Last Call For Back-Scratching 101

The Village is a small world after all as the Sony Pictures hack/leak is the gift that keeps on giving.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd promised to show Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal’s husband Bernard Weinraub — a former Times reporter — a version of a column featuring Pascal before publication. 

The end result was a column that painted Pascal in such a good light that she engaged in a round of mutual adulation with Dowd over email after its publication. It also scored Pascal points back at the studio, with Sony’s then-communications chief calling the column “impressive.” 

The exchanges were uncovered in a trove of Pascal’s emails released as part of a massive hack on Sony carried out by the group known as “Guardians of Peace.” 

The column, published after the Academy Awards earlier this year, lamented how “Oscar voters and industry top brass are still overwhelmingly white, male and middle-aged.”

Of course.  It's ironic that the column found Hollywood to be an overly chummy boys club (which it is) while of course Dowd and Pascal using a close friendship to get the glowing column about Pascal written in the first place.

Can't be burned down fast enough.

Don't Get This Band Back Together, Please

One thing Hillary Clinton can attempt to do in order to address concerns of African-American voters like myself who did not vote for her in the 2008 primaries is to not surround herself with the people she had in 2007-2008. You know, back when her campaign braintrust decided that trashing Obama with good ol' Southern Strategy garbage was OH HELLO LANNY DAVIS.

Last week, on Dec. 4, I helped organize a Ready for Hillary fundraiser in Montgomery County, Md., in the immediate suburbs of Washington, D.C. The organization, an independent grassroots committee, has been at work for the past year gathering millions of names and small donations in support of Hillary Rodham Clinton for president — that is, just in case she decides to run in 2016.

Never the hell mind with that plan then.

By the way, Davis goes on to say Martin O'Malley's people are backing Hillary now, but the funny part is O'Malley is going after Hillary over her refusal to prosecute Bush/Cheney era torture.

Ark-itechcts Of Their Own Disaster

Joe Sonka gives us some good news:  Dinosaur Steve's Ark Park here in Kentucky will not be getting taxpayer money after all.

Kentucky’s Tourism Arts & Heritage Cabinet Secretary Bob Stewart informed representatives of the proposed Ark Encounter tourist attraction today that their project will not be eligible for up to $18 million in tax incentives from the state, due to their refusal to pledge not to discriminate in hiring based on religion. 

“As you know, since the filing of the original incentive application in 2010, we have strongly supported this project, believing it to be a tourism attraction based on biblical themes that would create significant jobs for the community,” wrote Stewart in a letter to Ark Encounter’s attorney. “However, based on various postings on the Answers in Genesis (AIG) and Ark Encounter websites, reports from Ark Encounter investor meetings and our correspondence, it is readily apparent that the project has evolved from a tourism attraction to an extension of AIG’s ministry that will no longer permit the Commonwealth to grant the project tourism development incentives.” 

Stewart explains that their application will not go forward because the state will not grant incentives to a company that openly intends to discriminate in hiring based on religion, saying it is a violation of the state constitution for these incentives to be used to advance religion. He detailed how Ark Encounter representatives had previously promised not to discriminate in hiring several times, but recently they have stated they have every right to do so, saying, “The Commonwealth’s position hasn’t changed. The applicant’s position has changed.” 

Stewart cited AiG CEO Ken Ham’s Nov. 19 fundraising letter that accused the Beshear administration of religious persecution and reaffirmed their desire to discriminate in hiring based on religion. He also cited other statements throughout the year from AiG officials claiming the purpose of the park is to evangelize and indoctrinate its visitors. 

“Certainly, Ark Encounter has every right to change the nature of the project from a tourism attraction to a ministry,” wrote Stewart. “However, state tourism tax incentives cannot be used to fund religious indoctrination or otherwise be used to advance religion. The use of state incentives in this way violates the Separation of Church and State provisions of the Constitution and is therefore impermissible.” 

Stewart went on to wish the Ark Encounter project well, despite the fact that it will receive no money or incentives from the state.

Good.  I've been saying the Yabba Dabba D'oh here should never have gotten a dime, and it looks like finally that Ken Ham will have to fork over his own cash.  I'm not paying for a Christian indoctrination theme park with my tax dollars, especially when "Christian" here has nothing to do with the teachings of Christ and everything to do with being a complete bigoted asshole to everyone.

Good riddance, and I hope the whole thing burns.

StupidiNews!

• The House narrowly avoided another shutdown fiasco with a 219-206 vote to pass a funding bill through next year, but the bill faces substantial Senate opposition.
• A time capsule from Boston's colonial era has been dug up from under the Massachusetts State House, originally buried by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere.
• Dozens of congressional staffers walked out of the Capitol on Thursday in a "hands up, don't shoot" posture to show solidarity with supporters of slain Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
• Crude oil prices have now dropped below $60 a barrel as the International Energy Agency has cut their demand forecast for the fourth time in just five months.
• The FCC may have folded on net neutrality, but has decreed that in order to receive subsidies for rural broadband development that carriers have to offer a minimum of 10Mbps speeds.

Last Call For The Hollywood Shuffle

So if you recall last week's Sony Pictures data heist, you know crooks have been leaking devastating internal data from Sony Pictures showing just how mindlessly stupid the company really is on a number of issues.  First, the company has a major, major gender gap and diversity problem:

Here are the stats: of the top 17 highest-paid executives at Sony, 88% are white and 94% are men. To put that into actual real-world numbers, 15 of these executives are white (including the list’s sole woman, Amy Pascal, who’s the co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group), one is Indian (Man Jit Singh, president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment), and one is black (Dwight R. Caines, marketing president at Sony Pictures Entertainment). 

And in case you were curious about whether or not the gender pay gap is also an issue over at Sony as well, Columbia Pictures co-president of production Hanna Minghella makes $800,000 less per year than co-president of production Michael De Luca, with whom she partners on many projects. Minghella got her title in October 2010 after working with the company for almost 10 years; De Luca’s only had his since December 2013.

Now we find out the company's executives are pretty clueless on race and President Obama, too.

Before Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal attended a breakfast of Hollywood bigwigs last November with Barack Obama, she emailed her friend Scott Rudin for suggestions on what she should ask the president. 

In what has become the latest embarrassing email uncovered in a trove of messages leaked by hackers who attacked Sony, Pascal wrote Rudin: “What should I ask the president at this stupid Jeffrey breakfast?” She was referring to a breakfast hosted by DreamWorks Animation head and major Democratic donor Jeffrey Katzenberg. 

Rudin, a top film producer responsible for films like No Country for Old Men and Moneyball, responded, “Would he like to finance some movies.” Pascal replied, “I doubt it. Should I ask him if he liked DJANGO?” Rudin responded: “12 YEARS.” Pascal quickly continued down the path of guessing Obama preferred movies by or starring African Americans. “Or the butler. Or think like a man? [sic]” 

Rudin’s response: “Ride-along. I bet he likes Kevin Hart.”

Hahaha gosh that's hysterical, guys.  Look, like Chris Rock said, Hollywood is run by rich white people and they are entirely tone deaf to everything about race and culture across the board.

It's a white industry. Just as the NBA is a black industry. I'm not even saying it's a bad thing. It just is. And the black people they do hire tend to be the same person. That person tends to be female and that person tends to be Ivy League. And there's nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact, that's what I want for my daughters. But something tells me that the life my privileged daughters are leading right now might not make them the best candidates to run the black division of anything. And the person who runs the black division of a studio should probably have worked with black people at some point in their life. Clint Culpepper [a white studio chief who specializes in black movies] does a good job at Screen Gems because he's the kind of guy who would actually go see Best Man Holiday. But how many black men have you met working in Hollywood? They don't really hire black men. A black man with bass in his voice and maybe a little hint of facial hair? Not going to happen. It is what it is. I'm a guy who's accepted it all.

So no, not surprising at all that Sony's team assumed the President likes Kevin Hart movies.

Being Judge Mental On Immigration

Looks like the red states suing President Obama over his immigration action have gotten the judge they wanted for an injunction that could wreck the entire plan.

The lawsuit is led by Texas Attorney General (and Gov.-elect) Greg Abbott and joined by 17 other Republican states. They ask for an immediate injunction to stop administration officials from moving forward; if they succeed, the actions may be halted before they can begin taking applications, which the White House expects to start doing this spring. 

Legal experts say the lawsuit is flawed on questions of "standing," which requires proof of a tangible injury to the suing party; and on the merits, where longstanding legal precedent grants the executive branch a huge amount of discretion when it comes to enforcing immigration laws. 

But in a calculated move, the Republicans landed the case before their dream judge: Andrew S. Hanen of Texas, appointed by George H.W. Bush. Hanen has fiercely criticized the Obama administration where it has shown mercy on immigration enforcement. In a December 2013 order, he said the Department of Homeland Security "assisted" a criminal conspiracy by failing to prosecute or deport the smuggler of a 10-year-old girl brought into the United States illegally.

So what kind of damage can Judge Hanen do?  Plenty.  Despite the lack of standing issues with the case to begin with, if Hanen agrees with Texas and the 16 other states, Obama's immigration action would be blocked from going into effect.  The case would next go to the 5th Circuit, which would then be asked to lift such an injunction while the appeal was pending. Odds are real good the 5th Circuit would then tell Obama to go jump off a cliff and keep the injunction in place, and Obama's immigration plan would be in limbo until the 5th Circuit then got around to making a decision.

If the case goes to the Supreme Court, the Obama administration would have much better odds.

When it comes to the merits, the Republicans may have a tough time at the Supreme Court, should the case eventually reach there. Legomsky pointed to two Supreme Court cases — both cited in the Obama administration's legal memo justifying the actions — Chaney v. Heckler andArizona v. U.S. as examples of the "very broad prosecutorial discretion" that the executive branch has on the issue of immigration.

In 2012, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in Arizona v. U.S., "Removal is a civil matter, and one of its principal features is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials, who must decide whether to pursue removal at all." His 5-3 majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts.

But the path to SCOTUS has land mines all over it.  We'll see how this shapes up.

Time's Person Of The Year Announced

Time's annual Person of the Year for 2014 is a pretty decent (and non-controversial) choice, the "Ebola Fighters" who risked their safety to battle the disease in Africa and the US.

For decades, Ebola haunted rural African villages like some mythic monster that every few years rose to demand a human sacrifice and then returned to its cave. It reached the West only in nightmare form, a Hollywood horror that makes eyes bleed and organs dissolve and doctors despair because they have no cure. 

But 2014 is the year an outbreak turned into an epidemic, powered by the very progress that has paved roads and raised cities and lifted millions out of poverty. This time it reached crowded slums in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone; it traveled to Nigeria and Mali, to Spain, Germany and the U.S. It struck doctors and nurses in unprecedented numbers, wiping out a public-health infrastructure that was weak in the first place. One August day in Liberia, six pregnant women lost their babies when hospitals couldn’t admit them for complications. Anyone willing to treat Ebola victims ran the risk of becoming one. 

Which brings us to the hero’s heart. There was little to stop the disease from spreading further. Governments weren’t equipped to respond; the World Health Organization was in denial and snarled in red tape. First responders were accused of crying wolf, even as the danger grew. But the people in the field, the special forces of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the Christian medical-relief workers of Samaritan’s Purse and many others from all over the world fought side by side with local doctors and nurses, ambulance drivers and burial teams. 

Ask what drove them and some talk about God; some about country; some about the instinct to run into the fire, not away. “If someone from America comes to help my people, and someone from Uganda,” says Iris Martor, a Liberian nurse, “then why can’t I?” Foday Gallah, an ambulance driver who survived infection, calls his immunity a holy gift. “I want to give my blood so a lot of people can be saved,” he says. “I am going to fight Ebola with all of my might.”

And while these medical professionals definitely deserve accolades for their selfless work, it's Time's list of far more controversial also-rans that are the most intriguing: the brave Ferguson protesters who told the world that even in the most powerful country on earth, black people are still second class citizens in many ways, the ruthless Vladimir Putin, who upended Europe's entire geopolitical structure only to get sandbagged by good old fashioned oil speculation capitalism, Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, whose Alibaba IPO became the largest offering ever made to the Wall Street gods, and Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who may be the US's only real ally in the ISIS mess we're now stuck in until further notice.

Personally, I wanted to see the Ferguson protesters win, especially now with Eric Garner's now notorious case gaining nationwide attention to police brutality against people of color in the US.

What say the assembled?

StupidiNews!

• After years of drought, California is being inundated with a massive storm that could dump as much as ten inches of rain in parts of the Golden State.
• The GOP-led House has passed measures to remove insurance companies from oversight in Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation as part of today's must pass spending bill.
• A US appeals court has thrown out two major hedge fund insider trading convictions, putting dozens of other convictions obtained in the last several years in jeopardy of also being reversed.
• British analysts are warning that drug-resistant infections may cost the global economy up to $100 trillion over the next 35 years, a threat they say is as great as climate change.
• The US Navy has approved the military's first ship-based laser weapon for use aboard the USS Ponce in the Persian Gulf.

Last Call For Brownbacked Into A Corner

Well Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback cut taxes to the point where Kansas can no longer afford to provide basic services and surprise!  Tax cuts didn't magically create jobs or growth, and the state's budget is a complete wreck.

But Kansas, you re-elected the guy last month because that'll show Obummer and those liberals what for, right?  Well guess what?  Now, the other shoe falls as those basic services are cut even more.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) on Tuesday unveiled his plan to solve his state's serious financial woes: dramatic budget cuts to state agencies by 4 percent and move $201 million from specific funds to Kansas's general funds.

Those actions, according to the Kansas City Star, will open up $280 million Kansas can use to fill its budget deficit, which analysts projected to be about $279 million by the end of June 2015.

According to Reuters, $201.5 million would be taken from other funds and moved to the general fund and $78.5 million will be saved by cutting as much as $40.7 million from Kansas state contributions to the retirement system for public employees.

So 4% cuts across the board to everything, and gotta punish those state employees some more, because we all know they're nothing but mooching scumbags.

Hey, I wonder how many state employees voted for Brownback to take money out of their pockets.

Oh well.  Cut off you nose to spite your state, right?

Thermite At A Funeral

Ta-Nehisi Coates comes not to praise The New Republic, but to bury it under big neon signs pointing to evidence that it was a festering canker of “liberal” racist drivel. He gives the publication and its more famous staff no less than they deserve.

That explains why the family rows at TNR’s virtual funeral look like the “Whites Only” section of a Jim Crow-era movie-house. For most its modern history, TNR has been an entirely white publication, which published stories confirming white people’s worst instincts. During the culture wars of the ’80s and ’90s, TNR regarded black people with an attitude ranging from removed disregard to blatant bigotry. When people discuss TNR’s racism, Andrew Sullivan’s publication of excerpts from Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve (and a series of dissents) gets the most attention. But this fuels the lie that one infamous issue stands apart. In fact, the Bell Curve episode is remarkable for how well it fits with the rest of TNR’s history. 

The personal attitude of TNR’s longtime owner, the bigoted Martin Peretz, should be mentioned here. Peretz’s dossier of racist hits (mostly at the expense of blacks and Arabs) is shameful, and one does not have to look hard to find evidence of it in Peretz’s writing or in the sensibility of the magazine during his ownership. In 1984, long before Sullivan was tapped to helm TNR, Charles Murray was dubbing affirmative action a form of “new racism” that targeted white people. 

Two years later, Washington Post writer Richard Cohen was roundly rebuked for advocating that D.C. jewelry stores discriminate against young black men—but not by TNR. The magazine took the opportunity to convene a panel to “reflect briefly” on whether it was moral for merchants to bar black men from their stores. (“Expecting a jewelry store owner to risk his life in the service of color-blind justice is expecting too much,” the magazine concluded.) 

TNR made a habit of “reflecting briefly” on matters that were life and death to black people but were mostly abstract thought experiments to the magazine’s editors. Before, during, and after Sullivan’s tenure, the magazine seemed to believe that the kind of racism that mattered most was best evidenced in the evils of Afrocentrism, the excesses of multiculturalism, and the machinations of Jesse Jackson. It’s true that TNR’s staff roundly objected to excerpting The Bell Curve, but I was never quite sure why. Sullivan was simply exposing the dark premise that lay beneath much of the magazine’s coverage of America’s ancient dilemma.

And Coates continues with his vicious slashing, like a literary velociraptor let loose in a sheep pasture, the whole article is breathtaking. Was everybody at the magazine complicit in this? No, but that’s irrelevant, frankly. As far as I’m concerned, Chris Hughes’s massive techbro hubris actually did the world a favor for once, and mortally wounded something that should have been taken out back and shot years ago. And Sully, Marty Peretz, Charles Murray, Stephen Glass, all those guys can go straight to the septic tank of history as far as I’m concerned along with their damn “liberal” New Republic.

Winning Back The House

Greg Sargent points out that 2010 was the self-inflicted wound by Democrats that keeps on giving to the GOP, and that it's going to take another six years to even begin to fix the problem of the Republican-led House.

Today I chatted with David Wasserman, who closely tracks House districts for the Cook Political Report. Wasserman recently wrote that due to population shifts and redistricting that have resulted in huge concentrations of Democratic votes in Dem districts — wasting a lot of those votes — Democrats can now expect that the percentage of seats they win will consistently trail their victory in the overall popular vote by about four percentage points. 

Can regaining ground on the state level help change this? At my request, Wasserman went a bit deeper into the numbers. 

The starting point for changing it, Wasserman notes, would be in the big swing states that President Obama carried in 2012. Even though Obama won them, Dems still hold far fewer legislative and Congressional seats than Republicans do. In Ohio, the breakdown of seats in the next Congress will be 12 Republican, four Democratic. In Pennsylvania the breakdown will be 13 Republican, five Democratic. Those two states, Wasserman notes, are particularly lopsided because Democratic districts are “heavily urbanized,” with huge numbers of Dem voters concentrated in them around Columbus, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. 

Meanwhile, in Michigan the breakdown will be nine Republican, five Dem. In Wisconsin the breakdown will be five Republican, three Democratic. In North Carolina it will be 10 Republican, three Democratic. 

In all of those states, Republicans control the state legislatures. In all but one of them — Pennsylvania — Republicans also control the governor’s mansions. 

And all of this happened because in 2010 emoprog whiners said "Obama failed us!" and convinced Democrats to stay home or even to vote for the GOP because Obamacare was horrible and evil and a gift to insurance companies.  What we got stuck with was a GOP house for the next decade because of these assholes, and never, ever let them forget it.

But that's just the beginning of the issues.

 To be sure, the problem goes beyond these big swing states: In several southern states, Wasserman notes, Republicans have successfully jammed African Americans into single districts, helping to dramatically minimize the number of Dem-controlled districts in them. In states like Kansas and Utah, Democrats have no seats where they should probably have one. 

But winning back the governor’s mansions or state legislatures in these states seems harder than regaining state-level ground in the big swing states Obama carried. That’s why those seem like the best hope for Dems. 

Yet even in those big swing states, Republicans have large majorities in the state legislatures — a holdover from 2010 redistricting on the state level, too. “I don’t think there’s a realistic chance for Democrats to win back these legislatures by 2020,” Wasserman says. That means the most likely way Democrats can make a difference is to win governors’ races, which, Wasserman notes, would result in split rule that could force redistricting battles into the courts, where a more neutral outcome might result.

And we screwed ourselves on that in 2014.  We'll get another shot in four more years, but you can imagine the kind of damage Rick Snyder, Scott Walker, and Rick Scott will do to these swing states after we stayed home again in November.  Democrats in those states have nobody to blame but themselves for not voting.  You get what you deserve, guys.

And that will probably be true for me here in Kentucky in 2015 when Dinosaur Steve's second term is up, and I bet Democrats here, including myself, get exactly what's coming to us again.

But even if Democrats were to get something approaching neutral maps in these big states, Wasserman estimates, it could result in just a couple more seats in each state — adding up to a total of maybe 10 additional House seats for Democrats. That would obviously help, but it would still be short of the 30-seat edge Republicans currently hold. Democrats would still have to post pretty big victories in the next few cycles to get close to the majority. In short, beyond the problem of redistricting is the even more serious problem (for Democrats) of population distribution. 

“If Democrats were to get neutral maps drawn by God in all 50 states, they would still fall well short of winning back the House,” Wasserman concludes. “What Democrats really need is a massive resettlement program.”

So yes, getting the House back means getting local and state races back.  And that'll never happen if we write off more than half of the country because it's red.

StupidiNews!

• House and Senate lawmakers have agreed in theory to support a $1.1 trillion budget bill that will keep most of the government funded through September.
• President Obama has vowed to not use the "enhanced interrogation techniques" outlined in yesterday's CIA torture report.
• More NBA players are protesting the death of Eric Garner by wearing "I Can't Breathe" T-shirts, while demonstrators in Berkley, California blocked freeway traffic for a fifth night.
• A new report finds state highway funds are so low, that even Republicans are looking to raise fuel taxes.
• HBO Chief Technology Officer Otto Berkes is out as the company retools its HBO GO service for a standalone launch in time for April's "Game of Thrones" season 5 premiere.

Last Call For Done In Our Name

The Senate Intelligence Committee report on Bush/Cheney era torture of detainees by the CIA is out, and it details nothing short of absolutely Inquisition levels of physical and mental torture.

Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the C.I.A.'s medical staff, some C.I.A. prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” — a technique that the C.I.A.'s chief of interrogations described as a way to exert “total control over the detainee.” C.I.A. medical staff members described the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a “series of near drownings.”

The report also suggests that more prisoners were subjected to waterboarding than the three the C.I.A. has acknowledged in the past. The committee obtained a photograph of a waterboard surrounded by buckets of water at the prison in Afghanistan commonly known as the Salt Pit — a facility where the C.I.A. had claimed that waterboarding was never used. One clandestine officer described the prison as a “dungeon,” and another said that some prisoners there “literally looked like a dog that had been kenneled.”

And surprise!  Dick Cheney lied out of his ass about this program too.  Torture provided no useful, actionable intelligence whatsoever, but we did it anyway, and we kept doing it.

Monstrous.  Heads should roll for this, but of course they won't.

The release of the Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques prompted the Justice Department to say that it stands by its decision not to bring criminal charges after its own probe five years ago. "That review generated two criminal investigations, but the Department of Justice ultimately declined those cases for prosecution, because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain convictions beyond a reasonable doubt," the agency said in a statement Tuesday.

Oh well.  I guess that's that then.

Gitmo will remain open and CIA black sites will continue to hold detainees infinitely and nobody will ever be responsible for what was done in our name.

But the report dumps it all on the CIA, and not of course Bush/Cheney.  So we'll hear some paeans to "reform" and nothing will happen, and all this will happen again, if it's not happening now.

Same as it ever was.

Snake And Onions For Breakfast

Dear Canada, what the hell is going on up there anyway?

After a dispute over diced onions on a breakfast sandwich, two men threw a snake over a counter towards an employee of a Saskatoon Tim Hortons. 

According to Saskatoon police, staff members “fled the store in fear” after the incident, which took place Monday around 7:30 a.m. at the Tim Hortons in the 600 block of 22nd Street West. 

“I’ve never heard of a snake being thrown at an employee by a customer … It was definitely a little chaotic,” said Saskatoon police spokeswoman Alyson Edwards.
“The staff was shocked and afraid and fled the store.” 

Staff told police that two male customers were arguing with an employee about their breakfast order – specifically that they wanted their onions diced. When the argument escalated, one of the men reached into the pocket of the other man, pulled out a garter snake and threw it behind the counter. 

No one was injured, said police. 

Officers quickly found the snake and determined it was not poisonous, said Edwards. Police found a temporary home for the snake until it can be released into the wild in the spring.

Now, I have questions about this series of events.  Specifically, how the two guys decided "I will win this argument over diced onions by throwing this garter snake I happen to have, even though it's December in Saskatoon."

I want to know, because I can't figure out of it's complete genius or the end of Canada.

It's Like A Whole Other Country

Daily Beast columnist Michael Tomasky has given up on the South after 2014 as far as Congress goes, and is tired of the Dems spending good money on races they will never, ever, ever be able to win.  Yes, NC, VA, and Florida are necessary for the White House, but...

At the congressional level, and from there on down, the Democrats should just forget about the place. They should make no effort, except under extraordinary circumstances, to field competitive candidates. The national committees shouldn’t spend a red cent down there. This means every Senate seat will be Republican, and 80 percent of the House seats will be, too. The Democrats will retain their hold on the majority-black districts, and they’ll occasionally be competitive in a small number of other districts in cities and college towns. But they’re not going win Southern seats (I include here with some sadness my native West Virginia, which was not a Southern state when I was growing up but culturally is one now). And they shouldn’t try. 

My friend the political scientist Tom Schaller said all this back in 2008, in his book Whistling Past Dixie. I didn’t want to agree with Schaller then, but now I throw in the towel. He was a man ahead of his time. Look west, Schaller advised the Democrats. And he was right. Now it’s true that many states in the nation’s heartland aren’t winnable for Democrats, either. Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah will never come anywhere close to being purple. But Colorado already is. Arizona can be. Missouri, it’s not crazy to think so. And Montana and South Dakota are basically red, of course, but are both elect Democrats sometimes. (Did you know that both of Montana’s senators right now are Democrats?!) In sum, between the solid-blue states in the North and on the West Coast, and the pockets of opportunity that exist in the states just mentioned (and tossing in the black Southern seats), the Democrats can cobble together congressional majorities in both houses, under the right circumstances.

This is the crucial argument that the Left has had on the future of the Democrats: which is better, more Democrats, or better Democrats?   I've long been a proponent of more Democrats (Howard Dean's 50 state strategy) but considering how quickly that has disintegrated in just 8 years, leaving the GOP with the biggest House majority they've had since Hoover, I'm going to say that "more Democrats" isn't going to cut it.  The 50 state strategy isn't going to work anymore in Alabama or West Virginia or (and let's face it) Kentucky.

But it’s not just a question of numbers. The main point is this: Trying to win Southern seats is not worth the ideological cost for Democrats. As Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen recently told my colleague Ben Jacobs, the Democratic Party cannot (and I’d say should not) try to calibrate its positions to placate Southern mores: “It’s come to pass, and really a lot of white Southerners vote on gays and guns and God, and we’re not going to ever be too good on gays and guns and God.” 

Cohen thinks maybe some economic populism could work, and that could be true in limited circumstances. But I think even that is out the window now. In the old days, drenched in racism as the South was, it was economically populist. Glass and Steagall, those eponymous bank regulators, were both Southern members of Congress. But today, as we learned in Sunday’s Times, state attorneys general, many in the South, are colluding with energy companies to fight federal regulation of energy plants. 

It’s lost. It’s gone. A different country. And maybe someday it really should be.

And that's where Tomasky loses me.

Giving up on the South 100% is a recipe for repeating the last six years forever. It's the ultimate emoprog copout, not to mention it erases the political power of millions of people of color and treats us as what, hostages with Stockholm Syndrome, not to mention that there are millions of poor white voters in the South too.

But we need a new solution.  We need better Democrats AND more Democrats, and giving up on the South and handing it over to the GOP for the next 20 years only assures more of the country-destroying insanity we've seen since 2009.

The Tea Party is not going to magically go away once Obama leaves office.  We need to fight back on this crap and give people a reason to vote FOR Democrats and not just against the GOP. It's hard to say "we can't give up on the South" when Southern Democrats have given up on the Dems.  But at the same time, running Republican-lite candidates to win Blue Dog seats only hurts the Dems across the board.

So the fight is now "Since Southern Democrats told Obama to go to hell, what should we do to keep them?" The answer will define the party for the next generation. In 2014, "They're not Republicans!" was only good enough for what, 16% of the voting public? We've got to try something else, and now.

Something like "Actual Democrats as candidates".

Sorry.  We gave the Alison Grimes and the Mary Landrieus a shot, and they failed miserably.

New plan.