The Commentariat -- November 5

The Republican primaries will be a production of Fox "News."
-- Chris Wallace of Fox "News":

Charlie Savage of the New York Times compares George W. Bush's account of events in his soon-to-be pubished memoir Decision Points with news accounts of the events. Interactive.

Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "While [President Obama's] domestic agenda may end up being stalled for the next two years, national security remains his domain, no matter how unfriendly Congress may be. And the United States’ relations abroad, political and foreign policy observers say, may be the broadest avenue left for Mr. Obama to accomplish anything during the remainder of his current term."

More Bad News. Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Obama is moving to cool down his war with the United States Chamber of Commerce, one of the most bitter political feuds of the last two years." Obama sent Tim Geithner out for a two-hour chat with Chamber CEO Tom Donohue. CW: do you think those two were discussing your interests? ...

... What a shame for the nation that President Obama doesn't have the guts to follow Paul Krugman's advice: "Mr. Obama’s economic policy ended up being a political disaster precisely because he tried to play it safe. It’s time for him to try something different."

John Dickerson of Slate: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says President Obama must get in line with him & support legislation that reflects "the will of the people." However, McConnell's ideas of what "the people" demand are distortions.

Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "In an e-mail to newly elected House Republicans, Eric Cantor, likely to be the next House majority leader, said the Republican leadership would spotlight oversight findings in floor debates to point up what Republicans say is excessive government spending. Every week, the Republicans plan to publicize 'one major oversight hearing ... that plays into our overall focus on job creation and reducing spending,' Cantor said."

Gene Robinson: "Nancy Pelosi ... is losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well." ...

... ** William Saletan makes a similar point in Slate: "Democrats didn't lose the battle of 2010. They won it." Congresses come and go. The healthcare law is forever. ...

... Jonathan Karl of ABC News: "High-level Democratic sources in the House tell ABC News [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi is seriously considering staying in Congress and running for the position of minority leader. Pelosi is methodically calling every Democratic House member who won on Tuesday, as well as many who lost, sources tell ABC News. In the process, she is weighing her options and gauging her support." With video. Diane Sawyer interviews Pelosi here; we embedded a clip yesterday; here's more:

... MEANWHILE. Jonathan Allen & John Bresnahan of Politico: "Utah Rep. Jim Matheson, a co-chairman of the Blue Dogs, told POLITICO on Thursday that Pelosi should not be a candidate for minority leader." ...

... AND. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo: "Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), who dodged the shellacking on Tuesday, says if Pelosi makes a play to be Minority Leader, he'll run against her." ...

     ... New York Times Update: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Friday that she would run to remain the leader of the House Democrats." ...

     ... Time Update: "Democrat Jim Clyburn announced he will challenge [Steny] Hoyer [for the No. 2 spot]. Clyburn, a South Carolina Dem, is a leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the highest ranking African American ever to serve in the House.

Jordan Fabian of The Hill: "House Democrats were swept out of power because party leaders tried to hard to 'appease' Republicans on major issues, said a high-profile member Thursday who lost his seat Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said Democratic leaders should have been more aggressive and shut Republicans out of the negotiating process."

Jonathan Weisman of the Wall Street Journal: "... President Barack Obama is getting pilloried by the right on the cost of his 10-day trip to Asia, with outlandish hyperventilation going directly from suspect Indian media reports to conservative U.S. media outlets and commentators without a pause for fact-checking.... Now a new rumor has emerged courtesy of India’s NDTV. Mr. Obama, the outlet says, 'will be protected by a fleet of 34 warships, including an aircraft carrier, which will patrol the sea lanes off the Mumbai coast.' The White House called that ridiculous. But on the conservative Drudge Report website, it’s on the home page – in huge type." ...

... AND, Michele Bachmann, never one to let facts get in the way of a good rant, is outraged at the made-up cost of the India trip. With video of Bachmann being outraged & blatantly inaccurate.

California Sends a Competent Leader to Sacramento. Adam Nagourey & Jennifer Medina of the New York Times: Jerry Brown was California's youngest governor when he was elected in 1974; Tuesday he was elected as its oldest. Despite the state's deep fiscal problems, Brown knows what to do & how to do it. He's already begun meeting with state lawmakers. ...

... Florida Voters Choose a Crook. Damien Cave of the New York Times: Governor-Elect Rick Scott's "proposals, and his approach to business, suggest that residents here may soon see an approach to government closer to the conservative, budget-slashing overhaul proposed for Britain."

Nate Silver: "... polls conducted by the firm Rasmussen Reports — which released more than 100 surveys in the final three weeks of the campaign, including some commissioned under a subsidiary on behalf of Fox News — badly missed the margin in many states, and also exhibited a considerable bias toward Republican candidates." Rasmussen overestimated "the standing of the Republican candidate by almost 4 points on average."

The Commentariat -- November 4

Short of suicide, I don't really know what I'd have to do to convince you people that I'm not running. -- New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, once again denying he will run for President in 2012. CW: I think this tops the most famous refusal to run for President: If drafted, I will not run; if nominated, I will not accept; if elected, I will not serve. -- William Tecumseh Sherman (abbreviated)

Some likely Republican House committee chairmen. Rogues Gallery via Huffington Post.Josh Israel of the Center for Public Integrity: "The Republican takeover of Congress ... elevates up to 25 senior GOP lawmakers to the roles of committee chairs.... A Center for Public Integrity examination finds there are some common ties that bind the likely leaders of the 11 committees with the most domestic spending and policy clout. First, the top contenders are all men. Nearly all are white. Most have deep ties to the business community or the industries they will soon oversee. Some have former staffers who now work in the lobbying world and could seek influence before their committees. And many have gotten the lion’s share of their campaign monies the past two election cycles from special interest political action committees.

The Road Ahead. David Herszenhorn of the New York Times: "While divided government inevitably creates opportunities for compromise, the recent acrimony in Congress suggests that efforts to work together could just as easily collapse in a fusillade of angry floor speeches, filibusters by the Senate Republicans and veto threats by the White House." ...

... Gridlock. Naftali Bendavid & Janet Hook of the Wall Street Journal: "Come January, the House will be composed of an energized conservative Republican majority and a Democratic minority that has become more liberal. At the same time, a more closely divided Senate could make it harder to assemble the 60 votes needed to pass most bills." ...

Do the Math. Fareed Zakaria in Time: I would suggest three litmus tests to gauge whether the Republicans are serious about deficits: 1) Are they prepared to stop with the tax cuts? ... 2) Are they prepared to cut middle-class entitlements? ... 3) Are they ready to take on the Pentagon? ... These are not political statements. They are mathematical ones.

We've demonized taxes. We've created almost the idea that they're a metaphysical evil.... It's rank demagoguery. We should call it for what it is. If these [Republicans] were all put into a room on penalty of death to come up with how much they could cut, they couldn't come up with $50 billion, when the problem is $1.3 trillion. So to stand before the public and rub raw this antitax sentiment, the Republican Party, as much as it pains me to say this, should be ashamed of themselves. -- David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's first budget director.  Leslie Stahl interviews Stockman (video). Stahl's backstory is interesting, too (video).

Power Points. Jim Rutenberg & Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times: "How [the Republicans came back] is the story of one of the most remarkable Congressional campaigns in more than a half-century, characterized by careful plotting by Republicans, miscalculations by Democrats and a new political dynamic with forces out of both parties control. The unpredictable Tea Party movement, the torrent of corporate money from outside interests and an electorate with deep discontent helped shift the balance of power in Washington." ...

... Kim Geiger in the Los Angeles Times: "In a number of key races around the country, aggressive and meticulously targeted spending by independent conservative groups appears to have helped produce dramatic results for Republicans." ...

... AND Dave Weigel in Slate notes that Haley Barbour & the Republican Governsors Association didn't have a particulary good night: "In 1994, the GOP netted 12 governorships. This year it netted 5, and outside -- arguably -- of Florida, I don't see any upsets."

Hoover's Last Election? Ira Stoll: Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) says President Obama is "'guilty of political malpractice in the first degree,' both for allowing himself to be negotiated into a stimulus that was 'far too small' and too tilted toward unstimulative tax cuts, and also for his 'extended use of Hooverite rhetoric to assure people that the economy is improving when it obviously isn't improving.'"

Diane Sawyer of ABC News interviews Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

While our new majority will serve as your voice in the people's House, we must remember it's the president who sets the agenda for our government. -- Speaker-Apparent John Boehner, in his victory speech

I'd like Boehner to show us where in the Constitution it says that the president sets the agenda for the government. -- Ezra Klein

Alexandra Moe of NBC: "... just 32% of all Tea Party candidates who ran for Congress won and 61.4% lost this election. A few races remain too close to call." CW: the tea party Senate candidates were much more successful than were the House candidates. The secret slush funders threw most of their huge wads of cash into Senate races, especially those races where the tea party backed the candidate. What does this tell you?

If you think what happened in Delaware is ‘a win’ for the Republican Party then we don’t have a snowball’s chance to win the White House. -- Sen. Lindsay Graham

We did not nominate our strongest candidates. -- Former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott

Tea Party Identity Crisis. Amy Gardner & David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "... how [will]  incoming House members and senators who prevailed Tuesday under the tea party banner ... make the transition from outside the Republican Party to inside, from criticizing policy to making it, and from opposing the government to being part of it"?

Let the Bickering Begin. Jonathan Martin & Manu Raju of Politico: "Long-simmering tensions within the Republican Party spilled into public view Wednesday as the pragmatic and conservative wings of the GOP blamed each other in blunt terms for the party’s failure to capture the Senate." South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who was the prime mover behind tea party candidates, was the object of  his colleagues' scorn. "DeMint’s actions have enraged many Republican senators, aides and consultants, many of whom were exchanging cutting emails about him late Tuesday and early Wednesday as it became clear the party would fall short in the Senate."

Ooh! Rancor on the Right even among the Supremes? In hearing the case of Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants:

I think what Justice Scalia wants to know is what James Madison thought about video games. Did he enjoy them? -- Justice Samuel "Not-True" Alito

Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "... Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) appeared to be on the verge of making history as the first successful write-in candidate for Senate in more than 50 years.... A Murkowski victory would be a remarkable turnaround for an incumbent who had been disowned by her party, and signaled the limitations of novice tea party candidacies."

Matt Yglesias: President Obama should "move to the White House." He should quit trying to legislate -- leave that to Harry Reid -- and should start spending his precious time doing what the President & executive brance are supposed to do.

Dana Milbank criticizes President Obama for his failure to show contrition at his press conference yesterday. "His closest admission to a failure of substance was that he failed in his pledge to 'change how business is done in Washington.' He explained: 'We were in such a hurry to get things done that we didn't change how things got done.'" CW: I applaud the President for appearing to stand up for Democratic principles.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Ben Bernanke explains why the Fed will purchase $600 billion additional long-term securities. ...

... Paul Krugman on yesterday's Fed "action": " In short: meh."And here's the New York Times story on the  Fed's move.

Kanye West Always Upsets People. I faced a lot of criticism as President. I didn't like hearing people claim that I lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all time low. -- George W. Bush, on Kanye West's saying, George Bush doesn't care about black people. Via the Hollywood Reporter

"Damn Right." The ever-deliberative & cautious George W. Bush takes his time in deciding whether waterboarding is a legal, ethical & effective means of interrogating suspected enemy combatants. Jeffrey Smith of the Washington Post: "In his book, titled 'Decision Points,' Bush recounts being asked by the CIA whether it could proceed with waterboarding [Khalid Sheik] Mohammed, who Bush said was suspected of knowing about still-pending terrorist plots against the United States. Bush writes that his reply was 'Damn right' and states that he would make the same decision again to save lives, according to a someone close to Bush who has read the book."

Plutocracy

What It Is:

Bill Moyers speaks at Boston University on October 29, 2010, as a part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series. Reprinted in TruthOut. You can read the speech here on the TruthOut site. Moyers begins speaking about 6:45 min. in. BU has now disabled the embed. You can watch it on their site, though:

What We Can Do about It:

Prof. Lawrence Lessig of Harvard University speaks in Louisville, Kentucky:

Moyers' & Lessig's remarks will take you some time to get through. Both are worth your time. Come back to them later if you're too busy now. --  Constant Weader

Update: Cenk Uygur is way less articulate & intellectual than Moyers & Lessig, but his heart is in the right place: