 seats — and the Democrats would hold the House, 218-217!

Read that again: it means that if our forecasts turn out to be biased against Democrats by just 2 points overall, the party becomes about an even-money bet to hold the House.
Now move in the other direction. Say that we’ve underestimated Republicans’ margin by 1 point across the board. There are 8 seats that we’re currently projecting Democrats to hold by less than 1 point. Give those 8 seats to Republicans, and the gains tally grows to 60.
And if the forecast is biased against Republicans by 2 points? Another 5 seats, bringing their total to 65.

 Silver also lists the pitfalls that could befall pollsters this year:

 Consider, for instance, that the spread of recent generic ballot polls runs between a 14-point Republican advantage (Gallup’s ‘traditional’ likely-voter model) and a 3-point Democratic one (Newsweek). A mere 2-point error looks quite tame compared with that range.

Consider that one study finds that including or excluding cellphones can make a difference of 4 points in polls.

Consider that the pollsters have vastly different ideas about the magnitude of the “enthusiasm gap,” ranging from being worth just a point or two for Republicans to a double-digit advantage.

Consider that there was one recent midterm year —1998 — when the polls overestimated the standing of one party (the Republicans) by about 5 points overall, and that party underperformed their polls in virtually every individual race.

So it's not likely all these things will go awry, just as it's not likely Democrats will keep the House. But it's possible. That's all we ask.

X factors could affect NY Dems' chances

Nate Silver, the statistics wunderkind now based at the New York Times, has an exhaustive rundown of all the Senate and House races up for vote in tomorrow's midterm election. As expected, the news is horrific for Democrats.  Right now he's predicting Democrats will hold on to the Senate by a bare 52-48 majority, but lose the House with a 233-202 minority at night's end.

Silver uses his own statistical model that surveys polls in each race, factoring in local and national trends, and assigns a percentage indicating a candidate's chances of winning tomorrow.  An accompanying map allows  readers to click on individual races that show current predictions or, if they scroll over it, the race's standing over time.

Like at least 39 of his House colleagues -- and probably more -- Democratic incumbent John Hall of New York's 19th congressional district is now the underdog in his race against his Republican challenger, Tea Party newbie Nan Hayworth.  Right now Silver is predicting Hall will lose by 3 points. This, in turn, has spurred people like me to go out canvassing for Hall tonight, just to prove him wrong. Statistics Schmatistics.

But several "x" factors could hurt Hayworth's chances.  The first is one Silver himself acknowledges -- the wildcard aspect of Paladino's spot at the top of the GOP ticket.   There's no predicting if, say, Paladino will hold down turnout because of his zero chance of winning or his wackiest-guy-at-the-Tea-Party vibe, affecting candidates down ballot like Hayworth.

But there's another variable I haven't seen addressed, but which could have an effect on tomorrow's races: The new optical scanning machines that will get their first full implementation in the state tomorrow. The machines supplant the old lever machines most of us have grown up with and grown oddly fond of.  Slamming down the levers, a voter could not only feel the contempt, defiance or pride that drove him or her into that booth, but actually hear it, too. Bang. Bang. Bang. Take that, Bush. And despite a vague feeling that the vote was floating off into the ether, not sure exactly where or if  in its original state, it brought back so many memories -- a first vote; a toddler waddling in beside a parent -- it seemed worth the tradeoff.  Though I really hope those anti-Bush votes took.

But introducing any new technology is fraught with problems, and, in my mind, there's no predicting what effect this will have on the election, including Hall's race. First, I'm not sure the blue-haired ladies at the desk, or the old guys in vests, are up to the task. They can barely find a name in the register no less shimmy a ballot into a machine or undo an overvote. Sure, they'll learn as the day goes on, but it will certainly slow the process.   In addition, machine malfunctions during the September primaries were rampant throughout the state, and are likely tomorrow along with an anticipated shortage of techies. Will all this turn voters away? Which ones?  Long waits, though, may not be the only deterrent to voting. From a voter's standpoint, just navigating a new system will be difficult in itself, despite the "easy as 1-2-3" brochures sent to households beforehand. People who haven't read it first, or are thrown by novelty, may end up feeling frustrated at the least and Palm Beach deja vu at the worst.

If it has any effect, here's hoping it hurts them more than it hurts us.  Change, after all, isn't exactly their thing.