Do You Has?: Russ Feingold at Cardozo Law School, 1/29/06
The odd thing about living in New York City is how much is right here if you want it. Sometimes I hear these random screams from outside my dorm room that turn out to be some superstar showing up at the Tower Records a couple blocks away, and the other day I was walking through Washington Square Park and saw some women with strollers shooing away a cameraman.What on earth he was there for, I have no idea, but it was a serious video camera. I mean, where else do people say "Sorry, no pictures" and mean it? I can even head over to and mack on some cupcakes.
The political equivalent of all this is seeing high-level politicians up close on a fairly regular basis. Last semester I went to events featuring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, and just last week I talked to Oregon Gov.
Ted Kulongoski. Yesterday I went to go see U.S.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), possibly the most interesting of them all, because he's expected to take a serious look at a run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Feingold was the only senator to vote against the Patriot Act, he's half the namesake of McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform, and he's a deficit hawk.
He's also twice divorced, Jewish, and a Rhodes Scholar. As a state senator in 1992 he beat an incumbent Republican senator, with . (My favorite part is when he's touring his house, opens a closet, and says, "huh, no skeletons.
" Seriously, ) His most recent reelection was in 2004, where he ran about nine points better than John Kerry in Wisconsin. He is expected to win the support of the more left-leaning Deaniacs from the 2004 primary. I'm not too sure, but then again, Howard Dean seemed like a centrist in 2002 too.
Feingold's general topic was the Patriot Act and President Bush's illegal wiretapping, but he started off saying that America's "greatest priority" is to "stop al-Qaeda and their affiliates." He says we need to fight the war on terror "in the spirit of our country's laws and traditions," and if we don't, then "what is our faith in the ability of our government?" His best line of the night (well, besides the one I ) hit back on Karl Rove's claims that Democrats are stuck in a pre-9/11 mindset.
The real problem, says Feingold, is not that Democrats have a pre-9/11 mindset, but Republicans have a "pre-1776 mindset." That got a laugh. He called Bush's post-9/11 speech the best speech he'd ever heard by a president, and said that he thought then that Bush would win reelection, and it wouldn't matter.
Bush had, he said, "a lot of opportunities to make tough decisions that we would support," but instead, the Republicans seem to have made their primary goal to get as much power as possible and see if they can get away with it.
Feingold said his first hint that Bush wasn't going to be the president we'd hoped was the formation of the Patriot Act. Feingold wanted to add a "process of making sure it didn't go too far" but the president and even Democratic leadership "shut the process down.
" (Personal side note: has Democratic capitulation on national security ever helped them politically? If not, then why do we do it?) He talked about the filibuster of the Patriot Act renewal he led a couple months ago, "which frankly I didn't think was going to work.
"
This is where he went into the wiretapping discussion. He said the Patriot Act has become "a retreat from who we are and who we should be," a great line, and said "it's not inconceivable" that the president could be impeached for doing this, since wiretapping American citizens without a warrant clearly qualifies as "high crimes and misdemeanors." He implied that he doesn't support impeachment, since it wouldn't be good for the country, but I suspect he was suggesting that he would support censure.
He did say that Bush should apologize for wiretapping at tomorrow night's State of the Union, not an unusual suggestion from a Democrat, but striking from a guy who spent the rest of the speech being so pragmatic.
As for the potentially newsmaking topics, he says he was willing to consider an invasion of Iraq because he wanted to do whatever it took to take out al-Qaeda. Once he started seeing "shifting justifications" for the war, he pulled his support.
He had a weird answer on gay marriage, saying he doesn't think the federal government should be getting involved, but seemed to imply that "more successful monogamous relationships" is a good thing. I think he supports gay marriage but doesn't want to say so, but, really, I'm not sure. In terms of the Democrats-as-wusses angle that carried Howard Dean throughout 2003, Feingold said that the real test of Democrats' spines is how they act in the next few weeks and months, as the president starts hitting them with everything he's got.
It's been easy to criticize Bush in past months when his approval rating was in the mid-30s, but we're not going to see how strong the Democrats really are until we get into the next few months and campaign season. (Here's hoping.)
Of course, none of this is the reason I went.
I wanted to see if Russ Feingold sounds like a normal human being. I am convinced that with every Democratic presidentail candidate in 2007 and 2008: how can we know that you can win? Electability was a serious issue in 2004, and I think a lot of people feel snookered by Kerry.
Our candidate in 2008 simply has to be able to a) resist consultants; and b) give short, to-the-point answers. I am not saying this to advocate for or denigrate anyone (except Kerry, I guess), but it's clear that we need a candidate who's proud to be a Democrat and can explain why in a way that people appreciate.
So how did Feingold do?
I'd say pretty well. In terms of pure political talent, he's a lot better than the other candidates I've spoken and worked with recently. My Moneyball studies have taught me not to cite "intangibles" as a reason for liking a guy, but I'll see what I can do.
He does look presidential, in that he comes into a room and exudes confidence and a sense that he knows what he's doing. It's a neat trick when you see it. He knows the issues cold, he seems genuinely to enjoy politics and the Senate, and his politics diverge pretty frequently from the stale and blunt left-right continuum.
All in all, he is one heck of a guy. I'm glad he's in the Senate and he'd make a pretty good presidential candidate.
I'm a little concerned that he sounded too intellectual.
Again, this is a Rhodes Scholar speaking at a law school, but I am concerned that his remarks weren't as succinct and featured too much legal and legislative talk. One of Bill Clinton's tricks, worth learning for any politician, was that he always answered every question in one sentence, and then elaborated. It's easy, sure, to start talking on the topic and a couple minutes later say, "So, to answer your question.
.." It's harder to take a second, think of what the answer is, say the answer, and then explain it.
That way you let the audience listen to your answer, instead of spending their time wondering what it is, or if you're even going to say it.
I'm not sure Feingold was that concise, which could be trouble in the long run. He comes across as a completely normal guy though, even while showing all the polish of a top-notch politician.
He was funny, he was quick on his feet, and he handled every audience interruption with just the right level of direct response, humor, and appropriate dismissal. I wouldn't say he's our shining light for 2008, but I think he might just have what it takes.
- To get this party started right, first off, apparently .
You may think to yourself, "wow, if that's a success it'll be from the high production values and name-brand stars they can bring in." Answer, no. If they succeed, it's because of this:
It is being produced hand-in-hand with Big Vision Entertainment, should have an "MTV"/"reality" feel to it, and booking is reportedly already mapped out and approved by MTV.
See, underline means it's important. Something else important is booking your pro wrestling circuit out months in advance. Storylines grip people, in wrestling, politics, and King Kong, and wrestling promotions who book shows on the day of the event tend to start sucking.A cohesive storyline that lasts months convinces fans that they need to keep tuning in. In any event, I'm optimistic.
- Speaking of institutions in decline, my high school is apparently going into the toilet.
, so I guess my idea of actually finding out what people want out of their careers, and helping them get there, might not have been working. Blame the Bush economy?
- Moving into politics, U.
S. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana is reporting that in his Senate account, all of which can be transferred into a presidential campaign.
For the record, Bayh's strategy seems to be that the only way to beat Hillary (uh, Senator Clinton) is to have a comparable amount of money, so he spent 2005 fundraising instead of sucking up to the establishment in DC or going every weekend to Iowa or whatever it is you're supposed to do if you're running for president in three years. For comparison, the highest cash transfer in the 2004 Democratic primary was $2.4 million from Dick Gephardt, and that was after the end of the midterms.
In other words, Bayh has another year to go, and he's already going to transfer in three times as much money as anyone did in 2004.
- Speaking of 2008 presidential candidates, GQ has a lengthy profile on . I remember in 2004, being really impressed that disappointed Democrats weren't blaming Kerry for the loss.
Everyone generally seemed to think he was a good guy and a flawed candidate who gave it his best shot and lost when the GOP turned out to have had an amazing turnout effort. Then once it became apparent that Kerry was planning to run again in 2008 (and more importantly, that he thought his 2004 performance obliged us all to make him heir apparent), his tenuous support just crashed. which I found fascinating, does not feature a lot of good feeling towards John Kerry.
- Speaking of those dark days of November 2004, I'm always amazed at the ability of Republicans to spin 180 degrees on whether or not an issue is important. we have the Michigan Republican Party putting up a "jobs clock" for the number of Michigan jobs lost during Gov. Jennifer Granholm's administration.
Now, this is ridiculous on its face: when Bush was the first president since Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs (which, for the record, is no longer true as of January 2005), did the Michigan Republican Party think job loss was a big issue then? Of course not. Even more brazenly, they feature Gov.
Granholm saying, "If you are somebody who has lost a job, you need to vote for a change." Want to make one guess when she said that? Exactly: November 2, 2004, better known as Election Day, or The Day We Learned To Ignore Exit Polls.
The only conceivable reason Granholm could have made those comments is that Bush can't create jobs either, yet the Michigan Republican Party like a laser. Frankly, I'm impressed.
I don't think I can go to a show in NYC without falling in love with the last song in the set.
I went to the Baggot Inn on West 3rd St. a while back to see Galvin's brother's band (the ) rock out at a power-pop festival. ("Festival" maybe inappropriate; this was at a bar.
) The show ran late as usual, so we watched the conclusion of the previous band, which had a chick singing and playing guitar, another chick on keyboards, a guy on bass and a guy on drums. is a great form of music: you take a great melody, and you play it really fast and really loud. This band, which I would later discover was the , put on a pretty good act, closing with a song that was just unbelievable.
After days of research (finding out the name of the band, emailing the band, actually hearing back) I discovered the song was a cover of a pre-rock 1960s French song called "Sacre Charlemagne." I have since found the original, which is slow, and some faster covers, which are awesome. I can't, alas, find a way to reproduce the fantastic experience of hearing the Trouble Dolls tear it up live: lots of vocals, lots of guitars, lots of keyboards, and the melodies all jumping back and forth between instrument and voice so quickly you had no idea what was going on.
It was a thrill. I spent most of Thanksgiving break humming the melody, and I annoyed everyone.
See, then the Jellybricks did their part too.
Their set was awesome, and they took their stuff down to walk off stage. The host of the event came out and begged them all to come on for one last song, they start playing, it's a great melody, it sounds like something I know, it's the kind of opening that you know is really going to go somewhere ..
. and oh shit, it's "Baba O'Riley." Is there any better song than "Baba O'Riley"?
I submit there is not. That was the only song on which Galvin's brother sang lead, and it rocked. So, it looks like these bands know how to close a set.
That brings us to the instant case. Funny enough, currently the last band I've seen is also the first band I ever saw. In 1995 I went to see for the first time at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, with the opening.
TMBG is transcendent live, which merits its own discussion, but the Candy Butchers weren't bad either: they have Mike Viola on acoustic guitar, some other guy (sorry) playing on a single drum, and they played "Crazy Train." (Not as good as "Baba O'Riley" but close.) Monday night I was at the on Ludlow St.
with future rock star , expecting to see only Mike Viola, but the other guy showed up too. The Candy Butchers were on!
As with the previous two shows in this discussion, they played an excellent show, with good songs and solid melodies, and for the third time the closing song was the highlight.
This time might have been the best. As the show drew to a close, Mike decides he wants to play piano, and agrees with his partner to play a Beatles song. He starts banging on the keys, and again I think I recognize it, and soon enough I grasp that we've got on our hands a slightly faster-paced version of "Your Mother Should Know," which is awesome.
It sounds much better with a just a little kick in the tempo, plus my own mommy and I were both fans of the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" inr our respective teenage years. Despite that not being a hit before my mother was born, it's the same idea. Good times: as we will now see, I am a sucker for sweet songs.
It was three or four minutes in that I realized that Mike Viola had shifted songs. At first I thought he was just putting in his own variations on the lyrics (the Beatles song in question is not my most familiar), and soon enough I realized he wasn't going back to the Beatles at all. This song he played was fantastic: the piano melody sounds just like a McCartney song, and the lyrics are sweet and well said.
Then I asked Siobhan after the show what the story was, and it turns out this song was called "What To Do With Michael," off Hang On Mike, the album Mike Viola wrote to himself after his wife died. This song is about how they met and got together, and it's beautiful, heart-wrenching and a classic. It's the story of the girl who got it right.
I immediately went home and downloaded it off iTunes, and I've been listening to it ever since. I copied down the lyrics after the jump. The music has the bounce of true love, the words speak only of beauty, and yet it all had to end.
This song just tears me apart.
Or was it '95?
She was there studying abroad, he was on tour
Now my friend, they are inseparable
Now if you don't think that's love, you must by cynical
Or maybe man, you're just dreaming in French, yeah
That he's the one, he's his mother's son, not like anyone
Well that's right, he just needed time to heal
I'm not even kidding.
These are three in a row:
Cabbie: Are you going this way? I'm not turning around!
Chick: What the.
.? I'm not hitchhiking, I'm fucking paying you, and if I tell you to turn around you damn well better turn around!
He drives away.
Chick: Yeah, fuck you too, cunty Mr. Crack Whore.
Hipster guy: Lady, you need therapy.
Chick: Man, you need to stop sucking dick. And a haircut.
Bike guy: Hey girl, I really like your red hair
Chick: Yeah, me too. That's why I dye it. But I don't like it nearly as much as I like not being interrupted when I am tryng to talk to someone.
--St. Marks 3rd
Queer: But wait, is English a race?
Guy passerby: Holy shit, that's going on Overheard tomorrow.
So Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World last night turned out to be a really terrible movie. Quick review: I thought it would be a genuine movie, and it was a facetious movie. Multiple plotlines are never resolved or even halfway developed, and more than anything, the movie's just not funny.
It was roughly as funny as my everyday life, except that in my life I care about the serious stuff, and in the movie I just want it to be funny. It's neither funny nor insightful. Don't see it.
Fortunately, the previews were fantastic, and I am only too happy to describe them here. The first is Thank You For Smoking ( ), in which the tobacco lobbyist is the protagonist. I'm looking forward to this movie for three reasons: one, it looks hilarious, two, movies about people who are the best at making political arguments is right up my alley, and three, how often do we get to hear the tobacco lobbyist's side of the story?
In the trailer this guy goes onto a talk show with a kid with cancer, going through chemo. The lobbyist says, "How on earth would big tobacco profit off of the loss of this young man? It's in our best interest to keep Robin alive and smoking.
" They high-five. Here's another quote, to his son: "if you argue correctly, you're never wrong." How true is that?
I can't conceive of this movie not being absolutely terrific, though it may be my kind of movie in the way that, say, Brokeback Mountain (which I did see) was not. Also, it helps when you have a Killers song playing in the background of the trailer.
Even more intriguing is American Dreamz ( ), which my ever more pregnant sister Laura (happy birthday Laura!
!) like a month ago. In a nutshell, I can't figure out if this movie is the dumbest movie ever created, or if people are going to leave this movie with a whole different outlook on life.
Here's the rough premise (though the movie changes names to protect the impeachable): imagine that President Bush finally realizes one day that he's out of touch and decides to spend all his time holed up and learning about the world, then decides to reconnect with the people by being a guest judge on American Idol. The movie focuses on the William Hung joke contestant, here an Arab who gets shoved into a setup where fundamentalists cheat him into the final round of the competition so he can kill the president onstage, plus the Simon Cowell host, who's sick of being a star, and the Carrie Underwood character, who here desperately wants to become a star, and will gladly throw away everyone who cared about her to do it. Sounds like everyone has a lot to learn about becoming who they are and doing the right thing.
But is it slapstick? I can't tell. It could work as slapstick, and it could work a lot better if it has a point.
Some movies are meant to be transcendent. It stars Mandy Moore, so until it comes out I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt, plus, again, the song in the background is awesome. That should be a prerequisite.
Finally we had A Scanner Darkly, one of those movies with a plot inscrutable from the and probably from actual viewing too, but that doesn't mean it doesn't look fantastic. I mostly include this paragraph so that you'll check out the preview for yourself (though, seriously, see if you can watch it without installing iTunes) so you can see how good it looks. What do they call this, "mostly animated"?
They use real actors. I know a creative and cartoonish style worked for Sin City, which is even better than the that inspired it, but I have no idea whether that will apply to A Scanner Darkly.
In any case, these were terrific previews, almost worth the price of admission, and certainly enough to reinforce my well-considered philosophy that missing any of the previews renders the whole movie experience unacceptable.
Also, read the reader reviews for Thank you for the link.
How can I go on?
The series finale will be May 14, preceded by a one-hour retrospective.The campaign to replace the fictional Josiah Bartlet as president will be settled, NBC said.
"The Office" will go off the air at the end of March so star Steve Carell can film a movie, Reilly said.
What did I do?
I am always trying to find a good example of when Overheard in New York takes a funny conversation and makes it funnier with the headline.
Girl: I heard on CNN today that this woman in France just received the first successful face transplant after she was mauled by her Labrador. They replaced like her whole nose and lips and chin or something.
Guy: I mean, I thought Labradors were, like, really friendly.
I was starting to think already that I prefer Paul Hackett over Sherrod Brown in Ohio's Democratic Senate primary this year, but this latest article in the settles it. I wish I had decent commentary here, but Hackett just nails it.
Watch how this all develops:
Hackett said he opposes capital punishment – too much risk of executing an innocent person – for everybody except the fool who violates his family and home.
"Break into my house, we won’t have to worry about the application of the death penalty. It’s going to be a simple 911 call: Come pick up the body."
With succinct coherence, Hackett said: "I’m pro-choice, I’m pro-gayrights, I’m pro-gun-rights. Call me nuts, but I think they’re all based on the same principle and that is we don’t need government dictating to us how we live our private lives."
Asked to define being pro-gayrights, Hackett said anybody who tries to deny homosexuals the same rights, including marriage, as every other citizen is un-American.Are you saying, he was asked, that the 62 percent of Ohioans who voted in November 2004 to constitutionally deny same-sex marriages are un-American?
"If what they believe is that we’re going to have a scale on judging which Americans have equal rights, yeah, that’s un-American. They’ve got to accept that.It’s absolutely un-American."
Game, set, match. They're still going to nuke him on this, but wow, this guy is a force of nature.
(P.S. Why did the editor make "gayrights" one word?
)
You know, I kind of like Mike Huckabee, to the extent that I like Republicans. You know, if a guy has good ideas, likes working with Democrats, and means what he says, I don't really begrudge him a few differences on issues. But then I saw
He spoke frequently on his faith, the need to rise above the morass of coarse popular culture, and elicited a laugh when calling U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy a "gas bag" for his questioning last week of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito.
Honestly, I don't know if this is a joke. Are the second and third parts of this sentence intended to be a play on the hypocrisy of political life, or did the reporter catch him in a contradiction? I'm not the only one who sees this, right?
UPDATE: I wrote the reporter, and this is what he said:
The first two parts of that sentence (faith and coarse popular culture) were said at numerous points in the speech, while the Kennedy thing was a takeoff on energy policy, linking "gas" to "gas bag" Whether Huckabee meant it as a barb or a joke or both is something you'd likely need to ask him, but the crowd took the Kennedy line as a joke and laughed.
I still think he's being a hypocrite.
You know, I was just thinking that Hillary Rodham Clinton is running the risk of alienating the liberal base by pushing her centrist side too much.
The conventional wisdom is that she's got an advantage in that the base loves her enough to free her up to chase the center, but I'm not sure that's true. In fact, I wonder if in a presidential election the base will think she's sold out and the middle will think she's too liberal.
In any event, Clinton certainly can losing progressives, especially since she's been so hawkish on the war.
(Side note for my feminist friends: sometime take a look at how often women in politics are referred to by their first name. It's hilarious.) My feeling was that she spent 2005 establishing herself as a somewhat reasonable centrist, and she should spend at least part of 2006 reestablishing her liberal credentials.
She's got a two-step ahead of her: she's still got to suck up to both sides.
So will Clinton spend any of 2006 going hard after the Republicans? Let's see up in Harlem yesterday:
The House "has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about," said Clinton, D-N.Y. "It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard."
"We have a culture of corruption, we have cronyism, we have incompetence," she said."I predict to you that this administration will go down in history as one of the worst that has ever governed our country."
Okay then. The best part is that everyone's claiming this was a huge mistake.
Sorry friends, Hillary is just smarter than you are. I am still not convinced she can win the presidency, but if it's possible, she will do it.
As for Sharpton, he jokingly suggested that Clinton, who many believe is eying a run for President in 2008, had stolen his material.
Solid.
A congressional race that you may want to pay attention to is Texas' 22nd, encompassing parts of Houston and its suburbs. It's an interesting race in its own rights, but I'm happy to report that if we succeed at the very real chance of beating the Republican incumbent, that means we'll be taking out the one, the only, "The Hammer" Tom DeLay.
Here's what's neat: there's not one, but two former congressmen challenging DeLay in the general election. Nick Lampson was a Democratic member of Congress until the Texas redistricting put his home in Tom DeLay's district. This presented Lampson with a challenge: run against DeLay in his new home district, or run for reelection in the district he represented.
(The Constitution actually only requires that people live in the same state as their district.) He went with the latter, and lost his seat to Ted Poe, one of the worst people in America. DeLay won his district, but by a much smaller margin than anyone expected: 55-44% against an underfunded and unknown challenger.
So Nick Lampson, wising up a bit, decides to run against a weakened Tom DeLay in both candidates' home district. Now that DeLay is even more weakened then before, it looks like a smart move, but this contest gets more fascinating from here. Former U.
S. Rep. Steve Stockman, the Republican who Nick Lampson beat in his original district the first time he ran in 1996, just so happens to live in DeLay's district now too, and he's running too.
Now, here's where it gets interesting: Stockman is running as an independent. He apparently still holds a grudge against Lampson, you know, given that Lampson beat his sorry ass, and he's doing this to get revenge. I suspect he thinks DeLay won't even make it to Election Day, and he wants to be there to be a viable Republican in the event DeLay's departure happens after the filing deadline.
Good thinking, that.
One small problem, as the Houston Chronicle reports today (though I cite ):
1/10-12. MoE ~ 4.2% (No trend lines.)
Presumably, Stockman intends to drop out if DeLay is still in the race come Election Day, because as now he is literally costing DeLay the election. Is there a chance he'll stay in, either because he's a moron or because he gets illusions of grandeur?We can only hope.
As a final note, Louisiana has supposedly become rock-solid Republican, because New Orleans' Democratic base all had to leave. But didn't a good chunk of those folks relocate to Houston?Could that affect this race? Most claims of "we're going to turn out new voters" are hollow, but here we might really have something.
See, this is why I don't know sports
Red Sox, Snow agree to one-year, $2 million deal
See, fair, but I thought we already had a first baseman (Youkilis).We still need a shortstop and center fielder, right?
But no worries, we had today:
Red Sox, Graffanino agree to one-year, $2.05M deal
See, I thought we already had a second baseman (Loretta) when we need a shortstop and center fielder.
Fortunately, we've got down the pike:
See, now we're getting somewhere. He may not be a shortstop, but Tavarez is a short pitcher. Granted, we have about seven starters and seven relievers, but at least we're moving forward.Maybe part of my problem is I just don't get Larry Lucchino's :
"I have a theory that you never give up on superstars," Lucchino said.
Well, I suppose this doesn't apply to keeping your superstar GM when doing so would require you not to dime out your team's resident media darling and trading extraordinaire. But really, when was the last time not giving up on a superstar won them the World Series?Was Frank Thomas the hero in Chicago this year and I just missed it? Seriously, when has a team re-signed an aging free agent veteran and won the World Series with that player in the driver's seat? Jack Morris in 1991?
That Epstein is a fool for leaving when he has such mandatory wisdom raining down upon him.
Sam Alito: Finally, why we should care - and why we're going to lose
I don't know about you, but I have to say that I've had a hard time getting it up for the Sam Alito nomination. I mean, Roberts was fascinating, Miers was hilarious, and I don't know if I can take really caring about a third Bush Supreme Court nominee in a row.So I figured he would make it onto the Court, I wouldn't really care, and sooner or later a dark conservative cloud would come over America. The curiousity, then, was why I didn't care.
Paul Waldman, the senior fellow at , the founder of , and one of the references on my law school apps, may have some answers.He just wrote for tompaine.com about the Alito nomination, why we should care, and how the Democrats can get a win out of this. First, he shows how Democrats, per usual, are focusing on the wrong message for no real reason:
It seems pretty clear that Alito should have recused himself from any cases involving Vanguard.So what’s wrong with making this such a key part of the campaign against him? The problem is twofold. First of all, liberals are going to have an exceedingly hard time convincing large numbers of people that Alito is some kind of crook.
...
Like it or not, to most Americans the recusal issue will seem too technical and nit-picky.
Secondly, this issue says nothing about the fundamental debate progressives should want Americans to be having about this nomination. The Alito nomination isn’t about whether the Supreme Court will follow legal ethics on recusal, it’s about whether abortion will be legal, about whether civil rights and liberties will be maintained, about whether the head of our government is a president or a king.
Does that ever freak you out as much as it does me? Sometimes I get the feeling that national Democrats decide something absurd like prescription drug care is the issue that's gonna bring this one home, and then they insist that everyone stay on that one message no matter what happens, what changes, what race you're running, or whether making a secondary issue your only issue sounds ridiculous. Evil U.S. Rep. Anne Northup (R-KY) has made a career out of doing personalized, individualized campaigns.
It works. Point being, you have to figure out what people actually care about, and make sure they know where you and your opponent stand. Waldman points out the problem with the Alito pushback:
So what is the one thing Democrats and liberals want you to believe about Samuel Alito, the one reason he should not be on the Supreme Court?Is it that Alito is unethical, or that he’ll overturn Roe, or that he’ll let the government intrude on your privacy, or that he’ll give the executive branch unfettered authority? To return to the Kerry analogy, the story has it that at one point during the campaign Paul Begala went to Kerry headquarters, and in a meeting with some of the senior staff, he wrote out a number of central themes the campaign could employ. Pick one, he begged them—I don’t care which one you pick, but pick one.
Man, can I tell you how much regret I have looking at that sentence? We can't take back the past, but we sure can win the future. But not if Democrats talk like this:
The first thing that George Bush and Mike DeWine have to do is end their addiction to drug company money.Once you do that, then you can put on the table all of the issues that we need to address to bring down the cost of prescription drugs.
There is a prohibition in the Medicare drug bill on allowing the government to negotiate drug prices on the behalf of 30 million or 40 million Medicare beneficiaries. That's the most important change to make.But the drug industry is not going to let their acolytes - those elected officials they've helped so much - make any major changes that might in some ways make a dent in drug company profits.
This is with Ohio Senate hopeful Sherrod Brown a few months back. Good guy, if he's the nominee I'm behind him all the way, but I mean, come on.Protip #1: Start with your best answer. No one gives a shit where someone's money comes from. Seriously.
Can you think of an election where somebody lost because they got their money from drug companies or Hollywood liberals. Of course not. Again, I'm sure I'm not half the politician Sherrod Brown is, but no one cares.
Stop talking about it.
His second point is better, but he falls victim to the next prominent Democratic malaise. Protip #2: Make sense.It took me a while on Team Tony in 2004 to phrase Brown's point here effectively, and here it is: when you buy in bulk, you get lower prices. Since the government buys a lot of stuff in bulk, they almost always negotiate lower prices. In fact, the one time the government doesn't negotiate for lower prices is when they cover seniors for prescription drugs in Medicare.
That's right: the drug companies set the prices, and the federal government can't do anything about it. We need to take this Republican Medicare plan, scrap it, and start over.
How hard is that?But this other part is even worse:
Singer: Let's look at the primary, just briefly. This is the place where the blogosphere is very impassioned on one side or the other. Here's the difficult question: Why did it take so long to make the decision to jump in the race?
Brown: I was not working on any politician's timetable when I made the decision to run.
Yikes. Note that Singer, a blogger interviewing Brown for a blog, notes that bloggers are impassioned about his race.Presumably, a lot of the more influential of these impassioned bloggers will know that Sherrod Brown, a congressman since 1992, spent most of the 1980s as Ohio's Secretary of State. He's a politician. We know.
We don't mind. But saying he's not working on "any politician's timetable" comes across as disingenuous. That's like me saying I'm not a law student: sure, I may have just discovered my college GPA is in the lowest quartile at NYU Law (this is true, and hilarious), but I can't go around like, "oh, I'm not one of those law students you hear about.
" Sorry cuz, you're a lawyer. I mean, politician.
(On the side note of the actual question, further in he answers the question of why he took so long to get into the race, but he really screwed that up too.He said he wouldn't run, then Paul Hackett jumped in, and as things continued to worsen for Republicans, Brown jumped in. Come on, man.)
So that's me and message.Figure out what's important to people, phrase it well, and keep hitting it. I like to think it's just me, and Democrats aren't this bad, and Republicans aren't much better, but I suspect it's really this bad.
Talk about your horrifying moments: I have this friend Jill who was in all my law school classes last semester, and she just wrote a blog post about how she discovered a message board of guys obsessed with her, and, let's say, pretty vocal about stuff they should probably keep private.(What exactly is a "hate-fuck"?) You may or may not want to read this message board itself, but is pretty terrible. What an awful thing to go through.
Now, I've certainly had extended periods of being a dateless internet dork, so it's not like I've never seen guys like this, or their mature, thoughtful level of discussion. I should also say that I fully support a well-made joke about potentially sensitive topics, and that is not what these guys are doing. So to help the world become a better place, here are my tips for posting on the internet without (here's hoping) getting publicly revealed as an asshole:
- Understand when people may read what you're saying.
I take potshots at people all the time on this blog, and I would make the exact same points (maybe not the exact same words) to their faces. None of these guys have the balls to be this cruel in person, partly because they're wusses and mostly because they're just shooting off and don't believe what they're saying. I'm sure it never occurred to most of them that Jill would actually find this site and read it.
Guess what, chumps: that's your problem, not hers. So here's a suggestion: if you're going to post in public, be comfortable with the possibility of whoever you're trashing reading your comments. If, most likely, you're disparaging a video-game publisher, consider if there's a hard-working, talented, good-intentioned Squaresoft employee who's going to stare at the wall for ten minutes after reading your comments on Final Fantasy.
Can you make the same point without being a jerk about it? Now, if your post involves awful sexual comments about a person who goes to the same school as you, it's a little more straightforward: don't be a fucking moron. Think about who might read it, and what they might think, before you write a horrifying post.
Sometimes this takes practice. Try anyway.
- If you're not being funny, you're just being creepy.
My offensive jokes are hilarious because I keep the premise to things that no one could possibly take seriously, and I limit my audience to people who trust my intentions. To demonstrate, here's a fun fact: I support equal rights for boys and girls, I don't know why we didn't pass the ERA, and unlike Newt Gingrich, I don't think women will get "infections" if they were on the front lines of battle. I think women should be allowed to make their own decisions in life, from high-salaried Manhattan lawyer with no free time to homemaker and mother with no free time to Democratic Senate candidate with no free time.
(I also support women sleeping in, the free time thing is a coincidence.)
So that's my opinion on feminism. If I want to make a joke that involves women's rights, I have a challenge: the butt of the joke can't be "the feminazis," but rather the idea itself of taking me seriously.That's why I always get a kick out of pretending to oppose women's suffrage: it's not a statement of opinion, it's a joke about statements of stupid opinions. If this exciting wordplay sounds too complicated (I'm not saying it's easy, or that I'm perfect at it), limit your attempts to small groups of trusted friends. Fair?
Keep your message board posting to who's going to replace Leo on The West Wing.
So back to the instant case, these assholes may have tried to be clever or amusing, but it's clear from where their jokes were directed that the point wasn't to be funny. They were just being dicks, and pretending to make jokes as a disguise.That doesn't count as a joke. That counts as being a shithead.
(For those in the know, this is different than when my friend got deaned in front of contracts class for two reasons: one, the message boards here are public and can be viewed without an invite or a login, and two, there's no question that the victim here was an intentional target.Not cool.)
- Learn how to go after someone. There's nothing wrong itself with feeling threatened by a strident feminist, what's right or wrong is how you react to that feeling.
Protip: going after someone personally is awful, with the added bonus of making you look like an idiot. If you disagree with someone, shoot down their ideas. If you can't do that, then either you're wrong or you haven't thought about it long enough.
If you think someone really is a terrible person, then make it clear that you're divorcing their personal actions from their opinions (as I just did in the second and third sentences in this paragraph). Figure out what your problem is with someone, and go after that, and that alone. Don't get desperate for targets.
- Pick your battles, geniuses. You can't beat back a movement by browbeating one person. If you trash someone on a message board, guess what?
They're still going to feel the same way, and pretty much no one will notice. If you really want to tear down feminism, apply to the Heritage Foundation or donate to or something. Message-board discussions never, ever go anywhere.
I can't imagine having to read people saying horrible personal things about me, just because they feel threatened my opinion. I guess in our futuristic internet world, that's the price you pay to speak your mind.
Yeah, OK, so I'm working on more entries.I have too much of an essay mentality on here. It's probably poor taste for me to post my answers for the contracts and civil procedure exams on the web, right?
Anyway, here are some links to bide the time:
- this is, hands down, the funniest thing I saw all year, and the funniest thing on SNL in the past five years at least.It's one of those videos that where you miss a lot the first time because you're laughing too much. I can't stop watching this clip, and it's starting to scare me.
- I am a natural sucker for this one, since I love conspiracy theories and anything with the "_____ Theory" format.(Groove Theory? Excellent. Ewing Theory?
Insightful!) This one alleges that African-American leaders organized to shut down Chappelle's Show on Comedy Central. There are all the classic elements of a conspiracy theory: assuming that people in power have their fingers in literally everything that happens, taking a casual approach to grammar, taking an even more casual approach to sourcing, and my favorite, going on over and over without any coherent structure.
Do I buy the argument? On the record, no. Off the record, not really.
But I love conspiracy theories, and it's a solid tour through the history of Chappelle's Show and black leaders in America. Good times. Can't we just get the show back?
Here are my two favorite posts.
Finally, I buckled and got an account on , if you're into that sort of thing. God, I'm such a dork on breaks.Do I have any other interests?
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