January 2008

Speaking of People Who No One Trusts

Nothing like pissing off ASFSCME when trying to blame the reformers:

The notice does not say how many employees would be laid off. Stroger’s chief of staff, Lance Tyson, said the notices are the first step and that it will take two to three weeks for the administration to evaluate where the cuts would fall.
Anders Lindall, a union spokesman, called the letter “factually inaccurate,” noting some of the nine commissioners have supported new revenue although they oppose Stroger’s sales-tax increase.

“We have never seen a layoff letter like this one that attempts to pin the blame for potential job cuts on specific commissioners,” said Lindall, spokesman for the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees Council 31

Blagojevich to Lege: Trust Me

LOL–it’s hard to imagine that he thinks this is going to help:

Today, the governor didn’t repeat that veto threat when given the opportunity at a news conference aimed at heading off the CTA, Metra and Pace service cuts and fare hikes that loom Jan. 20.

Asked if he would sign legislation that increased the sales tax, Blagojevich hinted he might be able “to improve” a bill so that enough constituencies are satisfied. If it’s a bill that includes an increase in sales taxes to fund transit, then so be it, the governor said – just send it his way.

“If, however, the legislature believes in that (sales tax) bill, they ought to pass that bill and give me a chance to improve it,” Blagojevich told reporters in Chicago.

“There are a lot of creative things you could with the ability to rewrite legislation and I’ll leave it at that,” he added. “If they believe in that bill, they ought to pass that bill. We want them to pass something and give me the ability to act.”

When pressed on how he would “improve” the bill if he remained dead-set against increasing the sales tax, Blago said only: “Stay tuned. Stay tuned.”

He’s had the ability to negotiate with the Lege leaders in good faith and has passed up every opportunity.  The level of arrogance is just astounding.

Blair Hull Enters the New Hampshire Race

TPM Election Central has a new mailer put out by the Hull for Senate Campaign errr…Clinton campaign:

The Obama campaign replied with Rich, Zorn, and I largely recycling the 2004 material.

The vapidness of the argument is explained when Rich quoted me on his post–essentially these same bills that he voted present on (as did Emil Jones and Lisa Madigan once she was in the Illinois Senate) are the ones that he killed singlehandedly as Committee Chair once the Dems took the Illinois Senate.  It’s a bit bizarre to claim he’s ducking those votes when once he had the chance, he took the entire heat on the bills.

One theory is that Assistant Clinton Campaign Manager Mike Henry is having PTSD flashbacks  to his role as Campaign Manger for Blair Hull as Clinton numbers implode in New Hampshire.
Though I think most of us can understand if she hit Bill at sometime in the past.

When Pandering Doesn’t Work–Immigrant Bashing Fails in Iowa

Joshua Hoyt, Executive Director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, points out that scary brown people aren’t nearly as scary as immigrant bashers would like you to think:

The results are in. In a state where voters had a clear choice to vote for Romney’s tough stance on illegal immigration in the Republican caucuses, they instead turned out in historic numbers to vote Democratic. There they picked Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who has unabashedly advocated an earned path to citizenship for the undocumented.

On the Republican side, Romney, despite his overwhelming funding advantage, came up short. University of Iowa polls showed that 57 percent of Iowa voters favored earned citizenship for the undocumented and only 23 percent favored deportation.

This is consistent with national polling. In 20 of 22 separate public opinion polls conducted between March and December, somewhere between 55 percent and 83 percent of the respondents favored some form of earned legal status. In the remaining two polls, the majority favored this option.

Immigrant bashing just does not move votes. The 2006 elections were a disaster for anti-immigrant demagoguery. Not only did the issue fail to stave off the Republican loss of the House and Senate, but leading Republican anti-immigrant campaigners such as Reps. J.D. Hayworth of Arizona and John Hostettler of Indiana and Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania all lost their races. And in a telling portent of the future, Latino support for the GOP dropped to 26 percent from 44 percent.

While addressing immigration is necessary given the utter incompetence carried over from the INS to Homeland Security, it’s not an issue that is going to deliver a national election or take a good lead and turn it into a loss.  It does matter on the periphery of elections and certainly if you are in a close election, it can hurt a candidate who isn’t bashing.  At some point you have to stand up and do the right thing though and there are a lot of positive ways to address the issue and still win.

More than anything, the Democratic Party’s future is going to rely on building a base for constructive immigration reform.

But even in the party where the issue is hot, the guy who is relatively moderate took a greater percentage of the vote for those who thought the issue was important than did Romney.

After the jump, an e-mail from the Americans for Legal Immigration–a fine example of hysteria about brown people

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Left Wing Intellectuals in Hyde Park

Watch out for those folks at Harold’s Chicken Shack—Clinton thinks it makes Barack unelectable:

Hillary’s aides point to Obama’s extremely progressive record as a community organizer, state senator and candidate for Congress, his alliances with “left-wing” intellectuals in Chicago’s Hyde Park community, and his liberal voting record on criminal defendants’ rights as subjects for examination.

So he is progressive (I forget because the argument changes every day), he is an intellectual, and he believes in the Constitution.

The horror, the horror.

Peters on Obama

I’ve probably discussed this several times, but Charles Peters takes a look at Obama’s passage of the bill to videotape confessions to murders.

This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama’s bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument. Vigorous opposition came from the police, too many of whom had become accustomed to using muscle to “solve” crimes. And the incoming governor, Rod Blagojevich, announced that he was against it.

Obama had his work cut out for him.

He responded with an all-out campaign of cajolery. It had not been easy for a Harvard man to become a regular guy to his colleagues. Obama had managed to do so by playing basketball and poker with them and, most of all, by listening to their concerns. Even Republicans came to respect him. One Republican state senator, Kirk Dillard, has said that “Barack had a way both intellectually and in demeanor that defused skeptics.”

The police proved to be Obama’s toughest opponent. Legislators tend to quail when cops say things like, “This means we won’t be able to protect your children.” The police tried to limit the videotaping to confessions, but Obama, knowing that the beatings were most likely to occur during questioning, fought — successfully — to keep interrogations included in the required videotaping.

By showing officers that he shared many of their concerns, even going so far as to help pass other legislation they wanted, he was able to quiet the fears of many.

Obama proved persuasive enough that the bill passed both houses of the legislature, the Senate by an incredible 35 to 0. Then he talked Blagojevich into signing the bill, making Illinois the first state to require such videotaping.

And he proved me wrong.  The longest, most indepth post I wrote on this is lost in the archives of Political State Report, but I pretty much announced that after Ryan commuted all of the death sentences any chance for reform were dead because of the outrage that would follow.
I was wrong–very, very wrong and while other people like Tom Cross were positive forces for death penalty reform, Obama really put the reforms together and moved them forward.  It was an amazing feat and one that really caught my attention as I observed it.  I didn’t think it was possible and everytime a snag was hit, I thought it proved I was right and that while I am against the death penalty, the commutations were counter productive.

Obama pulled it off pulling along important constituencies and working hard.  I had always been impressed with him before then, but it is what really sold me on him by the time the 2004 Senate race picked up.

There are a couple interesting takes on this with Kevin Drum quoting me and Atrios thinking maybe Obama does have more of a plan than most bloggers thought.

My point isn’t that he’s perfect, but that he’s a lot more talented than appears on the surface. That probably can be said about other candidates as well, but there’s this weirdly effective Zen that surrounds Obama that most reminds me of Phil Jackson of all the odd comparisons I can make.

The race for the nomination has a long ways to go and I don’t think it should be assumed he has a free ride in anyway, shape, or form.  However, watching opponents either be co-opted or fall apart as the challenge him (other than Bobby Rush) there’s something about the way he leads and campaigns that involves a level of understated effectiveness that is very rare.

I can’t explain it, I can only offer the stages that I’ve observed over and over again as commmenter Tucker McElroy defined some time ago:

We’ve seen the stages before because we’re from here, but it’s fun to watch the national press go through it all over again.

1. Holy shit, you’ve got to hear this guy speak.
2. Holy shit, this guy was the first African American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Everyone we talk to says he’s really smart.
3. Holy shit, in his book he talks about doing blow, this could hurt him big time.
4. Holy shit, the right is going bonkers (He’s not really black because he wasn’t decendant from slaves – Keyes, His middle name is Hussein – tv right, Holy shit he’s in our church – religious political right, He’s a false messiah and the anti-Christ – nutjob right)
5. Holy shit, everywhere you look people are wild about Barack Obama. Don’t they know he did blow and HIS MIDDLE NAME IS HUSSEIN?
6. Holy shit, he won huge.
7. Holy shit, I can’t believe I lost like that. But at the end of the day I can’t really be too upset about it because I like the guy. (Dan Hynes 2004, Hillary Clinton 2008)