SmartRemarks

David Brooks, throughout his long history as a pundit, consistently seems to love drawing sweeping generalizations from just a handful of anecdotal examples. Sometimes even just one. In his latest column, he’s resorted to using an imaginary one.

Brooks retells the fable of the ant and the grasshopper through an imaginary middle-American voter he calls “Ben.” Ben is the ant. Ben came from a broken home, but “worked hard” and got “decent grades” and went to a couple of mediocre colleges to study hotel management, in which field he’s worked for the past 20 years, only to find himself increasingly disenchanted with America’s political culture… in a fashion, Brooks imagines, that’s manifested in last Tuesday’s primary results, in which incumbents of both parties got a drubbing. (IMHO a well-deserved one; I was delighted to see Joe Sestak take down Arlen Specter, to see Bill Halter force Blanche Lincoln into a runoff. Even Rand Paul’s victory in Kentucky bodes well from certain angles. And the victory in PA-12’s special election, where Mark Critz (D) defeated Tim Burns (R) in a district that actually swung for McCain in ‘08, was a pleasant surprise that confounded lots of pundits.)

But since Brooks is making up the example to suit his predetermined thesis, he gets to ignore inconvenient realities. His little fable elides quiet a few along the way, some of them rather significant…

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Tags: centrism, conservatism, David Brooks, media, voting

Finally. After six months of tedious delay, Al Franken will be sworn in to the U.S. Senate seat once held by Paul Wellstone. The fact that he beat incumbent Norm Coleman (albeit by the slenderest of margins, roughly 0.01%) was confirmed unanimously by the Minnesota Supreme Court, Coleman finally conceded the inevitable, and Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed the election certificate. Hooray!

Thus the Senate Democratic Caucus will finally have the magic 60-vote margin necessary to defeat obstructionist filibuster attempts by the GOP minority. It’s the highest number of Democratic seats since 1981.

Which leaves one obvious question…

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Tags: Al Franken, Reid, Senate

Here’s a man-bites-dog story for you:  on Tuesday in Springfield, capital of our fair state, over 5,000 people rallied in support of a tax increase. 

There’s good reason for this. The state income tax is flat (i.e., regressive) and one of the lowest in the country, at only three percent… and has been kept that way for years, placing political advantage over good sense, as the state has run a chronic structural deficit.

The current economic meltdown has exacerbated that situation to the point where it’s no longer possible to ignore or “fix” with accounting shell games. The state was facing an $11.5 billion deficit for FY 2010 alone. That’s nearly as large as California’s, and nearly twice as bad when measured per capita. Thus, Gov. Pat Quinn (the successor to our illustrious indicted Gov. Blagojevich), who as I have written before is a reformer and basically decent guy who therefore could never have made it to the governor’s office through conventional means, has proposed a painful but fair and prudent solution: some budget cuts (about $1.3 billion, including some layoffs and furloughs), accompanied by a modest tax increase—bumping the corporate rate from 4.8 to 7.2 percent, and the personal rate from 3.0 to 4.5 percent (with the automatic exemption increased from $2000 to $6000 per person). 

Now, you might think that with a Democratic governor, a Democratic state senate, a Democratic state assembly, an obvious emergency on their collective hands, and broad public support, it wouldn’t be too hard to get this passed, right? But this is Illinois.

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Tags: Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, Lisa Madigan, Mike Madigan, Pat Quinn, taxes, Todd Stroger

My immediate reaction yesterday when I heard the news report that Sen. Arlen Specter had changed his party affiliation from (R) to (D):  a shouted “Yes!” and a fist pump. 

Beyond that, almost everything has already been said in the media whirlwind of the last 24 hours, but I thought I’d share a little personal perspective anyway.

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Tags: Al Franken, Arlen Specter, Biden, conservatism, Republicans, Senate, voting

New Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele looks like he’s going to be a fertile source of embarrassing quotes; the “don’t trust us” thing the other day was not just an anomaly. Today’s latest:  according to The Washington Times, Steele wants the GOP to be the hip-hop party.

No, seriously. To wit: Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Michael Steele, Republicans

It’s been far longer than I intended since my last post. Sometimes time just runs away from you. So let me just toss off a few ideas that have crossed my mind in recent days, and get caught up…

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First off:  the wrangling in Washington over the new “economic stimulus package” has been interesting to watch. Obama has gone out of his way to be as “post-partisan” as promised, extending an olive branch to Republicans the likes of which Dems never saw under eight years of Bush, wining and dining them, inviting input… and in response they basically gave him the finger. (Although, anxious not to alienate a public who likes him, they tried to shift their ire toward the Democratic leadership.) And the usual suspects in the punditocracy backed them up.

Basically, the GOP’s goal right now seems to be to shrink the stimulus bill down to something so small and weak that it won’t be effective… and then to blame their opponents for its ineffectiveness. All while the country at large continues to suffer, of course.

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Tags: Battlestar Galactica, Congress, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, economy, Final Crisis, House of Representatives, Illinois, Legion, Obama, Republicans, Senate, super-heroes, television, Tom Geoghegan, unemployment

The question of who will fill Obama’s Senate seat has gotten the lion’s share of media coverage, but meanwhile things are heating up around another question, the one of who will replace Obama’s Chief of Staff—Rahm Emanuel—in the seat from Illinois’ fifth Congressional district, here in Chicago.

I went to a meeting tonight of the local chapter of Democracy For America (the organization that springboarded out of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential run), for a presentation and discussion of what’s happening in the 5th district. The room was packed, standing room only—I’d estimate at least 80 people there, on a cold wintry weeknight. Locally, at least, this contest is attracting some real attention.

I used to live in the 5th… back in the ’90s when it was represented by Dan Rostenkowski, then (for one term) Republican Michael Flanagan, then Rod Blagojevich… although I’d moved on to a new neighborhood by the time Rahm was elected in 2002. Not exactly a list covered with glory, but still, as those names might suggest (except for Flanagan, the only successful GOP challenger for the seat in 50 years), it’s a district that carries a bit more weight than the average Congressional seat, in terms of influence and career prospects.

And unlike the Senate seat, a vacancy has to be filled by special election. The primary for this one will be held on March 3, only eight weeks away. Chicago being a Democratic city, whoever wins the primary will win the general… and whoever wins the general can quite likely stay in Congress for as long as he pleases after that. And given that genuinely open Congressional seats in Chicago are not exactly everyday occurrences, it’s a free-for-all.

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Tags: Chicago, House of Representatives, Illinois, media, Rahm Emanuel, Tom Geoghegan, voting

Well, despite some optimistic tea-leaf reading earlier in the day about turnout, the voters of Georgia have returned Republican Saxby Chambliss to the Senate in today’s run-off election, defeating challenger Jim Martin by a wide margin.

Disappointing, but I guess even in a remarkable year, you really can’t win them all.

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Tags: Congress, Election 2008, Republicans, Senate

Here’s a question.

After years of complaints from politicians, journalists, and pretty much everyone about Americans’ waning interest in politics, and concern about dropping levels of voter participation… why were we so poorly prepared in so many places when that trend finally reversed itself?

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Tags: Election 2008, voting

For a long time now, the words “Grant Park” had only negative political associations. They evoked 1968, police attacking protesters, civil society crumbling before our eyes.

After 40 years, Tuesday’s election finally relegated that to the back burner. Grant Park in 2008 was about the culmination of a political process that brought people together, and the beginning of an effort to rebuild our tattered social compact.

I’m sure you’ve all seen plenty of photos by now, but (after the first couple, at least) these are mine. It was remarkable to be there, and I wanted to share.

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Tags: Election 2008, Grant Park, history, Obama