I’m not sure if it is the state of politics or the state of my mind, but I am trying to avoid politics. It is so depressing for reasons that are more implicit in my writing than explicit. But let me see if I can make it more explicit here. At one time, politics was almost exclusively retail. That doesn’t mean it was good. To a large extent, that just meant that so few people qualified as voters that any given politician didn’t have to work all that hard to have actual interactions with the voters.

But I still think that the size of the electorate does matter. This is why I have long been for greatly increasing the size of the House of Representatives. And it turns out, there is a group that believes this same thing, Thirty-Thousand. They note that, “The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended that the total population of Congressional districts never exceed 50 to 60 thousand. Currently, the average population size of the districts is nearly 700,000 and, consequently, the principle of proportionally equitable representation has been abandoned.” I don’t know just how accurate this is, but the idea is basically correct. The fewer people a politician represents, the more accountable he is.

Then we have the Senate, an anti-democratic compromise. When the United States was formed, the largest state (Virginia) had about twenty times the population of the smallest state (Tennessee, which was growing—fast). Now the largest state (California) has about 70 times the population of the smallest state (Wyoming—smaller than a California Congressional District). And that actually understates the problem because we have a whole bunch of little states now and a couple of really big ones. The 9 (18%) most populous states have more people than the 41 least populous states. In 1790, the 5 (30%) most populous states had more people than the 12 least populous. And things were improving because the new states like Tennessee and Kentucky grew rapidly after becoming states. We have the opposite now as people want to move to the two biggest states California and Texas.

So even under the best of circumstances, we do not have much of a representative democracy. But I suspect we could limp along with this. The real problem here is that politics is no longer retail. Let’s look at the 2012 California Proposition 37. It required that GMO products be labeled as such. As you probably know, I don’t really care about this issue. But what matters is that the measure was logical and it was hugely popular. And then Monsanto came in, spent millions of dollars on ads that showed small farmers who claimed that the law would put them out of business and the measure went down to defeat.

This sort of thing could never happen in a small community. For one thing, everyone would know who would be affected and how. But the ads that the GMO industry ran were total distortions. And they worked! And the truth is that when you have huge elections, people with money can distort if not destroy democracy. And I’ve seen little but that my entire life.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that local government is so great. I’m not making some kind of libertarian argument about only having local government. For one thing, if this can happen at the state level, it can happen at any level in the modern world. Even if Proposition 37 had been just for Sonoma County where I live, it wouldn’t have mattered. I don’t know any farmers and I don’t know anyone who knows any farmers. So unless we are going to go back to an agrarian economy that hasn’t existed since the 18th century, we are going to have this problem. (And libertarians are disingenuous when they claim that local control is better; they are just trying to destroy government piecemeal.)

Anyway, this is why each day I dread even reading about politics. That’s not to say that I don’t still do it obsessively. But even if our political trajectory is positive, it is only barely so. And it will take decades to repair the damage done by the last four.

I have been reading Ian Haney Lopez’s excellent Dog Whistle Politics. You should expect a quote and a review of sorts coming in the next few days. But I want to talk about the issue of racism in a more general sense. The truth is that I’m feeling a bit full of myself reading the book, because what he argues in great depth with an amazing amount of documentation is what I’ve been writing about here a lot—especially recently. Racism ain’t what it used to be, and more to the point, racism has never been what it used to be.

More and more, I’m exasperated at people who freak out when someone makes a racial slur. And sometimes these things are just a question of ignorance and don’t necessarily show any racism at all. I especially feel that when someone makes the mistake of talking about the “Jewish lobby” as opposed to the “Israel lobby.” Does this mean the speaker is antisemitic? Not this alone, that’s for sure. Israel is the only explicitly Jewish nation on the earth. It’s an easy mistake to make, but it’s come to mean a lot to people when it usually doesn’t. To me, the word “Zionism” throws up red flags, unless someone is explicitly talking about the history of Israel; when the word is used in a global sense, it is almost always antisemitic.

Regardless, all this focus on the words people use strikes me a way for public discourse to deny modern racism. The truth is that if some racist uses the n-word commonly in public, he’s going to be shunned by most people, and marginalized. That’s great. But when we are talking about politics, this kind of person doesn’t matter. What does matter is that David Duke can put away his Ku Klux Klan robes, not use any of the forbidden words, and fit easily within the Republican Party. And that brings us to Lee Atwater.

Atwater, of course, was the man who used Willie Horton so effectively for Bush the Elder against Michael Dukakis in 1988. And he is the man who explained how racism changes over time. He said (and I know most of you know the quote):

That’s why a couple of times I’ve gone ballistic on David Weigel, most notably in, Dave Weigel’s Racist Apologetics. The point is that politicians like Paul Ryan say things that are the newest form of racism, and Weigel is there to say, “No!” Because that’s what is so great about modern racism: you can always claim that you aren’t actually being racist.

But here’s the key: this has always been the case. When there were literacy tests, they were given with a nod and wink. The people promoting them would say, “This isn’t about race! This is just making sure that only ‘educated’ people vote.” And there were plenty of people who took that argument seriously at the time. But now, it retrospect, everyone sees it for the racist policy that it was. And people make the same kind of case about statements regarding young men in the inner city, but in another 40 years, that too will be seen as clearly racist as if the n-word had been used. And lest you think I’m reaching, what are Voter ID laws if not a new kind of poll tax? And Paul Ryan supports Voter ID laws.

David Weigel is not the problem, however. The problem is everywhere in the media. And this is why the media go crazy when someone uses an explicit racial slur. It doesn’t just indicate that there are still good old fashioned racists out there, it damages the pretense that we are post-racial. But it’s one big fiction. Racism still exists—it will probably always exist. And if Paul Ryan’s budget ever became the law of the land, it would have gotten popular support not because people were saying, “Let’s get those darkies off welfare!” It would have gotten popular support because in the minds of even many people who would be harmed by the budget (and not necessarily consciously), it was those minorities who were disproportionately being harmed. “And a byproduct of them is: blacks get hurt worse than white.”

That’s modern racism and that’s what we should be talking about. But instead, we go out of our way to deny it. And history will not look back fondly on us.

You know my general feelings about MSNBC. It has become too much of a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party. And like the Democratic Party, it lacks backbone and shows no loyalty whatsoever. This was clear when they fired Alec Baldwin, whose show wasn’t all that good anyway, but it was certainly better than Lockup that it replaced and was replaced by. Then there was the totally unacceptable firing of Martin Bashir. The network has the same non-offensive air that many people hate about the Democratic Party. It is also the reason that politicians like Ted Kennedy and Alan Grayson stand out.

Well, it would seem that MSNBC does have a backbone after all. It is just the backbone of top management and what they really care about. This was totally on display with the firing of MSNBC commentator Rula Jebreal. Her firing was the result of attacking the network’s biased coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. What’s shocking is that she said it on Ronan Farrow’s show—who would have known anyone actually watches that show? This immediately caused her booked appearances on a number of upcoming shows to be canceled.

Max Blumenthal at AlterNet has all the details, “Witch Hunt”: Fired MSNBC Contributor Speaks Out on Suppression of Israel-Palestine Debate. Jebreal said that she has been complaining in private to the network for the last two years with no change. What she said on the air was not different than what she has been saying privately. Blumenthal continued:

When Chris Hayes had her on to discuss the firing, he did not do himself proud. He defended the network and said that of course it was going to protect its “stars.” This is in reference to Jebreal specifically mentioning Andrea Mitchell. But as Blumenthal noted, “MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough has publicly attacked fellow MSNBC hosts and slammed the network for its support for the Democratic Party.” Of course, I’m sure that gold ol’ Joe speaks for the top management at MSNBC. They have a quasi-liberal network because there is an audience for it; it doesn’t make them liberal. And clearly Rula Jebreal got too far outside their comfort zone.

My experience with MSNBC’s recent coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict is that at its best, it is even handed. It’s usual coverage is highly biased toward Israel. What’s especially terrible about this coverage, however, is that it is better than the networks, not to mention Fox News. What is considered balanced coverage in America is that this all started with some extremists kidnapping three Israeli kids and killing them. This eventually led to Hamas firing rocks into Israel, who had to respond and ain’t it sad that so many Palestinians are getting killed. So the start of the narrative is arbitrary and picked to favor Israel. And in a horrific irony, the people who killed those kids either did it hoping for financial gain and not as a political act (and thus weren’t extremists but just criminals), or did it as a political act hoping it would lead to what is happening right now.

Regardless of any of this, the firing of Jebreal shows a fundamental weakness in MSNBC. She was a commentator, not a reporter or an anchor. She’s supposed to have opinions. And she’s the only one that was willing to voice this particular opinion. It was a great opportunity to address the issue. But MSNBC, because it is both timid and disloyal, just shut down the conversation. But if you want good coverage on just about anything, but especially the Israel-Palestine conflict, you should be watching Al Jazeera America.

See also: Dehumanizing Iranians and Jews.

As regular readers know, I idealize economist Dean Baker. But there is one issue that I have a frustrating disagreement with him. He argues that technological advances will make the economy better for everyone. This is true if you assume that the increased productivity that is brought about by these advances will be somewhat equally shared. Baker, of course, knows that they won’t. But he’s committed to making the argument that the problem is not the technology but the government policy (such as patents but also taxes and an almost endless list of other things) of taking or keeping money from the poor and giving it to the rich.

He is absolutely right about this. My frustration comes from the fact that he constantly attacks those that note that increases in technology are putting people out of work and making the lives of the poor even worse. The technology will continue to improve. Nothing is going to stop that and we can all be glad for that. But the fact remains that in the existing political-economic system, this is making things worse. And an end to patent protections won’t even begin to deal with the problem.

Another solution he’s fond of is work sharing. This is where, instead of laying people off in a recession, a company just cuts back on everyone’s hours and the government makes up the difference in pay. This seems to work rather well in Germany. In the United States, it has always been suffocated with so much red tape that companies rarely use it even when it is available. Regardless, it too isn’t going to solve our problem.

This has lead me to be in favor of something that Baker never talks about: guaranteed minimum income. And although I think Baker would be in favor of it, I think he also would consider it pie-in-the-sky and Loser Liberalism. But I was very pleased to see that Dylan Matthews over at Vox is taking the idea very seriously, A guaranteed Income for Every American Would Eliminate Poverty—and it Wouldn’t Destroy the Economy.

Unfortunately, the article is mostly just a response to Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry. And his argument is just that a negative income tax wouldn’t work because in the hand full of small tests, people didn’t work as many hours. Matthews responded with two main points. First, it wasn’t even true in all the tests. Second, the “not working as much” was basically just people staying unemployed slightly longer so they could get better jobs. Gobry seems to think that if everyone were guaranteed $5,000 per year, they would all stop working because, wow, with $5,000 per year, you’re riding high! Gobry is known for making big proclamation based upon nothing. And note what he’s actually saying here: giving workers more choices is a bad thing.

Matthews big point is that a guaranteed minimum income would not actually cost the economy that much: between 5% and 15% of GDP. Of course, it would mean that rich people would not be quite as rich and, let’s face it, they don’t need people like Gobry to stop this from ever happening. But the truth is that an end to poverty is available right now, and we don’t need any of Paul Ryan’s new bag of tricks to do it.

Matthews also made the point that people working less is not necessarily a bad thing. Let me take that further: people working less is the point of productivity growth. This idea that paid work is the only thing of value in the economy is madness. What especially makes me angry is that social conservatives should be in favor of this. Providing a guaranteed minimum income would necessarily mean that employers would have to pay people more because they could get a basic income by doing nothing. People making more money would allow, for example, one member of a marriage to stay home, manage the house, and raise the children. That’s a good thing!

Also, much of the greatest art and science ever created was done so by people who (because of the circumstances of their birth) had some kind of basic income. This is why advances in art and science have not traditionally been made by plucky youths born into poverty, even though there have always been a whole lot more of them. Gobry, like all conservatives, only ever wants to look at the down side of such policies. I think fathers and mothers being able to spend more time with there kids would be a great improvement. I think more great artists and scientists and thinkers would be a great improvement. Of course, so do conservatives. They simply aren’t willing to stop their immoral shifting of money from the vast majority of people to those who already have far more money than they can ever productively use.

If it weren’t for all the pain and suffering they cause, I would love the Republican Party. But I wouldn’t love them they way I love Iago in Othello or Richard III in, well, Richard III. Because they are both brilliant in their evilness. Instead, the Republican Party is more like Cosmo Lavish in Terry Pratchett’s Making Money. He is the evil subgenius whose machinations fail completely because he greatly underestimates his adversaries and greatly overestimates himself. This isn’t to say that Lavish didn’t have his victories, but in the end, he lost and went insane to boot. As I discussed earlier this week in Pessimistic Conservatives, conservatism constantly loses as long as civilization doesn’t collapse. And, just in case you haven’t been paying attention, the Republican Party is insane.

Let us consider the filibuster for a moment. For decades people of all political persuasions used this drastic legislative tool quite selectively. And then in the 1970s, it started to get out hand. And from there, basically every time the Republicans were in the minority, its use went up. I’m not saying that the Democrats’ hands are clean on this. But it is pretty much true, Republicans Caused All Filibuster Abuse. And it got so out of hand during the Obama administration that Harry Reid really had no choice but to get rid of it.

Actually, the filibuster didn’t go away; it is just that it only takes a majority to end one now, so it doesn’t take a supermajority to get Obama’s moderate judges confirmed. So what did the Republicans, those evil subgeniuses, do? Well, they simply filibuster every judicial nomination. So instead of the filibuster being a tool for individual senators to use to at least create some news and slow down an appointment, it is simply used as a standard procedure to slow down the entire governing process. The case is slightly less strict with executive branch nominations, but it is still largely true that the Republicans just slow down the nomination process by default.

This leads us to everyone’s favorite Republican subgenius, Ted Cruz. (Okay, maybe it’s a tie with Rand Paul.) As you may have heard, the FAA has banned American airline flights into Israel, because, as you may also have heard, they are at war. Now, the obvious explanation for this is that since Israel is at war, it is best not to fly commercial airplanes there. But if you are an evil subgenius, you know the real reason: it is because Obama is trying to destroy Israel’s tourism industry! So Cruz has decided that he will put a hold on all State Department nominees. Now imagine him laughing maniacally.

The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t matter. Jonathan Bernstein summed it up well in an article today, Ted Cruz Renders Himself Impotent. As he summed it up:

The Republicans long ago decided that they were going to throw out all the norms of representative democracy and use every technicality they could to their advantage. But all that’s done is make the government not work as well. When punishment because de rigueur, it also becomes useless.

Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux have just written a very scary article, Blacklisted: the Secret Government Rulebook for Labeling You a Terrorist. Basically, it documents that it doesn’t take much of anything for the government to label you a terrorist. Being associated with someone who the government suspects of being a terrorist can be enough. But the problem really isn’t how broad a net the government is casting. It is how vague a net it is casting.

The problem here is that this is how the Soviet Union worked. Basically everyone there was guilty of multiple crimes against the state. You couldn’t really get through life without doing things that were technically wrong but which everyone did. And it was just fine—as long as you didn’t bother anyone in power. Once you did that, then you were screwed. The law came down on you hard. I’m not suggesting that this is the case in the United States, but it is certain that we are moving in that direction, and have been for at least a century.

One line from the article really got to me, “They also define as terrorism any act that is ‘dangerous’ to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation.” It is the second part of that sentence that really bothers me. The reason is that I kind of agree that intimidation is a form of terrorism. Remember when Sharron Angle said, “I’m hoping that we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.” That was intimidation: elect me or there will be armed revolt. Remember when Ted Nugent said, “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year.” That was intimidation: if Obama wins re-election, I will try to kill him. Remember when Sarah Palin tweeted, “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!”? That was intimidation. Do you want more? Media Matters provided a small list in, Conservative Media Figures Have History of Violent Rhetoric.

But you know you will never see Sharron Angle or Ted Nugent or Sarah Palin labeled a terrorist. The biggest reason is that they are part of the power elite and so are effectively untouchable. But it is also that they are on the right wing. The government has a history of being more worried about non-violent peace protesters than the Second Amendment brigade. (And maybe they should be; I think most of the Second Amendment shouters are actually cowards.) So you can depend upon whatever rules the government comes up with to be used against anyone working for change that the power elite doesn’t want.

Consider this wonderful sentence from the rule book, “Although irrefutable evidence or concrete facts are not necessary, to be reasonable, suspicion should be as clear and as fully developed as circumstances permit.” In a strictly legal sense, I think this means that someone can be reasonably suspected of being a terrorist just because someone wants them to be. Given that I am not only not a terrorist, but a person committed to nonviolence, the circumstances would not permit any evidence being obtained to suspect me of terrorism. Therefore, the government ought to be able to label me as a suspected terrorist with no evidence at all. They won’t, of course; I’m no threat to the power elite. But this kind of wide open legalistic rule book for labeling terrorists is already being misused and will only be misused more in the future.

You question me? Read:

Evo Morales is not terrorist, but he is a leftist, which appears to be close enough. And while Nabih Berri is a conservative, he’s also Lebanese. Need I say more?

If this all sounds like I’ve lost my mind, go read the whole article. It’s even worse than I’m making it out. The “Watchlisting Guidance” document should be called the “Wishlisting Guidance” document, because it pretty much allows the government to target anyone they want for any reason they want. But I don’t suppose that comes as a shock to any of my readers. To give you an idea, let me quote from the end of the article at length. While you’re reading it, ask yourself if it doesn’t sound like something out of a Kafka novel:

Remember: when they hand you the knife, you are expected to kill yourself; but you don’t have to; if forced, they will do it for you.

One of my many minor addictions is checking The Upshot‘s Senate Forecast every day. And it is not the simple thrill of seeing what “today’s number” is. For the record, today’s number is 53%—the Republicans have a 53% chance of retaking the Senate, which The Upshot classifies as a “toss up.”

There is much more, though! They also provide up to date forecasts from five other organizations that do this kind of work. These include the Cook Political Report, which does old fashioned analysis and is never, it would seem, willing to go out on a limb. For example, it says that Montana leans toward Republican Steve Daines and against Democrat John Walsh, even though Walsh’s own mother wouldn’t think he has a shot—barring Daines having a fatal heart attack.

Also on the list is Five Thirty Eight, which is what The Upshot replaced at The New York Times. They tend to agree rather well with The Upshot, but it seems that Nate Silver just isn’t that interested in politics anymore. They don’t run their model all that often.

But the real outlier is The Monkey Cage model, now sadly supported by the Washington Post. It is a political science driven model and it does not paint a rosy picture of the Senate come next year. They currently give the Republicans an 87% chance of taking the Senate.

For a long time, I’ve said that the Democrats have a 50-50 change of keeping the Senate. But I am also a “fundamentals” guy. And political scientists have gotten really good at predicting elections—especially from a long way out. And I have to say that I go along with the fundamentals. It is looking more and more like the Republicans will take the Senate in November. But it is important to remember a two things.

First, if they take it, it isn’t going to be a “wave” election. They will have 51 or 52 seats. So it isn’t going to be that big a deal, and they are going to lose the Senate come 2016. Barring a Supreme Court opening, there isn’t likely to be much in the way of change, regardless.

Second, it does not mean that “the people” have turned against Obama or the Democrats or liberalism or anything else. It means that there were roughly twice as many Democrats running for re-election as Republicans. And it also means that angry old rich white people show up to the polls for midterm elections a lot more than calm young poor multi-ethnic people do. Forgive me while I rant for a paragraph.

I am so tired of this idea that Americans are constantly changing their minds about politics. This year they like the Democrats! Next year they like the Republicans! No, no, no! Pretty much year after year, people are the same. They don’t change. All that really changes is who is willing to make the effort to vote. And in this country, we have decided that we don’t believe in a fair democracy. So we make it far easier for rich people to vote than for poor people. So it isn’t even that liberal voters are less inclined to vote, it is just that in general, it is harder for them: they have less time and their polling places are poorly staffed. Regardless, whatever the election result, it doesn’t mean that anything has changed in the mind of the typical American from 2012.

Having ranted that, there is one thing that gives me hope. The Democrats are spending a lot more money this election on efforts to get out the vote. If this works and the electorate looks more like it does during a presidential election, then all the models will be wrong and the Democrats will do much better—almost certainly holding onto the Senate. We will have to see. I’ve been arguing for this for a long time. All this business about attracting the “swing” voter is just madness. You want to know my definition of a swing voter: a Democrat (Republican) who just isn’t yet willing to say he is going to vote for the Democrat (Republican). So the new Democratic approach is a good one. We will have to see how effective they are at it.