Matt Taibbi has been writing some strange things recently. On election day, he wrote that it was going to be bad regardless of who won. Later that night he admitted that the evening was actually pretty good. Like a lot of us progressives, I think it was just nerves. He wanted to reassure himself that even if Romney had won, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

And he was right, as long as the Democrats had managed to keep control of the Senate. Of course, there was a question about this. If the polling on the presidential race was so wrong as to allow Romney to win, couldn’t it have also been wrong about the Senate races? Anyway, a Romney presidency would have been a very bad thing, but I doubt it would have caused the cities of America to burn. (At least at the beginning of his term.)

Today brings another curious article by the great Mr. Taibbi, Hey, Rush Limbaugh: ‘Starting an Abortion Industry’ Won’t Win You Female Voters. He spends most of it making fun of Limbaugh, which is always worth spending some time on. Taibbi is at his best when he’s being a total asshole.

Finally, however, he gets to his real point which is that a big part of the Republican Party’s problem is its attitude:

This is certainly true, but I don’t think it is a primary reason why minority voters tend to vote Democratic. Republicans have a much more fundamental problem going forward besides their hatred of pretty much everyone other than white Christian men. The poor vote overwhelmingly for Democrats—even in most red states. (I plan to be writing more about this in the coming days.) Over the past 30 years, the Republicans have pushed policies that moved wealth from the poor to the rich. Thus, there are more and more poor people and less and less rich. This more than anything that anyone is talking about is the reason that the Democrats will continue to strengthen their electoral position.

We will see if the Democrats manage to screw this up by “moving to the center.”

Best line: “Like my books, every box of Ayn Bran is unnecessarily long.” This comes via Digby:

It bothers me that supposed liberals don’t see how they assure long term defeat by accepting the conservative framing of issues. The Republicans, by moving very far to the right, still get conservative policies even when Democrats win. The ACA—Obama’s signature healthcare reform—is far more conservative than what we would have gotten from Richard Nixon. Most recently, I’ve noticed this kind of conservative framing on MSNBC.

The best example of this comes from Rachel Maddow. Understand: I really like Maddow. She holds good progressive positions and her circuitous story structures are delightful. But she makes a major mistake when reporting on reproductive rights: she sets the fight over abortion exceptions rather than the rights themselves. This isn’t to say that she doesn’t believe that women ought to have the right to control over their own bodies; I know that she does. But she spends too much time (rightly) ridiculing those who want to force rape victims to carry the resulting pregnancies. And this says to the world: this is the battle line. But it isn’t. And Rachel Maddow knows this.

Another excellent example comes from Lawrence O’Donnell. On his 25 October 2012 show, he did a segment: “CEOs to Congress: OMG, fix the deficit!”[1] In it, he calls for tax increases and spending cuts, as though the spending cuts are a given and ain’t it great that financial types are finally calling for a very slightly less regressive approach to the problem.

I understand that the argument can be made for spending cuts. The problem with O’Donnell’s argument is that he is yielding the liberal ground and fighting the battle entirely on the traditional conservative ground. Up through the 1970s, conservatives supported tax increases and spending cuts to deal with deficits. Now liberals are claiming that if Republicans will act as they did a few decades ago, it is a major victory. It isn’t.

There are lots of very good ways to deal with our debt problem. As Dean Baker writes, if we got our healthcare system to cost as much as Germany (for example), we would have government surpluses as far as the eye can see. I recommend eliminating the Social Security tax cap. There are many other ideas. But we are lost as long as we dance in the streets at the thought of getting the smallest sacrifices from Republicans.

On reproductive rights, the problem is even worse. As much as I hate the “no exception” anti-choice people, at least their beliefs are logically consistent. I’ve written about this before, On Hating Women:

So the “rape exception” framing of reproductive rights is even worse than the extremist position. We should make the extremists define their position so that normal people can see what they are really calling for. That is my opinion. What is certain is that if we draw the battle line at exceptions, the best we will ever get are those exceptions. I don’t find that acceptable.

I hope that in the future our liberal friends at MSNBC and elsewhere will think about these issues. Shows such as The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word define liberal opinion as much as they reflect it. This is a war of ideas, and too often liberal commentators seek to win the battle (this election) and lose the war (better policy).

[1] Note the framing in the story headline: the deficit is a problem. But Obama has cut the deficit by a third. Why isn’t the headline “Cut Deficit Faster”? It would appear that not even O’Donnell knows the deficit has been cut, even though he certainly does.