Month: April 2012

What Do Democrats Have Against Mormons?

Last year, Gallup found that more Democrats than Republicans weren't willing to vote for a Mormon. Peter Beinart ponders the finding:

One reason Democrats may be more anti-Mormon than Republicans is that Democrats, on average, are more secular. Devout Protestants, Catholics, and Jews may be more tolerant of Mormonism because they understand from firsthand experience the comfort and strength that religious commitment brings. Many secular Democrats, by contrast, may start with the assumption that religious orthodoxy produces irrationality and intolerance. 

But Mormons have long had a history of worrying about the fusion of church and state when the church isn't theirs'. Alas, their current crusade against the civil rights of gays – funding campaigns as far away from Utah as Maryland – casts them in a different light, that of persecuters.

Von Hoffmanns All Round!

Jim Newell runs down all the worst primary predictions, including yours truly. Yes, my Palin paranoia got the better of me at times, but I did cop to my error (and was thrilled by it). Dish fave:

Bill Kristol, the publisher of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, is the most notoriously wrong-all-the-time political commentator in America.

The vocal advocate behind such hits as "the Iraq war will go swimmingly" and "Sarah Palin would be a great vice presidential candidate" typically spent most of this campaign season incorrectly speculating, or "reporting," on which candidates would join the race. In a way, this made Kristol useful. We knew, for example, that a Rudy Giuliani for President 2012 campaign — however unlikely that ever was — would definitely never materialize after Bill Kristol wrote this on June 8, 2011: "I’m told by two reliable sources that Rudy Giuliani intends to run for the GOP nomination for president in 2012. He may throw his hat in the ring soon."

A sad excuse: Romney was so obviously the likely candidate we hacks did our best to come up with other possible scenarios. It was called "keeping hope awake."

As Europe Turns, Ctd

Millman rebuts me:

President Obama can’t use Europe as a “warning sign for what Romney would bring to America” because: (a) Romney’s a Republican, and Republicans hate Europe and believe in American exceptionalism, just like they are against deficits and for smaller government, and no matter how many times you argue that these perceptions are untethered to reality it doesn’t matter: the brand is the brand; (b) nobody in America knows anything about what is going on in Europe, and it is inconceivable that anybody is going to successfully explain the situation to people in order to score an obscure political point.

Good points. But there may come a time when Romney's bullshit about his exclusive claim on pursuing "American" policies should be called out. He would, so far as one can tell anything concrete yet about his proposals, make America's fiscal policies more like Europe's – and Obama can and should remind people that this has led to over 10 percent EU zone unemployment and no real progress on the debt.

Sometimes the brand is a lie. Like the GOP and fiscal responsibility.

Stretching The Limits Of Free Speech, Ctd

The devil is often in the precise details. This must-read op-ed (which I missed) gives more context to the case of Tarek Mehanna, and I have to say I found its details troubling. There is no real doubt that Mehanna is an al Qaeda supporter, traveled to Yemen to try to get some Jihad on (failed), translated al Qaeda documents to spread propaganda and clearly hates his own country's foreign policy to a degree that allowed him to want to see his fellow citizens incinerated, like "BBQ," in his analogy. But I see no tangible, direct, organizational links with al Qaeda as in the Awlaki case; and mere translation and abhorrent, treasonous views. I can see why some conspiracy charges might have been salient, but a 17 year sentence? That seems unduly punitive to me.

Part of the problem is that Mehanna's backers really don't believe we are at war (hence the fact that both sides can talk past each other). But if we are at war, enemy propagandists have not historically been treated as untouchable. A reader writes:

I have no idea why anyone thinks that the propagandists for our military enemies should be afforded freedom of speech. Here’s a quick list of Axis propagandists tried, imprisoned, and in some cases executed after World War II:

* William Joyce – Lord Haw-Haw, British propagandist for the Germans
* Fred W. Kaltenbach – Lord Hee-Haw, American propagandist for the Germans
* Iva Toguri D’Aquino – Tokyo Rose, American propagandist for the Japanese
* Mildred Gillars – Axis Sally, American propagandist for the Germans
* Rita Zucca – Axis Sally, American propagandist for the Italians

These individual did not take up arms in the field of battle, but they all betrayed their native lands in their attempts to destroy Allied morale and extol the virtues of fascism during wartime.  It is uncontroversial that they were guilty of treason.  How is it controversial when the enemy is Al-Qaeda?

We have aired both sides of the argument and after reading more, I feel less confident in my previous position. But I wonder if, say, Glenn Greenwald, believes that treason itself is a crime. Or should be. And if Mehanna is not a traitor, who would be?

“We Have Lost Our Gods”

Ron Fournier and Sophie Quinton call attention to one American's disastrous brush with our collapsing institutions in an era of recession. It's quite the tale and helps bring to light the actual daily crises that the economic crisis continues to produce:

[Johnny] Whitmire tells a familiar story of how public and private institutions derailed an American’s dream: In 2000, he bought the $40,000 house with no money down and a $620 monthly mortgage. He made every payment. Then, in the fall of 2010, his partially disabled wife lost her state job. “Governor [Mitch] Daniels slashed the budget, and they looked for any excuse to squeeze people out,” Whitmire says. “We got lost in that shuffle—cut adrift.”

The Whitmires couldn’t make their payments anymore. They applied for a trial loan-modification through an Obama administration program, and when it was granted, their monthly bill fell to $473.87. But, like nearly a million others, the modification was canceled. After charging the lower rate for three months, their mortgage lender reinstated the higher fee and billed the family $1,878.88 in back payments. Whitmire didn’t have that kind of cash and couldn’t get it, so he and his wife filed for bankruptcy. His attorney advised him to live in the house until the bank foreclosed, but “I don’t believe in a free lunch,” Whitmire says. He moved out, leaving the keys on the kitchen table. “I thought the bank should have them.” A year later, City Hall sent him salt for his wounds: a $300 citation for tall grass at 1900 W. 10th St. Telling the story, he swipes dried grass from his jeans and shakes his head. “The city dinged me for tall weeds at my bank’s house.” 

Whitmire could also be considered an "Obama independent":

He is among a group of voters most skeptical of President Obama: noncollege-educated white males. He feels betrayed—not just by Obama, who won his vote in 2008, but by the institutions that were supposed to protect him: his state, which laid off his wife; his government in Washington, which couldn’t rescue homeowners who had played by the rules; his bank, which failed to walk him through the correct paperwork or warn him about a potential mortgage hike; his city, which penalized him for somebody else’s error; and even his employer, a construction company he likes even though he got laid off. “I was middle class for 10 years, but it’s done,” Whitmire says. “I’ve lost my home. I live in a trailer now because of a mortgage company and an incompetent government.”

Kornacki elaborates on Obama's drop among blue collar white men.