DR Tucker over at Political Animal wrote an interesting article, Forward Thinking. It’s about MSNBC’s supposed problem with breaking through in the ratings game. He makes the provocative suggestion that the network give Naomi Klein a show. But this, I think, just highlights the problem with having a liberal network. And it highlights the problem with MSNBC generally.

MSNBC is not going to give a show to someone who is an outspoken proponent of economic liberalism. It’s too dangerous to the rich people who own the network and its too unappealing to the people who advertise on the network. Remember: television is not about ratings; it is about advertising. While it is true that people want to advertise to the 25-54 demographic, they don’t want to do it when the show so aggressively attacks the major advertisers.

I am surprised that most people don’t remember what happens in the movie Network. Everyone remembers Howard Beale getting “mad as hell.” And maybe they remember that the ratings go way up for the show he’s on. But the head of the network, Arthur Jensen, doesn’t like it. So he has a little talk with Beale, who thinks he is speaking to God. (He might as well be!) So Beale abandons his populism for a message about how we are all meaningless cogs in the machinery of multinational capitalism. Ratings plummet so the producers of the show have Beale assassinated.

That’s the story of Network. And anyone who thinks that the people who own MSNBC are any different than those who own Fox News are deluded. None of them care about same sex marriage or abortion or even foreign wars. But they all care very much about having a political system that is rigged against the majority and for all the rich folks like themselves.

But there are other things. MSNBC (sort of like the modern Democratic Party) has shown it to be a amazingly disloyal outfit. Martin Bashir got fired over a minor thing. Ed Schultz was taken from prime time to the weekends and finally early evenings. And then, of course, there was Keith Olbermann, who was badly treated long before he finally got canned. All of these men are very passionate and that is something that MSNBC apparently doesn’t accept. (Well, it accepts it for Al Sharpton because he’s a legend and, what the hell, he’s not in prime time either.) It’s much better to have Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow, who are both really good, but not especially passionate.

It’s a well worn stereotype that liberals aren’t passionate. And to prove this, people point to Mark Shields. It’s true that the liberals that the mainstream media put on television tend not to be passionate. But that’s just because they’ve decided that passionate liberals aren’t suitable for television. Why? Because liberals on television aren’t passionate! Cenk Uygur has talked about this. MSNBC originally hired him because of his fiery liberal rhetoric. But once he was there, they complained about his fiery liberal rhetoric.

In addition to this, I just don’t see a liberal network ever being as successful as a conservative network. It isn’t because liberals aren’t as into politics as conservatives. Rather, the reason that people tune into conservative media is for the dopamine rush they get from the constant diet of fear and outrage. Liberals just don’t have the same resources on the fear issue. When it comes to outrage, there is a lot; but it is an outrage over systemic issues. You don’t feed it with constant small stories.

There is one thing that would greatly help MSNBC ratings: another Republican White House. That will greatly increase viewership as liberals reach out for any shelter in the storm for another four or eight years of everyone’s favorite game show, “Let’s Give More Money to the Rich and Claim it is for Freedom!” And I’m sure the owners of MSNBC would love that: more advertising revue and lower estate taxes. Liberalism rocks!

Joni Ernst is the woman likely to become the next US Senator from Iowa because she castrated hogs as a child. This is supposedly some kind of clever implication that she will go to Washington and “cut pork.” No one seems to be willing to say the obvious: it’s a terrible analogy. It makes no sense. And personally, I think it is a lie. I had a very good friend in grammar school who lived on a farm and I remember being there when they were castrating sheep. The children were not involved. But who knows? Bottom line: it’s only a metaphor and a very bad one at that. The main thing is that Joni Ernst is a conservative freak.

Radio Iowa uncovered a recording of the candidate, Ernst Carries Concealed Weapon “90 Percent of the Time.” Because, you know, freedom. But Jonathan Chait brought my attention to one little section of the wide ranging discussion that also included ending federal involvement in education and even more cuts to food stamps, even while she continues to support price floors on foods that make food more expensive. Again, you know, freedom.

The point of all this freedom is that the private sector can do everything better:

Actually, no. Conservatives have this very strange idea that the government got into the poverty elimination business because it hates, you know, freedom. That’s not actually true. The government got into the anti-poverty business because the private sector was not dealing with it. The public sector never deals with this nor should it. Did the private sector get rid of child labor? No. Will it get rid of poverty? No. It isn’t what the private sector does and people like Joni Ernst are delusional.

Ernst claimed that private organizations “used to have wonderful food pantries.” I don’t actually know what she means. Earlier this week, I was doing some work at a church that has a food pantry. It isn’t wonderful in the sense of overflowing with food. This isn’t because a great deal of food doesn’t come through it. An enormous amount of food is given to the poor by the church. This is despite the food stamp program that Ernst wants to cut even more.

But what would Ernst know about the these “good ol’ days” when the government didn’t help poor people so that churches and private organizations could have wonderful food pantries? Joni Ernst was born years after the War on Poverty started. If she saw “wonderful pantries” it was probably because they weren’t needed as much as they are now because of government anti-poverty programs that conservatives have repeated cut funding to over the past three-plus decades.

I remember Bill Maher saying that it was okay to vote for a Republican because sometimes what you need is an angry old white guy to manage your money. I more or less agree with this although the last forty years have shown that Republicans are useless in this regard too. But what I can’t tolerate are people like Ernst who claim that they really care about the poor and that’s why they want to stop the government from doing anything for them. Joni Ernst has lived a sheltered life where her ideas about the deserving and undeserving poor come from television. It’s outrageous that she’s even competitive in a statewide race anywhere. That she is clearly leading in Iowa almost makes me give up all hope for democracy and the future of this country.

This image is via BuzzFeed, Here Are The Most Conservative And Liberal Names In America. These are first names. It comes from data about political donors. Anyone who has made more than two campaign contributions since 1980 is on the list. Then names that showed up less than a thousand times were eliminated. So that’s the data.

What is interesting here is that all the most conservative names belong to men and all the most liberal names belong to women. That isn’t shocking. It is well established that women are more liberal than men. But I just wasn’t expecting it to be so overwhelming. CrowdPac, the group that provided the data, has a tool where you can check various names. It’s fun.

But here’s the thing. I tried every name I could think of. I couldn’t find a single female name that wasn’t liberal nor a single male name that wasn’t conservative. I’ve said it before, but it is worth repeating: women really are the better sex.

You may remember last year, there was quite a bit of coverage of Jonathan Haidt and his theory of political differences, Moral Foundations Theory. What he did was look at five moral foundations that correlated strongly with liberals and conservatives in different ways. They are: harm, fairness, ingroup, authority, and purity. Liberals score very high on harm and fairness. Conservatives score high on everything. But conservatives score substantially lower than liberals on harm and fairness, substantially higher on ingroup and authority, overwhelmingly higher on purity.

I just came upon an article I’m pretty sure I read last year, The Science of Tea Party Wrath. I’m not really interested in getting into that subject today. I think we all understand that liberals and conservatives are fundamentally different kinds of people. I think it mostly comes down to empathy. That’s not to say that conservatives can’t care about the weak and unfortunate, but when they do so, I think they do so in a more paternal way. Of course, mostly they don’t care about the weak and unfortunate — at least that’s true of the extremist Tea Party Republicans.

What struck me in the article was the following graph because it included libertarians as well as liberals and conservatives:

Forget about the last two bars: “economic liberty” and “lifestyle liberty.” The whole “liberty” idea was just a “good candidate” for a moral foundation. Personally, I think it is a term that is too vague and ideologically charged.

The most obvious thing to notice here is that libertarians do score about as you would expect. They agree with liberals about ingroup, authority, and purity; they agree with conservatives about harm and fairness. But there is something that I think is more interesting: the general pattern for libertarians is the same as for liberals. Conservatives have more or less the same scores on all of the foundations. But libertarians have the same pattern as liberals: high for harm and fairness; medium for ingroup and authority; and low for purity. That’s very odd!

Based upon this, you would think that libertarians would tend more toward the Democratic Party than the the Republican Party. Indeed, I have argued this. Other than the issue of taxes, the Democratic Party is far more libertarian than the Republican Party. Yet libertarians tend toward the authoritarian party. I don’t just say this because Rand and Ron Paul are Republicans. They aren’t what drives this; they are a symptom of it.

My long history with the libertarian movement — and one of the main reasons I left it — was that it was easily made up of 90% disaffected Republicans. In fact, the Libertarian Party was founded by Republicans who were unhappy with Nixon. But they weren’t unhappy with Nixon because of Watergate. They were like everyone on the far right of the Republican Party: they just didn’t like Nixon, although they all had their different reasons for it. But let’s face it: on domestic issues, he was pretty liberal.

What I find notable in the graph is that libertarians are even less concerned about “harm” than conservatives are. Based upon what I know about libertarians, I can’t really explain this other than to note that they tend to not care about practical outcomes. But I would be concerned if I were a libertarian. The foundation is defined thusly, “This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.” It is the foundation that is most associated with empathy.

I think this may have something to do with the great impact of Ayn Rand on libertarians. Her big message, above all others, was the virtue of selfishness. She argued not that altruism was bad but that it didn’t even exist. And so I think that libertarians tend to end up with a philosophy that says, “It is virtuous to only look out for myself.” And that goes along with their lower score on fairness.

But overall, I think this graph should make libertarians take a serious look at themselves. In a general sense, they believe the same way that liberals believe. But they vote the way that conservatives vote. You would either have to conclude that libertarians don’t understand what their actual interests are or that they don’t understand what the parties actually stand for. This goes along with my often noted observation that immigrants often become Republicans because of the rhetoric of the party, rather than its actual policies. So are libertarians just clueless? If not, you have to conclude that libertarians value lowering taxes on the rich more than anything else. And given that overall taxes in the United States are fairly flat already, the focus of the Republican Party’s tax “reform” ideas is to make the system less fair. If they ever got what they actually wanted — a flat income tax — overall taxes in America would be regressive. Is that what libertarians want?

My guess is that libertarians actually are completely clueless. That would also explain why they are libertarians at all.

It has been widely speculated that Shepard Smith is gay. It was rumored that in his recent contract negotiations with Fox News, he tried to get approval to “come out.” Fox News said no — undoubtedly thinking that their audience of conservative senior citizens would freak out about this. But I don’t exactly give Smith a pass on this. He has an estimated net worth of $20 million. He could easily get another job on a different network, although probably not making his current $10 million per year.

Of course, Smith’s problems at Fox News are not only that he’s probably gay. There are also rumors that he is secretly something even worse: liberal. Over the years, he has made comments that show a kind of open-mindedness that isn’t typical of conservatives — certainly not of the type that one finds on Fox News. Regardless, it is clear that Shepard Smith is not of the fire-breathing variety of conservatives. While supposedly straight news anchor Bret Baier has created a brand for himself as a straight-talking reporter, his bias is quite clear. I have no doubt that he could dust himself off and take over Sean Hannity’s show. That just isn’t the case with Smith.

Well, Shepard Smith is at it again! Yesterday on Shepard Smith Reporting, he took on the Ebola hysteria being promoted by the media. He said, “We do not have an outbreak of Ebola in the United States.” Of course, he didn’t state the obvious: that it is primarily right-wing media that is pushing all this hysteria. Check out Amanda Marcotte’s Salon article, Why Ebola Triggers Massive Right-Wing Hysteria. But he did call the coverage “irresponsible,” and I don’t think anyone can really question who he has in mind.

It is an amazing bit of television and and it speaks well of Shepard Smith for doing it. And it might actually have an effect on coverage. Since he was very careful not to call anyone out specifically, it may cause people to feel secretly ashamed and to at least ease up on the rhetoric. Or it may cause some people to double down. Smith did seem to be attacking Sean Hannity implicitly. Last week, on his radio program, Hannity said he wasn’t covering the CDC’s press conference on Ebola because, “I don’t trust them.” Yesterday, Smith said, “Suggestions have been made publicly that leaders and medical professionals may be lying to us. Those suggestions are completely without basis in fact.”

Smith also recommended getting a flu shot. He said, “Best advice for you and your family at this moment: get a flu shot. Unlike Ebola, flu is easily transmitted. Flu, along with resulting pneumonia, killed 52,000 Americans last year.” This is interesting because both Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh has argued that people shouldn’t get flu shots and that they are a kind of government conspiracy. My father’s girlfriend died believing that flu shots were a conspiracy and my father still is highly skeptical of them.

In his five minute talk, Shepard Smith slayed a number of conservative dragons. And I wonder if he isn’t putting his job in jeopardy. He continues, in his quiet way, to push against so much of what Fox News stands for. But he’s probably safe. For one thing, I suspect the executives at Fox News may realize that they’ve gone too far on Ebola and that it isn’t even good from a political or ratings standpoint. It is also true that being reasonable is a big part of Smith’s brand. Just check out this video, Seven Times Shep Smith Was Fox News‘ Voice Of Reason:

No one is perfect, of course; but you gotta love this guy!

When I saw the headline, I knew we were in trouble, The Secret Casualties of Iraq’s Abandoned Chemical Weapons. Many conservatives have grabbed onto this headline and said, “See: Bush was right; there were weapons of mass destruction!” That’s not what the story is about. In fact, it is kind of the opposite. And if you think about it for a couple of seconds you will realize this. At least, you will unless your brain is so caught in a partisan haze that thinking is impossible.

As C J Chivers wrote in the article, “From 2004 to 2011, American and American-trained Iraqi troops repeatedly encountered, and on at least six occasions were wounded by, chemical weapons remaining from years earlier in Saddam Hussein’s rule.” If that proved that Bush the Younger’s Excellent Mesopotamian Adventure was right, why did his administration hide this information? Because it didn’t prove that. Finding these old stores of chemical weapons was an embarrassment.

You may remember that Saddam Hussein used to be one of our guys. He was fighting Iran and we hate Iran because our foreign policy is run like a high school cheerleading clique. And what did we do for our “mother from another brother for a day”? We provided him with chemical weapons. Chivers expained, “In five of six incidents in which troops were wounded by chemical agents, the munitions appeared to have been designed in the United States, manufactured in Europe and filled in chemical agent production lines built in Iraq by Western companies.”

Let’s remember back to 2002 and all the rhetoric used to sell the war. Remember: the idea for the war was not popular before the six-month advertising campaign for it. Max Fisher over at Vox provided a couple of good quotes from the time:

Of course, even at the time, it was clear that the WMD claim was a smokescreen. For one thing, the definition of WMDs is vague and broad. I was shocked when Hussein didn’t have some kind of program that the administration could use to claim vindication. But I guess when you go around talking about nuclear weapons within six months, you need something more than big cannons. Even still, I never saw any person in the administration talk about this stuff without thinking they were lying.

I especially remember people using a rhetorical tap dance about how those who didn’t know were talking while those who did know weren’t. The implication is, “I’m not giving you any information and that’s why you know you can trust me.” It was madness and yet it was accepted. There was also Donald Rumsfeld’s “known knowns” comment. But it included a very telling bit, “Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn’t exist.” Technically true. This is the point of Russell’s teapot. But no one seriously thinks we should start looking for a teapot orbiting the sun just because we don’t have evidence of it.

The WMD lie was a big part of selling the Iraq War. But the arguement made by the administrtation was never, “Saddam Hussein has WMDs we sold him and they are stockpiled someplace he probably doesn’t even know about.” It was, “Iraq has an active WMD program.” In fact, it was even more than this with talk of nuclear arms and the intent to strike the United States. The new reporting in The New York Times is more evidence that this was not the case.

I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up on the Senate election models but they’ve all turned sharply against the Democrats. Interestingly, FiveThirtyEight currently gives the Democrats the highest percentage chance of holding onto the Senate: 40%. Sam Wang’s Princeton model gives the Democrats a 30% chance. And, of course, The Monkey Cage gives them 7% — the highest percent chance for the last two weeks! None of this means that the Democrats will lose the Senate. But it doesn’t look good.

This bothers me. As much as I try to approach politics in a reasonably objective way, I do care. Even apart of partisanship, I have long felt that we have a bad system of government. It usually ends up in a divided government and that means that neither side ever gets to show what its policies really mean. Of course, the Republicans have had better luck with this than the Democrats. This is because Democrats aren’t crazy and actually allow Republicans to govern when they are in power. So I am bummed out to know that the Democrats will likely lose the Senate because that will provide the president with even less power to implement his policies than he has now.

What is most definitely not going on is the Democrats doing what the Republicans did in 2012: refusing to except facts and “unskewing” polls. I’ve heard a few people make such claims, but they are typical of moderates desperately trying to argue that the Democrats are just the mirror image of the Republicans. You know the logic: the Republican Party has turned into a revolutionary group, but there were some radical Democrats in the late 1960s. Balance!

To me, there is a fundamental difference in the psychology of Republicans and Democrats. Republicans have an admirable certainty, which often falls into delusion when they are simply wrong about something. (Very often!) Democrats have an annoying defeatism, which often crumbles at the first sign that things are not going well. That makes the Democrats sound bad, but given the state of the American political system, such defeatism is highly rational. And it means we don’t look at the polls and say, “They must be wrong! Everyone I know who works at Apple is a Democrat!”

None of this means that we don’t hope. For one thing, there is the Bannock Street Project, where the Democrats have put $60 million into get-out-the-vote efforts. So the hope is that there will be many more “unlikely to vote” people who eventually end up voting than is usual. Then there is this very interesting effect that Ed Kilgore wrote about, Polling Minority Voters Is Hard. I didn’t know this, but for some reason that pollsters have not been able to figure out, black and Latino voters always poll a whole lot more conservative than they are.

Despite this, I still think (as I have for over a month), that the Democrats are likely to end up with 48 seats in the Senate. One thing about all the different polls and their very different probabilities for the Democrats holding the Senate: they all predict that the most likely outcome is 48 seats for the Democrats. But even if this is the case — or if it is even worse, which it could well be — this should have been a huge year for Republicans in the Senate. The Democrats should have basically no chance of hanging onto the Senate. The fact that they do shows some progress in American politics. Maybe we are headed into a time when being crazy actually hurts the Republican Party.

Oh, I’m just kidding! I’m not a delusional Republican, after all!