Look, this is all great and fun to talk about. But any discussion of the legitimacy of a 3rd party candidacy needs to be accompanied by an analysis of how the electoral map would break down on election day, and how a 3rd party candidate would be able to come up with 271 points...or votes...or whatever the hell they are.

Until you do that, this is pie in the sky.

I don't think we should kneejerk about the consumption tax. I think it could be laid out in a way that liberals would approve of. You exempt education expenses, medical expenses, maybe even food and housing. It becomes more of a conspicuous consumption tax. It redounds to the benefit of the nation because it encourages saving - a big problem we have. Finally, if you are essentially advocating the abolishment of the IRS, and cutting down the level of headache and heartburn associated with doing taxes every year, that has to hold some real value to voters...

Posted at June 14, 2007 10:28 AM in response to Presidential Politics

voreason: I 100% agree with you.

This thing can only end in a fragmented Iraq. There is simply no other long-term solution. And given that assumption, it would be far better to midwife the three-states into existence NOW, when we have the troops there to do it.

I know: It would be next to impossible. But it's a real, sustainable goal to shoot for with a real future if it worked, something that a united Iraq is not and has not.

Posted at December 12, 2006 3:54 PM in response to The ISG’s False Hope

I am more sanguine about 2008 - this is a very different world than 1980 was in spite of the MSM's current love affair with McCain. Not only is he going to have to be more accountable for his record than he was in '00, the guy is running the risk of overexposure - talk too much on TV and you might find people begin to grow tired of you, and start looking for reasons to dislike you...and the media always enjoys the backlash angle ('He was once considered by many to be a straight shooter, but has the luster worn off John McCain's rifle?'). This end-run-to-the-far-right that he's doing can't be ignored by the MSM forever, and if there's one thing that Kerry proved it's that the 'people' don't like to feel like they're being manipulated through calculated gambits and focus group politics. McCain's going to have to do more than toss around disembodied soundbites on Sunday talk shows to win primaries and a gen election.

The idea that McCain's military service will be 'honored where Kerry's wasn't'.... I'm just not buying it. McCain was the subject of a concerted slime effort in the 2000 primaries -in the face of his sterling war record. What makes you think the 6,7 or more GOP challengers (all with McCain in their gunsites) will pull their punches in 08 if they didn't in 00?

Veteran-bashing is no longer taboo in
American politics - and we have Rove&co to thank for it. The very idea that Kerry's combat time was somehow dishonorable compared Bush's father hiding him in the Texas Guard is the perfect illustration of how insanely up-is-down the discourse became...and likely will be in 2008.

If we learned anything from 04, it's that McCain's time in an F4 and in Hanoi isn't going to innoculate him from personal attacks, and in fact that time maybe the SUBJECT of the attacks.

As somebody else said - McCain's time is past - he missed his chance. He should have run in 96, challenged in 2004, or even cut a deal with Kerry.

Because it's just possible that the reason McCain lost in 2000 WASN"T the dirty tricks or Bush's supposed momentum after South Carolina. Maybe the real reason that he lost is because he didn't stand up well to the campaign microscope. And in spite of his POW grit and medals - his demeanor, his record as a Senator, his oratorical abilities were simply not all as appealing to a broad swath of Americans as he and the MSM would have us all believe. And when you add in the caliber of candidate he lost to, It occurs to me that there's a damn good chance that the McCain myth gets exposed very early in the 08 cycle...think Howard Dean.

Posted at November 26, 2006 7:44 PM in response to Straight Talk about "Straight Talk"

Rick, I think you've misinterpreted what I've said...I'm not claiming the committee chairmanship was the driving force behind Jeffords' flip. He was motivated by many other larger factors. But Daschle and Reid threw it in as a sweetener. And it worked, so it could work with Lieberman. At this moment, the Republicans are probably devising ways to make Joe feel very very welcome.

I don't disagree with your assessment - Lieberman is a loose cannon etc. Yes of course HE is supposed to serve us not the other way around. But I don't give a damn on how the guy votes on issues at this point. This whole thing comes down to that vote for Senate Majority Leader and Committee Chairmanships.

I appreciate your wanting to be principled and firm and tell Joe if he's not running as a Dem he's not a Dem etc. But...dude...this is politics. I just feel like you're ignoring the potential consequences.

That sonofab!tch may well win this election. And if he does we need him to vote to put Democrats in the chairs. That above all else. No matter what this is THE most important thing right now. Your plan seems to be to have every Democrat in the country sh!t on him for 10 weeks, and embarrass him and snipe at him and demand that Reid strip him of priveledges, and pronounce how 'detrimental he is to the party' etc.

But what if he wins? After all that abuse...why would he feel any obligation at ALL to vote with the Democrats? Imagine your family kicked you out of your house, wrote you out of the will, told you you weren't invited to the family re-union. Then after all that they call and ask 'hey, would you come over and mow the lawn?'

I'm not saying we pander to him. I'm not saying we endorse him or support him. But to out-and-out alienate him and antagonize him and make a sworn enemy of him...just seems like a terrible idea. I'm just suggesting Lamont run and win on the issues, and that Democrats unabashedly support Lamont not because Joe is the devil, but because Ned is the candidate chosen by CT Dems...we can and should do this all without demonizing or embarassing Leiberman. 

Posted at August 19, 2006 1:19 PM in response to Why Bush Needs Lieberman

I totally disagree with dinsdale. I think Lieberman is holding more cards here than people want to admit. We have this assymetric problem precisely because there is no credible Republican in the race...so they will vote by a VERY different set of rules than they do normally. Repubs don't care what he does, they're gonna vote for him out of default. That means he can stay 1 inch to the right of Lamont on the campaign trail and sweep up almost every single Republican vote PLUS a good chunk of Dems. I sure hope that numerical advantage is as significant as claimed.

At the moment this guy is 10+ points ahead in the polls and as such he has first dibs on a very valuable vote for SML in his hip pocket. I feel like once he's won the election, he basically isn't accountable to anyone so I don't trust a damn single pledge he makes about how he'll vote.

Look no further than Jim Jeffords for a test case - he was elected as a Republican in November 2000 and flopped in June of 2001. Why then? He felt slighted, he was pissed. He figured it was his last term anyway. And if not, he was 5.5 years away from any voter accountability. (ASIDE: I went to a John Cornyn event in 2002 where Bush spoke, and the 3 bogeymen they mentioned on several occasions were Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and Jim Jeffords.... The guy had been a solid Republican legislator for 30 freaking years and in an instant he was on par with Ted Kennedy.)

My point is that Joe has alot of similarities with Jim J. Joe knows if he wins this is probably his last term in the Senate because of the animus that's been created around him, regardless of how it happens in November. He knows that solidly 1/3 to 1/2 of Democrats are already done with him no matter WHAT he does going forward. So tell me again exactly how far you want to push this guy?

You really want Clinton to humiliate him? You really want Reid to immediately revoke all his priviledges?

Oh, and one more thing. You know why Jeffords voted for Daschle instead of Lott? Because he was offered a committee chairmanship (obviously there was more to the story, but still...)So in spite of what Lieberman has SAID about voting for Democratic chairs, i submit to you he has very little to lose and alot to gain if he were to choose....to be 'pushed' into reneging on his pledge in mid 2007.

Sure, he'll SAY all the right things now to keep the maximum Dem votes.... But in 8 months it will be "After some soul searching I have concluded that Senator Reid and I just don't see eye to eye on enough issues....etc" Voters would have to wait till 2012(!) to hold him accountable, if they got to at all.

Oh and one more diabolical thing - he can do all this contingent upon the outcome of the November races. He can play each side to his advantage behind the scenes between now and November, name his price if you will. If the Dems pick up 8 Senate seats? He keeps his mouth shut, keeps him pledge in 2007, is still a good 'independent Democrat'. Dems pick up just 5 or 6? Suddenly his vote becomes reallllly important.

So the remedy for this is for Lamont to run a brilliant campaign, turn that poll deficit into a lead like he did before, and give the fence-sitters a dose of courage....But if he looks like the Senator-presumptive, I just don't see bullying him is the right tactic. I'm sorry to sound like all those spineless Dem leaders, but this situation really has me worried. Imagine Lieberman wins and the Dems triumph with 6 Senate wins, then the heartbreak of Lieberman switching his vote because he was treated so shabbily by his colleagues.

Posted at August 18, 2006 9:23 PM in response to Why Bush Needs Lieberman

1.) "Right now, a married couple can leave $4 million tax free to their heirs and in 2009 it will be $7 million."

I'm confused about the whole concept of 2x the exemption for a couple - What exactly does that mean in the real world? If a single person wills me his/her $10m estate, then I get $2m tax free, and pay 45% on the remainder. Right?

OK so what if my parents are worth $10m and I'm their sole heir, under what circumstances do I get to use this double exemption so I only pay tax on $4m? If one parent dies and hands off the $10m to the other, then a year later that second parent croaks and leaves it all to me, Seems like I'm inheriting from only 1 person, so I only get $2m exempted. I mean, do they have to die simultaneously in order to get the double exemption?

I don't know a thing about estate planning and wills, but I would like to understand this point because I don't want to be in a discussion about it with my nutty right-wing brother in law and not have all the facts straight.

2.)To me Carville has it exactly wrong - it's not about the rate it's about the exemption level. IMO the obvious compromise is to keep the rate at 45%, but raise the exemption to $8 or $10m per person, or even higher. At that point, you innoculate yourself completely from any kind of hearstring-pulling 'i had to sell the family farm ' stories. We all know very few of those stories actually exist, but they do resonate with the public. Of course $2 million is a lot of money, but it's not an egregious amount - I can sort of empathize with someone inheriting an appreciated plot of land and suddenly having to sell a third of it to cover taxes. But, you move up to $8 or $10m and you would really have to stretch to muster up sympathy for someone who just received that size of a windfall. So  if you must: maintain the rate, but raise the exemption, tax revenues probably aren't greatly affected and you narrow the complainers down to only the extremely wealthy. Any veneer of Repubs 'protecting the humble hardworking families who've found some success and are being punished for it' is gone.

3.) The easiest justificaiton for keeping the tax is very simple and I don't see why it's not used more often: the estate tax is really just another form of income tax, and in this day and age, for right or wrong, the government taxes all income every April 15 for everyone, no matter how you came by it. If you want to change the whole tax philosophy of the country, we can talk about it, but it is what it is. When you inherit money, it's income, just like a paycheck, or if you have a business and earned it, or won it on a game show. 'Double taxation' is just a lie - even if the person who earned it actually did initially pay income tax on it.  YOU didn't. The IRS recognizes spouses and dependents...they don't recognize families as a special tax unit. Sure your parents paid tax on that money they earned, but they're not YOU. 

Democrats need to tackle this head on, and not waiver, and not to give in to some crap compromise that lowers the rate to 5% or whatever. As usual, facts and common sense are on our side.

Posted at June 8, 2006 4:08 AM in response to The Estate of Misguided Choices

Omigod - I am an idiot. I hereby swear I will never write another snarky post at 1am ever again. Jo-Ann - I take it all back.

Posted at May 17, 2006 6:30 AM in response to Noam Chomsky Pays a Solidarity Visit to Hezbollah

Yeah, Jo-Ann, I think we all sort of know what you're trying to say, but you're just not really coming out and saying it. So I'll give you some help.

What you want to say is that Hezbollah is political kryptonite right now, and therefore we shouldn't ally ourselves with people who don't treat it like that. That would be fine if you had just said that and left it there. That may indeed be a valid point - but only in terms of political expediency, not in terms of substance.

The problem of course is that you're trying to make a substantive argument that has more holes in it than swiss cheese. Problem 1 is that -for better or worse- Hezbollah are the duly elected spokesmen of the Palestinians. Nobody was more surprised to find themselves in that position than they were, but there they are. They don't want what we want, they don't act like we would have them act...but again, there they are, and the Palestinians elected them, with a vote. So complaining that we are setting back the march of democracy by having a dialogue with democratically elected leaders just doesn't quite mesh to me. Problem 2 of course is that you offer quotes from Chomsky that blow against the sails of your argument. Chomsky says that 'terrorism' has a squishy definition that we change as it suits us best. Hezbollah may do bad things, but are they worse than the regimes in Pakistan or Saudi (or Turkey or Egypt etc)? I assure you if they recognized Israel's right to exist, the world would happily let them firebomb nursing homes on Bingo nights without batting an eye. Chomsky is telling you that there is often scant relationship between what regimes actually do and the labels we give them, therefore, GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE and give him a break for listening to what they have to say.

What numbertwo said - badmouth the visit all you want, but it seems like GWB has caused mere dialogue to go out of style. Exactly what is wrong with having a conversation with them? How can that hurt?

And what noblesse said too about your sop to Chomsky's 'intellectual prowess in linguistics'. That (plus most of the rest of your post) really makes you sound like you don't know who the guy is. Maybe you recognized the name when you read the source article, and knew it to be a name that other progressives had mentioned, so you did a quick google and grabbed a sound bite for your post. Something just doesn't ring truthful in your treatment.

Posted at May 17, 2006 12:03 AM in response to Noam Chomsky Pays a Solidarity Visit to Hezbollah