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Wisconsin, And The Articles Of Faith

As I said previously, I think the challenge in looking at events unfold in Wisconsin between the Governor, the Legislature and the Unions, is trying to figure out how this plays out. Even though this week so a resolution that had clearly been likely all along - that Republicans would simply enact the union-busting provisions without the budget votes that needed Democrats present - where things go from here is still something of a mystery.

Partly, Wisconsin is a reflection of the worst effects of deep polarization in politics, where there is no common ground, where two sides can never agree. More than that, though, Wisconsin strikes me as being about the roots of that polarization - the "articles of faith" that drive true believers in both parties, beliefs that are, in many ways, unshakable.

Democrats have been dealing with their own damaging articles of faith during the health care "reform" debate and the aftermath of the 2010 elections. These were the assumptions that all the reform proposals were good and right, and that by being good and right, they would win with public support. Many liberals - good, thoughtful people otherwise - are bewildered to discover that so much of the health care reform plan is highly unpopular, did little to encourage voters in the last election, and still cannot be entirely sold to the public.

In my idealistic youth - and believe me, I had one - I too would have been mystified. We have a great ideas. We are right about so many things. Who doesn't see that? It took years, a number of painful Democratic defeats and some real immersion in the conservative side of arguments to realize that there are, in fact, more ways of looking at things - still, not necessarily the right ones, but listening to counterarguments made me think harder about what I consider facts, and what are simply, deeply held beliefs.

For conservatives, it's an article of faith that unions are bad, dangerous, and counterproductive (as well as a corrupt, slushy, source of funds for Democrats and their political goals). Their belief in this is unshakable, unbowed by facts... and not generally susceptible to negative public opinion.

Yes, it's also counterintuitive - especially when one considers that white working class voters - who make up some of the angriest and most vigilant conservative supporters - owe a great deal of their working rights, and their incomes, to the work of unions. A lot of this is regionally driven, an example of how views from the formerly confederate South have taken over the conservative movement and the GOP; it's the "right to work" South that was always the staunchest opponent of unions and unionization. And much of the recent anti-union effort has been driven by transferring "right to work" ideas from the South into the midwest.

We won't know, I think, for a while yet if these efforts take hold firmly enough to damage what remains of the union movement... but in a sense, it doesn't matter how this plays out to many conservatives. Win or lose, some will hold onto that article of faith that is antiunion. That's the real lesson of Scott Walker, who has shown the kind of absolute faith in an unpopular idea that may well lead to his political defeat.

In a sense, we were always bound to get to this point in American politics: the last few years have been, on both sides, a challenge to previously long held beliefs, certainties about how the world works, what people will agree with us about, and who's really right. Democrats have paid a huge price for insisting on a course of action on health care "reforms" that steamrolled public opinion, ignored reasonable opposition, and stifled even internal dissent. Similarly, Republicans have decided that the Walker play has to be defended at all costs, and unpopular arguments about fiscal discipline, steamrolling of public objections, ignoring reasonable discussions about compromise, and stifling internal dissent.

This is about true believers, and deeply held beliefs. And chances are, Republicans in many states will pay a price quite similar to theone Democrats just paid in the House elections. Because America, mostly, is not a nation of true believers... just situational ethiics and foxhole prayers. Wisconsin should never have come to this. But here we are... and if the true believers, and their absolutes, are rejected on both sides... then what?

Doing The Madison (Wisconsin), And Taking It To The Streets

Here's the question I keep having about the events unfolding in Madison: how does this all end?

The threat of our left-right divisions, after all, is not that one side will prevail... but that, in fact, the conflict keeps getting ratcheted up and no resolution is found. And the events in Wisconsin have to end at some point... don't they?

I've spent a lot of time - at least, as much time as I'm willing to, before I get exasperated - listening to arguments on all sides and, naturally, I come down on a decidedly left, but fiscally conservative side: there's no reason to eviscerate collective bargaining rights, but the way public service workers are compensated has to change. Lots of us can find common ground on something along these lines... but I don't think that's the point of what's unfolding in Wisconsin.

From the intransigence of the state's Governor, Scott Walker, to the "Senators on the run" sitcom of the Democrats who fled rather than see Walker's measure passed, it seems to me that real lesson in Wisconsin is each side testing the other for limits. How far will you go? How outrageous will you be? How many people can you rile up? And which side will cave?

Tht's why I ask again... how does this all end?

As a nation, we are generally conflict-averse and fairly comfortable and easily bored. Envisioning more mass labor protests, in other states, even with all that's happened and could happen on labor regulations, is hard to do. The energy to sustain this really isn't there. Around the country, looking at Wisconsin, I get the sense people - wherever theiir politics lie - wish Wisconsin officials would figure out a solution and end this.

The political and economic decisions we face do not get easier in the coming months and years; and maybe, given the passions surreounding some of these topics, there will be more taking it to the streets, more breakdowns of legislative comity, grinding our work and social lives to a halt. Maybe... but I kind of doubt it. I think no one knows how Wisconsin will end, but when it ends... there will be both a sense of relief that it's over and a resolve to figure out how to not let that unfold elsewhere. Whatever the price.

It's worth pointing out, after all, that with both side in Washington daring the other to reject a resolution to fund government operations through March and have a government shutdown, both sides managed to find a compromise they can live with. This, I thnk, is the real sense of our new normal: ugly compromises, barely manged week to week.

I'd love to say, as a good liberal, that this is all about union-bashing and we need to stand up for the workers and the unions. But the reality is that less than 10% of the country is unionized, and much of the unionized work force is public sector workers - teachers, emergency services, civil service. It's worth asking just what liberals think we are defending and where we think things go from here, when it comes to labor. I'd feel a lot better about a liberal, progressive movement that looked beyond unions, and worked harder to protect union gains for non-unionized workers, especially in service industries where unionization is unlikely to grow. And of course, I'd feel better about  conservative pushes for fiscal responsibility that didn't involve mistreating members of the poor and working classes, while protecting the rich and comfortable.

This is not the world we have. The world we have is the world that's on display in Madison. And that disagreement that's out in the streets, cannot be resolved. That's the reality. And knowing that... I still don't see how this all ends to anyone's satisfaction. But it does have to end... right?

Meet The President? Get A Job.

Here's one you may have missed; I know I did (via Ezra):

In eight trips outside Washington since Election Day, Obama - who frequently says he uses such travel to better understand the lives of Americans - has held almost no formal meetings with groups of unemployed people or organizations that advocate for them.

White House officials were unable to give a single example of him on these trips interacting, even in private, with a person who had recently lost a job, although they emphasized that they don't know about every person with whom Obama has talked.

This will surely serve as yet more proof to the Versailles Theorists (in my head, the Lambert post at Corrente practically writes itself), but the problem being highlighted seems like more than a story about a Washington bubble and serving a corporate elite. Who's been noticing that the President hasn't taken time to meet the unemployed? And who, really, is going to be dismayed by it?

One of the troubles I've had with "Versailles" has to do with a fundamental narrowness in the definition; by focusing on a small(ish) cadre pf Washington elites in politics, private business and the media, we miss a larger picture - that there's a reason Obama was elected and that his real base of support is among a part of the Democratic Party that doesn't usually get pulled into the "Versailles" definition, but probably belongs there: the college educated, upper middle class professionals who share the kind of abstracted liberal views that Obama's espoused, who tend to be more about the ideas and less about the practical applications of liberal thought.

Having the President meet unemployed people, after all, is symbolism: the real hard work of doing things like offering safety net programs, unemployment insurance and such is what one really wants done. Meet and greets can put a face on an issue, buttress an appeal for national sympathy... but helping people in need is more than a symboplic exercise and it won't help if the Administration's response to this bad press is pretty pictures and lip service. Despite grand announcements of a great reshuffling of his economic team, the fact remains that this is a White House that has not had great economic policies, and has been especially slack on making a priority out of helping the people most in need.

And as bad as that is... the real problem is that a large majority of Democrats are prepared to reelect Obama, regardless.

I tend to think it's a mistake to read into President Obama much more than the intellectual and social limitations of his class: it's easier for upper iddle class professionals to see poverty and unemployment as an abstraction than to face the painful, difficult realities of hardship. Helping people in poverty, helping the long term unemployed... this isn't easy, and it's not inexpensive, and it's not a recipe for short, near term success.On issue after issue, this is an Administration chock full of "Best and Brightest" types who mouth a familiar language of positivism and empowermentand try to do good on the margins. And that appeals, best and most, to a class of educated professionals who do much the same things in their lives and careers.

And of course, the obvious point is that, especially in this post midterm election landscape, the alternatives are much worse: if it's President Obama dn his team vs. Scott Walker, Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie, then yes, the choice is clear. It's a false choice... but not false for the "Versailles" reasoning  some people prefer. It's a false choice because the change that's needed is among liberals, within the Democratic Party and within the lower and working class left. The change we need is rejecting the control of a liberal agenda by an educated, professional elite. And the painful reality is... it's not happening. Lots of people would rather not think about poverty and unemployment and a host of difficult economic problems. And so we wind up with the middling choice of hard charging "realists" or Oprah-style empowerment junkies... when what we need is someone to take the even harder, less popular stance that we need to do less for people who already do quite well, and do more for people actually suffering and actually in need. Of course, to do that, it would help to see the people in need, and stop treating them, and their problems, as abstractions.

 

I'll Wait...

The news, these days, seems stuck on two storylines: covering the wave of uinrest across the Middle East and breathlessly reporting every minor step in Washington's painful budget process (chances are, that's followed locally by news in your state about the state level budget crises).

If I'm not writing much these days, and especially not much about politics, it's because I think a lot of this budget maneuvering is meaningless. Republicans in the House couldn't get their most extreme cuts past the Senate or signed by the President, and the President's new budget can't pass the House, and most of the speeches and news interviews are posturing with few real suggestions of a workable compromise. If nothing changes, then there's little likelihood of anything getting done. And for now... I'll wait and see what develops, but I don't expect much.

Everybody's got - well every political junkie like me, anyway, all nine of ya - their pet budget issues, and mine, as I've said is healthcare; or in the current language of budget talks 2 of the big 3 "entitlements" of Medicare and Medicaid. Like many on all sides of the budget discussion, I tend to agree that without some attempt to tackle health care costs through these two programs, it's impossible to significantly redue the deficit (you could cut defense spending, another unpopular topic, but you'd stil be stuck). So my test for any seriousness in these discussions of deficit reduction is: how seriously are they planning to reform Medicare or Medicaid?

By that measure, I'd say we're miles, and years, away from any serious or deep change. President Obama's budget did essentially nothing to tackleeither of these problems, and he admitted, basically, that he's not doing anything until Republicans offer a proposal. Republicans haven't offered much, either. John Boehner says he wants to remove President Obama's Medicare cuts from the Affordable Care Act and replace them with other "market based" reforms, and Paul Ryan now says he wants to turn Medicare into a "defined contribution" program, where the government subsidizes private health insurnce for seniors (yes, off in the distance there, you can see "mandate" in the offing), and then a system of "defined payments" for Medicaid, which means block grants to states.

Both are pretty much useless. Boehner's new version of "repeal and replace" is about as unserious as the "cuts" that Democrats have claimed to have enacted, but haven't and likely won't come to pass. Though Dems have cut funding for Medicare Advantage, which allowed some seniors to obtain HMO coverage rather than use traditional Medicare (which matters especially to seniors in rural areas where services may be scarce), Congress already put off, again, reforms to the reimbursement fees to doctors and has no plans to follow through on other cuts. Boehner's "market based" reforms is basically code for restoring the Medicare Advantage money, and some lip service about "waste fraud and abuse" but they have even less stomach for reducing reimbursements, which would be the crux of reforming the healthcare market. So much for "market based."

Ryan's proposal is interesting, but unlikely to amount to much; like much of his "Roadmap", it's a proposal Republicans support until actual hard choices have to be made (remember how they were cutting $100 million from this year's government spending, only to get to about $68?). Ryan's proposal would theoretically take the government out of the "price setting" role it has in healthcare through Medicare's reimbursement rates... but that's illusory because the "defined contribution" role, by its definition, would do the same thing. Also, there's a reason Medicare was started in the first place, and it's because private insurers don't particularly want to insure the oldest and sickest members of our population who require the most and costliest care. Ryan's Medicaid idea is even more fanciful: states alreeady can barley cover Medicaid costs, and that's under a formula that offers some flexibility to get additional federal money. Take even that small cushion away, and you're just making healthcare for poor people that much worse

The main point, though,  is that Ryan's proposals - or Boehner's - don't exist as legislation. Indeed, there's no indication that Ryan can write a bill with either proposal that can pass the House - even the Medicaid plan, which might be attractive to the House majority, will elicit howls from state Governors, mainly Republicans - never mind, again, the Senate or the President's desk. Better still, I don't think Ryan can even muster the relatively painful exercise of following through on soke sort of reimbursement reform in Medicare fees (which, by formula, would also affect Medicaid), and that's just basic - a House majority that can't cut costs by, well, cutting them... can't claim seirousness on deficit reduction.

In some sense all this roiling in Washington - and the implicit threat to voters of "don't keep yelling at us to cut something... or we will" - is pretending to make something not hard look very hard and complicated. It would be eay to cut the budget: just stop spending as much. The problem is, a government that actually spends less would be a government doing less, and that, in turn, would make people's lives harder. The math is not the problem... it's the potential results that are where the real pain lies.

Ryan and others are already trying to calim that "political demagoguery" is the problem, as a way to protect themselves from the negative fallout of proposals to cut Medicare or Social Security (remember, no one speaks for the poor, so Medicaid protests won't be heard). The harsher reality is that historically voters have punished Congresses that have cut those programs, and my bet - as many others do - is that voters wouldn't hesitate, in 2012, to do much the same thing. And for now, fear of being punished is really the beginning and end of why nothing has really happened on the budget. I'll wait... but I think we're going to find, in the coming months, that all of the notions of breathess drama and pitched budget battles will end in a muddle of both sides doing very little to reduce spending, or deficits, especially when it comes to the big, painful decisions needed on healthcare. And that's not necessarily good fiscal policy... but given this crop of politicians, I think failure and stasis may be the best result.

The Poverty Problem We Have (And The Revolution We Don't)

President Obama made history on Tuesday.

It was only the second time since Harry S. Truman’s State of the Union address in 1948 that such a speech by a Democratic president did not include a single mention of poverty or the plight of the poor.

- Charles Blow

In the ongoing discussion I've had with several people about, er... this stuff, one of the issues that's been put in stark relief is the tangled conditions of income inequality and deep poverty in America that are so much a part of our economic reality today. The sense that politicians are out of touch, the complaints that that the "mainstream media" is complicit in silence about people's suffering, the anger with corporate profiteering, especially with financial institutions... the things that drive the "Versailles" argument are in many ways symptomatic of a discussion about poverty that we're not having but exists, quite squarely, in the center of our political and eocnomic issues.

One reason I think we're not putting the poverty problem front and center - where it belongs - is because so many people se the problem as so blindingly obvious. Unemployment is spectacularly high. Home foreclosures are rampant. We've been in a terrible recession. Demand for government services is increasing. Surely, it seems, everybody knows there's a poverty problem. Don't they?

Well... do they?

It's long past time, I think, that someone - and a lot of someones - concerned about poverty put it out in public more starkly and far more directly than has been thus far, certainly since the recession began. Not an argument about who is out of touch. Not more polemics about how terrible rich people are. But someone to say, clearly and up front, that our society has to do something about poverty. And income inequality. And it has to be done right away. Seems obvious... but so far, it mostly hasn't happened. And I don't think it's a mystery as to why.

• Most of our current political debates are among the privileged and the comfortable. There is almost no one speaking for people in poverty, certainly no one to give voice to the actual experience and concerns of living in poverty day to day. We have experts, we have studies... and mostly, we have a professional, educated elite that likes to view poverty from a distance and talk about almost anything else.
• Actually dealing with poverty and income inequality doesn't mean poverty will go away. We will always be a nation where some have more and some have less. The challenge is to be a nation where our institutions do more for people with less, and our focus is not on giving more to people who have more.
• Taking stepes to reduce income inequality and better address poverty means many people will have to sacrifice and give things up. This is unpopular, and isn't helped by presentations, especially from the left, that put 80-90% of people into the "Middle Class" and thus somehow exempt from sacrifice. Until we - progressives, liberals, concerned antipoverty advocates -  can tell more people that "shared sacrifice" means "most of us", there's little change for the kind of changes needed.

It's depressing, and frustrating, that President Obama has turned out mostly to be a President of and for the upper middle class, educated. professional elite. It's not necessarily surprising - though, as Charles Blow notes, the President won more votes from lower income voters and the less educated - given that the President's base of support within the Democratic Party began with college students and their parents, but even his base, I think, felt that he was a President who would advocate for help for those actually in need far more than he has.

That the President hasn't been the kind of advocate many Democrats expected probably goes a long way - longer than his continued supporters might like to face - to explaining why his Presidency has been, at best, a middling success (or, to many, something of a puzzling failure). Though Democrats in Congress, working with the President, managed to pass a number of major pieces of legislation, the past two years of his Presidency showed an indifference to issues of poverty, and a preference for economic policies that often made bad situations worse - a Medicaid expansion in healthcare reform that is unrealistic, "Financial reforms" that don't do much to help individuals vis-a-vis banks, a general lack of practical solutions to address practical problems. Yes, the Congress extended unemployment benefits and beefed up fod stamp funds and showed some creativity on the margins; but the painful half measures on things like foreclosure protections and lack of affordable housing reforms were more indicative of the lack of priority given to helping those most in need.

This is why, for months, I've been most frustrated with the failure to develop a "Tea Party" movement on the left, a moment where frustration and anger with inaction in Washington by long serving Democrats would force intraparty challenges to the status quo. It's not the nation that needs a reviolution, and it's not the right wing that needs to throw out its RINOs. Progressives who are concerned with traditional notions of what a left wing party should be - focused on the working class, concerned most with policies and practical ways to help those most in need - ought to find much of the current Democratic leadership seriously wanting, and worth replacing. Yet, year after year, we stand by while the same people (Nancy Pelosi? Still?) do the smae things, getting much the same results.

This is the time when the case could be made to energize poor people, working class voters; this time, in the next few months, is the moment when a substantive challenge to a sitting President would need to take shape to have a serious hope of affecting change. It won't happen, I don't think, and many on the left will simply throw up their hands, complain about "Versailles", and grouse that Obama was not the one they wanted in the first place. And Republicans? At some point, the angry white working class of Tea Partiers is either going to notice that they've hitched their wagon to the people even less interested in income inequality and poverty... or they will continue to dream the dream that Stopping the Liberal Menace is the key to solving their problems, that sacrifice is for other people, and it's okay if poor people suffer... so long as it's not you.

Like many, I'm sure that the problems we have are largely unsustainable, that soemthing will have to give. And while I wouldn't entirely rule out the potential for uprisings... that seems a lot less in the cards than other, less extreme options. One of which is that, in the near term, poverty and income inequality simply get worse, and the opportunities for many simply shrink. We have a long way to go, and many people have pretty far to fall (including many who think it can't happen to them, and others who think it can't possibly be worse than it is already). I'd like to think we, as a society, don't want that to happen. But if we don't make dealing with the problems of income inequality and poverty more central soon and actually address things that can be addressed... things will get worse, for a lot of people.

 

The Republican Do-Over

Whatever else - and not to diminish a tragedy, but still - the attack in Tucson provided one healthy pause in that political discourse everyone is so worried about; the House of Representatives took a week off, more or less. And now the question becomes... what will happen when they return?

I'm sure there will be a lot of uncomfortble straining to "out-nice" the competition, but I expect, in short order, we'll pretty much get back rhetorically, to where we've been: ultimately the polarization we've experienced in our politics does not stem from animosity... it stems from the quite fundamental disagreements we have with one another. Those, most of all, did not go away because a delusional man went on a shooting spree in shopping center parking lot.

Still, in a sense, Republicans in the House will benefit from getting a chance to hit the reset button, and with it, they will get to erase a week of not entirely successful attempts to take control and flex their power. The failure to swear in two members will seem quaint, the reading of the Constitution will become a hazy memory (and sacrosanct, thanks to Rep. Giffords and her after the fact relevance of reading the First Amendment), and the "birther" outburst it provoked will be swept aside. And Repubicans will have a chance to reconsider their somewhat overblown attempt at "repeal" of healthcare reform.

It would be wildly optimistic to think that Republicans will shelve the repeal plan... but I suspect that the actual vote will now be a detail, and getting down to other business will become more important. It's the healthcare debate that's become "Example A" in many stories of our deeply unpleasant political discourse, and Republicans need to look like they "get it" on improving the tone of debate. Plus, it would also help them to have some actual proposals.

For Democrats, and the lefties who care deeply about getting some political successes (the kind of Obama supporters for whom the Giffords shooting has become their new rallying cry), I tend to think the next few weeks will be somehwat disheartening. In part, the sense that Republicans have to be nicer or they'll pay a price of some sort is wildly optimistic and thoroughly unrealistic. More over, the breadth and depth of the elction successes that Republicans had in House races has changed the political dynamic in ways I think many lefties don't understand. That's one aspect of the "more civil discourse" storyline that has not played quite the way many lefties would like: conservatives have not agreed to play by liberal terms, have made no promises to be "nice" as defined by others, and slapped away - successfully, I'd argue - attempts to link right wing rhetoric to the shooter.

All of which means that, surely as Michelle Bachmann can find a TV camera to talk to, the sense of newfound "civility" is probably bound to evaporate, and Republicans will, thanks to their majority, have no real reason not to do whatever they want to do - and successfully passing their repeal bill is still part of that plan. Democrats, I think, would have played a stronger hand had the vote happened today (Thursday) as planned - they'd have lost, but the debate would have been passionate, and the rhetoric would have played to their strengths ("How can you deny decent people vital services they desperately need?"... ah, can't you just hear Anthony Weiner now?). One of the dirtier secrets of the "repeal plan" is that, while Democrats sound good on the generalities, they tend to wilt on the specifics: the costs of expanding Medicaid, the lack of will to really rein in costs on Medicare, the unpopularity of a number of tax provisions. This debate, had it happened yesterday and today, would have played on the generalities, more than specifics.

In this new climate, where the first angry word is going to be met with stern disapproval from the Establishment (the MSM, the pundit class, "Versailles"... take your pick), Democrats will have to make their case carefully, still passionate, but without going - as they say - "too far." They will dare the Republicans to debate the specifics... and quite possibly not entirely like it when Republicans do just that. And when they get annoyed and want to vent... What's too far? Who decides? I don't think lefties are going to like the answer to ether question... especially when "not you" is the first answer.

Republicans could successfully recast themselves as the takers of higher ground, go light on the attacks, shake their heads, say "we hear you... but this is what people asked us to do" with just the right mix of firmness and regret. Republicans, really, have not generally shown the grace of winners, the pretentious unpretentiousness of being the majority, condescending to listen to the minority... before trampling on their dreams. They could finesse it now... though I tend to doubt it. All it takes a few fire breathers (Ms. Bachmann, care to comment?), and any attempts to sound high-minded will be worthless.

Even so, the clean slate that Republicans have been handed is a gift, one that I can't believe even they would just squander completely; even in these dark moments, when the House needed to come together, and the civility across party lines had to be first and foremost... Boehner seems to have stepped up and met the challenge. The good will he's bought - with moderates and even many hard edged Democrats, won't just go away in a day or even a week. Boehner's showing skill and finesse at casting himself as less partisan, more congenial, with a sense of how to play on the national stage (even his decision to skip the Wednesday "Memorial" for his previously planned cocktail fundraiser will probably not hurt - the Memorial looked too much like a pep rally to be unmissable). A Speaker Boehner who looks calm, steady, and sincere is no help to Democrats' plans to paint him and the GOP as radical, extreme, and un-civil.... And frustrated Democrats rarely do themselves favors in the heat of an argument.

Sure, I doubt Boehner can "out-cool" President Obama, the most acknowledged master of coolness we have, these days. But Boehner's mix of politesse, careful respectfulness and unabashed emotionalism at cheap sentiment is in some ways a more natural fit with the American mood than Obama's somewhat more aloof, above-it-all mien. And now, after a week marked by sadness and a sense of starting fresh, Boehner has control of how this conversation restarts, and what direction to start moving towards. That's power. And we'll get to see what he does with it... but I don't think there's a scenario in which, even in a month, Democrats can wrest that power to drive the upcoming discussions away from Boehner and the GOP. And just to be playground about it... that's why we generally don't allow do-overs.

Gabrielle Giffords, The Politics Of Violence, And A Lot Of Crazy Talk

Conservatives have spent the past 18 hours or so trying to deflect or change the topic to anything other than than the role of angry conservative rhetoric and its role in the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. They're probably wrong to argue that it can't be brought up... but probably right that, on balance, politics is really not the problem that led to Giffords and more than a dozen others being shot in a Safeway parking lot in Tucson.

The real lesson here, I suspect, is that many conservatives were caught short by the realization that Giffords was, and is, to many on the left, already a hero and a widely admired political survivor.

And I'm not just generalizing: I happen to love Tucson, and spent some time there, just last year. My mom gave money to Giffords via EMILY's List, and like many of the candidates, Giffords sent a mass Christmas card. Of all the ones we received from politicians, Giffords' card seemed the most natural and unforced.

There's no way, I think, for the politics of violence and the violent rhetoric of "lock and load" conservatism doesn't become a part of the discussion around the shotting. It decidedly doesn't help that Sarah Palin put up a "target map" of 20 Democratic Representatives she wanted to unseat, each distric marked in the cross-hairs of a gun sight. (and of the 20, 18 lost. Giffords was one of the two that targeting failed to remove).

But James Fallows of The Atlantic is probably right, and while the poltical climate is ripe for some examination... the story of mass shootings isn't defined by easy to explain political motives. And already, it's coming into focus that the alleged shooter in this case, as in so many others in recent years, is probably a story of untreated mental illness, and our societal failure in turning mental health into a law enforcement problem.

It's not Jared Lee Loughner's politics that will explain what led him to that parking lot with a Glock pistol, his mindset not defined by either his interest in Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto. Already, descriptions of "deeply disturbed" and "mentally unstable" have crept into explanations of his past actions, and the developing history of strange ramblings and inappropriate behavior in classroom settings is coming into focus.

The bigger problem now, as always, is that we have no way in this country to talk, reasonably or sensibly about mental illness, look rationally at the dilemmas we face in our failures to help people get diagnosed and treatedwhen issues of netal health are involved.There will be the perjorative attempts to label Louughner as "crazy" or "nuts", and there will be a loud pushback from those who fear stigmatizing all mental illnesses as prone to violence, dangerous, or needing to be locked up. People will try to find meaning in the rambling words, yet again, of someone who is quite possibly delusional, without providing any context. Our struggle to make sense of actions and decisions that are often inexplicable will go on.

Conservatives have done a terrible job, in recent years, of drawing lines and putting boundaries around practices and rhetoric, and those failings continue to haunt them when white supremacists rage, when militiamen wave their guns, Thinking about that last night, I realized that in some ways, this is about a little discussed divide in politics: consewrvatives tend to distrust the idea of groups and group thinking while enshrining the indvidual, however angry; while liberals believe much more in the power of organizing, and are leery of giving too much power or crdence ot one person. That dichotomy goes a long way to explaining conservative distrust of unions, organized workers, and protest groups... and the liberal concern for the separatists who hide in the woods with their guns (as well as their distrust of the kind of hero worship on the right for Ronald Reagan, or George W. Bush). What each side wants the other to do - expel outlying individuals, or discredit extremist groups - is often a direct challenge to a larger mindset.

These are the times when, for better and worse, we are watching the triumph of a David Brooks-like "sensible center," the people who stand for the proposition that the problem in our politics is that we've "gone too far" or "pushed the extremes." If we get a moment where the heated rhetoric gets dialed down, where some extremes of language get toned back... that's probably helpful for resetting, and reinvigorating the national political debate. It would, at least, suggest some sort of good coming out of a terrible tragedy. But conservatism didn't get Gabrielle Giffords and others sshot; Sarah Palin didn't put a gun into Jared Lee Loughner's hand. That's crazy talk... and it's the kind of thing we need less of, if we plan to have thoughtful discourse. But, if we did that, I suppose, then bringing up the topic of actual mental illness and how better to address mental health issues wouldn't seem so strange. Crazy... I know.

Health Care Reform's Latest Much Ado About Nothing

It's my line and I'm sticking to it: the real story of "health care reform" in the time of Obama is a story about what isn't happening, much more than what is, a theater of the absurd where a lot of people run around screaming, but nothing much really happens. And my advice remains: stay seated, and quiet.

Here's this month's storyline in a nutshell: The House Republicans have proposed a "repeal" of the Affordable Care Act. It will pass the House, because of their new majority. And it will be meaningless.

Now, can we all just get on with our lives?

The Fantasy That Things Can Only Get Better (And The Only Way Is Up)

The next couple of weeks will feature a lot of business news, news meant, in part, to try and shape what I suspect will be an upbeat narrative for the year: that the recession is over, that a new growth cycle has started, and things will be looking up.

Looking up is easy. Looking around... not so much.

Admitting that I am a decided Negative Nancy where these things are concerned (does anybody ever say, oh, Negative Ned? I'm thinking no...), I think early predictions of a good end to the year just passed, or some suggestion of an upbeat first quarter, or even first half, are both premature and somewhat wishful. We'll see what develops... but I think it's good to keep in mind both the problems we still face and some reasons why upbeat statistics may be less good than many think.

I'm especially deeply suspicious of suggestions that there will be strong retail numbers for the Christmas season; the idea of a blowout Christmas doesn't track with the feel I had from customers, or traveling around different malls and stores. Yes, there will be some sort of increase from Christmas 2009; but that increase is overstated when considering that the past 3 Chistmas seasons, at least, have been downturn-driven holidays, full of scaled back promotions and expectations. My sense is that retailers played it very safe this season, with smaller amounts of merchandise at lower prices, and still there was a great deal of deep discounting well before the final week (retailers tend to panic in years where Hanukkah - which was in the first week of December - and Christmas are far apart, because there's a distinct lull in between the two). People did respond by by buying more in the final week... but a lot of it was clearance sale driven. That's not a good sign for consumers reentering the market post holiday, when new Spring items start to hit shelves.

Then there's the sense that employment, which has been stagnating at a high level of unemployment for more than a year, may start to turn around. ADP, which processes much of the nation's payrolls, issued statistics today suggesting substantial renewal in hiring in December; perhaps, but I tend to wonder about the effect of seasonal hires, which no one discussed on the programs I saw, and the reality that most planned layoffs are executed prior to the last month of the year (give someone 4-6 weeks notice of termination, for instance... and your decisions roll out in mid-November). Initial jobless claims may in fact spike in the next few weeks, and I have my doubts about robust hiring in the first few months of the year, given that most business trends are stagnant, at best.

Beyond the beginnings of some rosy stats - which will be joined by a flood of what will, no doubt, be some fairly positive earnings reports from the final quarter of 2010 - it's worth keeping in mind that there are, still, some fairly distressing long term problems that are nowhere near resolved.

The most obvious, and least discussed in major media, is the continuing evolution of the foreclosure mess, its effect on home purchasing and ownership, and the putting off of some painful choices that may not wait much longer. Few people fully understand how profound some of the recent foreclosure revelations are - whether its the dawning realization that mortgage servicers lack a great deal of the appropriate loan paperwork to back up foreclosure claims, or the flip side revelations that many mortgage bonds may be more worthless than initially suggested (because the ownership of so many loans has been cast in doubt). Add to that the profound failure of the Obama Administration's lackluster efforts to relieve foreclosure pressures on any homeowners (the HAMP program, promised to help millions, has been used by less than a million, and many of those have continued into foreclosure, possibly hastened by poor supervision of banks in the program), and there's considerable likelihood that the housing market faces some profound pressures and upheavals in the coming months, even as Congress and the White House studiously try to avoid the problems.

Sales of existing homes continue to be affected by foreclosure sales, while sales of new homes continue to be almost nonexistent - there's no demand for new homes with the collapse of the market. These trends suggest that construction - both home construction and commercial - will not rebound anytime soon.

On top of that, whether one buys conservative lines about government budget austerity or not, the reality is that there are lilely to be pressure to cut and reduce government spending at every level in the coming year. This will lead to painful discussions and  choices about education, healthcare and welfare, just for starters, that are bound to get ugly, and probably quite mean. And neither choice is necessarily upbeat: refusals to cut will exacerbate budget issues, while cutting spending that helps the poor will exacerbate economic problems unlikely to be solved in the near term.

As the first few months unfold, a good test of just how much hope there may be to find a way through will be in President Obama's choices for reconstitutiing his ecnomic team - he has to replace both Larry Summers as his economic advisor and Christina Romer as head of his Council of Economic Advisors. Beyond that, there's a substantial question of whether Tim Geithner can last much longer as Treasury Secetary. So Far, the prospects that Obama will shake some of the complacency and corporate minded appointments on his economic team look unlikely; and by continuing in the same middling way that's marked his Presidency on econoic issues, it's likely that bad things lurking in the economy will get worse.

As I said, my instincts are towards gloom and doom on economic issues; with that, I tend to expect some sort of unforeseen - but predictable - spasm in the economy which may make things much worse, mush faster than many expect, sometime by June. But what do I know? The instincts to run away from major financial problems, to paper over the worst aspects, to pretend that nothing's wrong and everything will just get better... that's in our blood, and it's worked, in some sense, thus far. Maybe we'll just adjust to this "new normal", pretend that modest growth while millions suffer is somehow okay, and continue on our merry way. Things can only get better. The only way is up. Except, well, you know... if it's not.

What now?

I have to admit, much like Rachel Maddow, that the end of the year in politics was far different from what I expected. I, too, did not expect a lame duck session so chock full of undeniable accomplishment, genuine changes that forced me - even me - to admit that this President Obama guy might be kind of okay. Good, even.

The turn of events, all in the space of about 10 days, I think tended to throw everyone off, and has, in its way, made the start of this new year, and the prospect of a new Congress, even harder to anticipate. Will we get nothing but gridlock? Fighting? Or maybe, just maybe, some more remarkable accomplishments.

Don't look to me for predictions: I don't like them, and am often terrible at them. But I think to understand where we might be headed it's worthing noting that few people, seem to know what to make of what just happened, and almost no one seemed to note the few things I saw that might have some real impact going forward.

The main one, I think, is that the final weeks of the lame duck showed both the power and promise of Harry Reid, a reminder of why he is both underappreciated and uncredited with what accomplishments Democrats can actually celebrate, and that, along with his leadership, the story of the lame duck, probably, was the collapse of Mitch McConnell's "Just Say No" strategy for opposition. And if those two realities hold... then the next year or so may not be as bad as Democats fear... or Republicans hope.