Why Liberals Shouldn't Give Up

Couple of great videos:

First this one on the rise of conservatism, and the fact that liberals should get busy at a grassroots level instead of just blaming Obama. Great history lesson - Obama actually has something in common with Reagan, who was blamed by the Right for making too many compromises. Sounds familiar, eh?



Here's a clip with Richard Wolfe on MSNBC discussing the losing proposition of rape as an election issue for Republicans with author Michelle Goldberg (who made the video above) and pundit Joy Reid.

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My paraphrase of what they said: The main point is that the Tea Party thinks it is a majority in this country, so they honestly believe the people want all these anti-government draconian measures. They live in an echo chamber of their own media, such as Fox and Breitbart, telling them day and night that the Democrats are always wrong and the "foreign socialist Obama" wants to destroy America. And they believe in traditional values such as Biblical gender roles, with men taking the role as leader and making all the decisions, which is why so much of agenda circles around controlling women.

In 2010, they had a great victory because so many Tea Party conservatives were elected, and now they feel power-happy. Some of these newly elected officials really believe that they are patriots and should oppose Obama and the Democrats even if it means shutting down the government, which they did last summer. Eventually, those same Republicans are going to start losing elections, but right now the Party is in transition, so they will say almost anything to get elected, even if it contradicts their deeply held beliefs. Hence, the Party wants to get rid of Todd Akin even though he is one of them just because he said too much and gave away their real agenda. Also, that's why Paul Ryan now suddenly agrees with Romney about abortion, even though just last year he was writing anti-abortion legislation with no exceptions, just like Todd Akin.

Makes sense to me.

Retro Romney in Retroactive Mode

Hmmm, just what can we believe about Romney? Not much. He changes from year to year, day to day. Even if you believe him today, just wait a few hours.

Supreme Drama ~ Roberts Vs. Kennedy

Yesterday CBS News dropped a stunning bombshell when they published insider information about the machinations of the ACA Health Care ruling by the Supreme Court. The reporter is Jan Crawford, and everyone wonders who her sources are, whether clerks or the justices themselves. She says she had two sources - standard in most news stories. Maybe she just had some non-denial denials, as Woodward and Bernstein had while getting two sources in the Watergate case?

She reports that Chief Justice Roberts had originally sided with the conservatives to strike down the health care mandate, but Roberts didn't agree with Scalia and the others that they should strike down all of Obamacare. So he wrote his own opinion allowing the mandate as a tax, and the liberal justices got on board with it.

Ironically, Justice Anthony Kennedy - often thought of as the "moderate swing vote" - was the one determined to bring Chief Roberts back to the fold, badgering him for weeks to flip again and strike down Obama's plan, described in the article as a "relentless" effort. In the end, the conservatives put out an "unsigned dissent" ignoring Justice Roberts' ruling - rather vindictive.

Therefore, the shunning of Roberts as a traitor began long before the public knew of the verdict. The fury of Republicans on Twitter and everywhere else must have come as no surprise after all. No wonder Roberts told reporters that he was planning to go to Malta to teach a class: “Malta, as you know, is an impregnable island fortress,” he told reporters. “It seemed like a good idea.”

Indeed.

CBS: Roberts switched views to uphold health care law

Roberts focused the majority opinion on a much more difficult legal proposition: The tax power. But Roberts also would limit Congress' authority in future cases under the commerce power.

Roberts then engaged in his own lobbying effort - trying to persuade at least Justice Kennedy to join his decision so the Court would appear more united in the case. There was a fair amount of give-and-take with Kennedy and other justices, the sources said. One justice, a source said, described it as "arm-twisting."

Even in Roberts' opinion, which was circulated among the justices in early June, there are phrases that appear tailored to get Kennedy's vote. Roberts even used some of the same language that Kennedy used during oral arguments.

~~~snip~~~

The fact that the joint dissent doesn't mention Roberts' majority was not a sign of sloppiness, the sources said, but instead was a signal the conservatives no longer wished to engage in debate with him.

The language in the dissent was sweeping, arguing the court was overreaching in the name of restraint and ignoring key structural protections in the Constitution. There are clear elements of Scalia - and then, there is Justice Kennedy.

"The fragmentation of power produced by the structure of our government is central to liberty, and when we destroy it, we place liberty in peril," the dissent said. "Today's decision should have vindicated, should have taught, this truth; instead our judgment today has disregarded it."

Vanderbilt Poll - Tennessee Could Be a Toss-Up

 Be still my heart ~ a new Vanderbilt University Poll has Obama tied with Romney in a virtual dead heat within my home state of Tennessee!

Nashville Tennessean: Vandy Poll says Gap Closing

“Tennessee is clearly a red state,” said John Geer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt. “But these data show that the public is much more moderate than our state legislature.”

The poll of 1,002 Tennessee residents who are 18 and older found 42 percent would vote for Romney and 41 percent for Obama if the election were held now. The survey, conducted May 2-9 by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for Vanderbilt, had a margin of error of 4 percentage points.
. . .
Bill Freeman, a top fundraiser for Obama in Tennessee, said the overall poll result reflects a “tightening” the president’s campaign had already noticed.
“We’ve been tracking it for some time,” Freeman said Thursday. “We’ve watched it go from a solid-Republican (state) to a leaning-Republican to, we believe, a toss-up state now. We think we’re just a point or two behind and that winning Tennessee is in our grasp.
“And we’re especially excited about what that’ll mean to the down-ticket races across the state.”

And here's a part I love - proof that folks are fed up with our stupid Legislature:

Some of the General Assembly’s forays into issues such as “gateway sexual activity,” debating evolution in classrooms and permitting the carrying of guns into business parking lots have given Tennessee “a black eye nationally,” Geer said.

Just 22 percent of the people surveyed said it was more important to protect the rights of handgun owners to carry their weapons into any commercial establishment than it was to protect the rights of business owners to set their own rules. More than 7 in 10 said the opposite.

“The public is not wild about this stuff,” said Geer, co-director of the poll, which was sponsored by Vanderbilt’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. “When you aggregate opinion in the state, it’s more moderate than the aggregate behavior of state legislators. On certain issues, like guns in parking lots, they were way out of step.”

This is factual evidence for what my gut feeling tells me all the time - Tennesseans are not as conservative as our reputation as a Red State seems to imply. There are plenty of Democrats and Independents here, and our state usually runs about 50/50 in major elections. But there's still so much work to be done to drag us back into blue or even toss-up status. It broke my heart in the last election that the local Democratic Party spent more time campaigning in North Carolina than here, although that was certainly worthwhile for Obama. And while NC has had their problems with the recent Gay Marriage Amendment Debacle, the educated large urban areas of NC will still go for Obama, you can bet on that. And if NC can be a swing state, so can TN! So let's take this Vanderbilt poll as a glimmer of hope that our Democratic votes may not be wasted or cancelled out this time around, at least in the down-ticket races.