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The Wall Street reform effort in Congress will enter a new phase tomorrow, as the conference committee between the House and Senate will meet to begin hashing out the differences between the House and Senate versions which have already passed. The membership of this conference committee was announced today, and the committee will hold its first meeting tomorrow.
The mainstream media, led by the intrepid White House press corps, closely followed by the inside-the-Beltway punditocracy, has declared what must happen for the oil to stop flowing into the Gulf of Mexico: President Obama needs to get angry at the oil.
I wish I were kidding, but sadly, I am not. This is the [...]
The recent controversy over Republican senatorial nominee Rand Paul's comments and views on civil rights (and on the role of the federal government versus private business and private individuals in general), is certainly entertaining and quite possibly damaging to his candidacy (or possibly not, this is Kentucky we're talking about, after all), but at the same time it is probably not going to be the key issue that decides Kentucky voters this November. It's a pretty safe assumption that most people for whom civil rights are a top voting issue have already made up their minds not to vote for Paul anyway. But there's a much more fundamental argument to have with Tea Party candidates like Paul (and Republican candidates in general) which, so far, has been missing in the media debate. The real question that should be asked is: "What, exactly, in the federal budget will you cut to 'rein in Washington spending' and attack the deficit?" Because the answers to that are going to be the most effective argument to make against the Tea Party movement's surge within the Republican Party -- because my guess is that no matter what they answer, the voters are not going to like it.
The new media narrative, which is exactly what the White House was pushing just before the primaries happened, coincidentally (for once, Democratic framing actually worked -- the media snapped it up like a cheese puff at cocktail hour) is now: "it's an anti-incumbent year." The White House was pushing this, because it is a lot better sounding than what the media was using previously, which was: "it's an anti-Democrat year," or even: "it's an anti-Obama-agenda year." Of course, even if it is just an "anti-incumbent" year, Democrats still have more incumbencies to defend, so it's not like the party's out of the woods yet in regards to November.
Rand Paul, who just clinched the Republican Party nomination for the Senate race in Kentucky, is apparently not quite ready for primetime. His recent remarks on the Civil Rights Act painfully show why being a politician is not as easy as some people think. The problem for Paul, son of Ron Paul, is that even if he somehow survives this flap, it is almost guaranteed that there are going to be plenty more of them during the campaign. Because both Pauls, father and son, are (at heart) libertarians. Which requires some explanation, because many folks have never come into contact with the concept of libertarianism.
A lot of conventional wisdom about the 2010 elections died an ignoble death last night, as voters once again proved that even though the inside-the-Beltway crowd loves to attempt to pigeonhole them one way or another, when the election rolls around the voters have the final say. The breadth of such conventional wisdom's demise is rather staggering in its scope, too. So today, rather than dissecting yesterday's primaries (plenty of time for that in the days to come), I'd like instead to dissect a few themes which proved to be either partially or absolutely wrong last night.
Now, you can take this as a joke in one of two ways. The first, of course, pokes fun at the fact that the Senate takes an absolutely gargantuan amount of vacation time every year, when they are instead supposed to be doing "The People's Business." The second, of course, refers to the fact that the Senate is somewhat of a broken mechanism these days, notorious for not getting much done, ever, on anything. Compare, for instance, the amount of bills the House passes to the glacial pace of "work" in the Senate, of late.
Arizona is a truly beautiful state. It has many spectacular sights, of which the Grand Canyon is the most awe-inspiring. But Arizona is also a state of forbidding landscapes -- much of the state is desert or near-desert, where the heat of the midday sun is a force of nature to be heavily respected, if not downright feared. But what has put Arizona into the news recently is its "forbidding" political landscape. Specifically, on immigration.
While the Tea Party folks have gotten a lot of attention from the media in the Republican primaries so far, there are a few Democratic primary races which may have just as interesting an impact on the Democrats as the Tea Party challenges are having for Republicans. And since last week I took a look at the effect of the Tea Partiers in Republican races, today I thought it would be worth paying some attention to the Democratic side of the aisle. Because the anti-incumbent "throw the bums out" feeling seems to be happening to some degree in both parties this year. What it all means for the general election remains to be seen, of course. For now, let's take a look at a handful of these upcoming primary races.
Since it's the Friday after month's-end, the new monthly unemployment numbers were released today. Which adds another bar to the "bikini bottom" chart. Now, the measure of how many people know exactly what this means is exactly the measure of how well Democrats are getting the "jobs" message out. Because, as I've said previously, this chart should be front and center in the Democrats' campaigns this year.