Because there's so much fighting about what we can and can't talk about that no one ever gets around to talking.

The Cory Booker situation is just the latest example. As you may have heard, Booker, the mayor of Newark and until now beloved icon amongst Democrats, went on "Meet the Press" and put his foot in his mouth.*

"This kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides," Booker said. "It's nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity."

He was immediately and rightly denounced for false equivalence. His insistence that entire sectors of the American economy are off-limits for discourse in American politics led reporters to find out exactly how much money Booker had received from Bain. Booker ate some crow, but did so ineptly, embodying the slippery politician on "Maddow" and basically saying out loud that Obama had silenced him. So, a C level shit storm, in other words. But oh so indicative of the most tiresome part of our politics these days, the constant refereeing that's almost completely eclipsed any actual discussion of the issues.

I mean, I've done it, I'm sure. It's hard not to get caught up in it. And it is true that some people, in their eagerness to score political points, say stuff that's genuinely offensive. But by and large, the issue of "what you're allowed to say" and trawling around, looking for offense at every little thing in hopes of silencing people, has become the dominant form of political discourse. What makes it tiresome is the vast majority of it is disingenuous. Booker was just the most obvious example of this, because claiming that a presidential candidate's actual resume was irrelevant to the campaign was so nakedly greedy that even the most Beltway-intoxicated could see what was going on. 

But can you blame him? The process of feigning outrage that someone might bring up all sorts of issues has been successfully deployed to silence a diverse array of important but uncomfortable questions. Consider, for instance, how Mitt Romney has been touting his wife as his actual advisor on the vague category of "women's concerns". Since she's an advisor, her resume is relevant, of course, but actually pointing that out created a five alarm fire, because suddenly there was a new rule saying if you're a married mother, that should shield you from any examination of how your work experience affects your supposed expertise. That's just the most recent example, but by and large, taking umbrage that anyone would dare mention X is most of what goes on in politics now. Take, for instance, the way that any investigation into a religious ideology that a candidate openly claims influences him is now being treated like it's dirty politics. And we wonder why voter turnout is so low. If campaigns were being conducted in a court, the only word you'd hear would be "Objection!" That's exhausting.

What's interesting in all this is that it seems that people attacking Booker seem to believe that his comments about Jeremiah Wright were just fine, in other words, they agree that the problem with Republicans making a fuss over Wright was that Wright was "off-limits", no doubt on some vague belief that religion is off-limits. Of course they'd think that, since pretty much all political discourse now is about what is and isn't off-limits. In reality, the problem with the Republican attacks was that they were pure race-baiting. If we look at it from that angle and not from trawling around, looking for what's off-limits, then the response is more interesting and actually gets discourse going about stuff that matters. If you'll recall correctly, that's exactly what Obama wisely did. He could have run around clutching his pearls and demanding that religious faith be put in the ever-growing box labeled Off Limits. Instead, he actually decided to talk about the issues being raised, about being black and about the role of racism in this country. It caused a wave of awe in the political press, in no small part because a candidate actually talking about the issues instead of running around taking umbrage is a rare thing indeed. Needless to say, it was a more effective response than umbrage-taking as well, because it worked as a reminder that people who race bait do it because they're fucking racist. They've been spending the years since in a state of umbrage over this perception, of course, trying to make it off-limits to observe that someone's obviously in a racist snit.

The most irritating thing about umbrage-trawling is that people who do it invariably say, "We should be talking about the issues instead!", with "the issues" always being something other than the discourse they're trying to silence. Booker was again a comically outrageous version of that, suggesting as he did that a presidential candidate's resume was irrelevant to the campaign.

Personally, I think we'd all be better off erring on the side of "go ahead and say it". It seems to me that actually dealing with the issues works out pretty well, especially if you're in the right. Ceding territory to the Umbrage Police is far more beneficial to Republicans, because they don't want to talk about things like their fundamentalist faith, their ugly political histories, their devotion to outdated gender norms. Meanwhile, having someone say something vile and dishonest often says more about them than about you, especially if your response---as Obama has demonstrated before---is to actually deal with the content of the political attacks, instead of crying foul. A little more fearlessness would, I believe, make politics more attractive to more citizens, and help increase turnout at the polls. Which again is something we know helps the Democrats. 

*Marc and I shotgunned all five episodes of "Veep" last night, making this sort of shit even funnier.

There's been a lot of speculation that Romney, now that he's the general election candidate, is going to run more to the center now that he's finally over the Santorum hump. That's basic common sense and a typical pattern in most elections, but there are some folks who are dissenting and saying that Romney is going to be the exception to the rule. Paul Waldman lays out the case:

One of the many differences between Bush and Romney is that conservatives trusted Bush. Even if he presented himself as "a different kind of Republican" (i.e. one who wasn't so cruel when it came to social issues), they knew that he was one of them. There was no doubt in their minds about where Bush stood on most things, and on most things he was with them. With Romney, they'll doubt everything.

He goes on to explain that because of this concern, Romney is going to be constantly pushed around by conservatives, and really unable to distance themselves from him without creating a backlash in right wing media. Honestly, we can only hope, because I'm still pretty certain that conservatives are better at falling in line than liberals typically give them credit for. (It's the "everyone else is like me" problem; liberals don't fall in line very easily, so we assume that's true of conservatives, but it's not.) Still, there's now evidence for Waldman's theory:

Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr. announced today that Gov. Mitt Romney will address Liberty University graduates at the 2012 Commencement ceremony to be held at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 12, at Arthur L. Williams Stadium.

“We are delighted that Governor Romney will join us to celebrate Commencement with Liberty’s 2012 graduates," said Liberty Chancellor Jerry Falwell, Jr. "This will be a historic event for Liberty University reminiscent of the visits of Governor, and then presidential candidate, Ronald Reagan to Liberty’s campus in 1980 and of President George H.W. Bush who spoke at Liberty’s 1990 Commencement ceremony.”

Of course, making an allegiance to Liberty is a big part of the standard Republican campaign, but it seems to me that it's more politically toxic of a move than it was in the past. Before, Liberty didn't really make the news much, despite being founded by Jerry Falwell, and so it was a good opportunity to pander to the Christian right without really getting the notice of the mainstream. But the Bush administration was heavily staffed by people who went to these fundie universities, drawing attention to how they're basically shoddy places that don't offer real education, but instead are about indoctrination. 

I simply have to imagine that Romney really doesn't want to have to go kiss the Falwell ring, but he feels he has no choice. Which is good news, actually, because it suggests he's genuinely afraid that many fundamentalist Christians would rather stay home than vote for a Mormon. If that's true, then two things are also true: 1) He won't be able to stop trying to win them over and 2) a lot of them will sit this one out anyway. Fundies are notoriously hard to budge once they've got an idea in their head, and those who already think Romney is too much of the Other to be voted for are probably not going to change their minds. The only real question, then, is how many of them are seriously that wary of Romney. I'm skeptical that it's a high number, but this decision from Romney's camp suggests they believe that it's high enough. 

Oh boy, Rick Santorum is out of the race for five minutes and already there's stupid and disingenuous media outrages stemming from the general election. Buzz Feed has the story. It started when Mitt Romney started saying he understands the concerns of working women because he's married to one of those lady-things. This, of course, is part of his larger plan to appeal to female voters, which goes like this:

1) Act like the only woman he's met in his life is his wife. She is All Women.

2) .......

3) Win the female vote. 

Hillary Rosen sensibly goes on TV and points out that this claim doesn't even make sense, since Ann Romney is hardly the expert, being a lifelong housewife married to an incredibly rich man who doesn't know the first thing about what it's like to try to live off a paycheck:

But Romney has a secret weapon up her sleeve: Housewife Romanticization. She knows the feminine mystique still runs strong in this country, and that there's a strong tradition of idiotic platitudes about the greatness of housewives that exist to conceal very real concerns about inequality and female dependency, concerns that were raised in the 60s and haven't ever been completely killed off despite heavy use of meaningless platitudes. Romney trotted one of those out:

It was a three-fer, demonstrating that Ann Romney is a master at the language of meaningless bullshit: Invoking the questionable assumption that fertility equals goodness, I CHOOSE MY CHOICE, and of course, posturing about how stay-at-home mothers work so hard and YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW.

The last one may be one of my least favorite of meaningless platitudes in circulation in the U.S., the whole "stay-at-home moms are the hardest working, bestest people that ever worked!" one. It's a common feature on STFU Parents, with housewives braying about how, unlike everyone else, they work 24/7 and don't get vacations and blah blah. 

There's a very serious and insulting problem with this platitude: It carries with it the assumption that working mothers (a term that is commonly understood to mean women who have paid employment while raising children at home) don't raise their children.

Think about it: Romney is saying she made the "choice" to raise her five boys by staying home, as if her boys would have gone unraised if she'd had a job outside of the home. To which I say, screw you. My mom worked. In this country, most moms work. Their kids don't run around like wild animals, naked and barefoot and killing pigeons to survive. Hell, in some families, believe it or not, dads some times pitch in and raise their kids. (That last bit was mega-sarcasm, for the utterly literal.)

Rosen's point stands. Romney's tweet actually confirms that she has no idea what it's like for most women to be out there, worrying about how to make enough money to take care of themselves and their families. That she had the choice to stay home makes that very clear. And that's even if you don't know about Romney's financial situation. The reality is that she could afford economic dependence, because if she ever got divorced, her alimony payments would be enough to keep a whole neighborhood of single mother-led households afloat. Hell, Romney doesn't even have much in common with most stay-at-home moms. In the real world, many stay-at-home moms are living in poverty, unable to afford a job because of the costs of child care, and often living on a patchwork of family help, food stamps, and under-the-table employment. Even those who don't live in poverty are often living in a much more financially precarious situation than the "choice" stay-at-home mothers the media loves so much. The reality is that most mothers work, since most middle class families rely on women holding paid employment to stay afloat. More than 3/4 of women with children under age 15 at home have paid employment outside of the home. 

Unfortunately, a bunch of Obama people are falling all over themselves to shore up the narrative that stay-at-home moms are the bestest people that ever worked and they work much harder and longer than everyone else. Buzzfeed has David Axelrod, Jim Messina, and Stephanie Cutter pretending they're too stupid to grasp Rosen's basic---and accurate---point that a wealthy housewife is hardly the expert on the needs of women who live paycheck-to-paycheck. Cutter's tweet was the most irritating in terms of empty platitudes:

If anything, this is more blatantly offensive than Romney's tweet, since it more overtly implies that the solid majority of mothers who have paid employment outside of the home don't work hard and don't raise their children. Of course, when you ask the rare "choice" stay-at-home mother why she made her decision, many will say they tried to juggle a job and raising children and found.....wait for it....that it was too hard, that the work levels were unmanageable. I believe them! It's plain common sense that raising children while holding down a job is going to be more work than raising children by itself. This isn't to say that staying at home isn't hard work. But the danger of trading in empty platitudes like this is that they're rarely as content-free as people hope. Over-the-top poetics about the greatness of stay-at-home mothers do tend to imply that working mothers don't care for their children. In this case, it also obscures the fact that a woman who lives in extreme wealth and has a team of servants to handle the parts of staying at home that really are hard work---you know, like all the endless cleaning---really has no idea what it's like to either be a working mother or what it's like to live as most stay-at-home mothers do. 

Steve Kornacki has a rundown of different primary races where a losing candidate was able to make life hell for the eventual nominee, with an eye towards the possibility that this may not be the end of Santorum's influence on this race, particularly with regards to dragging Romney to the right. I'm even more skeptical after reading the history of situations where this did happen. In pretty much every situation, the challenger had a belligerent personality. Santorum is an asshole, but he strikes me as a bit too much of a conformist quislling to really mount a post-loss challenge to Romney. Part of the reason I think this is that he dropped out a bit suddenly; a real brawler would have carried his nickel and dime delegates to the convention. That he's dropped out shows he really did think he was in it to win it, and not that's out of his grasp, I don't really see what benefit he would get from continuing to be a pain in Romney's side. He barely campaigned at times as it was. Unless you can convince him that god has chosen him to bother Romney, I suspect Santorum fades into the background. 

I'm not happy about this situation, mind you. I think the country is better off when more conservatives with verbal diarrhea have access to the microphone. The number one problem with modern conservatism is that most conservatives are adept at disingenuous rhetoric that allows them to promote classist, sexist and racist ideals without coming right out and saying what they mean. Someone who has a compulsion to talk in public like they do behind closed doors can help bring some air to the situation, and make it that much harder for a motivated public to continue pretending not to see what's obvious about conservatism. That's why I'm annoyed about the firing of John Derbyshire; it allows everyone else who said basically the same thing in slightly less obnoxious language to carry on as if they're not racist, because you know, they fired the racist. And that's why I'm sad Santorum is out so soon. His unvarnished misogyny and tendency to get very close in public to saying blatantly racist things that he and his buddies say behind closed doors was clarifying. It was eroding the Republican brand by the day, which is probably why get got out.

Now that Romney is rid of him, he has nearly 7 months to wash the wingnut stink off him, and present himself as a moderate Republican. That may not sound like a long time right now, but in politics it's huge. As much fun as it is to watch pouty-faced idiot Santorum throw in the towel in a snit, I'm really sorry that he's not hanging in until August. The voters that swing elections tend to be low-information ones, after all, and they don't really start tuning in until the fall. A lot of them will only vaguely understand that there was a primary contest to begin with, much less have an idea of how radically right wing Romney had to be in order to save himself in it. Which sucks, because if nothing else, Santorum's overt hostility to women meant that questions about women's rights to health care and contraception particularly were being asked pretty regularly, which hurt Romney. He couldn't support that stuff without losing votes to Santorum in the primary, after all. Now that Santorum is gone, Romney can probably start being far more pro-contraception. He may even cut out the attacks on Planned Parenthood. Which means he might be able to close the gender gap that's opened up in the polls.

I don't want to be Debbie Downer, but I just don't see how Santorum's departure plays out any other way. 

I'm thrilled that women's rights are a front-and-center issue this campaign season, but it does come with an excrutiating price tag: Conservatives bloviating about how they looooooove "strong women". This is a standard talking point that Republicans trot out when they're called out for anti-feminism. At its core, it's a nonsensical claim and works more as a distraction than a real argument. The image of the steel magnolia---a woman who dispatches her responsibilities with ease, who has a lot of energy and occasionally is sassy to her husband, because she's far more competent than he---has a lot of emotional resonance, for conservatives, as well as feminists. Feminists admire the Joan Holloway type for her survival skills, because we know exactly how hard it is to survive in a system that is designed to make you fail no matter what you do. Conservatives love the "strong woman" image for an entirely different reason: Because the existence of these women means we don't need feminism, in their minds. The underlying argument of, "I don't hate women. I love strong women," is that we need patriarchy as a sort of litmus test for which women are deserving and which are not. If you can live under a system where you're a second class citizen, where you get paid less for equal work, where you don't have reproductive rights, and where men have a lot of personal power over you---and you can still get out of bed every day, put on your lipstick, and get shit done? Well, you've done proved you're a "strong woman". Here's a Mother's Day card as a reward, and remember, you don't need no stupid feminism. Just don't ask any hard questions about why men aren't tested this way.

Of course, there is a teeny bit of kinda feminism in the conservative wanking about "strong women". The celebrants of "strong women" are willing to go way out on a limb and allow that their favored form of female not be burned at the stake for her scary mouthiness. Conservatives love to pat themselves on the back for believing that the 19th amendment shouldn't be repealed or for allowing that some women may be allowed to draw a salary under some circumstances, and then get all faux-outraged when feminists say the vote is great, but it's really not enough. (We gave you the vote! How dare you actually use it for something, you stupid bitches, er, strong women?) I have a couple of examples from the campaign trail that have amused me.

Example #1: Rick Santorum is trying to suggest he doesn't hate women just because he believes their god-given role is to spend 30 years of their lives constantly pregnant. He's deploying his wife to defend him against charges of misogyny, since that's become women's work in Republican circles. 

Her argument is that Rick loves---you guessed it---strong women. Women with the strength to stand on two legs! Especially women who develop healthy pelvic muscles so that they don't have to wear pee pads all the time even after baby 8 or 10. By god, he's going to let her go back to work after all her kids are grown, which will be some time in her 70s, a well-known time in a woman's life when employers are scrambling over themselves to hire her for that resume with a 40-year gap in it. Did she mention that he supports her right to vote, because she votes for him? Who the fuck needs feminism?

But Rick Santorum is hardly the only man crowing about how his love of "strong women" means he doesn't have to answer for his votes against women's rights. Scott Brown has taken a hit for misogynist behavior and policy, and so he pulled the "strong woman" card out to argue against needing that stupid feminism stuff.

Brown was introduced at the press conference by his wife, former Boston television reporter Gail Huff.

Huff wasn't actively involved in the campaign that led to Brown's 2010 special election win to the seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, but said she's able now to be more involved since she's no longer a reporter in Boston.

Brown said he's used to being surrounded by "strong willed women" and Huff said the family, including Brown and the couple's two daughters Ayla and Arianna, have open discussions around the kitchen table.

"The girls, now that they are 23 and 21, have very, very specific ideas about what they do and don't believe and they chime in with a lot of great ideas, and it's wonderful for both of us to be able to bounce things off of them because their generation sees things very differently," Huff said.

Brown declined to be more specific about the family discussions, but when a reporter asked Huff to name an issue that she and the couple's daughter have educated Brown on, Brown chimed in and said "how to cook."

"Yeah, how to cook, how to sew, how to clean," Huff added.

So let's see here. Brown deserves a cookie because he believes women are permitted to have political opinions, though he won't go so far as to suggest that anyone do something foolish like listen to those opinions. Women having opinions on politics is a lot like letting a kid repeat the plot of the movie he just saw to you: You let them rattle on because it's cute that they're trying, but they're not really ready to be Roger Ebert or anything. 

But that doesn't mean women don't get to know stuff! I mean, they know how to cook and how to clean and even how to sew! They are so strong. Even in a world where the men around them think of them as slightly dim children who can't be trusted with grown-up stuff like reproductive rights, they get up in the morning and get those stubborn eggs into that heavy frying pan. They are so strong! And feminism is trying to take that away, ladies. They want you to forsake the condescending head pats from men who think you're stupid, and replace those head pats with equality and respect. Which sounds good on paper, but you know what happens then, right? No more head pats. Are you sure you can give that up? 

There's something intensely hilarious about Republicans acting like the election season was announced on them out of nowhere, giving them no time to prepare a suitable candidate. Steve Kornacki has an article about why the "white knight" fantasies Republicans are indulging, where some great candidate that can unify the nuts and the moderates will emerge and save them all from the black President, is just foolish. I recommend reading it; it has some good arguments with which to taunt your conservative friends indulging these fantasies. But really, the fantasy itself is fascinating enough:

This is why there’s suddenly loud talk about a new candidate jumping in the GOP race. If Romney melts down, Santorum looms as the next most likely victor — and his white hot culture war rhetoric these past few days is a perfect demonstration of why most November-minded Republicans believe his nomination would be a disaster. And after Santorum comes Newt Gingrich, whom those same Republicans tend to regard as poison, and then Ron Paul, who’s a nonstarter. As an unnamed Republican senator told ABC News late last week, “If Romney cannot win Michigan, we need a new candidate.”

Due to rioting in the streets and the eventual election of Richard Nixon, our country soured quickly on brokered conventions, but hey, Americans have short memories, so I can see the fantasy  has emerged. But it just makes Republicans look stupid. They kicked off the primary season like 8 months early! Now they're running around saying, "Oh shit, we forgot to develop an acceptable candidate." For the 2008 election, both Clinton and Obama had their campaigns up and running before 2007, and the Republicans are suggesting that it's just fine to grab someone off a shelf in August and toss them into the race. In other words, the very thing that got them into this mess---believing anyone would do and not really putting any effort forward to develop a good candidate---is what they foolishly think will save them. Why on earth do Republicans persist in this delusion?

Well, I think the answer lies in the Republican fondness for teleprompter jokes about Obama. No, hear me out. 

I'm sure it hasn't passed anyone here's attention that the now-mandatory jokes about Obama being unable to speak without a teleprompter* are racist dog whistles. These jokes substitute for swipes about "affirmative action" (not that conservatives don't make those as well, but those are more undeniably racist and so tend to exist more on the fringes), and "affirmative action", in turn, substitutes for more straightforward claims about race and merit, claims that have become socially toxic, unless you're Andrew Sullivan whining about the P.C. police shutting you down by making faces at you. But conservatives have a weird relationship with this spoken-in-code belief that the President is stupid and only has his position because the nation had a spasm of affirmative action impulse voting. On one hand, they do believe this. On the other, they only "believe" it, because they're not blind and can see just as well as the rest of us that he is a smart man. The result is that they initially believed any white dude in a suit could beat Obama, and that racism gave them an excellent tailwind in this race. And then, in a class too little too late fashion, they realized that they should have actually considered that Obama is a formidable candidate and beating him is going to be really hard to do. But, being conservatives, their solution appears to be, "Okay, get rid of all these other white dudes in suits, and grab someone else and throw him in! Surely he'll be better." It's weird. I've never seen anything quite like it. It's like someone who keeps buying the latest issue of US Weekly and then is surprised every time that it's not Harper's. I can't help but think if race wasn't such a distraction for conservatives, they could have put something better together. 

*Which is an inverse of reality. All politicians use one, because it looks better than the previous era, when all politicians---yes, Lincoln, yes, Roosevelt---read speeches off pieces of paper. (In fact, this practice saved Teddy Roosevelt's life; he had the manuscript of his speech in his pocket when a would-be assailant shot him, and the manuscript slowed the bullet down and kept it from killing him.) But off-teleprompter, Obama performs way better than average. In fact, his ability to give clear but eloquent answers off the cuff is one thing that separated him at a young age from other politicians.

I expected, going in to the Republicans having a debate on MLK day in the first state to secede and fire shots in the Civil War, that there would probably be a few jaw-dropping dog whistles blown to race-bait a crowd that's got a lot of people still bitter about a federal holiday honoring the civil rights movement. Seems to me that the whole point of the scheduling by Fox News was to stoke racial hostilities and keep Republican enthusiasm for kicking the black President out of office high, especially since Romney's presence is hurting Republican enthusiasm in the polls. So I was a bit surprised that Juan Williams broke the rules that require race to be discussed through dog whistles and insinuations, and tried to get it all out on the table. I mean, his personal motivations for that are obvious---the whole scheduling thing plus the candidates' increasingly racist rhetoric is just plain offensive, and the urge to call bullshit must have been high---but considering how much Fox pays him, I was still mildly surprised that he decided to use the debate to actually provoke the candidates into being more blunt. Of course, the flip side of that is that he had to have known that if he did provoke one of them into saying something super racist, his picture would be on the front page of every newspaper today.

Turns out that worked out better than even the most ambitious debate moderator could have hoped, because the crowd's naked hatred of Williams for daring to bring up race, instead of letting conservative candidates talk about it in euphemism, guaranteed he'd be the talk of political media today. Most of the coverage I've seen is of Gingrich taking the opportunity to really pull the string and let the asshole out in full force. 

Of course, Williams dropped the ball, because there's a number of ways to challenge Gingrich's lie about the President "putting" people on food stamps. You can ask, for instance, if he's saying that the better solution is for poor people to starve. You could ask how people are going to make it to that job training he's so up about if they're going hungry. You could ask him if he sincerely believes that we have 9% unemployment because people prefer to get $150 a month in food stamps rather than have a job, and if so, why did the number of people that he believes "choose" not to work has doubled in the past four years. You could ask him when he's getting a job, instead of living off direct mail donations. There's many fun ways to go about this.

That said, I honestly don't blame him for dropping the ball. It's got be unnerving being dressed down by a soulless monster while booed by a blood-hungry crowd of Southerners who are still pissed about the 60s and are looking for torches to light. And honestly, I don't care about why or how Williams went about this. I'm just glad he tried. The Republicans have really come to believe that they are entitled to race-bait without anyone calling them out on it, or even asking them an honest question about it, and they simply aren't. Someone needs to call bullshit on that. 

As far as that goes, one moment that really stuck out to me was how the crowd booed the idea of being born in Mexico.

In a report last week, NBC revealed that Romney’s great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, had fled to Mexico with other Mormons to escape persecution for polygamy. Romney’s father, George, was later born in the northern Mexico colony of Colonia Dublan.

When this was brought up, the audience booed simply at the mention of being born in Mexico. It was a naked moment of irrational hatred. What, do they think that the soil itself taints you? Would they refuse to travel there for fear of getting cooties? I'm rarely surprised at the ugliness that percolates below the surface in much of conservative politics, but even I was taken aback by how the mere mention of Mexico and being born there set them off. Interestingly, the Romney family and mine have this in common---my grandfather's parents were British citizens but my grandfather was born in Mexico and then moved to the U.S. as a child---and my grandfather is all about this Tea Party stuff. Wonder if they'd boo him, too. 

Romney's stock answer---that he supports immigrants who can claw through the mountains of paperwork and obstacles put in their way to move here legally---tends to satisfy a lot of people, but his family's story should really show why it's not good enough. It's not just that, but for Native Americans, we're all descended from immigrants. It's that most of them got here in ways that would now get them labeled "illegal". Moving back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico was actually really common back when the Romney's were doing it, mainly because you could do it without getting tied up in mountains of red tape that is now there because our government has decided to make it nearly impossible to legally immigrate here. And that doesn't even touch the problem of people who, like the Romneys when they were living in Mexico, are probably not looking to lay down permanent roots. Looking at the past with clear eyes makes it obvious that the purported dangers of having more permeable borders are just so much nonsense, and that increasing restrictions on immigration is pretty much always tied to racist hostility, which is why we've had laws aimed, at different points in time, at keeping out Germans and Irish, Italians and Eastern Europeans, then Asians, and now Mexicans and South Americans. 

So after 6+ months of a roller coaster ride of candidates rising and falling in the polls leading up to the Iowa caucus, Republicans in Iowa got together and produced the best possible outcome for the Obama campaign. What?, you may say. How is it the best possible outcome? Well, here are my reasons:

1) Mitt Romney was going to win the nomination no matter what. Iowa is a clown show, and at best it just delays crowning Romney the winner. By winning Iowa, he just gets to victory even faster. That means that the Obama campaign gets a head start. Now that the last bit of uncertainty has been removed from this race, Democrats and the Obama campaign can start campaigning directly against Romney. They need the extra time, because the one downside to all this is Romney looks more moderate and reasonable than he is, and the Obama campaign needs to make the case to the public that he is not. 

2) However, Romney won by a mere 8 votes. The Republican base already doesn't like him, and a close finish like that isn't going to do him any favors with those voters. Sure, the "screw you" they were trying to send to him was merely symbolic, but that they very nearly got to say it and then were defeated by such a narrow margin has got to be demoralizing. November is a long way away, but there's a chance that evangelical voters are going to nurse this grudge and it will suppress turnout in November. They're not known as people who let go of anything easily, after all. 

Even Romney seems to realize this wasn't exactly the best outcome for his campaign. Look how sad he is!

So, well done, Republicans. When you shit the bed, you really make sure to unload. While I'm still alarmed at how the Tea Party nonsense did manage to move this country to the right, the good news is that the Tea Party branch of the party also introduces chaos into the Republican machine. And since the Republicans can't really win on the merits of their arguments, they really, really need a well-oiled campaign machine. Happy to see the Tea Partiers gumming up the works. 

Going into the polls yesterday, there was strong reason to worry that Misssippi voters would vote to amend their constitution to declare fertilized eggs to be "persons". After all, a slight majority of voters favored the ballot initiative going in. And the people who strongly favorited it, basically white Republicans, are the ones who are sadly more likely to vote, especially in an off-year election. Still, seeing that 11% of voters were undecided gave me reason to hope. On a lot of issues, undecideds can break even, but on reproductive rights, they tend to break pro-choice. By a lot. 

It's not something I've ever seen an extensive study on, but the folk wisdom of pro-choice circles is "pro-life in the streets, pro-choice in the dark", as it were. In other words, there's an intense amount of pressure to identify as "pro-life" in conservative communities, even if you secretly disagree. To be vocally pro-choice is to be marked as a pervert and a feminist, and so it's avoided, to the point where some polling data suggests that half of people who identify as "pro-life" are actually pro-choice, at least to some extent. Certainly enough that they're not willing to see women thrown in jail for having miscarriages. Because of this intense social pressure, I suspect many people who side with pro-choicers on this law or that law won't say so to a pollster over the phone. Not only are you admitting out loud something that can get you marked as a "pervert" in your community, you may be doing so in front of friends, colleagues, or family members who overhear your conversation with the pollster. No wonder so many people say they're "undecided". But when you actually have your ballot in hand and you know that no one will ever find out how you voted, a solid percentage of voters go with common sense (and with sex!) instead of prevailing community pressures. Frankly, the way the poll numbers turned out, it appears many people who said they would vote yes on 26 instead voted no. 

I'm not just talking out of my ass on this, either. This happened before in South Dakota, when they tried to ban abortion both in 2006 and 2008. In 2008, the polling numbers going into election day weren't looking good for pro-choicers: 44-44 with 12% undecided. Again, you have the same problem of better turnout for more anti-choice demographic groups, as well. But when the ballots were finally counted, the abortion ban saw a surprisingly heavy defeat, 55-45. Seems like a combination of all the undecideds breaking pro-choice and more than a few people lying abou their views to pollsters. 

This trend reflects the larger situation with sex in the red states. In Bible Belt areas, the only thing more popular for teenagers than idealizing virginity is losing your virginity. Beyond that, you have the Saturday-night-is-for-drinking, Sunday-for-praying (yeah right) thing going on. I used to hang out at this honky-tonk-ish karaoke place outside of Austin, for instance, where more than a few people would get up and sing sentimental Jesus songs, then get liquored up and have a one night stand. You know, while no doubt fully believing that it's best to "wait for marriage". It's hard to explain, but they don't even seem to feel like there's a disconnect there, or not one that's much worth worrying about. Stringent sexual morality is put in the same bucket of ideals as going to church every Sunday, making your bed every day, and skipping dessert in order to go running: everyone knows that's what you "should" do, but no one is actually doing it. Openly rejected these prudish ideals is considered far more scandalous in many ways than simply not following them. Part of it is I think a lot of people think they'll eventually fall into a sexual relationship that fits within the narrow confines laid out by the religious right, so they're not ready for that big leap of questioning authority on this. It's very similar to people assuming they're going to get organized at some indeterminate date in the future, so they don't have to worry about it now. 

But of course, passing a law that truly could fuck with your basic freedom to live how you actually live, and not how you imagine your more upright and normative self will be living 10 years hence is a different story. Thus the sudden shift to the left in people's ideals when they don't think anyone is looking or judging. 

I'll add that the severity of the restrictions proposed in South Dakota and Mississippi didn't help the anti-choice cause. They do better when they aim for smaller restrictions that voters can convince themselves apply to other people, you know, sluts. That's why they were able to sell the defunding of Planned Parenthood to conservative voters, because it's easy for them to say, "Well, if you can't afford the pill, keep your legs shut." Anything where conservative-learning voters who fall short of fanaticism can feel they're sorting people into "good" and "bad" categories, and only depriving the latter of their rights, they'll support. It's why ultrasound laws pass easily; they invoke stereotypes of extremely stupid women who don't know that pregnancy means you're carrying a fetus. The non-fanatical supporter can imagine that should ever they need an abortion, that tactic won't apply in their case. Either they think they obvious superiority will get them an exception, or their obvious superiority will make it a less miserable thing to endure. Some may even like the idea of having to endure trials to prove you "deserve" the abortion. 

But this law put all women of reproductive age into a criminal class, as I explain at Alternet. Even the unicorns---women who wait until marriage, only have sex with their husbands, have the means and desires to have 5 or 6 children, and attend church twice a week---are eligible for criminal investigation for miscarriages, employment restrictions, and contraception denial. The whole point of the wingnut fascination with with sin and punishment is that there should be an ideal to aspire to, but this law made that impossible. This can't be discounted as a reason this ballot initiative went down in defeat.

Still, the most important factor is the casual hypocrisy of the Bible Belt. Sarah Morice-Brubaker asked this question in the wake of personhood's defeat: 

But sometimes a movement conducts itself in such a way that one wonders whether they truly grasp that most people simply do not agree with them, and are not likely to change their minds. Certainly this is not something that only conservatives (religious or otherwise) do. But those religious conservatives who argue against legal abortion, full stop; and who wish to see access to contraception curtailed… well, one begins to wonder: Do they get what a tiny minority they are?

No, they do not, because they wield so much social power in their communities. When they say things like, "the only way to prevent STDs is for two virgins to marry and stay faithful" or "contraception thwarts God's intentions for human sexuality", they face a chorus of amens from people who then often turn around and demonstrate, with their behavior, that they simply don't agree

Via Roy Edroso, I see that at least one wingnut has risen to the bait of defending the Tea Partiers who bellowed their approval at the idea of letting an uninsured man died. John Hawkins of Right Wing News rose to the bait, by pointing out that Blitzer was asking about someone with a good job who can afford insurance but simply doesn't pay it.  Of course, John ignores that "The Left" was doing more than simply disagreeing with people who say that someone in that situation should be left to die---though I am surprised at how few people have pointed out that they often are left to die---but that we were appalled at the bloodthirsty love of needless death on display at the debate.  It wasn't just that someone made a somber argument for the necessity of letting some people fall through the cracks (which again, is the status quo---emergency rooms are required to care for you regardless of ability to pay, but in the situation Blitzer describes, the man would actually be taken off life support), it was the foot-stomping glee that the Tea Partiers had at the idea of death. You get the impression that if Ron Paul suggested that they send a squad of people to his house to rape his wife and beat his kids, you know, to "send a message" about not buying your own insurance, the audience would have gone nuts with approval. That, I think, more than the argument, is the concern here. 

But I'm honestly surprised more wingnuts haven't risen to the bait like Hawkins, because the way Blitzer asked about this question was a complete and utter red herring. Red herrings are a favorite argument technique of conservatives---which is why I suppose Blitzer is fond of them, rat bastard that he is---but they have no place in a presidential debate.  A common red herring, for instance, is for anti-choicers to invoke the specter of someone who is 9 months pregnant, wakes up and says, "You know, childbirth doesn't seem like a good idea after all," and waltzes into a Planned Parenthood to have an abortion.  This never happens. But the reason wingnuts bring it up is because they can't win the argument on real world grounds, so they make up fairy tales to debate instead.  That's why having a so-called journalist do this during a debate instead of asking a real question is utter bullshit. You're just eating up time that could be spent on discussing real-world concerns.  

Let's revisit Blitzer's question:

A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I’m not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I’m healthy, I don’t need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it.

Your average American can see immediately at least one major problem with this question. There is no such thing as  "good job" that doesn't have insurance benefits.  He might as well have said, "So you have this 30-year-old who can shoot lasers out of his eyeballs, and he figures that he doesn't need a police force. Should he be able to opt out of the percentage of his taxes that go to pay them?"  Blitzer should be ashamed of himself for concocting a myth and throwing it out there like it matters.  And sure enough, Hawkins---dishonest fuck that he is---laps that shit right up, claiming that millions of Americans who are going without insurance could totally have it if they wanted. Sure, if they quit paying their rent, but let's be real here.  The notion that there are 30-year-olds who are like, "La di dah, I could totally pay for insurance with my vast fortune, but I choose not to because ha ha, the federal government's got my back!" is asinine.  It just doesn't happen, as most working uninsured work part time (aka, in not-good jobs).  And if you can find that one example somewhere in the mists of time---you heard from a friend of a friend about this person---so what?  We really shouldn't be making broad policy decisions that affect the entire nation because of one guy someone heard about somewhere. 

Now, there is the exception, I suppose, of entrepeneurs.  There are a lot of freelancers and entrepeneurs who take their chances with going uninsured, because money is tight and also because insurance is more expensive than Blitzer is letting on.  But that's just one more reason that universal health care is such a good idea! Right now, many creative and interesting people are stuck in jobs (jobs that someone else would probably like to have, especially in this economy!) that don't use their taients, and one of the major reasons is health care. I know a lot of people who are 30-year-old entrepeneurs of various sorts, and their attitude towards health care is not the cavalier one Blitzer describes. It's actually better-described as "desperate". Good health care that actually provides is simply too expensive for most people, and so the holy grail of this world is getting a contract with someone who values your contribution enough to offer health care on top of what they're paying you.  Universal health care reform will pay out many long-term economic dividends in this way, by encouraging more people to go with the small business ideas of their dreams, many of which will be successful and create more jobs....with health care. 

In fact, I would argue that this is a major reason so many corporate interests oppose health care reform. For all the blather out there about "free markets", much of modern day conservatism is about squelching actual free markets, where people with fresh ideas can actually compete with big businesses. The last thing big business interests want is to encourage entrepeneurs. Big business doesn't want to innovate or work hard; they just want to sit around collecting obscene profits off over-priced goods, safe in the knowledge that many of the people who could compete with them if set free are instead tied to desk jobs, in no small part because they want health insurance. Republicans are the protectors of entrenched corporate interests, and that's why, regardless of their poses, they oppose anything that would encourage genuine entrepeneurship. 

American politics are dominated by culture war, and one of the most disturbing aspects of the culture war is the quest for authenticity---especially since what is considered most authentic is usually measured in the ugliest possible way.  Take, for instance, Paul Waldman's examination of how Rick Perry plays the "authenticity" card.  Perry's schtick is that he's more Texan-than-thou, and his Texanness is defined very specifically as a brand of hyper-masculinity: the bigger man/Texan is the meaner, stupider, more violent man/Texan.  There's a lot of ironies inside this kind of authenticity-tripping, the biggest being that the measure of what is "authentic" are based in plain old myth-making.  Waldman talks a bit about how the myth of the cowboy is beloved in the U.S. because it appeals to this sense of authenticity, but it is pure myth:

Violence and the culture of honor have always been key themes in cowboy mythology, which is less a construction of history than a production of the American entertainment industry. It was essentially invented by Buffalo Bill Cody, whose wild west show toured the country and the world beginning in 1882.

This is absolutely correct.  Unlike 95% of Americans, I've actually known cowboys in my time, as in "men (and women) who work huge Western cattle ranches" kind of cowboys.  The job always struck me as uniquely boring and people's attachment to it was baffling to me.  You spend a lot of time.....watching cows.  And if you've never watched a cow before, I can assure you, cows are not here to entertain us.  Quite possibly the opposite.  Cows, like Rick Perry, are boring and stupid.  Perry is actually puffing certain aspects of his persona up in order to be considered more "authentic", a contradiction that should cause the concept of authenticity to fold up on itself and die, but unfortunately, in an America that cannot tell fantasy from reality, exaggerating your life in order to seem more authentic is surprisingly effective. 

But outside and within the state of Texas, this idea that Texans are Real Men, and Real Men are stupid, violent assholes has this hold over people, and it pisses me the fuck off. It's bad for the country, bad for men and women, and bad for Texans as a whole, because it erases the truly vibrant culture of the state and replaces it with the image of a whooping redneck with shit for brains.  Take, for instance, this bit of shameful business:

You may have heard the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted and executed for murdering his daughters by setting fire to their house, a crime of which he was almost certainly innocent. As Politico recently reported, when the campaign of Republican senator Kay Baily Hutchinson, who was challenging Perry in a 2010 gubernatorial primary, considered raising the issue, they tested it with focus groups. One voter memorably told them, “It takes balls to execute an innocent man.”

Actually, it does not.  It's an act of cowardice, as proved by Hutchinson's eventual fear of bringing it up.  That's always the contradiction at the heart of the manly man business---it's about acting all tough, but preening masculinity is fundamentally an act of cowardice.  It's rooted in insecurity and fear of how others will see you.  When you kill an innocent man because you're too afraid to let him go because you live in fear of people who've decided that masculinity is mutually exclusive from morality, you are a coward.  A quivering-in-your-boots, pissing-on-your-jeans coward.  

But hey, I'll give you this: you're still a Texan.  For some reasons that are obvious and some that are not, I'm not fond of this Real Texan bullshit.  Texas, like any place else, should be defined by the people who actually live there.  Which isn't to say that the state doesn't have  a distinct culture that can be identified, but that can also evolve, as cultures do.  As I noted in the most recent Bloggingheads I was on, there's a lot of iconic Texas culture that isn't politically loaded with these sexist, racist, anti-intellectual, pro-violence cultural markers.  Living in Austin, for instance, you would suffer occasionally from ignorant rednecks pulling the "Austin isn't real Texas" card, to which I'd say, "Yeah, Stevie Ray Vaugh, Willie Nelson, and some of the best barbeque in the country somehow means we're not real Texas".  I'd go further much further even in rejecting the concept of "Real Texas".  Texas is country-western, barbeque, and guns, but Texas is also the eccentric Houston hip-hop scene, the imaginative vegetarian cuisine of Austin, and people swimming in some of the coolest natural spring pools in the country.  Texas is Wille Nelson, but Texas is also Spoon.  Rick Perry is a Texan, but so is George Bush, and, more importantly, so were Ann Richards and Molly Ivins and Barbara Jordan, and so is Jim Hightower.  

I'd genuinely like to see this whole cult of authenticity fall away.  The irony is that when it does is when we can finally take a look at ourselves and see ourselves for what we really are, and we're more complex and interesting than any myth-making about authenticity provides.  

New Bloggingheads!  This time it's me and Joshua Treviño, patriarchy-lover extraordinaire and former Bush speechwriter, discussing the Perry campaign's chances and the role Texas plays in national politics.  You may be surprised to find that I'm largely unwilling to get into the weeds with him about the reality of the "Texas miracle".  It's not that I'm unaware that the "Texas miracle" is a myth.  I point out in the video that Texas's unemployment rate is still at a record high and is only one point below the national average, and here I'd like to add that Texas has higher unemployment than Massachusetts or New York.  Plus, dwelling on unemployment numbers is a way to distract from the fact that decades of neglect and Republican rule have created a culture of poverty in Texas that is stunning to even see, which Treviño no doubt has, since he travels a lot.  It's got the 6th highest poverty rate in the nation.  And pretty much everything that's shielded Texas from plunging even further into the abyss has nothing to do with Rick Perry's leadership: as someone who lived there 32 years, I can state with assurance that the mass migration of people to Texas owes more to the weather than any other factor.  Unlike someplace like New York that has hot summers and freezing winters, most of Texas doesn't have a winter to speak of, and a culture of air conditioning prevents the summers from being that bad.  New York is actually harder to take than Austin in the summer because it's so humid and there's so little intense air conditioning---some days you're just going to be sticky no matter what you do.  Not so in Austin. When people ask Marc and myself what we miss most about Texas, we tend to say "the weather".  The Tex-Mex, our friends, the Alamo Drafthouse---all fine things, but 70 degree days in January is hard to beat. Central Texas is the new Southern California, a place where you go when you could go anywhere, because it's got nice weather, and unlike Southern California, it's still not as crowded, though that's changing.

Anyway, getting off-topic.  Here's why I'm wary of arguing about the non-existent "Texas miracle": the old maxim that if you're explaining, you're losing.  This is the same trap liberals always fall into.  Conservatives trot out some quick, farcical, but evocative phrase like "Texas miracle", toss that out there, and enjoy watching liberals start arguing it, complete with heavy details and nuance that cause everyone who isn't already a detail-oriented liberal to tune out.  They try to drag you down the rabbit hole, too---if you successfully argue something simple as a rebuttal, they have a bunch of other lies to throw out to get you back to the bad habit of 'splaining shit. Treviño tried to bait me repeatedly like this, trying to toss out half-truths and falsehoods in order to get me to argue them down.  Anyone undecided watching this finds themselves emotionally attracted to the easy lies and not to the complex truths.  As long as we're fighting on their turf, we're losing.

Treviño asked me a hard question about this, and I struggled with an answer.  Clearly, the answer for an Obama win in 2012 is for them to start getting those jobs created and fast.  Steve Benen was closing in on the answer with this piece where he told the administration to start approving Republican requests for projects in their districts that would create jobs. He's right that they need to get that approving pen out and start fast-tracking some jobs.  But he's wrong that they should do it in places like Bachmann's district.  There's no return on that investment for them.  Even if Obama turns the economy around in some shitty little Whitopia Republican hellhole, they are still not going to vote for him.  The hardcore Republican districts vote their religion and skin color, full stop.  Giving them money in some political kabuki isn't what's going to get the job done.

No, the answer is to target spending in swing districts.  Ohio, Florida, places like that?  They're not going to be entranced by bullshit memes about the "Texas miracle" when they're experiencing an actual Ohio miracle or Florida miracle. Show them that Obama has the will to use his power to get them working again, and they'll respond positively.  Most people trust Democrats more on these issues than Republicans, and only vote for Republicans out of a desperate sense that since the Democrat isn't working, then they'll take their chances with the new guy, even if they're less trusting of the new guy's message. 

Of course, that's the sort of bold, ass-saving move we're not used to getting from Obama, so I'm not going to bet the house on that one.  But I do think it's important to remember that if you're explaining, you're losing.  If someone starts to go off on the "Texas miracle", I recommend joking it off instead of explaining it off---it is a miracle, because after all, Rick Perry had shit all to do with it, so you might as well thank your supernatural deity. All your efforts would be better spent focusing on what Obama has accomplished, and suggesting that a solid Democratic win in 2012 could help him accomplish more. 

Digby is skeptical about Karl Rove all of a sudden singing "Kumbaya", going on Fox News and denouncing the Christian right, saying we're not a "Christian nation", because we're a nation that has Jews, Muslims, and non-believers (and others, I'll add).  Digby's take is that Rove is being a pure anti-Perry political operative:

I'm not saying that, by the way, because Mormonism is "weird" or that it's not Christian. I'm saying it because Rove is indirectly appealing to Republicans who are not members of the Christian Right Tea Party to come out and vote for the one guy who isn't speaking in tongues on the campaign trail. Rove would not say this out of turn.

I'm also guessing that there's quite a bit of bad Texas blood at play here between the Bushes and Rick Perry. (He went after Perry for his remark about Bernanke and he could have easily swept it under the rug.)

I think that's an accurate guess.  Perry takes constant potshots at Bush, often in terms that aren't necessarily that obvious to people who don't speak "resentful conservative" or Texan.  If you're from Texas, it really adds a layer to this sniping of Perry's:  

Rick Perry on how he is different from former President Bush, a fellow Texan: "You know, they’re not all carbon copies in Texas. I tell people – I say one of the quick you can tell the difference is that he’s a Yale graduate; I’m a Texas A&M graduate.

On the Slate political podcast, Perry was described as going to a "land grant university", which really undersells how extremely redneck A&M is. Let me put it this way: in Austin, it's occasional said that you spot Aggies visiting from out of town because they have jaw problems that lead them to catch flies.  Perry might as well have said that Bush isn't a real Texan, since that's the implication here.  

Anyway, Karl Rove is an atheist, so maybe he's actually speaking for himself for once.  But he's the one who really pumped up the religious right in order to get votes for Bush, and so this is the bed he's made, and he should  sleep in it.

Jeff at Alas, A Blog blogged about this irritating, smug idiocy from Firedoglake's Janet Rhodes, who blogs about how she is completely willing to destroy this country in order to punish Barack Obama for not running the debt ceiling discussions in the way she believes he should have.  She claims to have told a representative from the DNC that she's so mad at Obama for "caving" that she'll be voting for the Republican in November, even if that Republican is Michele Bachmann. 

Now, I personallly have little patience for people trying to prove how hard they are generally speaking, and especially when said people are highly privileged liberals preening like they're tough because they'll "punish" the Democrats with their precious, precious votes---didn't you know their votes count five times as much as yours?  Well, they should anyway.  The belief that the choice is to do things 100% your way or to give up altogether is what drives the Tea Party, which is why Rhodes has functionally become a Tea Partier, who will give the resentment vote to whatever asshole the GOP runs.  I'm not going to argue the relative merits of Obama over fucking Bachmann, or Perry, or Romney.  That just creates more opportunity for idiots and assholes to preen about how they're lefter-than-thou, so left that they're willing to destroy this country in order to make a point about how superior they are to everyone else. 

Instead I'm going to talk about the illusion of control, which also feeds this ridiculousness.  The illusion of control is the belief that you (or one of your allies) personally has the power to make everything go your way, and having complete control of the eventual outcome is just a matter of making the right move.  In this case, Rhodes has convinced herself we can elect Republicans until Democrats, chastised for being too conservative, start acting right, even though the whole of history tells us that Democrats look at Republicans winning elections and think, "What I need to do is move to the right, because that's where winning happens."  But in reality, you don't have control.  You have power and you have influence and you have hard work, and these can affect outcomes, but some times shit is out of your control.  Refusing to believe this can drive a person around the bend, as demonstrated by Rhodes, as they become increasingly irrational, looking for that magic bullet that's going to make everyone else start behaving the way they want them to.  If you let go of the illusion that you can, if you play your cards right, determine the outcome with certainty, you can actually be more effective.  You can shift your attention from trying to control the outcome to trying to exert influence and accumulate power.  But in order to do this, you must be willing to lose.

I would recommend a little memento mori to rid yourself of this toxic illusion of control.  if you start thinking, "If I could just make him realize how mad I am at him, Obama would suddenly turn into a superhero who could get Republicans who literally believe he's Satan to cow before his mighty powers and his newly invigorated progressive agenda," it's time to step down, and think about the fact that one day, you will be dead.  Not just in the abstract---I recommend thinking about how your death will come with a lot of suffering.  Most of us don't just get to pass away gently in our sleep.  You might be crushed in a car accident or come down with cancer that causes you to be so mangled by pain that death starts to look like sweet release.  Now that you've pictured one of the many horrible possibilities that is the end of your life, remind yourself there's nothing you can do to stop it.  You can take measures minimizing how bad it's going to be: you can eat right and wear a seatbelt and go to the doctor regularly.  But one day, crushing pain will overcome you, your heart will stop, your bowels will release, and the people who loved you will be torn with grief.  And there's nothing---nothing---you can do to change that outcome.

If that doesn't work, then I recommend you thinking about how the human race will eventually die out, and at best, we can delay this outcome, but one way or another, all species go extinct eventually, and that also means our species.  And there's nothing you can do to stop it.  Influence it, sure.  Accumulate power that will increase your influence, sure.  But control it?  Nope.

I find this personally allows me to let go of the illusion that the only thing between me and the way I wish things would be is taking the right measures.  If you're going to lose the same battle with death that everyone else loses, then it makes it a lot easier to grasp that the reason that government isn't working the way you wish, it's because there are too many factors in play to give you control.  And that you cannot gain that control by preening like you're so hard core you're willing to vote for the Republican rather than allow a Democrat to make decisions that you disagree with, especially when it's based in having knowledge you may not have.  

I'm personally becoming more convinced every day that our political culture is so toxic in this country because suffering from the illusion of control. I notice, too, that people who fall into illusion-of-control thinking---the Nader constiuency on the left, the Tea Party on the right---tend to have relatively high levels of privilege.  I'm not "calling out" their privilege, which is a useless exercise in guilt-tripping to no avail.  It's more that I think people who are used to things working out for them get easily frustrated in politics, where almost nothing ever goes completely your way, because there's so many groups of people with different agendas influencing the outcome.  The notion that there's some way to just get your way in a hot hurry is widespread on the left and the right.

*It's created the Tea Party, people who are sincerely convinced that being big enough assholes will somehow make the country go back to being completely controlled by white Christians, preferably conservative ones.

*Many of the more irritating tendencies on the left also go back to this.  For instance,the belief that changing the language around a concept will have a dramatic effect on meaning, even though, for instance, replacing "liberal" with "progressive" simply made right wingers start bashing progressives like they did liberals.

*God knows on the right you see this with sex.  One reason the culture wars are so out of hand is that right wingers just continue to insist that by withdrawing education and access, you can actually bring an end to fucking for pleasure.  Talk about illusion of control!  

*It also causes liberal tendencies to misread who the Tea Party is.  No matter how much evidence you pile up to show that Tea Partiers tend to be wealthier than average Americans, liberals continue on portraying them as economically stressed people.  The reason is that it feeds the illusion of control---if Tea Partiers are under-privileged somehow, then we can write off their anger as an irrational response to real stress.  And that therefore the removal of that stress will shut them up and get this country back on track.  But if we look at the facts, we realize these people aren't being driven to be douchebags, but that's their natural state.  And we have to accept that there's nothing we can actually do to change their minds or shut them up, and that therefore the possibility remains that we can lose. 

I could go on, but this post is getting long enough.  I just want to point out that the illusion of control ironically diminishes your power in the world.  Time spent chasing phantoms is time not spent doing the hard work of trying to exert influence.  I realize that working with the ultimate understanding that you can easily fail no matter what you do can be demoralizing.  The cure for that is, in my experience, to give yourself  permission to enjoy small victories even if they fall short of perfection.  So, for instance, someone who has relinquished the illusion of control can look at the HHS requiring full coverage of contraception and say, "Hurrah! We got one!"  And someone who is still stuck in the illusion of control says, "Sure, that's good, but the Christian right is still out there and as long as we haven't wiped them out completely, it's not time to break out the champagne."  The latter person no doubt styles themselves as a cynic and a hardcore progressive, but in reality, they are someone who retains the illusion that perfection is achievable, and that therefore being happy with "good" is selling out.  They, in other words, are an idealist trapped in the illusion of control, and their inability to accept incremental victories is demoralizing to the people around them who are willing to fight through many losses and enjoy even minor victories. Meanwhile, the person who allows themselves to feel good about achieving something, even if it fell short of perfection, is someone who can get up the next day and fight for the next incremental change. 

There's a lot of interesting stuff in this Steve Kornacki piece about whether or not Obama could eke out re-election despite the shitty economy, just because Republicans are hated that much.  I think it's a compelling argument; usually the number one factor in elections is that Americans are incredibly ignorant, on average, about politics and where the parties stand on certain issues, and therefore swing voters just tend to vote yes or no on incumbents depending on their perception of how things are doing right now.  But once in a blue moon, things get so out of control in this world that swing voters actually pay attention, and it's possible that the combination of the crisis situation this country is in and the craziness of the Tea Party could tip the scales.  

But what I really want to highlight from all this is the reminder that the percentage of people who can swing an election is teeny-tiny.  Most people's votes are set in stone before the candidate is even selected.  People forget this, because lots of voters call themselves "moderates" or "independents", but those designations usually mean "partisan but have absorbed the toxic notion that there's something wrong about being partisan, so I'm going to pretend that my vote is up for grab, even though it's not, because I like deluding myself that I'm open-minded".  That's a widespread phenomenon in the U.S.  In fact, social science demonstrates that Americans are generally quicker to paint a rosier picture of themselves according to certain social standards than people in many other countries, for reasons that are still a little hazy.  

And to make it worse, the very small number of people whose votes are up for grabs are pretty much the polar opposite of the thoughtful citizen who has an open mind and spends the weeks before the election somberly reading up on the candidates before making a well-informed, well-considered opinion. Swing voters tend to be the most ignorant ones, which is probably why they manage to keep voting for Republicans, in between voting for Democrats, even though they basically never like the results of voting Republican.  The truth of the matter is that someone who actually pays a lot of attention to politics is going to become a partisan, and there's no shame in that.  It'd be like following sports or music intently without ever developing opinions about any teams or bands.  

Not to say that all this blogging and analysis and campaigning and whatnot is a waste.  On the contrary!  I think that the lesson to be taken from all this is that politics isn't a short term game, and people need to stop looking at it as if it was.  People poo-poo all these efforts because they matter little from one electoral cycle to the next, but they matter a lot when you're looking at one electoral cycle to the one 5 or 6 cycles from now.  Capturing allies and changing minds is a long, hard struggle, but slow, steady work can get us there.