“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Amy Goodman: FBI Raids and the Criminalization of Dissent
Early in the morning on Friday, Sept. 24, FBI agents in Chicago and Minnesota’s Twin Cities kicked in the doors of anti-war activists, brandishing guns, spending hours rifling through their homes. The FBI took away computers, photos, notebooks and other personal property. Residents were issued subpoenas to appear before a grand jury in Chicago. It was just the latest in the ongoing crackdown on dissent in the U.S., targeting peace organizers as supporters of “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Coleen Rowley knows about the FBI. She was a career special agent with the FBI who blew the whistle on the bureau’s failures in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks. TIME magazine named her Person of the Year in 2002. A few days after the raids in her hometown of Minneapolis, she told me, “This is not the first time that you’ve seen this Orwellian turn of the war on terror onto domestic peace groups and social justice groups … we had that begin very quickly after 9/11, and there were Office of Legal Counsel opinions that said the First Amendment no longer controls the war on terror.” . . .
This is all happening while the Obama administration uses fear of terrorism to seek expanded authority to spy on Internet users, and as another scandal is brewing: The Justice Department also revealed this week that FBI agents regularly cheated on an exam testing knowledge of proper rules and procedures governing domestic surveillance. This is more than just a cheating scandal. It’s about basic freedoms at the core of our democracy, the abuse of power and the erosion of civil liberties.
(my emphasis)
Glen Greenwald:WH messaging about its base
President Obama gave an interview to Rolling Stone and actually said this:
The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible. . . . .If we want the kind of country that respects civil rights and civil liberties, we’d better fight in this election.
(Greenwald’s emphasis)
This may be one of the most audaciously hilarious political statements I’ve read in quite some time. The Holder Justice Department’s record on domestic civil rights enforcement is actually one of the few areas where there has been substantial improvement — and that’s a perfectly legitimate argument to make — but for Barack Obama to cite “civil liberties” as a reason why Democratic apathy is “just irresponsible,” and to claim with a straight face that this election will determine whether we’re “the kind of country that respects” them, is so detached from basic reality that I actually had to read this three or four times to make certain I hadn’t misunderstood it. To summarize Obama’s apparent claim: the Republicans better not win in the midterm election, otherwise we’ll have due-process-free and even preventive detention, secret assassinations of U.S. citizens, vastly expanded government surveillance of the Internet, a continuation of Guantanamo, protection of Executive branch crimes through the use of radical secrecy doctrines, escalating punishment for whistleblowers, legal immunity for war crimes, and a massively escalated drone war in Pakistan. That’s why, as the President inspirationally warns us: “If we want the kind of country that respects civil liberties, we’d better fight in this election.”
Jane Hamsher: Hectoring the Base: It’s Not About GOTV, It’s About Laying the Blame
Obama is at it again, this time in Rolling Stone:
The president told Democrats that making change happen is hard and “if people now want to take their ball and go home, that tells me folks weren’t serious in the first place.”
Yes, for those wondering, this guy actually did win an election in 2008:
OBAMA: It is inexcusable for any Democrat or progressive right now to stand on the sidelines in this midterm election. There may be complaints about us not having gotten certain things done, not fast enough, making certain legislative compromises. But right now, we’ve got a choice between a Republican Party that has moved to the right of George Bush and is looking to lock in the same policies that got us into these disasters in the first place, versus an administration that, with some admitted warts, has been the most successful administration in a generation in moving progressive agendas forward.
The idea that we’ve got a lack of enthusiasm in the Democratic base, that people are sitting on their hands complaining, is just irresponsible.
I’d like to set the President’s mind at ease here. Even if the GOP wins both houses of Congress, he’ll still be President. And they’ll still need his signature on those bills.
But all of this “hippie punching” isn’t about turning out voters. To do that, as Obama well knows, you have to inspire them. Notice that nobody actually running for office is wagging their finger at voters and scolding them like a bunch of children.
No, this isn’t about GOTV. It’s about setting up a narrative for who will take the blame for a disastrous election. And once again, the White House doesn’t care if they make matters worse in order to deflect responsibility from Obama.
David Dayen: Has the White House Lost Their Minds?
Have you ever seen an athlete stay in the game for too long (no intentional resemblance to any quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings) because they cannot imagine a world without the adulation and cheering? That’s about the only analogy I can make to the persistent carping inside the White House, now a definitive strategy and part of the President’s stump speech, telling the liberal base to “stop whining,” “get over it,” “wake up” and “get in gear.” Blue Texan has an more complete list, and contrasts it with messages that would work on him.
Before revealing the latest in this genre, I would just add that I’ve never seen a politician run an election with the message “Don’t be stupid, quit your bitching and vote for me.” This goes orders of magnitude beyond “Here are the stakes, my opponent would vote against everything you care about. That at least has a certain time-tested quality. That would make the election a choice and not a referendum. But “vote for me, you simpletons”? There’s a reason that strategy has never been employed: because it’s so insane to think that open berating would inspire a voter to action.
Bob Herbert: What Is Paladino About?
Is the Republican candidate for governor of New York a racist, sexist, pornography-loving creep? Or are there other, more benign, explanations for the stomach-turning e-mails distributed by Carl Paladino?
One of the things that can happen in the news business is that some portion of a story becomes so vile, so offensive, it is virtually impossible to effectively recount or describe. Reporters keep their distance. Editors lunge for the delete button.
Such is the case with the images and videos forwarded by Mr. Paladino to a wide variety of people. The public should know about these mailings, and Mr. Paladino should give a full, thoughtful explanation of why he trafficked in such filth.
Joan Walsh: Say it ain’t so, Joe
Vice President Biden knows better than to tell the Democratic base to “stop whining.” Doesn’t he?
It’s been clear for a couple of weeks that Vice President Joe Biden was hitting the campaign trail with an assignment to rally the Democratic base. I watched his sit-down with Rachel Maddow Sept. 15, and he made a passionate appeal to the Maddow demographic, and Maddow herself. “One of the reasons I want to be on your show is to tell the progressives out there, you know, get in gear, man. Our progressive base…you should not stay home…you better get energized. Because the consequences are serious for the outcome of the things we care most about.”
On Monday though, Biden went a little beyond that, telling a crowd in New Hampshire that he wanted to “remind our base constituency to stop whining and get out there and look at the alternatives. This President has done an incredible job. He’s kept his promises.”
Now, I’m trying hard not to have a knee-jerk response to Biden’s dig.
Joe Conason: Are GOP midterm expectations oversold?
The “Democratic doom” narrative is meant to demoralize, but even Scott Rasmussen believes Dems will hold the Senate
Creating the universal premonition of Democratic doom is always among the most useful elements of Republican strategy. A broad feeling of foreboding demoralizes the party base, repels independent voters who prefer the winning side, and strikes emotional chords that are at least as important in electoral behavior as ideologies and issues. So Republican leaders and pundits regularly issue outlandish predictions of crushing victory, echoed across the media spectrum until they become self-fulfilling.
This year’s real conditions for Democrats are certainly threatening, but there are indications that the impending repudiation will not be as devastating as suggested by the current narrative. Whatever ultimately happens in the House, where a Republican takeover appears likely if not inevitable, the Senate will probably remain under Democratic control — despite enormous spending by “independent” groups such as the Club for Growth, the voice of Wall Street conservatives; American Crossroads, the Karl Rove outfit; and the Chamber of Commerce.
Dana Milbank: A sadder but wiser Axelrod packs his bags
It was, perhaps, inevitable: Twenty months in Washington, and David Axelrod has caught the bug.
This startling revelation occurred Monday afternoon, in a webcast interview with Politico’s Mike Allen, who noticed that President Obama’s chief strategist was “looking trim” and asked Axelrod his secret.
“Well, the real secret,” the newly lanky Axelrod explained, is “the first day I went on vacation I got sick and I learned I had a parasite.”
Oh, no! Was it a lobbyist? A defense contractor? One of those nasty social climbers?
“I want to make clear,” Axelrod continued, “that this happened outside of Washington. This is not a commentary on Washington that I have a parasite.”
Well, we in the capital are relieved to know that we are not the source of Axelrod’s digestive distress. But if Washington didn’t take those 25 pounds off of the 6-foot-2-inch Axelrod frame, this town did take something else from Axelrod and his boss: the notion that they would arrive and that the culture of politics would change.
1 comment
Author