A Red Tide Swamps the US Political Landscape

The polls had it right.  Last night, Republicans swept to control in the Senate, picked up governor seats in blue states, and increased their control of the House of Representatives.  The Democrats' get-out-the-vote effort failed to overcome the dark money, the voter suppression laws, and their own inadequate and defensive explanations of their policies.  Republicans controlled the political debate much as they have since Obama took office: "Everything bad is Obama's fault.  Everything good he had nothing to do with."  For their part, Democrats, from Obama on down, failed to energize their base. The nation will need to live with the result: the most extreme right-wing Congress we have ever had.

Jeff Schweitzer, blogging at the Huffington Post, has one of the best analyses of the election that I've seen.  In his post, "The Price of Failure and Rise of Extremism: How Democrats Blew It", he writes: "the depth, intensity, and institutionalized hypocrisy of the political right has taken our country on a new course; conservatives are writing a new chapter...on cynicism, deceit and delusion. As we contemplate our world dominated by Republicans controlling the House and Senate, we must therefore consider life in the face of deep hypocrisy. Mitch McConnell, with a straight face and no apparent appreciation for irony, said that voters should install a Republican majority in the Senate because his party would 'be able to bring the current legislative gridlock to a merciful end.'...This story highlights the major failure of the left. Democrats have not defined the agenda or narrated the story. This capitulation creates a void of reason such that absurdities like McConnell's claim can take hold without everybody doubling over in laughter. Like frightened children Democrats run from Obama's record, as defined by the right, rather than championing his amazing successes as defined by fact."

One thing is certain.  Before the members of the 114th Congress take their seats in January, Senate Democrats need to push through as many of the 156 pending Federal judicial and executive branch nominations as they can.  Failure to do so will ensure Republican control of the judiciary and make Obama's last two years even more difficult and unproductive than the past four have been.  Hey Mitch, this may be a good place to start showing how intent you are to end gridlock.

What do we have to look forward to from this extremist Congress and a ham-strung moderate President in the next two years?

Some things are clear.

There will be cuts to domestic programs, increases in military spending, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and, if Obama and Congressional Democrats don't go along with their radical agenda, a government shutdown or two.   Any progress on the environmental front will need to come from executive action. The War Powers Act as applied to the Middle East will not be changed and there will be no debate on the current bombing campaign.  Obama will not be able to get any progressive or even moderate appointments to the Federal judiciary through Congress.  One "good news" item: Social Security will not be privatized anytime soon.

Some things are not as clear.

Will Obama have the votes to resist neo-con-inspired congressional actions, such as increasing sanctions on Iran and funding for sectarian wars? Will he have the courage to pursue justice for the Palestinians and the courage to achieve a just Palestinian-Israeli peace?   Will he be able to close Guantanamo, that continuing insult to America's self-proclaimed adherence to the rule of law?

What changes will be made to the Affordable Care Act? Democrats should retain at least 45 Senate seats and Obama still has the veto.  So total repeal will be impossible.  However, Congressional Republicans can certainly reduce the number of people covered by the ACA - by removing the employer requirements and redefining full-time employees, by removing the penalty for non-coverage, and by reducing or ending subsidies for those earning too much to qualify under the Medicaid expansion.

Will Obama take executive action to progress immigration reform?  Will the Republicans threaten impeachment if he does so?  Will any action at all be proposed by Congress other than increased militarization of the US-Mexico border?  Republicans did not need the Latino vote to win these midterms and Obama's deportation policies were not something that would energize Latino voters.

How extensive will changes to Medicare be?  Along with Social Security and the Affordable Care Act, it remains one of the prime examples of what a Democratic Congress and President can accomplish.  That makes it a target for the extremists who now control the Republican Party - no matter how successful and well-liked it is.

Perhaps the best comment I heard during my GOTV calls in the weeks before the election was from a Kentucky voter.  He could not understand how anyone but "the 1%" could ever vote Republican, how people could continually vote against their own economic interests.  He mentioned that Kentuckians were hearing almost nothing about McConnell's opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, and a lot about Obama.  That strategy played very well in the South.  Later in my calls that evening, I spoke to another Kentuckian - an older woman, who was going to vote for McConnell because she was "tired of the handouts."  I thought of asking her which handouts in particular she opposed but realizing how thoroughly Republican myths have taken hold, I refrained.

This is the richest nation the world has ever seen.  We have one of the lowest tax rates, one of the highest levels of income inequality, and one of the least generous social safety net programs in the developed world.  To say we cannot afford to meet the basic needs of the most vulnerable in our society or to provide medical care for all is a lie.  But it is a lie that has become deeply ingrained in the political dialogue of the nation over the past three decades - a lie that has no place for "the common good" and promises more and more to those that have the most.

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Democracy: The What's Left of It Edition
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The World Series. Halloween, and the Election

The US midterm elections will be held in five days. The Senate is up for grabs and there is a strong possibility that, come January, Republicans will be the majority in both houses of Congress.  The over-riding question for the election is: Will the vast sums of money being spent by the Chamber of Commerce, the Koch brothers and other conservative groups along with voter suppression laws and tactics in Republican controlled states beat back the get-out-the-vote effort being mounted by Democrats and progressive organizations? Too bad US elections aren't more like those in Brazil or Australia where voting is mandatory for citizens of legal age.  Oh, that's right, in our country there are some intent on making sure others do not easily exercise their democratic right to vote or, preferably, at all.

I've been calling progressive voters in swing states in MoveOn's get-out-the-vote effort.  Reactions range from enthusiasm to apathy to weariness to just hanging up the phone.  And these are the progressive voters!  This week I've called voters in Colorado and New Hampshire - two states that voted for Obama in 2012 but whose Senate seats are "in play" and could easily be lost to Republicans.  If, as has been predicted for the past couple of months, the Democrats do lose control of the Senate, at least we know that we tried to get people to the polls.  There are still a few days left and if you want to help out, you can do so at the MoveOn Shift Sign-Up page.  The system uses a "Hub-Dialer" and a brief training session is held at the start of each shift.

Wednesday night, the blue-state San Francisco Giants beat the red-state Kansas City Royals. It was the third time in five years that the Giants had won the World Series.  That they did so was due in large part to their 25 year-old pitching ace, North Carolina native Madison Bumgarner.  Bumgarner now ranks as the all-time World Series ERA leader with an incredible 0.25 Earned Run Average.  For comparison, pitching greats Sandy Koufax, Christy Mathewson and Mariano Rivera have career World Series ERA's between 0.95 and 0.99.  What does this have to do with the elections?  Probably nothing but, like many sports fans and ballplayers, I am slightly superstitious.  Could this Giant victory be an omen of the Dems holding onto the Senate?  Could Kay Hagan retain her North Carolina Senate seat? Or does the Giants' victory predict an outcome similar to the 2010 mid-terms, when the Giants also won the World Series.  That year marked the biggest loss of Democratic Congressional seats in seven decades.

Tomorrow is Halloween.  Halloween is an especially appropriate holiday for Republicans in an election year when their fear-mongering reaches a fever pitch.  Is there anything the Republicans and their media mouthpieces don't want you to be afraid of?  Death panels, a national gun registry, crime, Ebola, Guantanamo closing, immigrants, Muslims, people of color exercising their right to vote, people of color...the list is nearly endless.   No, like most of the Republican agenda, these fears are just bullshit. What I find much more worrisome is the specter of total Republican control of Congress.  Not so much because it will make an immediate, drastic change in our lives - it won't...Republicans already control the House and our centrist President Obama can serve as a firewall against any truly insane actions.  Rather we should worry because of what a Republican victory in the Senate would say about the gullibility and apathy of the American electorate.  True, there have been enormous roadblocks thrown in the path of democracy by way of  Supreme Court voting rights and campaign financing decisions, by rampant gerrymandering, and by voter suppression.  But these all happened because the conservative Republican agenda won in past elections, resulting in the court appointments and state legislatures that have turned American democracy into one that caters to the interests of the ruling class and where income inequality is among the greatest in the developed world.  Republicans have done nothing positive in the four years they have been in the House majority.  Congressional approval ratings are in the 11-12% range.  And yet Republicans are on the doorstep of total Congressional control and all that means for Federal Court appointments.  A scary thought indeed.

In the end, the Senate races may come down to something like the bottom of the ninth in the final game of the World Series.  The Giants up by one run, two outs, a man on third, and Bumgarner  on the mound, pitching his fifth inning of relief on just two days' rest,  Let's hope the result is as good for the country as Bumgarner's final pitch was for the Giants.

Environmental Developments

The much-publicized but little-watched Senate "all-nighter" to raise awareness on the environment has come and gone.  Let's face it.  No non-local election is going to be decided on a candidate's position on global warming or any other environmental issue.  But elections definitely are decided by money, and, as reported in the New York Times on Monday, "Among the biggest recent changes is the injection of hundreds of millions of dollars to support candidates who make climate change a priority. The California hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer has pledged to spend up to $100 million in this year’s midterm elections to help elect candidates who support strengthened climate policy." 

So in preparation for Earth Day, here are some environmental actions, study results, and recommendations from the last six months or so. 

• In September, the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development issued a report on the link between climate change and food security, "Trade and Environment Review 2013: Wake Up Before It's Too Late".  "The report links global security and escalating conflicts with the urgent need to transform agriculture toward what it calls “ecological intensification" and concludes that what is needed is "a rapid and significant shift from conventional...industrial production toward ...sustainable, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers.” [Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy blog, Sep 20]
• Stymied by a Republican-controlled House and -filibustered Senate, President Obama promised, in his State of the Union address, executive actions on the environment and other issues. A week prior to the SOTU, Colorado State's Center for the New Energy Economy listed over 200 executive actions for his consideration.  Among the items suggested by the report are energy-saving performance contracts (ESPCs) for greener federal buildings, new efficiency standards for appliances, tougher greenhouse gas emissions standards for power plants, increased oversight of "fracking", and offering incentives for companies and individuals to bring new energy ideas to the market.  [New Republic, January 21]
• Some executive actions already in place include ordering "the development of tough new fuel standards for the nation’s fleet of heavy-duty trucks,... creation of seven regional 'climate hubs' to help farmers adapt to the impact of climate change, like drought and increased pests,...E.P.A... rules requiring automakers to double average fleet economy standards for passenger cars to 50.4 miles per gallon by 2025,... new rules cutting carbon pollution from future coal-fired power plants, a move that has effectively frozen construction of new coal plants." [New York Times, Feb.18]
• Apple CEO Tim Cook was questioned at a shareholders meeting by a spokesman for the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research on Apple's declared intent to use renewable energy sources for 100 percent of its buildings.  Brian Chaffin writes at The MacObserver website about the exchange: "In an emotional response to the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), Apple CEO Tim Cook soundly rejected the politics of the group and suggested it stop investing in Apple if it doesn't like his approach to sustainability and other issues....What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR's advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.  'When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind,' he said, 'I don't consider the bloody ROI.'  He said the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader."

• Mother Jones in a Climate Desk collaboration with The Guardian reported on an Oxford University study "enlisting citizen researchers to help study the role of global warming in the United Kingdom’s record-breaking wet winter."  The study "will determine in the next month or so whether global warming made this winter's extreme deluge more likely to occur, or not....The weather@home project allows you to donate your spare computer time in return for helping turn speculation over the role of climate change in extreme weather into statistical fact."  The so-called "attribution debate" has been reignited by the devastating winter weather and the flooding and storm damage it wrought...The research that links global warming to particular extreme weather events...has already notched up notable successes." The Oxford team has previously proven the case for the 2000 flooding in England, the killer heat waves in Europe in 2003 and 2010, and Hurricane Katrina.

Images
Earth from Space is from NASA.
Car driving through floodwater on the Somerset Levels appeared in The Guardian.  Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Sabotaging diplomacy? What are they thinking?

Yesterday, thirteen Senate Democrats joined thirteen Republicans and began circulating a new Iran sanctions bill with the potential to derail the Iran nuclear talks.  This action came in spite of requests from the White House that Senators hold off on any new Iran legislation while the nuclear talks are in progress.  I'm ashamed to say that New Jersey's own senior senator. Robert Menendez, is one of the leading supporters of the proposal and introduced it with Republican Mark Kirk.

These thirteen Democrats should know better.  They have put themselves in the camp of conservative hardliners in Iran and the Netanyahu government in Israel -  about the only other people on the planet against the historic interim agreement achieved by the G3+3 with Iran just last month. 

The influence of the lobbying group AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), strong supporters of the right-wing Netanyahu, is all over this.   Many, if not most, of the Senators pushing the legislation have received significant contributions from pro-Israel groups, who are heavily influenced by AIPAC.  Menendez  received more than $340,000 in campaign contributions in the six-year period ending December 31, 2012.  Mark Kirk, the leading Republican proponent of the current legislation, received more than $925,000.  All told, the 26 Senators received nearly $5,000,000 from pro- Israel groups. [maplight.org]

The proposed bill sets strong, and, likely illegal, conditions for a final agreement.  "Among those conditions is a provision that only allows Obama to waive new sanctions, even after a final deal has been struck, if that deal bars Iran from enriching any new uranium whatsoever."  [Daily Kos quoting Foreignpolicy.com, Dec.19]  As a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes such as energy and medicine.  Denying them this right to the peaceful use of nuclear power is a clear violation of the meaning of the treaty.  This is especially specious when we consider that Israel is a non-signatory to the NNPT and has 80 nuclear weapons sitting 1000 km or so from Iran's borders.  This condition all but guarantees that no lasting détente will ever be reached with Iran.

But that isn't the worst part of this bill.  The bill includes a non-binding provision that states that if Israel takes "military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran's nuclear weapons program", the United States should support it.  Since when does the United States outsource its military and foreign policy to a foreign power? 

As Andrew Sullivan writes on The Dish website:

As usual, English is the first casualty in propaganda. Any act of “self-defense” against a mere “program” is not an act of legitimate self-defense. In international law, you are allowed to defend yourself if attacked; you do not have a right to attack another country just because you don’t like one of their military programs (which the Iranian regime has, in any case, sworn it would never use). That would be a license to shred international law and any concept of just warfare. For the US Senate to proactively bless future aggressive military action by a foreign government when it is not justified by self-defense is an appalling new low in the Israeli government’s grip on the US Congress.

If the Senate goes ahead and approves the bill when it comes to the floor next year, President Obama will have no choice but to veto it.  If he does not, he should hand back his Nobel Peace Prize.  And the Senate should congratulate themselves for caving in to AIPAC and taking us all a step closer to war.

Other Notes
Being pro-Israel does not mean being anti-Iran diplomacy.  Americans for Peace Now is a Jewish-American organization that supports the two-state solution and works for peace between Palestinians and Israelis.  They recently circulated a petition asking Congress to allow time for the nuclear talks with Iran to succeed.  It's a shame that this group of peace activists doesn't have the influence of AIPAC on potential donors.

Update
This afternoon, Americans for Peace Now updated its petition.  You can sign the petition here and send it to your Senators. 

Links
Link to Wikipedia entry on Americans for Peace Now

Link to Wikipedia entry on AIPAC


Correction
An earlier version of this post indicated that Charles Schumer of New York introduced the bill with Mark Kirk of Illinois.  While Schumer was one of the 26 co-sponsors, it was Sen. Menendez, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair, that led the Democrats supporting the bill.