Commonweal Institute Blog

A CNN poll this week shows that, as CNN worded it,

"...most Americans still agree with the bedrock conservative premise that, as the Gipper put it, "government is not the answer to our problems -- government is the problem."

"Queried about their views on the role of government, 54 percent of the 1,013 adults polled said they thought it was trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Only 37 percent said they thought the government should do more to solve the country's problems."

In a cleverly-titled October 24 post, “WITT, YOYOs, and Why Americans Don’t Go Green”, Joel Makower described the implications of market research about why it’s hard to get Americans to listen to talk about environmental problems, let alone to take appropriate action. Sponsored by ecoAmerica, a group which, from its minimal-information website, appears to comprise SRI International Business Intelligence, Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and Campus Climate Challenge, this

[…] extensive study of Americans' environmental attitudes…points up the serious obstacles faced by activists -- as well as green marketers in the private sector -- in getting Americans to align their actions with their innate desire to make the world a better place. […T]he big-picture takeaways are: • There is no common agreement on what environmental concern means or what to do about it. • Libertarian values are gaining over communal ones. • Environmental complexity is paralyzing. • Pocketbook environmentalism is powerful. […]The…research found that even the most environmentally sympathetic Americans have competing priorities; that environmentalism is hampered by anti-science and anti-intellectual attitudes; and that men and women have very different environmental concerns…. […]The millions of Security Moms and NASCAR Dads who haven't yet tuned into how climate change and fisheries loss might mess with their kids' future aren't about to be beaten into submission by the latest arguments or evidence. They're not about to make purchase decisions based on a maybe-someday rationale for stemming environmental problems. They want to know: what's in it for me, today? So, big news: Americans are shallow, misinformed, self-interested, and unsophisticated. But they're our neighbors, our colleagues, and our relatives. And they're likely your clients, customers, or constituents. If you want to move them toward greener behavior and actions, you'll need to deal -- carefully and creatively -- with all of these sobering realities.

Think of the environmental communication problem as the canary in the progressive coal mine. ecoAmerica's research shines a light on what is making the canary sick. ecoAmerica took the canary in for an MRI—market research investigation—and came up with a grave diagnosis. But they also got a better idea of what will be needed to cure the poor bird.

As we listen to the current flock of feebly chirping progressive politicos and spokespersons, we can tell that there’s something wrong. They sure don’t seem to be singing a coherent song that the public hums under its breath (despite current public revulsion against the conservatives in power).

The message here for progressives (and moderates, liberals, etc.) is: It’s about the marketing, stupid! Marketing is how everything is sold in America, from products to services to political ideas.

Marketing, based on underlying market research, is how the conservative movement has succeeded in developing support for their ideas and values. It’s how they prepare the ground for conservative candidates and policies. And it’s how they’ve been promoting the values—libertarian, pocketbook, anti-intellectual—that have been making it hard to have a broad-based, meaningful dialogue about America’s future.

To date, marketing capacity has been sadly lacking on the progressive side. Until moderates and progressives invest serious money in infrastructure functions like market research, language testing, narrative development, and strategic marketing services for the progressive movement as a whole, we’re not going to make progress.

Research is an essential ingredient of this mix—research to find out what matters to different sectors of the public, and how large sectors of the public can be persuaded to support progressive values and ideas. Linguistic analysis alone isn’t sufficient. Good policy ideas aren’t sufficient. Clever phrases or narratives aren’t sufficient. Single-issue efforts aren’t sufficient. Political polls about candidates and ballot measures aren’t sufficient. All of those things—language, ideas, phrases, narratives—should be tested to identify the ones that will work. Testing isn’t cheap, but it’s worth the investment if we want to be successful.

It’s time we deal -- carefully and creatively -- with these sobering realities.

It’s ironic that America’s flawed election system may have worked to the Democrats’ advantage this year. More than half of votes in Virginia were cast on electronic voting machines, many of which are touchscreen models that do not produce a voter-verifiable paper ballot. See here for a list of equipment used in Virginia. As a result, the whole idea of recounting the vote in the Allen-Webb race is a fantasy--it can't be done. This is a matter that Democrats and Republicans alike should be concerned about, a top priority for local activists as well as national legislators.

There is a lot of talk about "the center" and "centrists." Lots of people say the progressive blogs are on "the left."

To put this in perspective, when and where is the last time you heard anyone talk about nationalizing the oil companies? That would be a "leftist" proposal.

After all, the oil companies do not "own" the oil any more than anyone can own the air or the water. They are extracting OUR resource, under license from US to operate, and as corporations are granted limited liability by US. In exchange, they are supposed to be serving the public interest. A discussion about whether they are serving the public interest might involve questions about how much they are setting aside to cover the costs of putting carbon into the air, or to pay for research into transitioning away from fossil fuels a they start to run out, how much they pay their employees, and other ways that WE might benefit from allowing them to extract OUR resource. So obviously, they are not serving the public interest.

A broader discussion would ask whether we need to reform the corporate system into something that really does serve the public interest.

The fact is, "leftist" arguments are not even part of our national discussion. Without that perspective in the discussion, it can't really be said that there even is a "center," can there? And without ALL sides contributing to the marketplace of ideas, how can society arrive at solutions that incorporate the best ideas from all the different perspectives?

It is time to restore the Fairness Doctrine!

How many of you have heard of the Fairness Doctrine? Public broadcasters are licensed to use OUR airwaves. It used to be that in order to be licensed they were required to serve the public interest. One part of that public interest was to present a balanced view of different political viewpoints and to cover controversial issues of public importance. This "Fairness Doctrine" requirement was intended to protect the public from the possibility of moneyed interests buying up all of the information sources, leaving the public hearing only their viewpoint.

There was also a personal attack rule, which required stations to notify people or groups who were attacked on their broadcasts and give them the opportunity to respond on the air. And, candidates were given the opportunity to respond to attacks or endorsements of opponents.

Ira Chernus has rightly identified the need for progressives to an alternative narrative if we are to extricate ourselves expeditiously from the ongoing mess in Iraq. As he describes our present drifting predicament:

[…T]he story of the 2006 election isn't over yet. It's like one of those movies on DVD with several alternative endings. You get to choose the one you want. [….Bush] seemed to confirm the media's story of the election as a negative verdict on "staying the course" in Iraq….Of course, that narrative does have a good dose of truth in it. Most Americans do now oppose Bush's Iraq policy and particularly its implementation. But the Democratic win does not mean that voters simply saw through the administration's lies and now demand the true story. They just want a new story. [….]But the Democrats as a party have not yet come close to agreeing on a single, clear alternative policy -- no less a story to tell about it. They've merely played on our cognitive dissonance about the Bush administration's losing war by telling us what they are against. [….]

Chernus is right about the need for a new story in order to move forward:

[...T]he election results hint at a public hungry for a new story about the war. And George Bush's day-after response -- sacking Rumsfeld -- shows that, however reluctantly, he will change his story in response to voter disaffection. The public may be able to force policy change too, but only if there is a compelling new story that demands a new policy.

He doesn’t hold out hope for this new story emanating from either of the major political parties. Instead, he has dropped it in the lap of an unlikely savior:

This is a job for the peace movement, whose role has always been to articulate alternatives. Now is the time to offer a new narrative using an alternative recipe, the same one that the peace movement has always used: Take big dollops of truth and moral compassion in equal measure and stir.

The peace movement as a force has been marginalized by the media (despite its many sincere adherents) and by all the powers that be in Washington. The purity of the positions that traditional peace lovers tend to embrace might rightly be resisted by many of good will who see the complexity of the situation, which mixes the occupation of Iraq with nuclear weapons posturing in surrounding countries, China’s hunger for energy sources, Peak Oil, the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, Osama bin Laden, Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, etc., etc., etc. In this situation, pure peace-people will find it hard to be true to their traditional values and come up with a viable alternative and, if they do, the source of the message will unfortunately be discredited.

However, the need for a new narrative is a great opportunity for the progressive movement as a whole. This is the time that progressive voices representing multiple perspectives, not just peace, need to articulate and advance an alternative narrative. We need a narrative that represents the values of environmentalists, women’s rights advocates, those who oppose corruption in government and overweaning corporate power, labor, and civil rights advocates, all of whom have a stake in what’s happening in Iraq. We need a narrative that not only can gain more supporters right away for a new direction, but one that can strengthen a progressive vision that can serve as a foundation for preventing future conflicts of this type and for opening doors to solving related social problems.

The task of coming up with a creative alternative narrative should rest with a progressive infrastructure organization, not limited to a single issue, that is willing and able to develop various narrative options and and test them for effectiveness before widespread promulgation.

This is not the time for hunches or multiple competing stories—it’s the time for a disciplined, professional approach. And the sooner that process can start, the better.

Don't fall into the trap of believing the mainstream media smiley-face blather about how well this latest election went. Jonah Goldman and Tova Wang have written a concise summary of the election problems seen all over the country in 2006, rich with details.

The mainstream media in its instant analysis has proclaimed the election system worked surprisingly well in 2006. While it is true that no single catastrophe of election administration grabbed headlines this year, it is quite dangerous to suggest that the problems voters encountered on Election Day were not serious. As over 25,000 callers from across the country to the 866-OUR-VOTE voter information and protection hotline confirm, these problems led to thousands of eligible Americans being denied the opportunity to cast a ballot. […]While the case should not be overstated, it is critical that as we immediately enter the 2008 presidential election cycle, we undertake a more honest assessment of what happened in this election so we can concentrate on ensuring real, meaningful reform before the next federal election cycle. Only if we understand the problems that voters reported in 2006 can we enact real solutions that will move us toward a more fair and accurate system of elections.

It‘s about time the local, state and national leaders of both major parties recognize that our democracy is more important than partisan advantage. They should take advantage of the opportunity this coming year to make significant advances toward fixing our broken election system in time for 2008.

One would think that reporters and media commentators would have learned by now that they are vulnerable to being used as the vehicles for politically-motivated propaganda. The mainstream media, wittingly or unwittingly, not infrequently promote political agendas without checking out the background of guest speakers, “research reports”, press releases and identifying them to the public.

I recently caught venerable NPR providing an hour of air time to Mike Ratliff, senior vice president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), in an hour-long discussion of ISI’s misleading study, which appears to have been designed to persuade the public that higher education is failing to turn out informed citizens. Read the exposé,

Contrary to the dominant MSM narrative that Democrats won last week’s election because they moved to the right, Democrats won across the nation by running solidly progressive campaigns. In an interview on NPR, Senator-Elect Sherrod Brown, who beat incumbent Mike DeWine in Ohio, explained:

My race in Ohio, a state that has gone Republican more often than not in the last dozen years, a state that as people say is a slightly conservative state, I ran a very outspokenly progressive campaign. Standing up for the middle class, taking on the drug companies and the oil companies. You know, “Whose side are you on?” And I think that campaign shows that you can win in moderately conservative states as progressive Democrats, someone who is outspokenly supportive of advocating for the middle class. I think that will work in the Senate as it worked in Ohio. That is what I am, and what I think an awful lot of Democrats are. And I think it is a position that a lot of independents and Republicans found attractive in Ohio this year and will continue to around the country.

As Senator-Elect Brown’s campaign exemplifies, even in more conservative states like Ohio, Democrats won on progressive appeals and pragmatic solutions. Still, to ensure an enduring progressive majority, what is needed now is for progressives to connect these pragmatic solutions to deeper themes. Progressives need to articulate a deeper sense of what we want America to look like, with a narrative that speaks to our values, and to communicate where we want to lead the nation, and continue to build the foundational infrastructure to get there.

If we are going to ensure that last week’s election was more than a one-off, then developing compelling narratives and building progressive infrastructure continue to be of the highest priority.

From the Ho-Ho-Kus Cogitator, the personal newsletter of Commonweal Institute advisor Harvey Gotliffe:

Politicians and political appointees are born with the ability to rearrange the truth to give the impression that they are for this and against that, to enable them to convince their consituents that they are working for the common man -- the same common man that has 46 million of his number without any health insurance coverage. [...]

One political party promulgates the illustration of a jackass, while the other party visually depicts a bloated and lumbering mammal to symbolize their party's image. The donkey symbol for the Democrats and the elephant for the Republicans are both credited to political cartoonist Thomas Nast, who drew them for Harper's Weekly in the 1870s. The donkey's origin was first attributed to Andrew Jackson when he ran for president in 1828 and his opponents labeled him a "jackass" for his populist views and his slogan, "Let the people rule." He used the donkey to his advantage by putting it on his campaign posters.

In 1874, Nast's cartoon showed a deceitful donkey attacking an ineffective elephant, a symbol for Republican voters who were abandoning President Ulysses Simpson Grant. Other political cartoonists picked up on the symbols, and a two-animal menagerie was born.

Today the elephant wants to forget about the election and the donkey is braying loudly in celebration. There's hope that over the next two years, we won't be led by jackasses and by those who forget why they were elected.

You might have heard that progressive organizations are starved for funds, while the hundreds of right-wing organizations like The Heritage Foundation that pound us with the right-wing message every day are all flush with corporate and wealthy-donor money. You might have heard that people who work for right-wing organizations are well-paid, well-trained and have access to the latest technology and resources, while people who fight for OUR values have to work for a pittance and barely get by, use ancient technology, etc.

It's true. Progressive organizations ARE starved for funds, and as a result many of them primarily reach out to their membership lists - to appeal for funds - instead of reaching out to the public to broaden the progressive base. Meanwhile the conservative organizations are always out there making the case for conservative ideology and candidates. So the public - and resulting government policy - understandably leans right.

Because of this lack of funds many progressive organizations depend on a select few donors and have to be cautiously "centrist," moderating their message and mission rather than risk giving offense by reaching out with a message that would resonate with more people - and grow the base.

Here's a thought. If everyone who reads DailyKos, Huffington Post, Eschaton, Common Dreams, AlterNet, BuzzFlash, Smirking Chimp and all the other online progressive sites and blogs each gave at least $100 to a progressive organization - ANY progressive organization - it would end the dominance of the corporations and the conservative movement once and for all. There would be enough money for good jobs and internships for anyone interested in working to support progressive activities and candidates and policies.

Every time you turn on the radio or a cable news show you hear one form or another of the same old message, “conservatives and their ideas are good and liberals and their ideas are bad.” Think about how often you hear one or another variation of that theme.

But how often do you hear that liberals and progressives are good? How often do you hear that liberal/progressive ideas are better for people than a conservative approach? And if you are reading this you're looking for progressive ideas. So how often do you think the general public is hearing that progressives and their values and ideas are good?

The public does not hear our side of the story very often – if ever.

Why is that? Maybe it’s because we aren’t telling people our side of the story!

There are literally hundreds of conservative organizations that primarily exist to persuade the public to support conservative ideas (and, therefore, conservative candidates.) The people you see on TV or hear on the radio or who write op-eds in newspapers are paid by, or at the very least draw upon resources provided by these organizations. You might or might not have heard of the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute or Americans for Tax Reform or the This Institute or the That Foundation or the Government-and-Taxes-Are-Bad Association – but there really is a network of well-funded conservative organizations marketing the conservatives-are-good-and-liberals-and-government-and-democracy-are-bad propaganda every hour of every day and they have been doing so for decades.

Click this link to visit a collection of links to articles, studies, reports and other resources for learning about the right-wing movement, its history, how it is funded and how it operates.

Now, can you think of any organizations that exist to tell the public that progressive values and ideas and policies and candidates are good? Do you know about any organized effort to persuade people to support progressive values and ideas?

The neocons, continuing to focus their attention on what they see as the threat posed by Islam, have a new tactic to advance their clash-of-civilizations model. The Ethics and Public Policy Center, which describes itself in a cover letter as "D.C.'s premier institute dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy," is now distributing free copies of "Islamic Imperialism: A History" by Efraim Karsh of King's College, London--just in time for the Christmas season. Targets of these free books are "tens of thousands of .... Americans in positions of responsibility and influence." EPPC is backed by the usual funders of conservative movement organizations, such as the Bradley, Koch, Olin, Smith Richardson, and Sarah Scaife Foundations. Perhaps George W. Bush is waiting to come out with his new policy on Iraq until EPPC and its ilk have been given more time to stir up anti-Islamic sentiment among policy and media influentials. Watch for similar tactics on multiple fronts in coming weeks.

There's a very perceptive letter to the editor in the San Jose Mercury News today, from a Bryce Johnson in Saratoga, California:

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is no grammarian. In his statement: "Failure in Iraq at this juncture would be a calamity that would haunt our nation, impair our credibility, and endanger Americans for generations to come," he got both the mood and tense of the verbs wrong. He should have said: "Failure in Iraq at this juncture is a calamity that haunts our nation, impairs our credibility, and endangers Americans for generations to come." It is neither subjunctive nor future, it is fact and it is now.

Note the set-up that Gates was making -- that "failure" would be intolerable. We can expect this to lead to the conclusion that the US cannot afford to fail, hence measures such as continuation or even escalation are justified. Gates' statement is likely another part of the public opinion manipulation effort taking place while Bush delays on making up his mind about what to do in Iraq. Don't believe it -- Bush's mind is made up and the adminstration is telegraphing its intent.

The Democrats and wavering moderate Republicans in Congress should pay close attention to this opinion-manipulation campaign, lest they fall into the trap of colluding in escalation of the ongoing disaster in the Middle East. Reveal and resist the manipulation campaign--don't fall for it.

It's a real shame that Gov. Schwarzenegger of California, who has been acting pretty moderate during the past year and is clearly proud of the state's strong stand on global warming, has decided to shelve the prospect of investing in an ultrafast "bullet train" connection between the northern and southern urban centers of the state (San Francisco, San Jose, & Sacramento to Los Angeles & San Diego). Air travel is a significant contributor to global warming, and north-south travel in California is a major means of travel in this long, skinny state..

There has been ongoing interest in the bullet train for years among a small cadre of far-sighted people. It's time for responsible business folks to step up to the plate. Creative alternatives should be explored, such as investment in the bullet train as constituting a "carbon offset", or creation of a nonprofit "bullet train trust" (analogous to a land trust). Dealing with global warming is going to require thinking outside our life-as-usual boxes.

I’ve been thinking about the power of narrative—a story that weaves together where we have been, where we want to go, and why we want to get there—and how one progressive narrative can be used to tie together progressive values, recent new research findings, opinion pieces from other sources, and an unrelated book about protecting the commons.

The progressive narrative of a society in which all can have opportunity and thrive serves as a vehicle for bringing together our values, our past, and our dreams for the future. Conscious use of this same narrative in multiple contexts will reinforce it in the public mind, increasing its power and making it more likely to become our reality.

A comment sent in by Lew Creary:

In his "Progressive Etymology" posting, Chris Bowers sketches a history of the political usage of the term "progressive" that in effect recognizes four consecutive phases -- a classical phase that ran from the late 19th century until FDR's first campaign for president, a second phase initiated by FDR's use of the term "liberal" to describe his New Deal ideology and ending with widespread abandonment of the progressive banner after Henry Wallace's fourth-place finish in the 1948 presidential election, a third phase consisting of a 1990s revival of the term "progressive" by two quite different political groups (DLC types and Bay-Area entrepreneurs), and a fourth phase, now in progress (2007), in which the term helps to create a "big tent" in which diverse elements of the American center-left can comfortably gather.

Here, I want to call attention to a fifth significant strand in the usage-history of the term "progressive" that overlaps in time each of the four strands that figure in Bowers's account, but which goes unmentioned in that account. This fifth strand is the term's role as the name of a standard-bearing political magazine, The Progressive, which has gone by this name since 1929, and whose direct lineage goes all the way back to U.S. Senator Robert La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin, and his founding of La Follette's Weekly on January 9, 1909.

To quote from the magazine's web site, "In 1929, La Follette's Weekly changed its name to The Progressive, but the views of the magazine have remained remarkably consistent over the years. The Progressive, a monthly since 1948, has steadfastly stood against militarism, the concentration of power in corporate hands, and the disenfranchisement of the citizenry. It has continued to champion peace, social and economic justice, civil rights, civil liberties, human rights, a preserved environment, and a reinvigorated democracy. Its bedrock values remain nonviolence and freedom of speech." In 1979, the magazine successfully (and famously) defended its right under the first amendment to publish a controversial article on the hydrogen bomb [see this for the magazine issue containing (and focused on) the article, and this for a 1999/2003 retrospective analysis of the case and related issues by the author of the H-bomb article].

Bowers is happy with what he sees as the emerging "big tent" function of the term "progressive" because it contributes to a sense of unity among different types of Democrat activists. But this contribution to unity, based as it is on a potentially equivocal political label, has its limits. For example, it seems unlikely that an activist committed to reducing the concentration of power in corporate hands would be willing to compromise that goal away as the price of entering the "big tent" to collaborate with a "New Dem" type on some other, shared, goal. However, the price of such collaboration might be lower than that. Even if key value-differences exist within the big tent, principled, limited collaborations on shared goals may still be possible (and worth seeking out). And such limited collaborations may sometimes be the best we can hope for in the short run, given the values of the participating activists.

I want to get out a thought I have been working on.

For a long time America's politicians have needed to posture and pretend and play a game of saying things that every informed person understands are not true, but are mouthed in order to to "position" themselves aligned with their idea of the thinking of the broad uninformed masses.

The conservatives built up a power structure by building (and funding) advocacy organizations like Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute - buying a movement - and progressives and their funders had not done that. So the conservatives have had this persuasion machine in place and progressives have not. The conservatives were able to use their machine to build up the "conventional wisdom" along the lines of their own strategic narrative. And so for a long time the public was, probably correctly, perceived to have been largely persuaded by conservative rhetoric, and the politicians had to speak to that.

So maybe for a politician it was a correct perception that you have to move right and "triangulate" and spout right-wing crap to get elected. You get this enormous demand built up by the right's unanswered propaganda, and at the same time you get this enormous conservative-engineered institutional pressure built up to vote a certain way on legislation. What else were politicians supposed to do?

Meanwhile progressives were not working to persuade the public, so there has until recently been little popular demand or respect for progressive policies and candidates. Sure, we want leaders to do the right thing, but we haven't been building up the mechanisms or creating the public demand that makes leaders do the right thing -- or that protect them, "watch their backs" and give them cover to do the right thing.

I think the blogs are starting to make a tremendous difference in our politics. They are holding politicians and the media accountable, and I think we're all starting to see the effects. They can't seem to get away with ANYTHING anymore because of these darn bloggers, and a lot of them don't like that one bit. But progressive politicians are learning that now there finally is someone out there - the blogs - working to persuade the public, and watching their backs, and applying pressure, and rewarding good behavior and punishing bad behavior. A power structure for progressive is being built.

So I think that one of these effects from the blogs is that doing the RIGHT thing rather than ridiculous posturing and perception games is starting to become the way to win elections. Or maybe I should say that the posturing and perception game to win elections and doing the right thing are converging - into the same thing.

I am particularly impressed by Ian Finseth’s Talking Points article in the Commonweal Institute’s newsletter this month. Excerpts:

The desire to advance human liberty is certainly laudable, but the problem is that the administration has emphasized freedom as a policy goal at the expense of clearly articulating another social value, justice, which is much more deeply rooted in Arab culture. The result has been to cloud our understanding of the conflict, to limit our options for dealing with it, and to distort badly our entire foreign policy in the Middle East.
[….]
If we’re serious about prevailing in “the decisive ideological struggle of our time,” as President Bush phrased it in his January 10 address, we can’t simply try to export our own values without a good understanding of the values of our would-be partners. The United States and even our moderate Arab friends have been talking past each other, speaking different languages, and that miscommunication makes it incredibly difficult for us to gain traction in the war of ideas.
[….]
It is probably too late for the current administration to understand any of this or to take any of it to heart, but in the years ahead the policy analysts and planners in the American government need start understanding and talking the language of the region they are dealing with. Few changes would have a more salutary effect on our relations with the Muslim and Arab worlds than explaining how our involvement in the region promotes justice there as much as freedom – assuming, of course, we don’t just talk the talk, but walk the walk. That means, above all, pushing hard for a just settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, if it’s not too late, achieving a just allocation of resources and reconstruction monies in Iraq. Then we’ll see improvement in our relations with ordinary Arabs, increasing room for our ideas to take root, and some recovery of our squandered international prestige.

American Enterprise Institute, one of the Right's "belief tanks", apparently believes that reputable scientists and economists will help them obfuscate the reality of global warming if they're paid enough. It's time for all honorable professionals to renew their personal pledges of membership in the reality-based community. How could anyone sell out their intellectual integrity and the future of the world for a suitcaseful of ExxonMobil cash?

All who are hoping for continued Democratic control of Congress, and perhaps the presidency as well, in 2008 would do well to get serious about election insecurity, voter disenfranchisement, and the like now, while there's still time to make progress on fixing Anerica's broken election system. And of course this is true, too, for those who would just like to see honest elections in which those who want to vote are able to do so, and the votes of those who do vote are counted correctly.

According to top Republican strategist Karl Rove, speaking to Time magazine correspondent Mike Allen, their Nov 2006 loss was not extraordinary. The RNC is emphasizing how narrow the margins of victory were in quite a few races.

The Republican National Committee has been pointing out that a small shift in votes would have made a big difference. A shift of 77,611 votes would have given Republicans control of the House, according to Bush's political team. And a shift of 2,847 votes in Montana, or 7,217 votes in Virginia, or 41,537 votes in Missouri would have given a Republicans control of the Senate. In addition, the party has calculated that the winner received 51 percent or less in 35 contests, and that 23 races were decided by two percentage points or fewer, 18 races were decided by fewer than 5,000 votes, 15 races were decided by fewer than 4,000 votes, 10 races were decided by fewer than 3,000 votes, eight were decided by fewer than 2,000 votes and five races were decided by fewer than 1,000 votes.

The implication is that politically or financially motivated hackers and programmers; corrupt, lazy, or incompetent election officials; and sundry other malefactors will likely be able to make a significant difference yet again in 2008 unless we sort out our election mess very quickly.

Taking into account that it may take months to get federal legislation passed, that the primaries are only about a year away, and that it can take up to six months for an election jurisdiction to prepare ballots and set up the mechanics for an election, we have no time to waste.

The Bush Administration is about to let a drug company sell one of our few remaining effective antibiotics for use on livestock. This is so the drug company can make higher profits. They do not care that this decision could kill a LOT of us.

Here is what is going on: These days people don't think of infections as serious, not to mention potentially fatal. This is because we have antibiotics to kill the germs. But throughout human history bacteria were one of the biggest - if not the biggest - causes of death. All the way up until the discovery of penicillin - less than 100 years ago - people used to die from things as simple as a cut getting infected.

The germs have been fighting back. They build up resistance to the drugs we use against them, and over time the drugs stop working. This is the reason doctors tell people to be sure to take ALL of the antibiotics in a prescription even if they start to feel better -- you need to kill ALL of the germs or the ones that survive develop resistance. The other reason is that drugs are given to livestock because they help them get fatter quicker. Over time, through simple evolution and natural selection, the germs become resistant to the antibiotics and we all are put at risk. One after another the antibiotics have become nearly useless. In fact, we only have a few effective antibiotics left.

Think about what would happen if germs get a chance to build resistance to the few remaining effective antibiotics. Now read this news story:

Visitors to the Indonesian island of Bali are often surprised to see farmers, herders, children - virtually anyone and everyone, making professional quality art. When asked about this, Balinese are often puzzled by the question - in their world there are no professional artists, everyone has some talent and everyone uses it for his or her own joy. While some artists are clearly better than others, and some artwork reaches a "professional level" in a commercial sense, everyone has access and everyone creates the art that inspires them. Art has not been "professionalized" in Bali as in the West- it is still democratic. Like art, politics and media have also been professionalized in the West - made undemocratic through the exclusion of ordinary citizens.

It hardly seems possible. Our country has gone through four flawed national election cycles—2000, 2002, 2004, 2006—and still hasn’t managed to correct the systemic problems plaguing our election system. Is this a democracy, if one cannot have confidence that one’s vote will count? Why is this not a central issue for everyone who is actively involved in politics? Why don’t we hear more about it in the media?

In the movie, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore says that we are "entering a period of consequences." And the world is beginning to understand the consequences of global warming. From today's news story, Global warming story hits critical mass,

"The next section of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, focusing on global warming impacts, is due to be released at a meeting in Belgium next month. A draft version of the report says that, within a few decades, hundreds of millions of people will face water shortages, while tens of millions will be flooded out of their homes. Tropical diseases like malaria will spread, pests like fire ants will thrive and by 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos. By 2080, hundreds of millions of people could face starvation, according to the IPCC draft report."

What am I getting at? One solution to the crisis is for people to stop having so many babies. We're already using up the fisheries. The cattle being raised to feed so many meat-eaters is as big a problem as the cars we're all driving.

There is plenty of time between now and 2080 to dramatically cut the population of the world by simply limiting how many babies we're all having. If there are fewer people around then fewer people face starvation, disease, dislocation and the rest of the consequences.

The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism: Who Really Cares, by Professor Arthur Brooks. Brooks, who confesses that he is a long-time liberal, purports to be an in depth analysis of charitable giving in the US. The picture that emerges from his statistical analysis of existing and some new national tax data, surveys, and interviews is not pretty for progressives. Bluntly, Brooks’ findings are that conservatives give more – a lot more – than liberals. He found that the best predictors of contributing to charity, volunteering, working in political campaigns - even giving blood - are: a conservative outlook and political beliefs, belonging to a church, frequent church attendance, having a strong family, earned income as opposed to inherited income or welfare, and belief that self-reliance and individuals, not government, are the best solution to society’s ills.

What do people "know?" If you are reading this you are probably a hyper-informed citizen. But what about the rest of us? What information reaches the public?

Progressive blogs reach progressives. Right-wing blogs are part of a noise machine that is designed to reach and influence the general public.

Right-wing blogs are tied into the conservative movement's larger "noise machine" information apparatus. This is why we see very different results when the right launches an information campaign. They echo or are echoed through every channel through which the public receives information -- by Limbaugh, Fox News, Drudge, and funded outreach into other channels, and their politicians are part of the coordinated process. So their message gets out there and the public "knows" what they want them to know. A very good example is what happened to Dan Rather. The public "knows" that Dan Rather "tried to smear President Bush" with "forged documents." In fact the origin of the documents is still unknown, and forged or not, the underlying story was factual.

It would benefit us to keep in mind that progressive blogs have a limited reach and that we need to keep looking to extend that reach. There is no progressive noise machine. There is no coordination. There is no funded outreach to the general public. Non-right-wing politicians likely as not fear blogs and tend not to join in a coordinated messaging efforts. Yes, progressive blogs are read by media figures, informed opinion leaders and public officials, and that is very important. But we have very little effect on what the general public "knows." Only after shrill repetition for several days or weeks across the entire blogosphere does an important story even begin to reach into the traditional corporate media.

Current example - the prosecutor scandal. On the Heading Left Blog Talk Radio Show last week Nate mentioned that there was wide coverage of the scandal over firing US Attorneys who wouldn't play ball and drop investigations of Republican corruption or wouldn't falsely accuse Democrats of crimes. But in my own local paper there was only a short article on page 6, and it repeated verbatim White House talking points that the firings were "handled badly," that the President "has the right to hire and fire prosecutors," and that "Clinton fired all 93 prosecutors while Bush fired only 8."

Older example: What is the current percentage of Americans who think Iraq attacked us n 9/11? It's probably still very high - considering that Iraq didn't. What is the percentage who think we found the WMD?

Chris Bowers has written an interesting new piece about the progressive netroots:

As someone known not only as a prominent figure within the progressive netroots, but also as someone with a tendency to base much of my writing on quantitative research, I have often been asked to try and measure the positive impact of the netroots on the Democratic Party and the 2006 elections in order to counter these arguments. This is not an easy thing to do, but I believe there are a number of more or less objective ways in which the contribution of the progressive netroots to the Democratic victories in 2006 can be documented. Taken together, these contributions reveal just how mature a political force the progressive netroots have become, and how indispensable they are to continued Democratic success in the future.

The areas of netroots that Chris discusses are:
1. Closing the fundraising gap
2. Campaigning on Iraq
3. Keeping the base motivated
4. Influencing establishment media coverage
5. Stretching Republicans' resources thin
6. New infrastructure, new ideas

These are exciting times. Let's hope the major political donor community begins to recognize more generously the efforts of individual progressive bloggers, who are a not-insubstantial part of the netroots community. Many individual bloggers are living a hand-to-mouth existence. Think how much more these dedicated activists might be able to accomplish if they didn't have to worry about paying the rent and their lack of health insurance.

The contemporary progressive movement is evolving as a networked phenomenon, rather than a hierarchical stack of major institutions. Good ideas can originate anywhere within the matrix and be amplified by other parts. The netroots are a prime example of how effective this type of entity can be. Forward-thinking donors will recognize that support for the progressive network implies support for its component nodes, including small organizations and even individuals.

A classic semantic frame-shifting (might we say shape-shifting?) exercise is underway, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales seeks to evade responsibility for his and his department’s role in the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys.

Tom Hamburger reported today in the Los Angeles Times that ‘the Office of Special Counsel will investigate US attorney firings and other political activities led by Karl Rove.’

[….T]he Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

Hamburger was likely misreading the situation when he said:

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is a federal agency headed by Scott Bloch , whom Daniel Schulman described in the May/June 2007 issue of Mother Jones [I couldn’t find a link to this story online] as “a law professor and attorney…a…one-time fellow at the conservative Claremont Institute.” He also quoted a source who described Bloch as “a Bush appointee who, employees say, shares his boss’ antipathy for dissent.” The OSC invites whistleblowers to report via its website . However, Schulman’s article detailed example after example of whistleblowers trying to bring attention to serious government malfeasance, only to have their cases delayed, dropped, or ignored by the OSC, and subsequent serious retribution against the whistleblowers themselves by various entities implicated in the cases. Other articles, e.g., on Alternet and Log Cabin Republicans , describe Bloch’s undermining of the effectiveness of the OSC and defiance of executive orders.

With this in mind, an OSC investigation is hardly likely to “create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.” Instead, suspect another cover-up in the works.

Hamburger’s paragraphs:

"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. "We will not leave any stone unturned."
Bloch declined to comment on who his investigators would interview, but he said the probe would be independent and uncoordinated with any other agency or government entity.
should be looked at with a skeptical eye.
The growing controversy inspired him to act, Bloch said.
"We are acting with dispatch and trying to deal with this because people are concerned about it ... and it is not a subject that should be left to endless speculation," he said.

You bet—the last thing this secretive administration wants is any more speculation about their covert deeds.

Responsible media and Democratic investigators should not let themselves be lulled into thinking that the OSC’s investigation is going to uncover—and make public--anything substantive against Rove or other top officials. Indeed, an OSC investigation may be used as an opportunity to identify inside whistleblowers, in order to destroy them. Anyone in the adminstration who wants to blow the whistle on Rove and his cronies should talk to those who want the truth to come to light, not to be hidden in clouds of darkness.

By Guy T. Saperstein

An organization has emerged in Washington, D.C.,