“The Worst Possible Version Of Himself”: Yeah, MSNBC, Mark Halperin Will Solve All Your Problems
What do the thought leaders in the liberal blogosphere think about Mark Halperin? Well, Markos Moulitsas says he’s “a useless piece of shit who is always wrong about everything,” “has no political acumen,” and has been “engaged in a long-running jihad against the truth.” Duncan Black says that Halperin “sucks ass” and is “proud of the fact that Matt Drudge rules his world.” Gawker’s new boss, Alex Pareene says Halperin is “the world’s laziest dispenser of conventional wisdom” and “the worst hack in America.” Also he’s so bad at what he does that “the most offensive thing about the existence of Mark Halperin is that he’s the worst possible version of himself.” Esquire‘s Charles Pierce says Halperin is one of “the worst two things that have happened to American political journalism in the past 30 years” because “he long ago invented the kind of Beltway insidery railbird bullshit that passes today for analysis.” Heather Digby Parton says that Halperin is “the quintessential Villager, a man who exhales conventional wisdom the way the rest of us exhale carbon dioxide.” Ed Kilgore is especially brutal on this subject:
Mark Halperin is one of the most famous, and certainly one of the most richly remunerated, journalists in Christendom—yet is capable of writing graph after graph and page after page of palpable nonsense, expressing not only an indifference to but an active defiance of any objective evidence that transcends the “insider” information he purveys…
…He writes what Villagers want to read, and is rewarded with unequaled access to their most avaricious thoughts and intentions. And because they do matter in politics, albeit not as much as they would wish, there is a sort of “journalism” going on, but not of the sort that should be taken seriously…
I bring this up because MSNBC wants to do something very silly.
The talks, first reported by New York Magazine, center around rebroadcasting Bloomberg’s 5 p.m. show “With All Due Respect” at 6 p.m. on MSNBC, sources at both networks who are familiar with the discussions said.
“With All Due Respect” is hosted by “Game Change” co-authors Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, who are regular guests on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
For many at NBC, the idea of rebroadcasting a competitor’s show feels desperate. “Talk about out of ideas,” one on-air talent at MSNBC said. “We’re going to run a rerun of another rival network’s show? As a programming decision that is completely insane.”
That last quote there is pretty easy to put in Rachel Maddow’s mouth, don’t you think?
In any case, who’s the audience for MSNBC’s political programming? Who are their fans? Who do those fans read on the internet? Who do they respect?
And even if much of the MSNBC audience has never heard of weird names like Atrios, BooMan, digby, and kos, they’re still cut from the same kind of cloth. They do not want to listen to Mark Halperin for ten minutes, let alone a full hour. If they don’t already, they will hate Halperin with the white hot heat of a thousand suns.
Maybe the management should ask the greatest blogger of all time, The Rachel Maddow Show producer Steve Benen, what he thinks about airing Mark Halperin Bloomberg reruns at 6 p.m.
Here’s what Benen had to say about Halperin back in August 2008:
It’s difficult to identify with any real certainty the single worst political analysis of the presidential campaign, but if you missed ABC News’ “This Week” yesterday, you missed Time‘s Mark Halperin offering analysis that was so bizarre, it was tempting to think it was intended as satire. Only in this case, Halperin was serious.
So, if this is what MSNBC Chairman Andrew Lack wants to do, he should resign before he humiliates himself and pisses off all the actual talent he’s already assembled.
It’s also unclear that either side would get a significant ratings boost from the deal. MSNBC’s 5 p.m. show, “MTP Daily,” hosted by Chuck Todd, has floundered in the ratings. The show has averaged 499,000 viewers since it launched, and just 65,000 of those viewers are in the coveted 25-to-54 year-old demographic.
But sources at NBC say Lack may be less concerned with ratings than with relevance. Halperin and Heilemann are big names in New York and Washington, and their addition could buy MSNBC a greater stake in the political discussion during the 2016 campaign. To that end, sources said, he may be willing to overlook the hurdles.
Trying to be more relevant by running reruns of Mark Halperin that first aired on a rival network that no one watches?
Good luck with that.
By: Martin Longman, Web Editor for the Washington Monthly, November 20, 2015
“The GOP’s Self-Inflicted Wounds”: Keep One Thing In Mind; The Party Establishment Brought This Plague Upon Itself
As the leading Republican presidential candidates rant and rave about deporting 11 million immigrants, fighting some kind of world war against Islam, implementing gimmicky tax plans that would bankrupt the nation and other such madness, keep one thing in mind: The party establishment brought this plague upon itself.
The self-harming was unintentional but inevitable — and should have been foreseeable. Donald Trump and Ben Carson didn’t come out of nowhere. Fully half of the party’s voters didn’t wake up one morning and decide, for no particular reason, that experience as a Republican elected official was the last thing they wanted in a presidential candidate.
The insurrection that has reduced Jeb Bush to single-digit support while Trump and Carson soar is nothing more than the understandable reaction of the jilted. Republican leaders have spent the years of the Obama presidency inflaming GOP base voters with extreme rhetoric and wooing them with empty promises. The establishment won its goal — electoral gains in Congress and many statehouses — but in the process may have lost the party.
Unrest was brewing among true-believer conservatives even before Barack Obama took office as the first African-American president. George W. Bush had angered the base with his budget-busting expenditures for Middle East wars and a new prescription drug benefit under Medicare. What had happened to the party’s commitment to fiscal responsibility?
The final straw for many came when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and Bush, in his final days, won authorization of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program — a massive bailout for the big Wall Street banks. It was a wholesale violation of conservative principles that helped inspire the birth of the tea party movement.
With the economy still in crisis, Obama took actions that further riled conservatives — pushing through Congress a messy economic stimulus package and rescuing General Motors and Chrysler. And then the president turned to health care, ultimately winning passage of the Affordable Care Act.
The GOP saw a golden political opportunity. Rather than work with Obama toward compromise, Republicans positioned themselves as implacable foes of the president and all he stood for.
As the tea party increasingly came to demonize Obama for being an alleged Muslim or socialist — and even to delegitimize him as supposedly having been born in Kenya — the Republican establishment shamefully played along despite knowing that none of this rubbish was true.
The result was a sweeping victory in the 2010 election. Republicans captured the House by electing dozens of tea party-backed candidates, who came to Washington with revolution on their minds.
Experienced GOP politicians who should have known better allowed this insurgency to push the party into a series of showdowns with Obama that Republicans could not possibly win. Having told the base that great things could be accomplished by shutting down the government or threatening default on the national debt, the establishment had to say, in effect, never mind.
Voters began to realize that they’d been had. The Republican leadership talked a good game at election time, but never delivered.
Is it any wonder, then, that 51 percent of Republican voters (according to the Real Clear Politics poll average) say they favor Trump, Carson or Carly Fiorina, none of whom has ever held public office? Or that another 11 percent support Ted Cruz, whose career in the Senate has consisted of vehemently opposing his own party’s leadership as a bunch of weak-kneed quislings?
If you add it up, roughly six of 10 GOP voters tell pollsters they reject any candidate the Republican establishment likes. That amounts to a party in open revolt.
There are those in the Republican establishment who look at prior elections and predict the outsider candidates will eventually fade. There are those who believe the fear of terrorism, post-Paris, will lead voters to choose safety over adventure. Perhaps this is something other than whistling past the graveyard, but that’s what it sounds like to me.
Are voters who have been on the raucous, anything-goes Trump bandwagon for months going to fall meekly in line behind someone like Bush or Marco Rubio? It gets harder and harder to imagine such a thing.
Meanwhile, the whole field is being pulled so far to the right on issues such as immigration and taxes that any of the likely nominees will have a hard time winning the general election. This is a fine mess the Republican Party has gotten itself into, and we won’t know until the early primaries whether there’s any hope of a way out.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, November 26, 2015
“Europe The Unready”: Europe’s Ability To Protect Itself Turns Out To Have Been Undermined By Its Imperfect Union
Thanksgiving as we know it dates not to colonial days but to the middle of the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln made it a federal holiday. It is, in other words, a celebration of national unity. And our national unity is indeed something to be thankful for.
To see why, consider the slow-motion disaster now overtaking the European project on multiple fronts.
For those not familiar with the term, the “European project” has a very specific meaning. It refers to the long-term effort to foster a peaceful, prosperous Europe through ever-closer economic and social integration, an effort that began more than 60 years ago with the formation of the Coal and Steel Community.
The effort continued with the creation of the Common Market in 1959; the expansion of that market to include newly democratic nations in southern Europe; the Single European Act, assuring free movement of people as well as goods; further extension of the European Union to former Communist nations; the Schengen agreement, which removed many border controls within the continent; and, of course, the creation of a common European currency.
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One way to think about all these moves is that they were attempts to give Europe many of the attributes of a single nation without formal political union — at least not yet. The more or less explicit hope of many in the European elite was that technical and economic integration would gradually foster psychological unification, and eventually pave the way for a United States of Europe.
And for a long time the project worked very well, as Europe grew steadily more prosperous, peaceful, and free. But how would the process deal with setbacks? After all, the European project was creating ever-growing interdependence without creating either the institutions or, despite elite hopes, the sense of political legitimacy that would be needed to manage that interdependence if things went wrong.
Which brings me to the disasters.
At first sight, the financial crisis, the refugee crisis, and the terrorist attacks might not seem to have anything in common. But in each case Europe’s ability to protect itself turns out to have been undermined by its imperfect union.
On the financial crisis: There’s widespread consensus among economists (though not, alas, among politicians) that Europe’s woes were mainly caused by mood swings among private investors, who recklessly poured money into southern Europe after the creation of the euro, then abruptly reversed course a decade later. Yet something similar happened in America, too, where money first poured into mortgage lending in the “sand states” — Florida, Arizona, Nevada, California — then took flight. In the U.S., however, the pain of that reversal was limited by federal institutions, ranging from Social Security to deposit insurance. In Europe, unfortunately, the cost of bank bailouts and much more fell on national governments, so that private-sector overreach soon spilled over into fiscal crisis.
On refugees: the politics of immigration in general, and refugees in particular, are nasty everywhere — just listen to Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. But Europe is also trying to maintain open internal borders while leaving the management of external borders to national governments like that of impoverished, austerity-ravaged Greece. No wonder, then, that border controls are making a comeback.
And on terrorism: No free society can ever be perfectly secure from attack. But think about how much harder it gets when anti-terrorism is pretty much left up to national governments, whose capacity for policing varies greatly. Imagine how New Yorkers would feel if political paralysis in New Jersey were getting in the way of any effective anti-terrorist policy there, and you have a good idea of the problems Belgium has created for France.
Ideally, Europe would respond to these setbacks by strengthening its union, creating more of the institutions it needs to manage interdependence. But the political will for that kind of move forward seems lacking, even for the most obvious steps. For example, on Tuesday the European Commission proposed the gradual phase-in of a Europe-wide system of deposit insurance, which is the bare minimum needed to maintain stable banks within a currency union. Yet the plan faces furious opposition within Germany, which sees it as a giveaway to its spendthrift neighbors.
The alternative is to take a step back, which is already happening on border controls. European leaders are, rightly, concerned that each such move damages the whole European project. But what is the realistic alternative?
The truth is that I don’t know the answer. I’m just thankful that America has the kind of unity Europe can only dream of — at least for now. I guess we’ll see what’s left after President Trump gets done with it.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, Opinion Pages, The New York Times, November 27, 2015
“This Too Shall Pass”: Everyone Should Calm Down About Trump’s Ongoing Presence At The Top Of The GOP Field
I’ve been consistent in my belief that former reality TV star Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee. I wrote as much a week-and-a-half ago arguing that neither Trump nor retired pediatric neurosurgeon Ben Carson would be the nominee, given that never in history has a major party nominated someone as bereft of political or military experience as either of these two.
Since then Carson has started his descent back into oblivion – he’s dropped five points in the RealClearPolitics average of polls over the last two-and-a-half weeks – perhaps because the Friday the 13th attacks in Paris exacerbated questions about his grasp of foreign policy. Trump, as has been the case at virtually every turn since his announcement of candidacy, has benefited, gaining three points over this same time period.
So it was gratifying to see yesterday a post by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver arguing that everyone should calm down about Trump’s ongoing presence at the top of the GOP field. He makes a few strong arguments, the first being that while Trump has remained comfortably in the 25-30 percent range, his “middling” favorable ratings make it unlikely that he will be able to grow that base as the field winnows. Another is the question of whether the Trump coalition will actually show up and vote (a question we’ve previously considered in this publication).
And, he adds:
It can be easy to forget it if you cover politics for a living, but most people aren’t paying all that much attention to the campaign right now. Certainly, voters are consuming some campaign-related news. Debate ratings are way up, and Google searches for topics related to the primaries have been running slightly ahead of where they were at a comparable point of the 2008 campaign, the last time both parties had open races. But most voters have a lot of competing priorities. Developments that can dominate a political news cycle, like Trump’s frenzied 90-minute speech in Iowa earlier this month, may reach only 20 percent or so of Americans.
He looks at Google search data and exit-poll data from previous elections to demonstrate both when voters have typically indicated that they made up their minds and also when their interest (as expressed by their online search patterns) starts to rise. “This burst of attention occurs quite late – usually when voters are days or weeks away from their primary or caucus,” he writes.
So as he suggests, everyone should calm down. Return to your regularly scheduled wondering if Trump’s latest insanity will be the event to pop – or at least start taking the air out of – his balloon. Last week it was his flirtation with fascism (yes, I know that he didn’t come up with the idea of stripping Muslims of their constitutional rights, but he didn’t bat an eyelash at it either and to the best of my knowledge still hasn’t actually repudiated the idea); over the weekend he mused about how roughing up a protestor at one of his rallies was the right thing to do. Now we’re onto his fabricated recollection of “thousands” of Jersey City, New Jersey, residents – he has identified them as Muslims but even supposing such an event took place, how would he be able to tell their creed over the television? – celebrating the 9/11 attacks. “It was well-covered at the time,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” What’s actually been well-covered is the fallaciousness of his memory on this topic. Think about this: Is there any way that mass celebrations in an American city would have not been – to borrow a Trumpism – a yuuuuge story in the supercharged days, weeks and months after 9/11? If such video existed, it would have run on an endless loop on Fox News Channel. It would have become an instant and enduring meme on conservative talk radio and on the right-wing of the Web. Even Carson, who initially shared Trump’s “memory,” has since retracted the claim. I suppose the same conspiracy that has purged every news report of the thousands of cheering New Jerseyans from the collective memory and all contemporaneous news reports must have gotten to Carson too!
The Iowa Caucus is scheduled for February 1 of next year. One circumstance that is bound to change in the more than two months before that event kicks off the formal primary season is advertising. Most of the ads that have run thus far have been positive and soft – basic introduce-the-candidate ads. But sooner or later rival candidates and other outside groups will start training their negative ads on Trump. There is reason to believe that advertising has been able to move numbers – which makes sense if you believe that the polls thus far have been driven by news coverage (which I do). Let’s see what happens when the ad dollars start flowing in earnest and especially start recounting some of Trump’s greatest hits, like those mentioned above.
The whole thing is bizarre – and will be superseded by his next outrageous pronouncement, which will no doubt be that Muslim terrorists attacked the first Thanksgiving dinner.
This too shall pass, in other words – rather like the Trump candidacy.
By: Robert Schlesinger, Managing Editor for Opinion, U.S. News & World Report; November 27, 2015
“The Libre Initiative”: The Koch Brothers Are Spending Big Bucks To Win Over Latinos. Here’s Why It Probably Won’t Work
The Koch brothers are sinking big money into an expanding effort to win over Latino voters in the 2016 cycle with a simple message: Don’t go with the party that will make you reliant on government. Vote Republican instead.Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But it’s intended to make a broader point that I hope to illustrate below.
Ashley Parker of the New York Times reports that the conservative billionaire Kochs are helping to bankroll a multi-million-dollar effort to reach out to Latino voters, called the Libre Initiative, that is meant to fill a vacuum left by the Republican Party, which the group thinks has failed miserably in this outreach mission. The Times sums up the group’s message this way: “economic freedom and smaller-government principles will yield opportunity and prosperity.”
The Libre Initiative, which is wooing Latino voters in part by giving them Thanksgiving turkeys and an array of community services, seems to be evolving into a substantial presence. The Times reports that it has as many as 70 employees in nine swing states, is funded in part by an organization of Koch network donors, and is expected to spend over $9 million in this cycle.
The group supports comprehensive immigration reform, putting it at odds with the overall posture of the Republican Party, not to mention the GOP presidential candidates, who have lurched so far to the right on immigration that the RNC’s 2012 autopsy counseling a more welcoming posture towards Latinos is nothing but a dim, distant memory. However, suggests the Times, support for immigration reform might not be enough to win over Latinos, who could be alienated by the group’s — and the GOP’s — position on the Affordable Care Act and other issues:
The group has also drawn the ire of some Hispanic and immigration advocacy groups by raising concerns about some of President Obama’s more sweeping executive actions on immigration, and by pouring money into House races to help defeat two Hispanic lawmakers — Pete P. Gallego of Texas and Joe Garcia of Florida, both Democrats — because they supported the president’s health care plan, among other issues Libre opposes.
But the group, in providing services to Latinos, hopes to get them to abandon their support for the Democratic Party by persuading them to embrace a limited government vision instead:
These community services speak to what the group says is its core mission — to provide Hispanics with the tools to lift themselves toward the American dream of economic freedom and success, while also showing them that they do not need to rely on the government to succeed.
“At the end of the day, we want Hispanics to prosper, to be self-reliant, to achieve their full potential,” said Ivette Fernandez, national director of the Libre Institute, which is running a pilot program to help people study for and pass G.E.D. exams. “So we felt it was very important to be able to educate them on those principles the country is based on.”
The trouble with all this is that Latinos tend to support the overall Democratic governing vision — and not the Republican one — when it comes to economic issues and health care, too.
— 56 percent of Hispanics polled said the Democratic Party is more in line with their views on economic policy and job creation. Only 22 percent said that of the GOP.
— 64 percent of Hispanics polled viewed Obama favorably, and 59 percent said they were satisfied with his presidency.
— Only 36 percent of Hispanics polled viewed the GOP favorably. By contrast, 68 percent viewed the Democratic Party favorably.
What’s more, the Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll has consistently found that a majority of Hispanics view the Affordable Care Act favorably. While there may be a downswing right now in favorable Latino views of the ACA, previous downswings have been regularly followed by subsequent upswings. The point is that Latinos have consistently viewed the health law more favorably than the overall American public has — for years now.
This has historically proven frustrating for Republicans. After the 2012 election, Mitt Romney complained that Barack Obama had beaten him in part with “free” government giveaways to core constituencies, including “free health care” to Hispanics in the form of Obamacare, as if Dem policies are little more than dependence-fostering government handouts designed to buy voter loyalty. Romney had used similar “free stuff” rhetoric during the campaign, and ended up performing abysmally among Latino voters.
If the Koch-funded group’s core message is that Democratic economic and health care policies produce an over-reliance on government — whereas scaling back government and unleashing the power of free enterprise are the only true solutions to maximizing opportunity and self-realization for Latinos — it would not be surprising if many of them end up rejecting its fundamental animating principles this time around, too.
By: Greg Sargent, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, November 27, 2015
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