I’ve long argued that the big problem with the deficit hawks is not so much their desire to reduce the size of government, although that itself is short sighted. The big problem is that these deficit hawks only want to reduce the size of government on the backs of the poor. Thus we get calls for cutting entitlement programs, unemployment insurance, and food stamps. We don’t get calls for getting rid of “too big to fail” insurance or the Social Security tax cap or the low capital gain tax rate. Actually, we get just the opposite. Remember the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan? The first thing it did was lower taxes!

The brilliant Mark Thoma discusses this problem from a different perspective over at The Fiscal Times, The Real Reason for the Fight over the Debt Limit. Basically, he argues that we are all this together. He notes that the rich don’t face the same uncertainties that the rest of us do, and that this fact needs to be acknowledged. But increases in inequality have allowed the rich to wall themselves off from the rest of society and thus have a skewed view of who the supposed takers are.

I would go much further than this. Our system is set up so that the rich are simply not allowed to fail. Ever. Look at Jack Abramoff. He was convicted of the worst kinds of crimes against his clients and democracy generally. So he went to prison. But afterwards, he was not vanquished from polite society and prevented from having a decent job. Instead, he was given a multimillion dollar book contract and is widely heralded as a truth teller. That is what happens to The Chosen in this country. They take care of their own.

I don’t think that Thoma’s argument really works, however. You are never going to convince the rich that they really should support SNAP by claiming that we are all one big happy family. More compelling is my argument in The Revolution Will Be Televised: if the rich don’t allow the rest of society a reasonable lifestyle, there will be blood. And the first people on the gallows will be the rich. That is a kind of social insurance that the rich ought to be very interested in. (Of course, they aren’t; the rich are as short sighted as anyone.)

In Rage of the Privileged, Paul Krugman says that it is worse than Thoma indicates. He notes that the rich are all for the government when it is helping the rich. He is right, of course, but it is just more proof that the rich don’t care about anyone but themselves. If we had an actual democracy, we could do something about this. But we clearly don’t. So much advantage for the rich is locked in. For example, the rich don’t want to see the military budget cut because of all the great defense contracts. But it has been easy to convince the people that we must have a huge military to protect us, even though it is really all about protecting the profits of the rich.

What’s more, we now have a political system that is paid for by the rich. Only someone who can generate a billion dollars in campaign contributions is a viable candidate for president. Is it any wonder that the most liberal candidates we generate are people like Obama who are above all protectors of the rich? These people will never willingly give up power. And as long as they are in power, they will continue to do everything they can to harm the poor. And their success matters too little on who is in power in Washington.

Jonathan Chait wonders if any positive information about Obamacare can get through the conservative media blackout, Someone Tell Ted Cruz the Obamacare War Is Over. He isn’t alone; a lot of people wonder how it can be that in conservativeworld, all the news is bad. But this is just more of liberal commentators thinking that the conservative movement is just like any other political movement. It is best to think of modern conservatism as cult.

Regardless of what kind of healthcare reform had been implemented, liberals would have been hopefully optimistic that it would work. Most liberals are not that keen on Obamacare, but even if they had gotten the single payer system that they wanted, they would have watched closely to see how it was doing. They would have been pretty sure that it was going to work well, but they would have been ultimately constrained by the facts on the ground.

Conservatives are quite different. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that conservative opinion leaders are quite different. They don’t think that conservative policies are the best; they know. So when it comes to Obamacare, they are sure it is going to be bad. They don’t need the random bit of positive data to confuse the issue. Anyway, what makes a policy the best is not what works the best as most people would define it. The attack on Obamacare is not even about the ridiculous notion that it will deprive people of “freedom” by making them change their healthcare. (It doesn’t do that, anyway, not that it matters.) They aren’t even against it because of their generalized hatred of poor people who the program helps. They are against the program because it raises taxes a small amount on the wealthy.

So Chait may think that lower individual premiums is a good thing. He may think that reduced long-term Medicare spending projections is great. He may think that tens of millions of people getting health insurance is wonderful. And I agree with him! We ought to be dancing in the street. But none of these things cut the taxes of the rich, who it turns out already have really good healthcare. So there really is no good news on the Obamacare front.

What conservatives write in the National Review and the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal are not what the conservative elite actually think. Those articles are for the conservatives in the pews. They are the official conservative line for dissemination to the little conservatives who are by and large not well served by the movement they support. There is a pathway for this misinformation: Wall Street Journal opinion page to Rush Limbaugh to the dittoheads. As awful as those dittoheads are, they aren’t going to be so easily led if Rush was telling them, “We need to let the poor die so the rich can be free to not pay a penny more in taxes.” And part of the problem is that we liberals don’t call out the conservative movement for what it is. We need to stop pretending they actually function as a normal political movement. It is all about the people believing the Truth brought to them by the elites. It is all faith-based down low, but at the top, the elites have very sensible reasons for their beliefs.

Digby asked a good question, Who Are the Austerians Anyway? She never really answers the question, but does point out one very prominent austerian: President Obama. She takes us back to February 2009—Just one month after taking office—Obama was already talking about cutting entitlement programs. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who reads this site. Obama is now and has always been a New Democrat and that means on economic issues, he is conservative.

In 2008 the economy was exploding. People were very upset. The crisis was the result of decades of uninterrupted conservative economic policy. The people wanted a change! So who did they vote into office? A moderate who was committed to lead like Bill Clinton—the prototypical New Democrat who enacted much of the legislation that directly caused the financial crisis. He allowed Glass–Steagall to be repealed and re-nominated Alan Greenspan, the man most responsible for the housing bubble that caused the crisis. I don’t think the people voting for “hope and change” were hoping for a change back to the president before Bush. But that’s all they got.

Right now, Japan has Shinzo Abe as prime minister. He appears to be a loose cannon. There is much about him that I don’t like. But because he doesn’t care about how things are normally done, he is doing for the Japanese economy what others were too conventional to do. Of course, that conventional thinking was not textbook economics. In fact, it was just the opposite. It was conventional in the sense that everyone all over the world was doing it, even though it was doing no good and causing great harm. If half the leaders of the world decided to kill themselves by jumping off a cliff, apparently the other half would do the same thing. Abe is one of those rare leaders who doesn’t go along and as a result, Japan is finally getting some good fiscal and monetary policy.

Digby is correct that Obama didn’t pivot to the budget deficit (in the middle of the worst economic downturn in generations) because the Republicans won big in 2010. He didn’t pivot at all. He was always the defender of the power elite, so the deficit was always primary in his mind. Liberals are so inclined to cut Obama slack and act as if the only reason he ever does anything bad is because he is forced to. But that’s just not true. Obama is simply not that much of a liberal when it comes to economic issues. He certainly does want to do things to help the economy, but he also wants to cut spending. And his “threading the needle” approach to policy is often particularly bad. For example, he wants to cut entitlements in exchange for raising taxes. That’s doubly bad for the economy.

What we needed in 2008 is the same thing that we will need in 2016: an actual economic liberal in the White House. But because we will have had 8 years of a Caspar Milquetoast presidency, we may end up with some conservative whackjob. The positive aspect of that is that he won’t be much more conservative on economic issues than Obama.

A vibrant political culture needs community groups, libraries, public schools, neighborhood organizations, cooperatives, public meeting places, voluntary associations, and trade unions to provde ways for citizens to meet, communicate, and interact with their fellow citizens. Neoliberal democracy, with its notion of the market uber alles, takes dead aim at this sector. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.

In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.

—Robert W. McChesney
Introduction to Profit Over People

On this day in 1683, the great Baroque composer Jean-Philippe Rameau was born. He was also a music theorist. This did not get in the way of the art of his work. But it did allow him to push the bounds of the music of the time. A good example of this is the second Trio des Parques in Hippolyte et Aricie:

The great writer William Faulkner was born in 1897. He was an amazing and complex writer. And he really deserved to win this day. But here’s the thing: I don’t enjoy his fiction. I admire it. I wish that I had a small fraction of his talent. But his vision of the world is so unrelentingly negative. I don’t think he was a very happy person. Regardless, it is easy to get lost in his books, and we are all the better for his work.

Other birthdays: film director Robert Bresson (1901); the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich (1906); alleged spy Ethel Rosenberg (1915); Christopher Reeve (1952); Married couple Michael Douglas (69) and Catherine Zeta-Jones (44) share a birthday; Mark Hamill (62); and Will Smith (45).

The day, however, belongs to the poet and humorist Shel Silverstein who was born on this day in 1930. He is generally considered a children’s writer, but he didn’t see himself that way and neither do I. To me, he is a guy who wrote stuff for people like me. Silverstein was extremely clever with an unconstrained but very positive id. But his work was also broad. He wrote the hyperactive silliness of Where the Sidewalk Ends and the sweetly profound The Giving Tree and social satire in songs like “The Cover of the Rolling Stone” and “A Boy Named Sue.” Here is the short film The Giving Tree read by Silverstein:

Happy birthday Shel Silverstein!

I have a chicken. Her name is Fred—after Super Chicken’s lion sidekick. But maybe it is more correct to say that Fred has me. It all started two weeks ago. I was working in my room with the window open, because it faces south and so is very hot even on relatively cool days. And I thought I heard a goose outside. I thought maybe a flock of geese had landed to eat, as they do from time to time. But there were no geese so I passed it off to my generally tenuous relationship with the outside world. About 15 minutes later, however, I heard the same sound in addition to some people talking.

I went outside and my neighbors told me that there was a chicken in my yard. The speculation was that the chicken must belong to one of the houses across the highway from us. I went over there and found the main place that had chickens. I managed to get their caretaker to come over, but she claimed that it was not their chicken. This may or may not be true. She just may not have wanted to bother. Regardless, the chicken got into a regular habit of sleeping on the muffler of the car and then hanging out in our backyard during the day. This concerned me. I was afraid we might take off with the chicken one morning. But soon, Fred began spending all of her time in the backyard.

As you can see, Fred is rather skinny. This also concerned me, so I located a feed store and made my way to it. The place had a greeter, so I asked, “A chicken has adopted me, so I’m looking for a small amount of food for her.” He looked consternated, which I took to mean that they didn’t sell small amounts of food. I couldn’t have been more wrong. He said, “We don’t actually give any feed away.” I was simultaneously embarrassed and outraged. I replied, “I’m going to buy it, of course!” So he quickly provided me with the aisle and I was off. He was nowhere to be found when I came out. I hope I embarrassed him.

I asked the guy at the checkout stand how much to feed a chicken. He said about a quarter pound per day. I got a ten pound bag for $5, so that’s 40 days of chicken food. That makes chickens a far more economical pet than cats or dogs. Since then, I’ve been feeding Fred and she has been eating. What’s more, she freaks out quite a bit less than she used to. But we still have a long way to go.

We’ll have to see how things proceed. It may be that once Fred gets back to a normal weight, she will abandon me. But overall, she seems pretty happy. Some people have expressed concerns that Fred might be attacked by another animal. That’s possible, of course. But I don’t think there is a great concern. A cat went after her one of the first days Fred was here. Fred tore off after that cat who hasn’t been back. I think that Fred will be fine.

Afterword

That should be “Fred Henhouse.”

On this day in 1936, the great puppeteer Jim Henson was born. For someone like me, there is nothing better than The Muppet Show. I love puppets, but it is more than that. It is the zeitgeist of the whole show. The fact that it is a collection of marginally talented characters who decide to “put on a show” that makes it especially compelling. It also has a very high silliness to funny ratio.

Of course, Henson did a lot more than that. And his legacy will long out live him. I continue to see non-Muppet related work being done by the Jim Henson Company. It is the kind of stuff that goes back to the great film Labyrinth. Here is a collection of clips of the Swedish Chef, which was apparently the Henson character that all the staff most loved:

The film director Bert I. Gordon is 91 today. He is best known for his B-movie classic The Amazing Colossal Man, which is really quite good. But I know what you are thinking, “Didn’t you slam one of his films just last year?” Yes, in Earth vs. Burt I. Gordon! I did review Attack of the Puppet People. But even though I was critical, I concluded, “As drama goes, Attack of the Puppet People is a disaster, and yet it somehow works.” And that is a lot more than I can say for most big budget action films that are produced today. Regardless, Gordon has greatly improved the world with his work. I assume that his 91st birthday finds him well, because he is currently in post production for a new film, Secrets of a Psychopath. Totally fucking awesome!

Other birthdays: jurist John Marshall (1755); comedian Phil Hartman (1948).

The day, however, belongs to one of the very greatest American writers F. Scott Fitzgerald who was born on this day in 1896. He wrote beautiful prose at a time when most writers were more inclined to play with language. Probably the best of these writers was Gertrude Stein, but even on the micro-scale, I don’t think she compares. What’s more, Fitzgerald crafted great characters existing in complex worlds. What most appeals to me is the thematic thread that I think links all of his work together: the power of love simultaneously for good and ill. We see this most explicitly in Tender Is the Night, where love is effectively transferred from one declining character to another ascending character.

Of course, I need to be careful in discussing Fitzgerald’s work. A couple of years ago, I wrote about The Love of the Last Tycoon and how the line “There are no second acts in American lives” didn’t mean what people thought. In addition, I noted that the book was written in the first person and just because a character thinks something, doesn’t mean the writer thinks that. Some idiot took exception, “I truly love it here online when people with pretty thin resumes take on the dead masters. Amazing to read.” What I find amazing is that people take the time to comment on articles they clearly haven’t read. I wasn’t criticizing Fitzgerald; I was criticizing those who ignorantly quote him. So I always worry that there are idiots waiting around to bash me for things that exist only in their own very limited minds. Perhaps this time people will defend the “dead master” for the slight of only considering Fitzgerald “one of the very greatest American writers” rather than the greatest writer in any language ever. Whatever.

Happy birthday F. Scott Fitzgerald!

Should we be worried about the Democrats’ chances in the 2014 elections? Charlie Cook thinks we should. He has been looking at the polling from NBC News/Wall Street Journal. And he is right that it isn’t a slam dunk for the Democrats regardless. But I think he’s overstating the problems.

Most of his article presents relatively good news to the Democrats. In generic polling, Democrats have a 45-42 advantage over Republicans. But these generic polls tend to overstate the Democratic advantage by 2 percentage points. Thus, right now, it looks like the Democrats have a 1 percentage point advantage in 2014. This is not great. In 2012, the advantage was 47-42. According to Cook’s 2-point rule, that gave the Democrats a 3 percentage point advantage, which is about right (the Democrats did better than that in the White House and Senate, but worse in the House). In 2010, the disadvantage was 43-45, or a 4 percentage point advantage for the Republicans. So the Democrats are looking a lot better for 2014 than they looked for 2010.

In addition to this, remember that the 2010 election was a great defeat for the Democrats in part because they held so many marginal seats. The Republicans have won those seats back. So the idea that the Democrats could lose another 63 seats is ridiculous. But as I wrote in The Next Three Election Cycles, the 2014 election is likely to be a wash for both parties. This is assuming that the Republicans don’t do anything really stupid. But barring that, I assume that Republicans will make minor gains in the House and Senate. That might mean they take control of the Senate. But we aren’t likely to see huge changes.

Cook’s concern about the Democrats comes from the polling of independent voters. There has been a decided shift among this group of voters toward the Republicans. Right now, they are divided 25-43. This is dramatically different from 2012 when it was 35-34 and even worse than 2010 when it was 26-40. I don’t really trust the category of “independent voter.” In general, it is just a bunch of people who are Republicans or Democrats who refuse to admit it. And the fact that there is this huge swing from off to on to off year elections makes me think that this is mostly just a question of extremely conservative “independents” who always vote and moderate “independents” who only vote for the president.

There’s another issue: since 2005, there has been a steady increase in “independent” voters and decrease in Republican voters. In 2005, there were 33% of voters claiming to be independent and 33% claiming to be Republican. In 2012, 40% claimed to be independent and 27% claimed to be Republican. So part of the change is just the fact that more and more Republicans are claiming to be independents. What’s more, I think most of these people have changed because they think the Republican Party is too liberal. So these are the most conservative (Tea Party, most likely) Republicans.

Charlie Cook is not really partisan and so I’m sure he is just presenting the data as he sees it. But like most such people, I suspect he has a bias toward the supposed center of the political spectrum. And that is what all of the concern is about the “independent” voters. Of course, as I’ve noted: these supposed independent voters aren’t all that independent and regardless aren’t centrists. Should the Democratic Party start pandering to this group? After all, it did very well with this group less than a year ago. Has anything happened in that time that would make a reasonable person turn against Obama and the the Democratic Party? I don’t think so. This isn’t a group that the Democrats are going to convince regardless. And the “independent” vote is already factored into the total vote. The last thing the Democrats need to do is move to the right yet again.

Jonathan Bernstein wrote a really great article over at The American Prospect, The Day After Shutdown. Although he doesn’t think there will be a shutdown, he has put together an overview of how a shutdown would get resolved. Based upon it, I can see why he doesn’t think a shutdown will happen. The whole thing seems pretty straight forward. So you have to wonder why the Republicans would allow it. There is one very good reason, however: there is too much power in the House Republican caucus vested in inexperienced legislators who don’t know what they are doing. In that case, this will be a learning opportunity.

The beginning of it is obvious. Parts of the government will shutdown and this will anger people who will complain to our representatives in Washington. This will cause Congress to at least try to put together some limited fixes—you know, things like the air traffic controller fix to the Sequester (can’t allow the rich to suffer). And the partisan press will blame the other side.

The whole thing gets interesting when the mainstream press gets involved. Bernstein argues that they will come down on the side of the Democrats. This isn’t because the mainstream press is liberal. (In part, that’s because they aren’t.) As he correctly notes, the main way that the press is biased is toward the status quo. Thus, they will not see a government shutdown as a good thing—especially when it is done for an unprecedented reason: to defund one bit of legislation that they don’t have the votes to repeal in the normal democratic way.

He adds a very important footnote:

As the media goes, so goes the public and this will lead the parties to the bargaining table. What the final deals is, is uncertain. It will depend upon which side is the more desperate, but that will most likely be the Republicans. As Bernstein says, “[The deal] probably won’t even be as good for Republicans as whatever their best deal would have been before a shutdown, and it might even be better than the status quo for Democrats.”

Assuming that Obamacare is not defunded, the Democrats will win this fight. The Republicans set it up that way. If they had said they wanted a trillion dollars cut from the budget and ended up with a hundred billion, they could claim victory. But defunding Obamacare is all or nothing. They’ve argued that Obamacare is such a big threat to freedom in America that it must be stopped. That doesn’t allow for any compromise. In the end, I think they will look both weak and incompetent. That’s very bad for them.

Bernstein explains where that leaves the Republican Party: nowhere.

That’s correct. Just like Christians whose leaders promise the Second Coming of Jesus that never comes, the Republicans will always have an explanation for why they were always right. The only way they go away is through electoral defeat. The crazies cannot be reformed; they must be defeated. And it seems the crazies are determined to defeat themselves.