The Democratic Party is suffering from a case of terminal smugness. Democrats ignored the warning back in 2006, when the South Park television series ran the episode, “Smug Alert”.
I recently came across a dangerous manifestation of “The Smug” in a recent article written by Ed Kilgore for The New Republic, in which Mr. Kilgore complacently explained “why Obama won’t face a primary challenge”. We are supposed to forget about the “shellacking” taken by Democrats in the mid-term elections. We are to ignore the fact that “mischief-making pundits have seized on a couple of polls to burnish their narrative”. In an act exemplifying what my late father described as “tempting fate”, Mr. Kilgore proceeded to belittle the most serious criticisms of the President, while daring lightening to strike:
Above all, primary challenges to incumbent presidents require a galvanizing issue. It’s very doubtful that the grab-bag of complaints floated by the Democratic electorate — Obama’s legislative strategy during the health care fight; his relative friendliness to Wall Street; gay rights; human rights; his refusal to prosecute Bush administration figures for war crimes or privacy violations — would be enough to spur a serious challenge. And while Afghanistan is an increasing source of Democratic discontent, it’s hardly Vietnam, and Obama has promised to reduce troop levels sharply by 2012.
The timing of Kilgore’s supercilious disregard of a challenge to Obama’s presence atop the 2012 ticket could not have been worse. Thanks to the efforts of the late Mark Pittman, a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by Bloomberg News has forced the Federal Reserve to disclose the details of its bailouts to those business entities benefiting from the Fed’s eleven emergency lending programs initiated as a result of the 2008 financial crisis. The Fed’s massive document dump on December 1 (occurring right on the heels of the WikiLeaks publication of indiscretions by Obama’s Secretary of State — Hillary Clinton) has refocused criticism of what Kilgore described as the President’s “relative friendliness to Wall Street”. Although Mr. Obama had not yet assumed office in the fall of 2008, after moving into the White House, the new President re-empowered the same cast of characters responsible for the financial crisis and the worst of the bailouts. The architect of Maiden Lane III (which included a $13 billion gift to Goldman Sachs) “Turbo” Tim Geithner, was elevated from president of the New York Fed to Treasury Secretary. Ben Bernanke was re-nominated by Obama (over strenuous bipartisan objection) to serve another term as Federal Reserve Chairman.
In the 2008 Democratic Primary elections, voters chose “change” rather than another Clinton administration. Nevertheless, what the voters got was another Clinton administration. After establishing an economic advisory team consisting of retreads from the Clinton White House, President Obama has persisted in approaching the 2010 economy as though it were the 1996 economy. Obama’s creation of a bipartisan deficit commission has been widely criticized as an inept fallback to the obsolete Bill Clinton playbook. Robert Reich, Labor Secretary for the original Clinton administration recently upbraided President Obama for this wrongheaded approach:
Bill Clinton had a rapidly expanding economy to fall back on, so his appeasement of Republicans didn’t legitimize the Republican world view. Obama doesn’t have that luxury. The American public is still hurting and they want to know why.
The Pragmatic Capitalist criticized President Obama’s habitual reliance on members of the Clinton administration as futile attempts to bring about the same results obtained fifteen years ago. Obama’s appointment of Erskine Bowles (Clinton’s former Chief of Staff) as co-chair of the deficit commission was denounced as a recent example. Bowles’ platitudinous insistence that it’s time for an “adult conversation about the dangers of this debt” drew this blistering retort:
Yes. America has a debt problem. We have a very serious household, municipality and state debt crisis that is in many ways similar to what is going on in Europe. What we absolutely don’t have is a federal government debt problem. After all, a nation with monopoly supply of currency in a floating exchange rate system never really has “debt” unless that debt is denominated in a foreign currency. He says this conversation is the:
“exact same conversation every family, every single business, every single state and every single municipality has been having these last few years.”
There is only one problem with this remark. The federal government is NOTHING like a household, state or municipality. These entities are all revenue constrained. The Federal government has no such constraint. We don’t need China to lend us money. We don’t need to raise taxes to spend money. When the US government wants to spend money it sends men and women into a room where they mark up accounts in a computer system. They don’t call China first or check their tax revenues. They just spend the money.
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Mr. Bowles finished his press conference by saying that the American people get it:“There is one thing I am absolutely sure of. If nothing else, I know deep down the American people get it. They know this is the moment of truth”
The American people most certainly don’t get it. And how can you blame them? When a supposed financial expert like Mr. Bowles can’t grasp these concepts how could we ever expect the average American to understand it? It’s time for an adult conversation to begin before this misguided conversation regarding the future bankruptcy of America sends us towards our own “moment of truth” – a 1937 moment.
I hope it doesn’t take “a 1937 moment” for the Democrats to appreciate the very serious risk that the Palin family could be living in the White House in 2013.
Occupy Movement Gets Some Respect
Much has changed since the inception of the Occupy Wall Street movement. When the occupation of Zuccotti Park began on September 17, the initial response from mainstream news outlets was to simply ignore it – with no mention of the event whatsoever. When that didn’t work, the next tactic involved using the “giggle factor” to characterize the protesters as “hippies” or twenty-something “hippie wanna-bes”, attempting to mimic the protests in which their parents participated during the late-1960s. When that mischaracterization failed to get any traction, the presstitutes’ condemnation of the occupation events – which had expanded from nationwide to worldwide – became more desperate: The participants were called everything from “socialists” to “anti-Semites”. Obviously, some of this prattle continues to emanate from unimaginative bloviators. Nevertheless, it didn’t take long for respectable news sources to give serious consideration to the OWS effort.
One month after the occupation of Zuccotti Park began, The Economist explained why the movement had so much appeal to a broad spectrum of the population:
Reports eventually began to surface, revealing that many “Wall Street insiders” actually supported the occupiers. Writing for the DealBook blog at The New York Times, Jesse Eisinger provided us with the laments of a few Wall Street insiders, whose attitudes have been aligned with those of the OWS movement.
By late December, it became obvious that the counter-insurgency effort had expanded. At The eXiled blog, Yasha Levine discussed the targeting of journalists by police, hell-bent on squelching coverage of the Occupy movement. In January, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg lashed out against the OWS protesters by parroting what has become The Big Lie of our time. In response to a question about Occupy Wall Street, Mayor Bloomberg said this:
The counterpunch to Mayor Bloomberg’s remark was swift and effective. Barry Ritholtz wrote a piece for The Washington Post entitled “What caused the financial crisis? The Big Lie goes viral”. After The Washington Post published the Ritholtz piece, a good deal of supportive commentary emerged – as observed by Ritholtz himself:
Once the new year began, the Occupy Oakland situation quickly deteriorated. Chris Hedges of Truthdig took a hard look at the faction responsible for the “feral” behavior, raising the question of whether provocateurs could have been inciting the ugly antics:
Chris Hedges gave further consideration to the involvement of provocateurs in the Black Bloc faction on February 13:
Despite the negative publicity generated by the puerile pranks of the Black Bloc, the Occupy movement turned a corner on February 13, when Occupy the SEC released its 325-page comment letter concerning the Securities and Exchange Commission’s draft “Volcker Rule”. (The Volcker Rule contains the provisions in the Dodd-Frank financial reform act which restrict the ability of banks to make risky bets with their own money). Occupy the SEC took advantage of the “open comment period” which is notoriously exploited by lobbyists and industry groups whenever an administrative agency introduces a new rule. The K Street payola artists usually see this as their last chance to “un-write” regulations.
The most enthusiastic response to Occupy the SEC’s comment letter came from Felix Salmon of Reuters:
John Knefel of Salon emphasized how this comment letter exploded the myth that the Occupy movement is simply a group of cynical hippies:
Even Mayor Bloomberg’s BusinessWeek spoke highly of Occupy the SEC’s efforts. Karen Weise interviewed Occupy’s Alexis Goldstein, who had previously worked at such Wall Street institutions as Deutsche Bank, where she built IT systems for traders:
Chris Sturr of Dollars & Sense provided this reaction:
If Chris Sturr’s expectation ultimately proves correct, it will be nice to watch the pro-Wall Street, teevee pundits get challenged by some worthy opponents.