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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Sunday Roundup - September 14, 2014

This is the weekly selection of news from sources outside the US mainstream corporate media. Today we look at Islamic State, Gaza, Texas politics, and in brief, the latest greenhouse gas data and the Scottish independence vote. 

Islamic State
The drums of perpetual war are beating again on the banks of the Potomac.  Without a Congressional vote or debate, American military might is being thrown at Islamic State (aka ISIS) in the midst of the sectarian war that has been gripping the Middle East.  On September 9, Sarah Lazare at Commondreams.org reported on a recently released study on the strange parallel between the arming of Islamic State and al Qaeda.  The Islamic State (IS) is now in possession of lethal weapons formerly owned by so-called "moderate" Syrian rebels, as well as large quantities of arms produced in the United States, a new report reveals.  The study — conducted by Conflict Armament Research, a research organization that tracks weapons proliferation in war zones — documents arms and ammunition captured by Kurdish People's Protection Units and Peshmerga forces from IS in Iraq and Syria from from mid-June to early August 2014...."This is one more piece of evidence of why military solutions have devastating consequences in the immediate and long terms," said Phyllis Bennis, senior fellow at Institute for Policy Studies, in an interview with Common Dreams. "We see an example of the consequences of the over-arming of the region if we look back at Afghanistan in the 1980s during the anti-Soviet War when the U.S. provided stinger missiles that can bring down aircraft to mujahedin guerrillas who morphed into al Qaeda."  We have 13 years of experience in knowing what doesn't work in these conflicts and here we are doing it again.

There are other options short of war to weaken ISIS. The above-quoted Phyllis Bennis wrote in The Progressive on September 10: We have to recognize that military attacks are not only wrong in a host of ways (illegal in international law, immoral because of civilian casualties, a distraction from vitally needed diplomacy) but also that those strikes are making real solutions impossible....weakening ISIS requires ending the support it relies on from tribal leaders, military figures, and ordinary Iraqi Sunnis.   Bennis then presents six steps short of war to accomplish this:  

• Stop the airstrikes. 
• Make real the commitment for “No boots on the ground.”  
• Organize a real diplomatic partnership to deal with ISIS. Even though the U.S. is carrying out airstrikes and deploying new troops in Iraq, everyone agrees there is no military solution. 
• Initiate a new search for broader diplomatic solutions in the United Nations. That means working to build a real coalition aimed at using diplomatic and financial pressures, not military strikes, at the international level in both Iraq and Syria.
• Push the UN...to restart real negotiations on ending the civil war in Syria. That means everyone involved needs to be at the table.
• Massively increase US humanitarian contributions to U.N. agencies for the now millions of refugees and IDPs in and from both Syria and Iraq.

Related

As usual in these poorly thought-out rushes to military action, some of the best analysis comes from The Nation.  Here are links to a trio of relevant articles.

Phyllis Bennis, "The Speech on Diplomacy That Obama Should Have Given Last Night"

Zoe Carpenter, "Is the War on ISIS Illegal?"

William Grieder, "Obama’s Long War in the Middle East"

Gaza

As Egypt gets ready to host a donor conference for the devastated enclave of Gaza on October 12, Noam Chomsky's September 9 article for TomDispatch.com "Ceasefires in Which Violations Never Cease - What’s Next for Israel, Hamas, and Gaza?" should be required reading for every pundit on the planet and for anyone wanting to understand the situation in Gaza.  Tom Englehardt's introduction makes clear that if what Israel wanted to accomplish in Operation Protective Edge was to destroy support for Hamas, they failed miserably.  Englehardt quotes a Palestinian poll taken just before the current ceasefire went into effect:  If new presidential elections are held today and only two [candidates] were nominated, [the Hamas candidate] Haniyeh, for the first time since we have started asking about his popularity about eight years ago, would receive a majority of 61% and Abbas would receive 32%.  

Chomsky notes the history of these ceasefires whose terms have basically remained the same since Hamas came to power in the 2006 elections.  The regular pattern is for Israel, then, to disregard whatever agreement is in place, while Hamas observes it -- as Israel has officially recognized -- until a sharp increase in Israeli violence elicits a Hamas response, followed by even fiercer brutality. These escalations, which amount to shooting fish in a pond, are called "mowing the lawn" in Israeli parlance. The most recent was more accurately described as "removing the topsoil" by a senior U.S. military officer, appalled by the practices of the self-described "most moral army in the world."  Chomsky has much to say about Israel's disengagement from Gaza in 2005, the world reaction to the internationally monitored 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power in Gaza and the West Bank, Operations Cast Lead and Pillar of Defense, the recently concluded Operation Protective Edge, and the latest Israeli land grab in the West Bank.  On the land grab: As Operation Protective Edge ended, Israel announced its largest appropriation of West Bank land in 30 years, almost 1,000 acres.  Israel Radio reported that the takeover was in response to the killing of the three Jewish teenagers by "Hamas militants." A Palestinian boy was burned to death in retaliation for the murder, but no Israeli land was handed to Palestinians, nor was there any reaction when an Israeli soldier murdered 10-year-old Khalil Anati on a quiet street in a refugee camp near Hebron on August 10th, while the most moral army in the world was smashing Gaza to bits, and then drove away in his jeep as the child bled to death. 

Quoting Israeli scholars, journalists, military and political leaders, Chomsky concludes that a viable two-state solution is not a strong consideration in Israeli political circles: The realistic alternative to a two-state settlement is that Israel will continue to carry forward the plans it has been implementing for years, taking over whatever is of value to it in the West Bank, while avoiding Palestinian population concentrations and removing Palestinians from the areas it is integrating into Israel...Gaza will likely remain under its usual harsh siege, separated from the West Bank.  And the Syrian Golan Heights -- like Jerusalem, annexed in violation of Security Council orders -- will quietly become part of Greater Israel.  In the meantime, West Bank Palestinians will be contained in unviable cantons, with special accommodation for elites in standard neocolonial style.....For a century, the Zionist colonization of Palestine has proceeded primarily on the pragmatic principle of the quiet establishment of facts on the ground, which the world was to ultimately come to accept.  It has been a highly successful policy.  There is every reason to expect it to persist as long as the United States provides the necessary military, economic, diplomatic, and ideological support.  For those concerned with the rights of the brutalized Palestinians, there can be no higher priority than working to change U.S. policies, not an idle dream by any means.

Related
For a discussion of what has happened to Palestinians politically and territorially, see "The Map: A Palestinian Nation Thwarted & Speaking Truth to Power" - Informed Comment (reprinted July 13, 2014)

Map is from Friends of Sabeel - North America website
and Informed Comment

Lone Star Politics
Over the past year or so, there have been various surges of optimism over the possibility of Democrats picking up a governorship or a US Senate seat now held by a Republican in a red state. The latest bit of unfounded optimism is the Kansas Senate race.  The Democrat is dropping out of the race and Democrats are supporting the independent.  Whether this last bit of optimism pans out or not, we'll have to see.  Earlier would-be upsets are now long forgotten and Democrats are trying desperately to hold onto Senate seats in swing states.  One of the early examples of this unfounded optimism was in the Texas governor's race.  As Rolling Stone journalist Mark Binelli noted in a July article: This was supposed to be the year Texas turned blue, or at least purple, the year female and Hispanic voters turned out in droves and carried Democrat state Sen. Wendy Davis to the governor's mansion. Battleground Texas, a group founded last year with the bold goal of transforming Texas into a swing state, targeted the swelling Latino population, which by 2020 is projected to overtake the white population of Texas....By Memorial Day, however, the Battleground Texas narrative, at least in this election cycle, had begun to look like Daily Kos fan fiction. Davis was trailing Abbott by 14 points. Meanwhile, back in her old Fort Worth Senate district, a Tea Party Republican named Konni Burton seems well-placed to win Davis' old seat in the fall.  The Abbott lead over Davis is still hovering in low to mid double digits and our second most populous state looks like it will remain "red.  The article "Lone Star Crazy: How Right-Wing Extremists Took Over Texas" explains how Texas fell "into the hands of gun nuts, border-sealers and talk-radio charlatans":  After nearly six years of pumping out cynical horror stories involving our nefarious president and a Washington bureaucracy run amok, the right-wing fear machine has managed to reduce its target audience to a quivering state of waking nightmare, jumping at shadows.  Binelli sees a parallel with the 1960's.  In the years after JFK's murder, Dallas was known as the City of Hate, an image which the city struggled for years to erase.  Nowadays, the City of Hate era has grown so distant that hate has been allowed to return as a winning campaign slogan in Texas. ...Then as now, the pot was stirred by reactionary preachers..., wealthy string-pullers.., political opportunists...and organized interest groups.  

Links/In Brief
Scotland
With less than a week until Scotland votes on independence from the UK on September 18, the most recent polls are saying that it is too close to call.  [The Guardian, Sep 12]

If the vote is for independence, a whole slew of constitutional questions arise.  And the exit of the overwhelmingly Labour Scottish MP's from Westminster has led to a (perhaps ill-founded) hope among Tories that Scottish independence will consign the rest of the UK to permanent Conservative government.  [The New Statesman, Feb 20]

Greenhouse Gases
Surging carbon dioxide levels have pushed greenhouse gases to record highs in the atmosphere, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has said.  Concentrations of carbon dioxide, the major cause of global warming, increased at their fastest rate for 30 years in 2013, despite warnings from the world’s scientists of the need to cut emissions to halt temperature rises. [The Guardian, Sep 9]