Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Fri. Nov. 20


 
AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
 
 
 
 
1.  Upcoming Event
 
2015 New Hampshire Democratic Party JJ Dinner
 
 
Join Hillary Clinton, Martin O'Malley, and Bernie Sanders at the New Hampshire Democratic Party at our 2015 JJ Dinner

Sunday, November 29, 2015
Manchester Radisson Ballroom and Armory
700 Elm Street, Manchester, NH

Doors open at 4:00pm for buffet dinner.
Speaking program to begin at 5:30pm
 
 
 
 
 
2.  Backtracking
 
 
Fearing A Losing Battle, The Site Evaluation Committee Modifies A Key Regulation
 
by Chris Jensen,   nhpr.org,   November 19, 2015
 
Citing a desire to avoid a confrontation with a legislative committee, the Site Evaluation Committee Wednesday softened proposed a rule involving "public interest" as part of its consideration of new utility  projects.

The issue at the meeting was whether the Site Evaluation Committee had gone beyond what the legislature intended when it ordered the body’s reorganization so it would better serve "the public good" and "provide clarity" about its rules and how it makes decisions.

The question of overreaching was raised by the Joint Legislative Committee for Administrative Rules, which has oversight for such changes.

Utilities including Eversource, the parent company of Northern Pass, have also argued that the rules go too far.

But SEC chairman Martin Honigberg insisted the body acted properly when it created them.
“With respect to the rules as we developed them, I think they are fully consistent with the legislative intent,” he said during the meeting in Concord.

Sponsors of House Bill 245 - the  legislation that resulted in the reorganization - also said the rules were what they intended.

But the SEC - which is now made up of nine members including two new public members and seven government officials – decided not to stand its ground, saying they worried that a confrontation with the Joint Legislative Committee could end badly, in the worse case with rules being completely eliminated.

One change was making a key rule dealing with whether a project is in public interest far less demanding.

For example the proposed “public interest” rule provided far more detail than in the past. One section would have required the SEC to consider “whether the beneficial and adverse effects of the facility, including the costs and benefits to energy consumers, property owners, state and local tax revenues, employment opportunities, and local and regional economies serve the public interest.”

As amended the rule is less specific, simply saying that the SEC must consider a list of items including private property, "the environment of the state" and "the overall economic growth of the state."

That provides more flexibility for utilities to argue their case and for the SEC to make decisions, but it is also more vague, a problem the SEC was originally told to correct.

Despite being weakened, it is still more demanding than what some utilities wanted:  a simple notation of of "public interest," without any list of what was to be considered.

At a meeting last month with the Joint Legislative Committee, Honigberg recognized there was criticism about a high level of detail for determining public interest and said he was willing to make changes. "If it is the will of the committee that we remove all that language and just leave with 'public interest,' we understand that and we will adjust," he said.

Also gone from 'public interest' is a provision that required considering whether construction and operation of the facility “will be consistent with federal, regional, state and local policies.”
SEC members have noted that a 1980 New Hampshire Supreme Court case involving Public Service of New Hampshire - now known as Eversource - has long been interpreted as saying that the SEC overrules local planning.

Sue Ford, a Democrat and state representative from Easton who wa
s one of the sponsors the the bill that resulted in the SEC's reorganization, said she could live with the changes and they are a significant improvement over what the SEC used previously.

The change - and several others - now go to the Joint Legislative Committee. The committee could accept them or demand more modifications.

When Gov. Hassan signed House Bill 245 in 2014 she said "As we work to diversify our energy sources, reduce energy costs, and provide predictability for businesses, we must ensure that the siting process for new energy projects includes the views of local communities and protects what makes our state special."
 
 
 
 
3.  Punting
 
 
Some action on opioids is needed now
 
Editorial,   sentinelsource.com,   November 20, 2015
 
It’s a fairly common axiom of business or government that if you want something done, you simply do it; if you want to avoid being blamed for doing something, you form a committee.
Wednesday, the state Legislature chose the latter, forming a task force “to address the state’s opioid and heroin addiction crisis.”
 
Before we chastise our legislative leaders for punting in a situation that clearly called for more immediate action, we’ll momentarily acknowledge the political bind they were in.
On Nov. 3, Gov. Maggie Hassan put out a call for a special legislative session to deal with the crisis. The unusual move comes amid the heat of a U.S. Senate race between Democrat Hassan and Republican incumbent Sen. Kelly Ayotte, which made it inevitable the issue would be placed under a political microscope, fairly or not.
The appearance of forcing a GOP-led Legislature to act immediately and decisively on an issue that’s leading headlines daily would certainly be a coup for Hassan, and something GOP legislative leaders could hardly endorse. The political solution: Appearing to act while not giving Hassan what she wanted.  Thus, a task force to study issues that have already been studied for several years now.
Hassan’s call for immediate action came 22 months after she noted the epidemic of opioid abuse in New Hampshire during her State of the State address — something the governors of Massachusetts, Maine and Vermont also declared early in 2014. Hassan herself formed a task force in 2013 to study the growing problem of neonatal abstinence syndrome — affecting infants born to mothers who were hooked on opioids. So it’s not as if the current crisis has snuck up on anyone. Leaders in the Legislature also have seen the epidemic growing over the past several years, and have been besieged by social services, law enforcement and other agencies to act.
Now, two months before lawmakers head back to Concord, the issue is suddenly so potent that a solution must be found immediately?
Actually, yes. That is to say action should have happened long before now, but the need is still immediate. And that’s where the Legislature got it wrong Wednesday. What was needed — what is STILL needed — is to take what steps can be taken to tackle the problem now. As has been mentioned more than a few times, this is literally a life-or-death matter. Hundreds of Granite Staters are dying annually from opioid overdoses, and that figure could be many times higher if not for the availability of the drug Narcan, which reverses the most severe symptoms of an overdose.
Hassan pushed lawmakers to pass a comprehensive bill to address the epidemic. Perhaps some measures contained in that legislation, such as required changes in how doctors prescribe painkillers, need more examination before being mandated by law. But others — equating the abuse of the potent opioid fentanyl with that of heroin under state law; establishing a statewide office to coordinate drug courts; increasing scrutiny of methadone clinics; and increasing resources devoted to dealing with the issue — seem reasonable steps to take immediately.
Whatever the motives behind the requests and the votes, lawmakers had the opportunity to act to save lives every day. And they passed.
To recap: Everyone in the Statehouse gets the chance to go home saying they made progress. Hassan gets to say she forced action, while GOP leaders can say she was playing politics but they didn’t give in to her.
And those in the grip of addiction … well, they get to stay there, unless they die before any real solutions are put into place.
 
 
 
4.  Some Thoughts on Economic Development
 
paign=nhbr&utm_content=NH+Business+Review+News+Browser
 
Economic development requires a team effort
by Bill Norton,   nhbr.com,   November 18, 2015
 
The onset of winter brings attention to the high energy costs we have in New England. My last electric bill at home computed to 19.2 cents per kilowatt-hour. Visiting a friend in Raleigh, N.C., in October, I confirmed their rate was 9.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, and, of course, their heating costs are less than half (2,600 heating degree days v. 6,000-plus in New Hampshire). The offset is they use more air conditioning, albeit with their cheaper electricity.
This is the residential perspective, but for businesses, especially those that use a lot of electrical power, energy costs can be an important driver of where to do business, which impacts decisions of where to locate and/or relocate.
There is no short-term answer or “fix” for New England's high energy costs. Five or six years would be warp speed. So, to compete with other regions in the United States, we have to do better in areas that impact decisions of firms to stay and grow.
Chief among these must be a competitive, educated and reasonably plentiful workforce. There is a lot of room for improvement on this score, whether it is retaining our new college grads or retraining experienced workers for new careers, trades or employment skills.
Over several recent columns, I have ruminated on northern New England's competitiveness at a global level. Even the three northern states with a population of just over 3 million – one-third of whom are working – is not a very big number. But nationally, we have a higher profile. We have a legacy of old-line manufacturing, the cotton and woolen mills, shoes, electronics, computers, etc. We also should benefit from the large number of non-New England students who attend our colleges and universities (although we undoubtedly should exploit this resource more).
We hear and read that we are aging and graying, but there may be a silver lining in that cloud.
I was sitting around the table the other day with an economic advisory committee, and it dawned on me that, at age 65, I was one of the youngest at the table! There was a lot of talent and experience there, many of whom were older and more gray than me!
The point is, we need to encourage flexible transitions and phased retirements that allow those with years of experience to mentor, train and leverage younger workers.
Another day I was in a meeting with several bankers. Looking around the room, it dawned on me that a majority of them would hit retirement age, all within a short time frame. Who is going to take their place?
Leveraging the in-place knowledge and experience to ensure a smooth transition is a worthwhile endeavor that will yield dividends, making our region more competitive on the knowledge and skills side.
About a decade and a half ago we changed centuries, and we now have technologies never dreamed of before.
Rich Karlgaard, in a recent Forbes column, talks about the “Disruptive Dozen” technologies: genomics; new materials; energy storage; advanced recovery of oil and gas; renewable energy; robotics; autonomous vehicles; 3-D printing; mobile Internet; Internet of things; cloud computing; and automation of knowledge work.
These are the sectors and industries we here in the Northeast should be focusing on – high knowledge and high value-add.
Alas, some of us are “long in the tooth” and will struggle to grasp these technologies and applications. That is why we need the millennials and Gen Xers to stay and prosper here. It is a team effort. These are high-intensity sectors, and that is why our high standard of living and quality of life will attract these intense and intelligent workers.
So we need to play to our strengths. Key among them are the young people who go to school in the region (prep school, college or graduate school). Some of them develop an affinity for the area, and in some number of cases they might start or choose to grow companies here. That is a strong economic development strategy that should be pursued aggressively and consistently (in good times and in bad).
Dartmouth College has a strong cohort of graduates who choose to live in the Upper Valley – could that be expanded? St Paul's and Phillips Exeter are two other sources of talent and resources. And there are many smaller schools, such as New England College and Colby-Sawyer. If I were charged with recruiting successful business owners and entrepreneurs, this is where I would start – culling those alumni lists.
Concord has several parallel “economic development” conversations going on right now. The greater community is beginning to acknowledge that economic development (defined as expanding tax base and new good jobs) should not be left solely to municipal and state entities. It is a community-wide priority, and thus private citizens (young and old) should jump in.
The good Lord helps those who help themselves.
 
 
 
5.  NH No Longer a Firewall Against Republican Crazies?
 
 
The G.O.P. Establishment Has a Big New Hampshire Problem
 
by Nate Cohn,   The Upshot,   nytimes.com,   November 19, 2015
 
The last two Republican presidential primary contests have followed the same script: A conservative candidate wins in Iowa, a relative moderate wins in New Hampshire, and the latter — with broader appeal and all of the establishment’s resources — outlasts the former in a protracted fight for the nomination.
But so far this cycle, New Hampshire’s voters aren’t playing along. Donald Trump has led every poll in New Hampshire since June. Candidates like Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush have struggled to get out of the single digits.
The weakness of mainstream candidates in New Hampshire poses a big challenge for the party’s beleaguered establishment. If a candidate acceptable to the party can’t win New Hampshire or Iowa, the G.O.P. will face a bleak choice: undertake the daunting and expensive task of mounting a come-from-behind effort, or grudgingly acquiesce to a candidate it really doesn’t want, like Ted Cruz, but who may be better than someone it can never accept, like Mr. Trump.
The extent of the weakness of the establishment in New Hampshire is a striking departure from recent contests. In the polling data that The Upshot has collected from the last three Republican primaries, no one other than Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and George W. Bush led even a single New Hampshire Republican poll in the year ahead of the contest. Not only did surging conservatives like Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich never lead, but they also didn’t usually come close. After all, this is a state where Jon Huntsman won 17 percent of the vote in 2012.
The traditional strength of the establishment in New Hampshire is underpinned by all of the state’s demographic characteristics. Self-identified moderate voters made up approximately half of the electorate in the last three contests, according to exit polls, compared with about a third nationally. Evangelical Christians, who represent a majority of Republican voters in the South and Iowa, represent around one-fifth of G.O.P. voters in New Hampshire.
How is Mr. Trump doing so well? He’s drawing on many moderate and secular voters who haven’t supported the anti-establishment but usually religious candidates who have fared well in Iowa. The same pattern emerges in national polls, which often show Mr. Trump faring best among self-described moderates.
The strength of a populist candidate like Mr. Trump, who opposes free trade and immigration, isn’t without precedent in New Hampshire. In 1992, Pat Buchanan, another anti-trade and anti-immigration candidate, won 38 percent of the vote against the incumbent president, George H.W. Bush. Four years later, Mr. Buchanan actually won the state, narrowly beating the eventual nominee, Bob Dole.
But the G.O.P. establishment then was not in anywhere near the danger it is now. This year, the “outsider” candidates, like Mr. Trump, Mr. Cruz and Ben Carson, possess as much organizational, financial and personal strength as the establishment candidates, or maybe more. This year’s schedule affords the party few opportunities to make a comeback: The contests after Iowa and New Hampshire — the Nevada caucuses, South Carolina and the predominantly Southern states on Super Tuesday — are all relatively favorable to conservatives. This year’s establishment candidates have shown far less strength, by any measure, than Mr. Dole or George H.W. Bush, who had the resources, name recognition and party backing to survive early setbacks.
Mr. Trump is generally polling in the mid-20s in New Hampshire surveys. The large number of moderate, establishment-friendly candidates competing in New Hampshire might split the mainstream vote, preventing any one candidate from consolidating enough support to win.
Many of these candidates have little chance to win the nomination, and some, like Chris Christie and John Kasich, barely register in national polls. But over all, Mr. Christie, Mr. Kasich, Jeb Bush, Mr. Rubio and Carly Fiorina combine for nearly 40 percent of the vote in New Hampshire polls, compared with around 25 percent in national surveys. There’s no guarantee that these voters, if their favorite exited, would coalesce behind any one of the other candidates in that group, but surely the establishment would be in a better position if there were not so many viable candidates competing for support in New Hampshire. Right now, there’s no good reason for any of them to leave.
All of this creates a lot of danger for the party’s establishment. Its worst-case outcome is what the polls are already showing: a clear win for an unacceptable candidate, and the other candidates so evenly split and so far behind that the contest fails to clarify which candidate the establishment should coalesce behind. But there are other dangers, too, like the possibility that a relatively moderate candidate, like Mr. Kasich, could finish above mainstream candidates who are more acceptable to the establishment.
The best case for the establishment, of course, would be if a mainstream candidate won the state and became the clear favorite of party elites in the process, but a strong second-place showing by an acceptable candidate would probably suffice. A strong second place for a candidate acceptable to the party would winnow the moderate wing of the field and position that candidate to ultimately consolidate party support and take a lead later in the primary season.
There is a lot of time left until the February primary and just as much precedent for late movement. In 2008, Mr. McCain overcame a 15-point deficit over the final month of the race to defeat Mr. Romney by a comfortable margin. In the last cycle, Rick Santorum was polling in the single digits at this point in Iowa, but he ultimately surged in the final weeks to defeat Mr. Romney. There is enough time for Mr. Trump to fade, even if just by a little, allowing someone else to win. There is enough time for an establishment candidate to break out. There is even enough time for momentum and tactical voting to cause voters to consolidate behind a single candidate.
So far, though, none of this has happened. Until it does, the establishment’s path to victory will look much longer than it has in any recent contest.
 
 
 
 
AND NATIONALLY
 
 
 
 
 
6.  The 2015 Election Results and the Implications for Next Year
 
 
Off-year elections reveal a 2016 map with sharper borders
 
by David Weigel,   washingtonpost.com,   November 4, 2015
 
Two weeks before Election Day, the TV screens of New Jersey’s 11th Legislative District glowed with a new negative ad. Republicans Mary Pat Angelini and Caroline Casagrande were under attack.
“Voting records proved they routinely sabotaged women’s health services,” said a frustrated-sounding female narrator in the ad. “They blocked even the most sensible gun-safety measures.”
It worked. Just two years after New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) won a landslide in the state and district, suburban votes ousted the Republicans — and helped boost Democrats to their biggest legislative majority since Jimmy Carter was president.
“Chris Christie’s left a lot of Republican political body bags along the side of the road,” said Michael Muller, a strategist for state Democrats.
The 2015 elections were rougher for Democrats in redder states, as they suffered a surprisingly large defeat in the Kentucky governor’s race, failed to win a majority in the Virginia Senate and saw voters thump an LGBT rights ordinance in Houston. But in blue states and cities, the party held or gained ground. As the parties head into a new presidential year, the country’s partisan divide has deepened. Republicans walked away from Tuesday with the big wins. Democrats walked away with fresh confidence that their map can win a third presidential election in a row.
“It says good things for Hillary Clinton,” said Carolyn Fiddler, communications director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “I’m sure she would have preferred it if [Gov.] Terry McAuliffe won a Senate majority for Virginia Democrats, but despite all the money spent there, the status quo continued. The blueness is seeping out from the cities as folks move and settle families. It’s a long-term shift.”
Democrats were not papering over the failure in Virginia, but they were encouraged to see where the blue vote held. The race for the 29th Senate District, centered on Manassas in the Washington exurbs, was one of the year’s most expensive. Democrat Jeremy McPike won it by eight points, thanks to votes from fast-growing, racially diverse Prince William County. Democrats failed to defeat Sen. Richard H. Black (R-Loudoun County), a perennial target, but they cut his margin from 14 points in 2011 to five points Tuesday. The race for an open seat in the Richmond suburbs was even closer, with the Republicans triumphing by 2.7 points in a seat they’d last won by 13 points.
Coverage of that last Democratic loss centered on big ad spending by pro-gun-control groups, which greatly outmatched spending by the National Rifle Association. “Please, please run on gun control,” Republican strategist Chris LaCivita advised Clinton, sarcastically.
But LaCivita, who worked another suburban campaign that went against Republicans, cautioned that the results were close. “What Tuesday showed is that Virginia is still a swing state, an up-for-grabs state,” he said. “We’ve got to draw a message that has crossover appeal to suburban voters.”
Democrats have been counting on winning in 2016 by turning out the growing Democratic electorate, but they have always expected next year to be a fight. Democrats finished Tuesday with confidence that they’d cracked the suburbs. In Colorado, where Democrats lost a 2014 U.S. Senate race after a heavy focus on abortion rights, party activists ousted three members of the Jefferson County school board.
Progressives put recall elections on the ballot after the board members introduced merit pay and challenged history lessons that did not respect “American exceptionalism.” Julie Williams, one of the defeated conservatives, told the Denver Post that “the liberal agenda and union bosses” were responsible for a 28-point landslide against her. But nearly half a million dollars in pro-recall spending was matched — unsuccessfully — by the local branch of Americans for Prosperity, funded in part by the Koch brothers.
In Pennsylvania, another swing state that Democrats include in their 2016 map, the party celebrated a sweep of state Supreme Court elections. That was a break from tradition, of the party’s base staying home in sleepy off-year races. It was enabled by direct mail to Democrats featuring President Obama, a nationalization of the race — and a mirror image of Obama-centric ads that buried Democrats in Kentucky.
“The worry behind this election was that Philadelphia would not turn out, or produce a very low turnout,” said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.), who made nearly a dozen campaign appearances for the Democratic candidates between Halloween and Election Day and who has endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton for president. “As it turned out, Philly contributed more than 10 percent of the statewide vote. Hillary, who already has a very strong base, can look to that. Her potential in our state is strong because she’ll keep the Philly vote, do well in suburbs, and has a chance to exceed the president’s numbers in western Pennsylvania.”
In an interview, Pennsylvania Republican Party Chairman Rob Gleason pointed to wins in some county and legislative races to argue for a “good night” marred by an “unconscionable” judicial campaign. “We didn’t have a good candidate for mayor in Philadelphia,” he said, “and the unions spent $10 million. Of course that was a problem.”
Urban turnout, a key to Democratic hopes in 2016, was strong enough to notch wins. The party took back city hall in Indianapolis and held it in Charlotte. In both cases, Democratic strategists suggested that they benefited from anger at Republican control, epitomized by Indiana’s bungle of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
If applied to 2016, that strategy points to an election fought by inches, on the issues most likely to drive out the base. Clinton, who has built a lead in Democratic primary polling after a shaky summer, has focused on gun control and other base-driving issues to a greater degree than most Democratic nominees. Kentucky, a swing state in both of Bill Clinton’s presidential runs, is off the Democrats’ new map. Colorado’s Jefferson County and Virginia’s Prince William County are decidedly on it. And in New Jersey, Democrats reached out to voters who did not necessarily turn out every election and found the cultural issues that scared them most.
“We discovered that we could treat them like a base voter if we talked in the right way,” Muller said.
 
 
7.  Pay Attention to the State Level
 
 
Democrats just released a 2014 autopsy report. There’s only one sentence in it that matters.
 
by Chris Cillizza,   The Fix,   washingtonpost.com,   November 18, 2015
 
Following a second straight devastating midterm election loss in 2014, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz pledged to convene a group of prominent party members to figure out why they kept losing ground. “This diverse group of Democratic Party officials, strategists and advocates will each bring with them expertise from their fields to collaborate on a holistic review of the party’s past performance and present actionable areas for improvement moving forward," Wasserman Schultz promised.
That long-awaited document — all 18 pages of it! — hit the Internet on Tuesday and, boy, is it underwhelming. If you are looking for the Democratic version of the "Growth and Opportunity Project," the 100-plus page Republican autopsy report issued after the 2012 election, this ain't it. The Republican autopsy was deeply critical of the GOP and its positioning with voters. The Democratic version is largely a celebration of Democratic principles. Whereas the GOP autopsy suggested that the party totally reconsider its position on immigration reform for example, the thrust of the Democratic one is that the party should do a better job of coordinating its message. Um, no duh.
There is, however, one sentence in the largely-pointless autopsy that is both right on and vitally important. Here it is: "Build a three-election-cycle strategy for redistricting – at the state and federal level."
It's not a sexy recommendation but it is a critical one for a party that has been absolutely decimated downballot during the Obama years.  As the autopsy notes:
Of the 7,383 members of state legislatures across the country, Democrats hold 3,172 seats. Out of the 99 chambers, we hold 30. We must regain seats across the country to secure those seats and retake the 22 state legislative chambers lost in 2010 as we advance towards 2020.
This map from the National Conference of State Legislatures tells that story in stark visual terms:

At the moment, Republicans have total control of 30 of the 50 state legislatures and split control with Democrats in eight others. Why does that matter, you ask? Because congressional maps for each state following the decennial Census — with a notable few exceptions — are drawn by state legislators. That's why the 2010 election was such a disaster for Democrats.  They watched their control over state government collapse at exactly the wrong time; newly elected Republican governors and state legislatures drew maps across the country that heavily favored their side, leading directly to the takeover of the House majority in 2014.
The problem for Democrats is twofold going forward:
1. 2014 was another disastrous downballot election for them and the 2015 election simply cemented Republican gains. They have only three more elections to change that trend.
2. Their major donors and top-tier staff talent have generally shown little inclination to fund or work on the low-profile fights for control of state legislatures.  Republicans, on the other hand, led by the Republican State Leadership Committee, have poured millions into the effort — and have reaped the rewards.
Nowhere in the DNC autopsy is it mentioned how the party plans to solve those fundamental problems. The party is planning to coordinate its efforts better, target key gubernatorial races and the like. And that's all well and good. But the real key is to make clear to the major Democratic donors that winning over state legislatures must be a major priority of the party between 2016 and 2020. If that message doesn't get through, Democrats might well be looking at a long stay in the congressional minority.
 
 
8.  America's "Democratic Socialism" Tradition
 
 
Bernie Defines Socialism
Evoking Franklin Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, the Vermont senator bridged the aspirations of New Deal liberalism with the democratic socialist tradition.
 
by Harold Meyerson,   prospect.org,   November 19, 2015
 
During the 1930s conservatives repeatedly alleged that Franklin Roosevelt was really a socialist. Today, Bernie Sanders said they were right.
In a long awaited speech heralded as providing his definition of “democratic socialism,” the Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate on Thursday afternoon told a packed crowd of Georgetown University students—most of whom waited hours in a drenching rain to hear him—that by democratic socialism, he meant the economic and social principles laid down by FDR, most particularly in his 1944 State of the Union Address. In that speech, Roosevelt proclaimed that the nation needed a second, economic bill of rights. Sanders quoted the passage in which Roosevelt’s laid out the philosophic basis for such an expansion of rights: “True individual freedom,” Roosevelt said, “cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men.” The Vermont senator ran down the list of rights that Roosevelt enumerated: a decent job at decent pay, time off from work, a decent home, health care, and, for businesses, “an atmosphere free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies.”
The only other figure Sanders cited as shaping his vision of socialism was Martin Luther King, Jr. (Unlike FDR, King did indeed identify himself a democratic socialist, as did such other key civil rights leaders as A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and James Farmer. Roosevelt called himself various things—most commonly a liberal, and once, when asked his philosophy, responded that he was “a Christian and a Democrat”—but never a socialist.) King, said Sanders, followed in FDR’s footsteps in proclaiming the need for economic as well as civil rights.
Getting down to particulars, Sanders continued that democratic socialism meant creating an economy that works for all, a universal health care system based on the principle that health care is a right, free tuition at public colleges and universities (and higher Pell Grants and lower interest rates on student loans, which would also make private colleges more affordable), a governmental commitment to full employment, a living wage (with a minimum wage of $15), paid family and medical leave, more progressive taxation, and the automatic voter registration of all Americans when they turn 18.
As the socialist and social democratic parties throughout the West have been doing for 70 years, Sanders disavowed what was perhaps the classic definition of democratic socialism before World War II. “I don’t believe the government should own the corner drug store or the means of production,” he said, “but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of America deserve a fair deal.”     
When Roosevelt was president, of course, socialists did believe that the government should own many major industries. The Socialist Party leader in Roosevelt’s time was Norman Thomas, who won almost a million votes in the 1932 election in which Roosevelt ousted Herbert Hoover. By establishing Social Security, granting workers the right to form unions and bargain collectively, and employing millions of the unemployed on the projects (chiefly but not exclusively construction) of the federally funded and operated Works Progress Administration, however, FDR co-opted a share of the socialists’ program, causing such longtime pillars of Socialist Party support as the garment and clothing workers unions to switch their allegiance to Roosevelt and the Democratic Party. So did most of those who had voted for Thomas in ’32. Writer Upton Sinclair, a longtime socialist activist, followed this course to its logical conclusion: He ran and won in the 1934 Democratic primary for governor of California, though a red-baiting campaign by the Republicans ensured that he lost the general election that November.
Beginning in the late 1950s, a number of American democratic socialists began to argue that they should go into the Democratic Party without abandoning their ideology. (The total number of American democratic socialists in the late 1950s, I should add, was almost surely smaller than the crowd that gathered today in the Georgetown auditorium to hear Sanders.) That argument received its fullest expression from Michael Harrington, Thomas’s successor as the leader of socialist movement, who argued in his 1967 book Toward A Democratic Left, that the presumably socialist-free American political landscape actually harbored within the Democratic Party what he termed “a hidden social democracy.” The nation’s more progressive unions, the civil rights activists, the middle-class liberals (then mounting protests against the Vietnam War)—these were the groups whose European counterparts made up those nations’ social democratic parties. Accordingly, Harrington concluded, American socialists should enter—publicly, unashamedly—the Democratic Party, those hidden social democrats’ political home, where they could work for the kinds of social changes attainable in everyday politics while also campaigning for a future of a more democratic economy and society. In 1973, he founded an organization, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (now known as the Democratic Socialists of America), which did just that. (Full disclosure: I’m a vice-chair of DSA, though—also full disclosure—I haven’t been to a DSA meeting in years.)
While in college in the late ‘50s and early 60s, Sanders belonged to a DSA precursor, the Young People’s Socialist League, whose chief activity was supporting the civil rights movement. Since then, he has not been a member of any socialist organization. While DSA urged socialists to work within the Democratic Party, without forfeiting their right to criticize the party’s numerous shortcomings, Sanders steered clear of the Democrats as well. In matters of political affiliation, Bernie isn’t much of a joiner. Once he got to Congress, however, and then the Senate, he did join and take an active role in those bodies’ Democratic caucuses.
In a certain sense, what Sanders accomplished today was to signal that the political space between America progressivism and social democracy—at least, as he defines them—has shrunk to insignificance. Clearly, this has not always been the case; it’s taken the dysfunctions of American capitalism that have accumulated over the past 40 years to push progressives, and with them, the center of the Democratic Party, to the left, to within spitting distance of those who call themselves social democrats, or, in Sanders’ case, democratic socialists. By anointing Roosevelt to be the father of them all—liberals and socialists both—Sanders has proclaimed an end to such distinctions. To be sure, calling for Medicare for All places him more on the social democratic side of the ledger, but then, it places Lyndon Johnson there as well.
If Sanders’s surprising success (thus far) in running as a socialist is partly a function of the widespread recognition of those capitalist dysfunctions, it’s also in part the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The great American socialist leaders of the 20th century—Eugene Debs, Thomas, and Harrington—had to make continually clear that their brand of democratic socialism had nothing in common with Soviet communism and its totalitarian progeny, which they each articulately condemned. Sanders labors under no such handicap: The anti-socialist and anti-liberal leaders who deliberately conflated Rooseveltian liberalism with Stalinist communism (the young Richard Nixon was a master at this) were put out of work with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
As the New Deal programs and policies took root on American soil, some observers occasionally remarked that the Roosevelt Democrats had carried out the Thomas socialist platform. Noting the shortcomings of New Deal liberalism (its alliance with the segregationist South and its failure to enact universal health care, among other things), Thomas responded by grumbling, “They carried it out on a stretcher.” Sanders might not contest that judgment, but in harking back to FDR’s 1944 Economic Bill of Rights, he has reconciled the most visionary statement of Rooseveltian liberalism’s aspirations with the democratic socialist tradition—or, more precisely, claimed it as the foundation of his own socialist beliefs.
A recent CBS/New York Times poll found that 56 percent of Democratic voters hold a favorable view of socialism—a figure that exceeds Sanders’s own level of support in that poll by 25 percentage points, which means that a goodly chunk of Hillary Clinton’s backers hold that view as well. What all those Democrats mean by socialism is anybody’s guess, but I suspect their sense of it is close to Sanders’s: An anti-plutocratic and egalitarian commitment to re-democratize the nation; a belief in economic rights; and a sense that the boundaries between socialism and liberalism are at minimum very porous. The cognoscenti might see themselves as the children of Thomas and Harrington, but most would see themselves as the children of Roosevelt and King. Sanders’s message to them all is: They’re right.
 
 
9.  Obsessives
 
 
The GOP’s Obsession With ‘Radical Islam’
Republicans say they call it as they see it—until the tables are turned on them.
 
by Brian Beutler,   newrepublic.com,   November 19, 2015
 
The deadly attacks in Paris last week, followed by the second Democratic primary debate over the weekend, reignited a Republican obsession, unique to the Obama era, with the claim that U.S. leaders can’t defeat jihadi terrorism unless they identify the perpetrators with highly prescriptive language.
This obsession arose after the George W. Bush presidency precisely because Bush and his security advisers recognized the humane and strategic value in avoiding anti-Muslim incitement. As a Republican, Bush was able to mostly keep a lid on the kind of rhetoric his party now espouses unapologetically.
Republicans specifically claim, without a shred of evidence, that referring to ISIS fighters as “radical Islamic terrorists” isn’t just nomenclature, but a strategic prerequisite to vanquishing them.
Their preferred rhetoric serves two purposes, one the flip-side of the other. By adopting a label that implies a dogmatic link between Islam and violent extremism, they play to the U.S. public’s broad suspicion of and antipathy to Islam; and by insisting on a label they know responsible stewards of U.S. national security will reject, they can cow Democrats as weak-on-terror agents of political correctness.
In reality, Democratic unease with this language is almost entirely a function of strategic, rather than empathic, thinking—a reflection of the greater seriousness with which the party treats national security and foreign affairs than Republicans. And the most shameless thing about it is that many Republicans understand the objection at a deeply personal level. Their nomenclature wouldn’t survive even one Presidential Daily Brief. But they’re happy to set that all aside for immediate political expediency.
At the debate Saturday, Hillary Clinton explained her unease with saying we are at war with “radical Islam.”
You can talk about Islamists who clearly are also jihadists, but …we’ve got to reach out to Muslim countries. We’ve got to have them be part of our coalition. If they hear people running for president who basically shortcut it to say we are somehow against Islam, that was one of the real contributions, despite all the other problems, that George W. Bush made after 9/11 when he basically said after going to a mosque in Washington, we are not at war with Islam or Muslims. We are at war with violent extremism. We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression. And, yes, we are at war with those people. But I don’t want us to be painting with too broad a brush.
Clinton stipulated instead that we’re at war with “jihadists.” She could perhaps have beat Republicans at their own faux-specificity game by referring to them as “Salafist Jihadists.” But her point is clear: Nobody disputes that the perpetrators of the attacks in France were Muslim, but insisting on a rote connection between jihadis and the religion they claim makes it harder for the U.S. to enlist non-jihadi Muslims into the fight against terrorism.
Republicans claim to be aghast at this logic, but they in many ways personify it.
The most commented-upon response to Clinton came from Senator Marco Rubio, who deployed a predictable but unusually inapt simile. “I don’t understand it. That would be like saying we weren’t at war with Nazis, because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi Party but weren’t violent themselves. We are at war with radical Islam, with an interpretation of Islam by a significant number of people around the world, who they believe now justifies them in killing those who don’t agree with their ideology.” Others have deconstructed andreconstructed the comparison to make better sense of it. But the best way to illustrate the point is by reference to one of the right’s own pet peeves.

In April 2009, less than three months after President Obama took office, the Department of Homeland Security issued an internal report, commissioned during the Bush administration, on the resurgence of right-wing extremism in the U.S. and its resemblance to the surge in extremism and violence the country experienced in the 1990s.
When word broke, conservatives were apoplectic. They attributed some of their outrage to the fact that the report identified reintegrating veterans as a potential source of violence. But their objection to a focus on “right-wing” extremists contributed to their grievance in equal or greater measure.
The right’s objection wasn’t so much to the government studying violent internal threats, but to the association the report drew between those threats and right-wing politics.
The phenomenon extends outside the realm of violent extremism, too. Liberals and conservatives frequently disagree about what constitutes racism, but there is a strong bipartisan consensus in the country that overt racism is anathema. Conservatives take incredible umbrage at any linkage—whether justified or trumped up—between conservatism and extant racism in America for precisely this reason.
Call Dylan Storm Roof a neo-Nazi, nobody will object. Call him a right-wing extremist, and conservatives will balk. Some will take great offense.
It turns out leaders of all stripes, including religious and political ones, are at pains to distinguish their ideological commitments from those who do violent or otherwise heinous things in their name. Neither Republicans, nor orthodox Muslims, are exempt. Of course, nobody’s trying to recruit Republicans into a massive geo-political conflict with their co-partisans, but they’re familiar enough with the broad brush Clinton described to know that positing a war with “radical Islam” is counterproductive.
 
 
10.  History Repeats Itself--The Second Time as a Farce
 
 
When Will We Ever Learn?
 
by Ed Kilgore,   washingtonmonthly.com,   November 18, 2015
 
Now that Republican presidential candidates are increasingly lining up behind the idea of reengaging Sunni militants with ground forces in Iraq and Syria—Jeb Bush just expressed an ambition to become the third politician named Bush to send U.S. troops into Iraq—you have to wonder all over again if these people are completely immune from learning anything about the American experience there other than the belief that if we had never withdraw troops we would have to send them back in again!
Kevin Drum’s informed exasperation is entirely appropriate here:
[I]t’s astonishing—or depressing, take your pick—how soon we forget what we learned just a few years ago. Should we send a massive force into Anbar to crush ISIS once and for all? Well, we’ve tried that before. Remember? We sent a massive force into Iraq and, sure enough, we toppled Saddam Hussein’s regular army units pretty quickly. Then, despite a huge military presence, the country fell apart. The Sunni insurgency lasted for years before it was finally beaten back. Then the Shiite government of Iraq decided that fealty to its Shia supporters was more important than uniting their country, and before long Anbar was in flames again, this time with ISIS leading the charge.
You want to take out ISIS? Me too. But if you want to do it fast in order to demonstrate how tough you are, it’s going to require 100,000 troops or more; it will cost hundreds or thousands of American lives; and the bill will run to tens of billions of dollars. Remember Fallujah? It took the better part of a year and nearly 15,000 troops to take a medium-sized city held by a few thousand poorly trained militants. Now multiply that by ten or so. And multiply the casualties by 10 or 20 or 30 too. This isn’t two armies facing off on the field of battle. It’s house-to-house fighting against local insurgents, which isn’t something we’re especially good at.
Still, we could do it. The problem is that President Obama is right: unless we leave a permanent occupying force there, it will just blow up yet again—especially if we take Ted Cruz’s advice and decide we don’t really care about civilian casualties. Having defeated Al-Qaeda 2.0, we’ll end up with Al-Qaeda 3.0. Aside from a permanent occupation, the only thing that can stop this is an Iraqi government that takes Sunni grievances seriously and is genuinely willing to govern in a non-sectarian way.
This isn’t just a guess. We went through this just a few years ago. But everyone seems to have forgotten it already. Just send in the troops and crush the bastards! That worked great against the Nazis. It doesn’t work so great in Iraq.
 
FINALLY   doubleheader  
 
 
 
 
 

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