Crazy election scenarios, part 1: an electoral college tie

Could the 2012 presidential election result in a tie in the Electoral College?

Yes, and the scenario -- while unlikely -- isn't wildly improbable either.

In order to be elected president, a candidate must win at least 270 electoral votes.  If you tweak the potential results in 7 battleground states, for example, and assume no surprises in those places already assumed to be in one column or the other, you can get to a 269-269 tie.

Three states with 22 electoral votes (Iowa, Nevada, and Wisconsin) would have to be in the Obama camp (all are thought to be leaning that way), while four states with 69 electoral votes (Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia) would have to be in the Romney camp.  Of these 4 only Florida appears to be leaning toward Romney, but all are very close.

Here is the state-by-state breakdown, under this scenario.  The 7 battlegrounds are marked with an '*' (sorry if the formatting is wonky): 

Obama                                                      Romney                                  

California                        55                    Alabama                       9

Connecticut                       7                    Alaska                           3

Delaware                           3                    Arizona                       11

D.C.                                   3                   Arkansas                       6

Hawaii                               4                    Colorado*                    9

Illinois                             20                    Florida*                     29

Iowa*                                6                    Georgia                       16

Maine                                4                    Idaho                             4

Maryland                         10                    Indiana                        11

Massachusetts                 11                    Kansas                           6

Michigan                         16                    Kentucky                       8

Minnesota                        10                    Louisiana                      8

Missouri                          10                    Mississippi                    6

Nevada*                            6                    Montana                        3

New Jersey                      14                    Nebraska                       5

New Mexico                     5                    New Hampshire             4

New York                        29                    North Carolina             15

Oregon                               7                    North Dakota                3

Pennsylvania                   20                    Ohio*                           18

Rhode Island                      4                    Oklahoma                      7

Vermont                            3                    South Carolina                9

Washington                     12                    South Dakota                  3

Wisconsin*                     10                   Tennessee                     11

                                                                Texas                            38

                                                                Utah                                6

                                                                Virginia*                       13

                                                                West Virginia                   3

                                                                Wyoming                         3   

Total                              269                    Total                         269

The 12th amendment to the Constitution is quite clear about what would happen next.  The presidency would be decided by the newly elected House of Representatives, with each state delegation casting one vote.  Barring a highly unlikely Democratic takeover of the House tomorrow, the end result would almost certainly be a party line vote in favor of Mitt Romney.  While Obama's support largely comes from the most populous states, Romney would have support from a higher number of states.  And even in some of the states Obama is likely to win -- like PA, OH, and WI -- the majority of their House delegations are Republican.

It would be quite something, no question, if this were the result -- among other things, it might be incredibly destabilizing politically, particularly if a case could be made that GOP voter suppression efforts (voter ID laws) played a role in swinging even one state (Florida would be, once again, the most likely culprit).  Of course, if that case cannot be legitimately made, the Constitution says what the Constitution says, and Mitt Romney would rightfully become the 45th president.

Perhaps the strangest part of this whole scenario actually involves the selection of the vice-president.  The Senate makes this decision, which at first blush appears to mean that Romney would be joined by Joe Biden.  However, the 12th amendment (and Senate rules) are silent on whether a minority of US Senators could use the filibuster to frustrate the will of the (Democratic) majority.  If the Senate parliamentarian allows the use of the filibuster, the presiding officer of the Senate (who would be, of course, VP Biden) could ignore that advice, and call for a straight-up vote.

Which could result in a 50-50 tie.  However, unlike other decisions over which the Senate regularly presides, Biden could NOT then break the tie.  The 12th amendment calls for a majority.

No one knows what would happen at that point.  Presumably they could continue to deliberate, until 1 person changes their mind.  It is possible some other individual -- not Joe Biden, and not Paul Ryan -- could be selected, if 51 senators could agree.

There will, of course, be a great deal of pressure for the Senate to select Ryan, since the House will decide first.  But if Obama-Biden won the popular vote on Election Day, there will also be a great deal of pressure to select Biden.  One probably shouldn't discount the fact that Biden was a US Senator himself for a very long time, and has many friends on both sides of the aisle.

That said, I think this scenario is extremely unlikely, because Colorado and especially Ohio are most likely going to wind up in Obama's column.  Obama also holds a small but steady lead in the polls in Virginia, and demographic changes since 2008 make a surprise Obama victory in Florida a decent possibility too. 

One should also keep in mind that there still are a couple of states (Maine, Nebraska) that allow the splitting of electoral votes.  While this is unlikely, its not impossible, and it could break the deadlock before it gets to the House (most likely in Romney's favor).

Making the perfect the enemy of the good, or why you can't vote 'none of the above' this year

Two anti-Obama articles by progressives have gotten quite a bit of attention in the blogosphere recently:  Matt Stoller's piece on Salon, and Conor Friedersdorf's article on the Atlantic Online website.  Both call for people on the left to refuse to vote for Obama.


I obviously disagree, and strongly.

These kinds of arguments tend to piss me off, I have to confess, because they make the perfect the enemy of the good, and seem to be based on a breathtakingly simple notion of how the world actually works.  This is particularly true for libertarian arguments (Friedersdorf is a libertarian).

Like most arguments from the left that claim there is no difference between the two parties (and candidates), I just think they are stunningly naive.  Stoller in particular writes as if he suddenly and recently discovered that both parties support corporate capitalism -- like an undergrad the first time they read Marx.

Really, the parties support corporate capitalism, and are more inclined to listen to the powerful?  No sh*t. 

Welcome to politics in the modern developed world, much as it has looked for 8 decades.  C'mon in and join the battle, Matt and Conor.  The water, I can assure you, is tepid.  Want it to get hotter?  Then get jump in, get wet, and heat it up.

To argue, as both of them do, that since both sides do bad things, I no longer have a moral obligation to choose the lesser of two evils, seems to me to be morally irresponsible.  You know why the lesser of two evils is better?  Because it involves less evil.  When I worked briefly as a labor organizer in my early 20s I constantly encountered this argument.  Hell, I think I made it too.  There is nothing easier than stepping outside the field of battle, and judging, keeping ones moral views pristine, while real lives are affected by real change.

But, as Edmund Burke once said, the only thing needed for evil to prevail in the world is for good men to do nothing.

Voting for a third party, or not voting, or arguing there is no difference between the two options, is doing nothing.  It is also empirically inaccurate.  These are the same arguments people made when advocating a vote for Nader in 2000.  How did that work out?

As an alternative, these two authors propose...what, exactly?  Voting for a third party?  Really?  Why not just not vote?  Hell, why not just vote for Romney?  When I was doing the labor stuff, I remember a number of colleagues saying that if we can push the system to a crisis point, then real change can take place.  This is basically what Stoller argues. 

But what tends to happen historically, when things go from bad to worse, is that they then go from worse to even more worse.  Revolutions end in blood.  States based on formal equality, with liberal institutions and the rule of law, that at least make some pretense to trying to balance capitalism and mass democracy, have only been the norm (even if frequently dishonored) for a very tiny portion of human history.  Even now, the vast majority of the world's population does not live in such places.  And these things do not persist of their own accord, and once they're gone, there is no guarantee whatsoever that they can be reconstructed.  And the fundamentals of that liberal system are under attack here especially, but in Europe too, in ways that Stoller notes.  To observe that they are being attacked and undermined through both political parties tells us nothing, when the differences between the two are otherwise so stark -- wider than they've been since the 1860s.

There is NO path to change in this country that goes through a third party, unless somehow that third party emerges from within the Democratic Party.  None.  There are only two -- interconnected -- paths to real change:  social movements for economic justice, and working within and pushing the Democratic Party.  Friedersdorf is concerned with drone attacks and civil liberties.  Stoller is concerned with inequality and the power of the financial sector.  Personally I'm much more concerned about the second one than the first one, but I just think it is stunningly naive to think that progress on either would be possible with today's GOP in control of 2.5 of the 3 branches of the federal government.

To vote third party this year, or to not vote at all, is an act of moral cowardice.

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

Sandy and solidarity

Last Sunday, for some crazy reason my friend Todd and I took the train down to NYC to see the Jets game -- even as Sandy roiled her way up the coast, toward the same destination. As fans from across the tri-state area settled into their seats, awaiting the national anthem and the kick-off, the usual anticipation was palpably deepened by fear of what was to come. Todd and I worried about whether we'd be able to grab the last train out (we did). Others had much more profound worries.

I've been going to Jets games since the early 70s, and can't recall the last time the team decided to dispense with a paid performer for the anthem -- but that's what they did. They asked the crowd of 60,000 or so to sing it themselves. If you've ever been to an NFL game before, you know that they have become these incredibly artificial sensory environments. There is a non-stop overload of piped in sound, music, and flashing images -- much like our culture more generally, where we are constantly asked to look out, or perhaps inward in a superficial way, rather than to the people next to us. Suddenly, that stopped. It took perhaps 30 seconds or so, but gradually everyone found their voices, and began to sing. Look, I'm someone who is deeply ambivalent about public displays of patriotism. As a Jew, a large crowd of people singing about their country makes me profoundly uncomfortable.

But as we neared the end of the anthem, I found myself surprisingly moved. And I wasn't the only one.

I am constantly amazed at the ability of people from the New York area to shift, when it matters most, from the knowing assholishness that many of us show to the world on a daily basis. to the most profound acts of social solidarity.

Todd and I got out on the last train. But I've followed the selfless acts of many of my NYC friends through FB over the last week -- Scotty Elyanow, Gaby Moss and so many others -- and I know that no matter how much cynicism our leaders and institutions throw at us, that solidarity is still there. There is an irony, perhaps, in the fact that it was the portion of Manhattan containing the supposedly indispensable financial district and its 'Masters of the Universe' that went dark, and that ordinary people (and eventually government) once again came to the rescue.

It is that social solidarity, ultimately, that underpins things like Social Security, Medicare, and even progressive taxation and FEMA. And because it is so valuable, and may not in the end be a renewable resource, I do prefer to have a former community organizer in the White House than a financial speculator.

Preview of tonight's foreign policy debate

I do plan to live blog the foreign policy debate tonight, but I want to preface my comments and reactions a little bit -- first, because there are things I think we have to keep in mind in order to fully make sense of what goes on this evening, and second, because my own views may require a fuller explanation, which I cannot provide when the clock is ticking.

First:  if you think this debate is Obama's to lose, because of his experience, his knowledge, and his successes -- I think you are mistaken.  Romney is the one with the advantages here.  A bigger man would hesitate to exploit some of those advantages, for reasons of national security.

Romney is not that man.

Second:  I think that by and large, Obama has had the most successful foreign policy of any American president in decades.  I expect everyone on the right to disagree with me on that -- but I also expect many of my allies on the left to disagree, too.

Why do I think Romney has the advantage tonight?

Because Obama is the president -- and because Obama is who he is, and Romney is who HE is.  What Obama says becomes, in effect, a statement of American policy.  As a consequence, he must be guarded in what he says, and will often be unable to provide full explanations for his positions for reasons of diplomatic strategy and national security.  Obama, as we know, is a man who values the meaning of words, and measures them very carefully (this is why he is fond of the teleprompter).  He is a writer, and a constitutional lawyer, and it is reflected in the measured language he tends to deploy, and the pragmatic and process-focused approach he uses to the world.  He is in many ways the ideal president for the country to have at the moment, as we seek to re-familiarize ourselves with the cultivation and use of soft power after a decade in the self-destructive manichean wilderness.

Romney really has no restrictions whatsoever on what he can say tonight, save what his conscience and political instincts tell him are inappropriate.  There was a time, not too long ago, when presidential challengers knew that there were certain kinds of issues, questions, and discussions that had to be put aside during the election season.  Our times are different, and Romney doesn't seem like the sort of candidate who would honor such limits anyway.  He has already demonstrated that he doesn't care whether his arguments directly contradict his prior statements.  He also doesn't particularly care whether what he says is logical, reasonable, or truthful.  I'm guessing he also doesn't care that the consequence of attempting to corner Obama into a belligerent 'if-then' statement might be a dramatic narrowing of our national options, with regard to a nuclear Iran in particular.  Romney is even more likely to shake the etch-a-sketch on foreign policy than on domestic policy, since the ignorance of the remaining persuadable voters on world politics is extensive to say the least.

Let's make this more concrete.  Romney is likely to push -- hard -- on two inter-related issues tonight:  the prospect of a nuclear Iran, and the commitment of the U.S. to Israel's national security.  He has the luxury of bellicosity on both of them.  Even if Romney were tempted to rein this in for moral or intellectual reasons, the political benefits to saber-rattling will be too tempting for him to ignore, especially because Obama cannot responsibly match him.

Tonight, Romney will attempt to draw a 'line in the sand,' and draw Obama into making a definitive statement that we will never tolerate a nuclear Iran.  He will do the same with Israel, by trying to depict Obama as someone who would throw Israel under the bus to avoid military conflict with Iran.

Obama cannot join him in the drawing of such lines.  If he does, I'm going to come down on him like a ton of bricks, because he will be betraying the restraint, balance and realism that have led to his foreign policy success.  It will be the functional equivalent of a wartime president saying 'defeat is not an option.'  Of course its an option -- it always is -- and one must always leave room to maneuver in case it becomes the most likely one.  A nation, like an alliance (Israel!), is not a suicide pact.

Obama cannot responsibly take the bait.  If, in refusing to take it, he can appear more reasonable, responsible and knowledgeable than Romney -- if he can make the case that there are outcomes in the world that the United States does not have the power, even the right, to determine -- he can turn these exchanges to his advantage.  But it will be exceedingly difficult to do, because of the logical and emotional simplicity of the policy choices that Romney will present.  Romney will try to make this into Munich, and will make Obama's attempts to qualify and complicate the situation into something that sounds like waffling and appeasement, rather than a reasoned judgment based on a full understanding of the limits of American power in general, and military power in particular.

Obama, of course, could respond by being bluntly honest.  He could say that a war with Iran -- following quickly upon the worst foreign policy blunder in the nation's history, in Iraq -- would be an unmitigated disaster for the United States, and for Israel.  It would almost certainly grease the already slippery slope toward American national decline.  And he could conclude this response by saying that a nuclear Iran is inevitable, and we must begin to the lay the groundwork now for dealing with it, by establishing a diplomatic structure to prevent an arms race in the region.  Since Israel already has nuclear weapons, perhaps some kind of stasis can be obtained. 

But he can't say any of this, because he is the president.  Does Obama know that we probably can't prevent Iran from developing nuclear materials, and weaponizing it?  Of course -- he must.  He knows that is an option, even the most likely one.  Does Obama know that a military strike on Iran would be an unmitigated disaster?  Surely.  But he cannot say so publicly, for fear of losing whatever leverage the US still might have over Iran's rulers.  But he also can't follow Romney into the corner, because he will eliminate his room for maneuver should he get re-elected.

Romney will tell the country that the most important foreign policy threat facing the country is the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.  I believe the most important foreign policy threat facing the country is the possibility that our own domestic politics (and the irresponsible behavior of Israel) might lead us into a military conflict with Iran.  I'm quite certain that President Obama holds a position closer to mine.  But he's going to have a devil of a time trying to make that argument during the debate, without being depicted by his opponent as an appeaser, and a betrayer of our Israeli ally.

Second, you can discern my foreign policy views from what I've written above.  I'm including a few paragraphs on this, because some of my comments during the debate tonight will probably be disagreeable to some of my friends on the left.

I believe Obama has been our most successful foreign policy president in decades, because my study of American history tells me that it is far easier to start wars, than to finish them.  Some military conflicts have easily definable goals -- the definition of victory, if not the path to it, is clear.  Victory in World War II was going to ultimately require the unconditional surrender of Germany and Japan.  Victory in Korea was going to require the preservation of the territorial integrity of South Korea.  One might also call these 'necessary wars,' though obviously the case is much clearer for the former than the latter.

Iraq and Afghanistan more clearly resemble the Vietnam War, than these other conflicts.  In each case, we were ostensibly trying to pursue political goals through military means -- they were wars of choice, in other words.  In each case, both the definition of and timetable for victory was essentially left in the hands of either our enemies, our local allies -- or both.  And in each case, little to no effort was made to assess whether the price (in blood, treasure, reputation, domestic civility, and opportunity costs) was ultimately worth it, until we began to seek an exit.

I'll have more to say about this in a future post, but I maintain that the invasion of Iraq was the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States.  And I say that with an expert's knowledge of the Vietnam War, which was a far more bloody and destructive conflict.  While over 2 million people (59,000 Americans) were killed in Vietnam, and it bitterly divided the country and stressed the federal budget and the economy, it had no appreciable impact on the nation's strategic position, its military capabilities, or its national security.

The invasion of Iraq, in contrast, fundamentally and perhaps permanently changed the position of the United States in the region, and in the world.  It also greatly weakened the possibility of success in Afghanistan, while strengthening the one nation in the region willing and able to check American power (Iran).  40 years from now, when historians write about the first decade of the 21st century, they will likely mark the acceleration of American national decline to the decision to invade Iraq, as well as the manner in which the war and its aftermath were prosecuted.

Obama inherited TWO of these wars of choice -- oh, and the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.  And to make the task of winding these conflicts that much more challenging, Obama was the leader of a political party that had been repeatedly hammered from the right since the late 1940s for lacking the stomach to fight and win wars.

Obama nonetheless undertook the detailed strategic assessment that his predecessor should have engaged in before these invasions took place, and did so with what I believe was an admirable sense of the limits of American power.  The preeminent foreign policy goal of the first Obama Administration had to be the marking of a clear exit path from both Iraq and Afghanistan.  While those of us on the left may lament how slow the wind down has been -- particularly from Afghanistan, where the initial response was to increase the number of US troops -- we must not forget the enormity of this task.  Lyndon Johnson kept throwing America's young men into the volcano that was Vietnam, too cowardly to admit that victory was not possible, too cowardly to accept that sometimes tactical retreat is the only wise path.  Richard Nixon, not wanting to be the "first president to lose a war," ran for president in 1968 claiming to have a 'secret plan' to end the war...and then sent over 30,000 Americans to their deaths in Southeast Asia, with the full knowledge that victory was not possible. 

Obama finished the work of winding down the war in Iraq, so that the nation's resources (financial, military, diplomatic) could be concentrated on extracting ourselves from Afghanistan in as satisfactory a manner as possible.  Initially, this required resourcing US forces there -- the 'Afghan surge' -- in order move the status quo to a place where a timetabled exit was possible.  This was not nation-building, Bush style, though some on the left have said as much.  The Afghan surge was not about 'victory.'  It was about getting out.  If you doubt this, read some of the reporting by Woodward and others on Obama's decision making in the late summer and early fall of 2009.  The deliberations included detailed discussions of the Vietnam War, of the limits of military power, and of a timetable to leave.  Some in the administration argued against any kind of surge at all; others, mostly the devotees of the religion of 'counter-insurgency,' hoped to use the surge to launch an ambitious test-case for nation building.  Almost everyone, other than the president, resisted the idea of a timetable -- a date.  Obama was so adamant that the surge had to be in service to a time table to withdraw, that he ultimately settled the internal debate by writing a 10 paged single-spaced brief one night on just what he was agreeing to...and got all the major advisers to sign it.

As my friends on the left will rightfully point out, part of this process of clearing a path to the exit from Afghanistan has been the use of drones there and in Pakistan, often resulting in the deaths of civilians.  But to me, as long as Obama is able to keep his eye on the prize here -- it must only be a tool to facilitate what will ultimately be a much smaller American footprint -- I think its a call a pragmatic American president has to make.

And so, our military role in Afghanistan will come to an end, too, as it has in Iraq.  If you do not think that the implementation of two tactical retreats constitutes an ENORMOUS foreign policy accomplishment, I will remind you once again of the failures of his predecessors when confronted with similar moral and strategic dilemmas.  I believe it is the greatest foreign policy accomplishment of any American president in nearly a half century.

And of course, Obama's sense of limits -- he is an avid reader of Niebuhr, recall -- has extended to the rest of his foreign policy as well.  If the situation with a nuclear Iran comes to a head in the next 4 years, it is absolutely essential that we have someone like Obama in charge.

But do you think Obama can explain all of this in a debate, when Romney hammers him repeatedly about killing the bad guys?  God help us all if he can't.  Romney is surrounded by the same neo-conservatives that Bush was.

Rich people to the rescue! Taking apart Romney's tax plan

In the first two presidential debates, Mitt Romney -- without using that horrid word 'stimulus' -- has claimed that his 20% across-the-board cut in marginal tax rates will spark massive job growth AND reduce the deficit.  He has also claimed that the middle class will primarily benefit from these cuts, while the rich will not.

Deficit reduction would presumably occur because he would broaden the tax base by eliminating deductions and subsidies, and because the stimulative impact of the tax cuts would increase investment and demand, and effectively pay for itself through the increased tax revenue that the subsequent growth would provide.

None of these claims are backed up by the evidence.

Economist Laura D'Andrea Tyson gives us a really good breakdown in the NY Times Economix Blog today -- so let's go through it.

Romney proposes the following:
1.  an across-the-board 20% cut in marginal tax rates
2.  repeal of the estate tax (he conveniently didn't mention this in the debates)
3.  repeal of the alternative minimum tax
4.  cut the corporate income tax to 25%
5.  extension of the Bush tax cuts

These cuts would reduce federal tax revenue by an estimated $6 trillion over ten years -- $5 trillion for the first four listed above, $1 trillion for the extension of the Bush cuts.

In other words, his tax cuts would increase the deficit by that amount, all other things being equal.

It should be noted that 4 of the 5 proposals above would be heavily weighted toward tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans -- roughly 2/3rds of the $6 trillion would go to the top 5%, or those taxpayers making $200,000 a year or more.

Even if this $6 trillion could be made up through eliminating loopholes, deductions and subsidies (which it can't), is this really the most effective, efficient and just way to create jobs?

The answer is clearly no. 

More to the point, there is little evidence that cuts of this kind would actually create jobs.

Tyson:

If tax cuts for high-income earners generate substantial real economic activity and job creation, then we should expect to see two things in the data. First, employment growth should be stronger in the years after tax cuts for these earners. Second, parts of the country with a larger share of high-income earners should experience stronger employment growth after national tax cuts for these taxpayers, because the places where they live receive a larger share of the national tax cuts.

What do we actually see after combing through a half-century of economic data? Neither of these predictions is borne out.

Personally, I'm skeptical about relying upon massive tax cuts at all right now, for economic stimulus.  Given how low borrowing costs are at the moment, and given our need for massive infrastructure investments (and money for states and localities), I still strongly prefer to see a job creation program that leans more toward spending than tax cuts.  If we are going to temporarily have the federal government spend more than it takes in, we'll get more bang for our buck with investments.

That said, if the approach of both parties is going to lean heavily toward tax cuts, the evidence is clearly on the side of giving them to the bottom 95% - not the top 5%. 

While Tyson found no link historically between job creation and tax cuts for the wealthy, there is a clear link between job creation and tax cuts for everyone else: 

Almost all of the stimulative effect of income and payroll tax cuts on job creation in the short to medium run result from such cuts for the bottom 95 percent.

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service confirms this.

Remember that consumption -- regular people spending money -- still accounts for 70% of our economy.  Our recovery is slow because of insufficient demand.  It is not possible for the spending of the top 5% to spark sufficient demand to create jobs in large numbers.  Tax cuts for the bottom 95% are much more likely to be quickly spent.  And when they are spent, demand increases...which will lead to more hiring.

In survey after survey, employers have been abundantly clear:  they will hire more people, when demand increases.  Romney seems to think that if he is elected, his overall personal white guy awesomeness will somehow magically cause the confidence of wealthy white employers like himself to soar...inducing them to hire more people.

Does that sound like an economic policy to you?  Romney and his fellow 'job creators' may seek to trickle something down on the rest of us.  But whatever that something is, I'm pretty sure it won't be jobs.  And keep in mind that every tax cut dollar that is distributed in the way that Romney proposes is a dollar that cannot be spent on public investments that will benefit the vast majority of Americans in the coming decades -- public education, public health, infrastructure, etc.

Live Blogging the Presidential Debate, over on Facebook

I will be live-blogging the Presidential debate tonight over on Facebook, though I do hope to transfer my comments (as well as those from the 1st debate) to here tomorrow morning.

If Rush Limbaugh were a Democrat and a university president, he'd be John Silber

Former BU president and Democratic Gubernatorial nominee John Silber just passed.

I do extend my sympathies to his family.

It is often said that one should not speak ill of the dead. In this particular case, however, I have been speaking ill of the deceased since the early 1990s. I see no reason to stop now.

As a public figure and academic leader, John Silber was a loathsome philistine. William Weld remains the only Republican I've ever voted for, and that is because Silber was such a racist bastard I couldn't bring myself to give him any more power than he already had.

And by the way, I personally -- privately -- heard damning judgments of the man as a college president from both Howard Zinn and philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.

If you manage to piss off BOTH of those guys, you probably need to check yourself.

There is a crack, in everything -- Happy Birthday, Leonard Cohen!

Happy 78th birthday to Leonard Cohen.

For reasons I can't quite explain, Cohen seems to have become some sort of sensei for me at this point in my life.  Did you ever read an author, listen to a musician, or meet a person that you were suddenly -- blindingly -- convinced had something essential to teach you?

Maybe its because I'm a slowly aging Jew enticed by Buddhism, who aches in the places he used to play, like Cohen himself.

Maybe its because I, like Cohen, revel in the reality that I am a cracked vessel -- because that, as he says, is how the light gets in.

Don't know.  I do know that I'd love to spend an evening of conversation with the man, over a bottle of peaty scotch.

I will probably have to settle for seeing him in concert in Boston in December.

3 Cheers for the Sedentary Voter...

You know, they say 'free your mind, and your a*s will follow.' Well...

An end to the days of whine and poses: my exhaustion with white privilege, already

Call me crazy, but watching the GOP over these past few years (and tonight) seems to be inducing a bit of self-hatred in me.

I am pretty much all done with privileged white men. 

My god, what a whiney group of narcissists. OK, if you're a bit panicked at the thought of becoming a numerical minority in the US in a few years, I think I get that.  But do you really need to take over the Party of Lincoln and TR, and bring the whole damn temple down with you?

Personally, THIS privileged white man is looking forward to the new, young, and diverse America that the GOP is so desperate to vilify, indenture lock up and lock out. Perhaps then, this nation can finally redeem its soul, and -- to paraphrase Langston Hughes -- let America be America again.

Rerum Santorum?

Interesting that Romney used Rick Santorum to blow the racial dog whistle at the GOP Convention tonight, and repeat the lies about welfare reform. 

Perhaps he didn't want Paul Ryan to be the only Catholic on the podium who completely ignores the teaching of his own church on poverty?

Who built Mitt Romney (other than Bill Bain and George Romney)

So, who built Mitt Romney? And are all of us responsible (is the Mittster a public good), or just the individuals present at the conception?

Or perhaps he created himself, ex nihilo? I note the similarity between this phrase, and nihilism, and will now stop.

Bush won't be at the convention, but his disastrous legacy will be

GOP, party of fiscal responsibility?  Sorry folks, this isn't your father's Republican Party.  

We seem to have fallen into a twisted Alice in Wonderland version of Schlesinger's cycles of American political history.  

First, the conservatives hold power, and spend our national inheritance on the functional equivalent of coke and cars, like some kind of addle-brained trust funder.

Then, the voters select grown-ups (Democrats) to try to clean up the mess.  Because Democrats today are -- virtually without exception -- fiscal conservatives, their attempts to do so tend to be cosmetic and inadequate in scale, if well intentioned.

Finally, unable to find a ladder tall enough to get us out of the hole dug by the Republican predecessor, the Democrats are accused of presiding over 'socialism,' and the American people vote for more frat boy madness.  

With each cycle, the madness seems to get, well, madder (note this year's GOP platform, which calls for a return to the gold standard).

George Romney Knew Better: Educational Inequality and the Continuing Significance of Racial Segregation

Nationally, black and Hispanic/Latino public school students are now more segregated from whites than at any point in the last four decades.  Most policymakers and activists on all sides accept the fact that our metropolitan areas are segregated by race as well as class, and work within its confines.  In this age of greatly diminished expectations – the ‘twilight of common dreams,’ as Todd Gitlin once put it – it is assumed either that these patterns aren’t terribly important, or that the practical and political obstacles to changing them are too overwhelming.  Today, Democrats and Republicans alike unashamedly promote efforts to “gild the ghetto” with charter schools that are more segregated than regular public schools, and with compensatory education programs that have little chance of truly compensating. But the black-white academic achievement gap is unlikely to narrow much further without revisiting the imperative of residential integration in our metropolitan areas.  By ignoring segregation, we thrust the entire burden of our unjust social geography on urban and high poverty schools, leaving white and privileged suburbs untouched.

However, as Richard Rothstein and I argue in "The Cost of Living Apart," in the September/October 2012 issue of The American Prospect, it wasn’t always this way.  From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s these geographical inequalities were very much a part of our public discourse.  As Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) during Richard Nixon’s first term, Republican George Romney – Mitt’s father -- led an ultimately unsuccessful crusade to use the power of the federal purse to ‘loosen the white noose’ and open up the suburbs along lines of race and class.  He believed that racial inequalities in education and opportunity could not be overcome any other way.  Forty years on, it seems clear that George was right.  Unfortunately, as the Democratic and Republican National Conventions near, it appears that neither party is willing to take up the banner of racial integration.

Racial segregation matters -- in Providence and elsewhere

As Rothstein and I discuss in the longer paper on which our American Prospect article is based, social scientific research on school segregation is quite clear.  Geographically concentrating poor black and Latino children – as we do in the Providence metropolitan area, and throughout the United States -- is harmful.  Integration, on the other hand, is beneficial.  Because black and Hispanic children in Providence and elsewhere are much more likely to be poor than white children are, racial segregation not only isolates them – it compounds the negative consequences of poverty, by concentrating it geographically. 

While we have much more research on the consequences of racial segregation for blacks than we do for Hispanics, both groups are clearly segregated here – in Providence, and in the metropolitan area as a whole.  This is one of the ten most segregated cities in the country for Hispanics.  In the Providence-Fall River metropolitan area, according to the U.S. Census, Hispanics have a ‘dissimilarity index’ of just over 70.7%; the index for the smaller black population is 65.5.  

What does this mean?  This means that 7 out of 10 Hispanics (and almost that many blacks) in greater Providence would have to move, in order to achieve an integrated pattern.  The dissimilarity index for Hispanics is slightly lower for Providence, 57.6%.  But all this tells us is that Rhode Island’s Hispanic population is heavily concentrated in the Capital City – and segregated within it.  The average Hispanic resident of Providence lives in a neighborhood made up 45.3% of other Hispanics, despite being just over 30% of the city’s population. 

While approximately half of the residents of Providence are white, the school age population is overwhelmingly Latino and black -- 84%, according to the latest RI KidsCount Factbook.  There are many reasons why this might be the case, some of them innocent and easily explained.  But the lack of affordable housing in the suburbs, due in large part to exclusionary zoning, is clearly a major factor trapping low and moderate income Hispanics and blacks in Providence.  Because of this, and because most public school children attend neighborhood schools, one consequence of the residential segregation of blacks and Latinos is school segregation.  26.4% of Hispanic public school students in Rhode Island, for example, attend extremely segregated schools (those with a 90-100% minority student body).

Combine this with Providence’s high rates of child poverty – among the worst in the nation for two decades now – and it should be abundantly clear that segregation matters.  Hispanic and black children in the Providence area (and nationally) are not only three times more likely to grow up in poverty than white children are; they are much more likely to live in predominantly poor neighborhoods and attend high poverty schools, even when they themselves aren't poor.  Nearly four in ten black and Latino children in Providence grow up in poverty.  As a consequence the average Hispanic primary school student in the Providence metropolitan area attends a school with a poverty rate of just under 75%.  The numbers are comparably stark for black students.  For whites, who are disproportionately found in suburban schools, its 32.1%.  Just 4% of students in Barrington's public schools live in poverty.

Politicians and experts typically refer to schools as “failing” if they are filled with poor children who don’t do well on high-stakes tests.  Faced with the obstacles posed by racial segregation and geographically concentrated poverty, however, such schools may be doing as well as they possibly can.  

Black and Latino children from poor Providence families disproportionately suffer from poor health, which causes frequent school absences.  A higher percentage of Providence school children changed schools during the 2010- 2011 school year than any other district in the state. During that time period, one in four (25%) Providence children changed schools, compared to the state rate of 14%.  Providence also has a very high rate of chronic early absence, the percentage of children in kindergarten through third grade who have missed at least 10% of the school year (i.e. 18 days or more). During the 2010-2011 school year, more than one in five (22%) Providence children in grades K-3 were chronically absent.  Children from poor families are much more likely to suffer from financial crises causing repeated household moves that result in changes of teachers and schools, with a resulting loss of instructional continuity.  

Poor children are also more likely to be living in communities with high levels of crime and disorder, and to have parents who are incarcerated (or whose employment prospects are greatly limited by prior imprisonment).  Recent scholarship also indicates that children growing up in poverty experience high levels of stress at young ages, which not only affects their health -- it shapes their cognitive development too.  Poor black and Latino students in Rhode Island on average attend low-performing high schools (according to test scores), where schools spend more time on discipline and 'teaching to the test' and less on instruction, while white students mostly attend high-performing high schools.  Poverty and inferior educational opportunities combine to drive blacks and Latinos out of high school at rates higher than that of white students, increasing the chances that their own children will grow up in poverty too.  

Children stuck in high poverty schools -- who are, again, disproportionately black and Hispanic -- are often isolated from the positive peer influences of middle-class children who were read to frequently when young, whose homes are filled with books, whose adult environment includes many college-educated professional role models, whose parents have greater educational experience and the motivation such experience brings and who have the time, confidence, and ability to monitor schools for academic standards.

Recent research confirms that integration not only benefits black students but also does no harm to white classmates, provided the concentration of disadvantaged children is not great enough to slow the instructional pace or deflect time from academics to discipline. When children whose parents have strong educational backgrounds comprise a strong classroom majority, all students benefit from the academic culture established by that majority. Integration is no panacea, but without it other reforms to raise the achievement of disadvantaged children have less promise.

 George Romney understood this.

Back to the future:  George Romney and the 'white noose'

The Civil Rights Act of 1968 – the Fair Housing Law – was passed in the waning days of the Johnson Administration.  Its language was ambiguous.  It could be interpreted narrowly, as a prohibition against racial discrimination.  Or, it could be seen as requiring HUD to ‘affirmatively promote’ racial and economic integration across the metropolitan landscape.  Recognizing the role that government at all levels had played – and continued to play – in the racial segregation of American cities and suburbs, George Romney chose the latter interpretation.  Federal policy, suburban zoning laws and discrimination by realtors and the financial sector had “built a high-income white noose basically around these inner cities, and the poor and disadvantaged, both black and white, are pretty much left in the inner city,” he told Congress.”  His 1968 campaign book, The Concerns of a Citizen, urged “we must have open housing on a statewide basis; eliminate zoning that creates either large-scale economic or racial segregation; provide low-cost private housing through nonprofit organizations in all parts of the metropolitan area and throughout the state.” 

During his first 18 months in office Romney quietly developed a series of programs and proposals that put HUD (and Nixon) on a collision course with metropolitan segregation – and those who preferred to leave it untouched.  The latter group included the increasingly suburban base of the Republican Party. 

Operation Breakthrough was designed to build low and moderate-income housing in the suburbs.  While it wasn’t aimed at racial integration, Romney intended to use HUD funding to either entice or coerce suburbs into revoking their exclusionary zoning laws.  Open Communities, however, was directly aimed at the racial integration of the suburbs.  Hidden even from the White House, by the summer of 1969 Romney and his staff had taken a full inventory of all federal programs that could be used to open the suburbs, and had even draw up a list of possible target areas.

They were deeply critical of the failures of their predecessors.  The Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, despite all of their rhetoric, “lacked the political fortitude to deal with urban problems on a metropolitan-wide basis,” wrote Under Secretary Richard Van Dusen in an internal policy memo in the fall of 1969.  Instead, “they poured large amounts of money into the ghettos.”  “The white suburban noose around the black in the city core is morally wrong, economically inefficient, socially destructive, and politically explosive,” one staffer wrote to Romney in August 1969.  What was needed was a “frontal assault on suburbia.”  Using the carrot – the promise of federal funds – HUD began to put both programs into practice during the first six months of 1970.  Romney went to Congress in May 1970 to get legislative authority to use coercion (‘the stick’) as well.

George Romney was no lone crusader.  Indeed, it is a sign of how far even liberals have strayed in the 21^st century from the dreams of the civil rights movement, that questioning metropolitan segregation was quite common among Republicans as well as Democrats in the 60s and early 70s.  President Johnson was somewhat vexed by the fact that each urban, suburban and educational task force he appointed in his second term seemed to call for metropolitan desegregation, even as he was casting about for alternative and more politically viable approaches to the urban crisis.  This included the famous Kerner Commission, which in 1968 called for the integration of “substantial numbers of Negroes into the society outside the ghetto,” through the reorientation of federal programs and the placement of low and moderate-income housing in the suburbs.  Failure to do so would condemn blacks to a “permanently inferior economic status,” rendering the U.S. “two nations, separate and unequal.”

Angered at Romney’s secrecy, and under increasingly intense pressure from suburban officials, Nixon made his position explicit in a series of statements between December 1970 and June 1971, declaring his belief that the federal government did not have the legal authority to ‘force’ racial and economic integration of the suburbs.  While he would enforce non-discrimination law, he insisted that racial segregation in the suburbs was a byproduct of economic considerations, not discrimination.  Privately, he even considered introducing a constitutional amendment banning federal efforts to force educational and residential integration.  Romney was pushed out after the November 1972 election.  “Nixon’s policy,” according to Charles Lamb, who served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the mid-70s, “was consciously designed to protect the status quo, to shield suburbs from economic, and thus racial, integration.  Its political intent was to preserve the Republican political base for years to come.”

Federal urban policy since then has focused primarily (and weakly) on improving the quality of ghetto neighborhoods (and their residents) by devolving resources and power to municipal authorities, public-private partnerships and Community Development Corporations (CDCs), not on the forces that create and sustain metropolitan inequality.  Particularly since 1980, federal and local governments have embraced an ideology of market accommodation in policy making that emphasizes privatization, decentralization, economic competitiveness, and creating a favorable ‘business climate.’  National policymakers in both parties have continued to deploy the rhetoric of decentralization and localism – for education, as well as urban policy more generally.  This approach enjoys support from free-market advocates on the right as well as community-based activists on the left.  Politically, it has granted both political parties a kind of cheap policy grace, presenting the appearance of doing something about poverty and urban problems, but without the political and economic costs that confronting metropolitan segregation, economic insecurity and an underfunded and inadequate welfare state would actually entail.  The social consequences of this persistent localism have been profound, setting in motion a kind of “feedback loop” that reinforces patterns of place-based racial and economic inequality.

Despite the growing ideological divisions of our age, there has been a surprising political convergence on issues related to urban policy, social services, and housing.  From the spread of charter schools, to the expansion of home ownership through financial deregulation, it is apparent that left and right agree on much more than is commonly assumed.  Virtually all of these points of agreement either hide or exacerbate racial and economic segregation, or geographically concentrate its deleterious consequences.  In many ways the Obama Administration’s embrace of urban charter schools, school choice, and the use of market models for the assessment of students, teachers and schools, is emblematic of this convergence.  Despite a lack of evidence of their efficacy, and growing empirical support for the integration of schools by class as well as race, the ‘achievement gap’ is virtually never discussed in terms of the intersection between inequality and social geography.

George Romney understood that there is little chance we can substantially narrow the achievement gap without breaking up heavy concentrations of low-income minority children in urban schools, giving these children opportunities to attend majority middle-class schools outside their “truly disadvantaged” neighborhoods. But urban children cannot have a practical opportunity to attend such middle-class schools unless their parents have the opportunity to live nearby.

The truth about Medicare cuts

Just in case you need some quick truth on the nature of Obama's cuts to Medicare, which you are hearing so much about, Krugman has it. 

Note, of course, that the Ryan Plan includes the exact same cuts, even as he demagogues them out of the other side of his mouth. 

The difference is how the savings are used: Obama us

es them for subsidies to enable low/moderate income Americans afford health care coverage, which is part of why the Congressional Budget Office found that ObamaCare doesn't increase the deficit. Ryan uses them to 'pay' for tax cuts for the wealthy, which of course would blow up the deficit...unless you eviscerate most of the federal government's essential functions.

Which he proposes to do.

A primer on Romney's VP, Paul Galt (er, Ryan)

Everything you always wanted to know about Paul Ryan, courtesy of The American Prospect's election newsletter, Ringside Seat!

PAUL RYAN: BEHIND BLUE EYES

After a campaign spent pandering slavishly to the right, Mitt Romney has finally inspired a giddy burst of bipartisan consensus: On the right and left, everyone’s jumping for joy about his new running mate. For conservatives who’ve always regarded the former “Massachusetts moderate” with flinty suspicion, it wasn’t enough for Romney to endorse and effusively praise Paul Ryan’s infamous budget—a plan that would give the richest Americans an average tax cut of at least $150,000 a year and cap Medicare benefits, meaning that seniors would fall further and further behind over time. They didn’t believe Romney. But now, with Ryan on the ticket, it’s clear that Mitt fully intends to bomb the social safety net back to the 19th century, and to turn America into a land of super-haves and 99 percent have-nots.

The Prospect’s Jamelle Bouie has long argued that Romney truly meant it when he embraced Ryan’s blend of Austrian economics. And if anyone still had a doubt who will be setting economic policy in a Romney administration, he did introduce his pick this morning on the USS Wisconsin as “the next president of the United States, Paul Ryan.” It was a slip of the tongue, but also a grim reminder: What Dick Cheney was to foreign policy, Ryan would be to domestic policy—terrifyingly running the show, albeit with a dash of homespun, blue-eyed charm.

But if the prospect of Ryan as economic commander-in-chief is enough to send any liberal (or moderate) into a depressive funk, the idea of running against him gets the blood up. It’s guaranteed to have that effect on President Obama, who in many ways has already been running against Ryan. The single most rip-roaring speech of the 2012 Obama campaign was back in April, when the president picked apart the Ryan budget in devastating detail and memorably described it as “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” Ryan was in the audience that day, sitting right on the front row, and was reported to have been visibly fuming as the president eviscerated his plan, saying that it “paints a picture of our future that is deeply pessimistic." 
The president has been trying all along to persuade his somewhat dispirited supporters that this is a high-stakes election—a referendum on the country’s future economic direction. Now, thanks to Romney’s risky choice of a light-on-experience economic extremist as his Cheney, Obama won’t have to do any more convincing. But he still has to sell the dangers of the Romney/Ryan plan to the rest of the country. 
SO THEY SAY 

“We don’t need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget.”

—Grover Norquist 

DAILY MEME: A PAUL RYAN PRIMER

• Although Paul Ryan has been one of the most polarizing and oft-debated figures in government among pundits and politicos, he's an unknown quantity for most of America. 
• Ryan got his start as a staffer on the Hill, making ends meet slinging margaritas and whipping Washingtonians into shape. He was even trusted to drive theWienermobile during his tenure as an Oscar Meyer salesperson.
• But that salesperson background could backfire. Ryan might come across to many Americans as robotic as his running mate. 
• After all, he was voted "Biggest Brown-Noser" in high school. 
• He was first elected to Congress at age 28, and he's only 42 now. That means Ryan is going to be around for a loooooooooooooong time, regardless of whether the Republican tickets wins this White House tug-of-war. That is, unless he turns into campaign kryptonite like Sarah Palin. 
• Ryan also has some Ryan Gosling cred. Just check out his "Hey Girl" Tumblr. 
• Apparently the House Budget Committee chair loves noodling. Here is thedefinitive primer on noodling. 
• He also has very serious hair. Here are 21 pictures of it being oh so serious. 
• Ryan is Catholic, which means this is the first time a Protestant hasn't been on a presidential ticket ever. 
• When asked why he didn't choose to articulate his positions by running for president this year, he said, "Well, that's because I like myself too much." 
• Remember what Newt Gingrich said about the Ryan Plan? "I don't think right wing social engineering is any more desirable than left wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate." 
• He also has a history of trying to spread the objectivist gospel: “I give out ‘Atlas Shrugged’ [by Ayn Rand] as Christmas presents, and I make all my interns read it. Well … I try to make my interns read it."
• Not everyone is scared of Ryan's vaunted intellectual prowess. Paul Krugman said of the Ryan budget in 2010: "it’s the audacity of dopes. Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce." 

WHAT WE'VE WRITTEN ABOUT RYAN

• Paul Ryan might be as disastrous for the GOP as Sarah Palin was four years ago...
• ...which may mean that Barack Obama is the politician looking most forward to his place on the GOP ballot. 
• Especially since this means the GOP ticket seems driven to relive the Bush years...
• ... a time that the current administration gleefully jumps to deride at every opportunity. 
• Even in 2011, we were saying that Paul Ryan would be crushed if he ever ran for higher office.
• But he's clearly been thinking "about how the words 'Vice President Ryan' sound" for quite some time. 
• As far as party battles go, where one falls on the Ryan budget "is about as clean and plain as an ideological dispute gets."
• And now is the time for reporters and pundits to seriously delve into Paul Ryan's political vision, and not be led astray by his wonky charm as they have been before.

WHAT WE'RE READING ABOUT RYAN

• Jonathan Chait: “The Legendary Paul Ryan.”
• Ryan Lizza: “Fussbudget: How Paul Ryan Captured the GOP.”
• Derek Thompson: “Paul Ryan's budget takes us back to 1950. That's not a metaphor. That's a statistic.”
• David Corn also picked apart the deep “unseriousness” of the Ryan budget—which Republicans, of course, take very seriously indeed.
• The economic hardships of Ryan’s hometown, Janesville, Wisconsin, were featured in Mother Jones.
• And if you want to know why conservatives are so ga-ga over Ryan, check out this homage in the Weekly Standard.

POLL OF THE DAY

Here’s one measure of how risky Romney’s vice-presidential choice could prove. Last year, CNN polled the country on Paul Ryan’s radical plan for “reforming” Medicare. Fifty-eight percent opposed it; just 35 percent liked it. 

The system shook, but stood: the ObamaCare decision

You know, part of my joy today is about the Supreme Court's decision on the Affordable Care Act -- but I think its deeper than that. 


Its rooted in my sense that the legitimacy of a core American institution (the Court) wavered, even shook, but ultimately remained in place. 


I remember the acid in my stomach after the Bush v. Gore decision, and anticipated having the same feeling this morning. The nihilism that American conservatism seems to have adopted seems bent on devouring standards, institutions and processes that have served this country well for a very long time -- like some sort of civic auto-immune disease. 


As James Fallows recently wrote, "liberal democracies depend on rules, but also on norms -- on the assumption that you'll go so far, but no further, to advance your political ends. The norms imply some loyalty to the system as a whole that outweighs your immediate partisan interests."

It was out of such loyalty that Gore stepped aside after the Court stopped the vote count in 2000, as much as many of us wanted him to fight.  It was in violation of that loyalty that the Bush campaign sought to stop the vote count, and in violation of that loyalty that the Supreme Court's narrow majority upheld Bush's strategy.

It was in support of that loyalty that Chief Justice John Roberts, however reluctantly, ruled today. Perhaps there still are a few true conservatives left among the bomb-throwing crazies, who would undo in the name of patriotism all that makes that patriotism morally justifiable.

Sir Thomas More, as quoted in "A Man for All Seasons":

"And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, ...the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down..., do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!"

America joins the ranks of civilized nations!

Victory!  I'd like to take this time to welcome my country to the 20th century, and offer a brief shout out to Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and every great American who has fought for universal healthcare as a human right.


And thanks, most important, to President Obama -- who saw this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and grabbed it!

A love song for Anthony Kennedy

I just met you, and this is crazy, but here's ObamaCare -- uphold it baby!


[A revision:  Kennedy you two-timing so and so, this is for John Roberts instead.]