Michael Lewis reflects on it:
My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don't want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either.
Doug Mataconis calls this "the most overwrought election loss reaction ever":
Walter Russell Mead counters the distraught voter above:
The left’s problem in Wisconsin wasn’t that the right had too much money. The left’s problem is that the left’s agenda didn’t have enough support from the public. Poll after poll after poll showed that the public didn’t share the left’s estimation of the Walker reforms. Many thought they were a pretty good idea; many others didn’t much like the reforms but didn’t think they were bad enough or important enough to justify a year of turmoil and a recall election. The left lost this election because it failed to persuade the people that its analysis was correct.
Now that the issue will be on the Colorado ballot in November, Scott Morgan wonders how Obama and Romney will deal with it:
[W]e have a major swing state in which a legalization measure is polarizing the electorate around this exact issue. Obama and Romney will approach that situation how? By standing there like fools and saying nothing at all? By saying it isn't important, even though the voters think it is? Neither look is particularly flattering.
Saying something even slightly sympathetic about fixing our marijuana laws in some way would probably pick up a not-insignificant number of votes for whoever dared to do it.
Miami, Florida, 9.53 am
"The news that Abu Yahya al-Libi, the No.2 leader of al Qaeda, is now confirmed to have been killed in a CIA drone strike in Pakistan's tribal region along the border with Afghanistan further underlines that the terrorist group that launched the 9/11 attacks is now more or less out of business," – Peter Bergen.
What Bush failed to do in eight years, Obama has accomplished in three. He did it without torture. And he accomplished exactly what he said he'd accomplish. Think back for a few minutes to a decade ago. Imagine George W. Bush achieving what Bergen has now noted. Would a re-election even be in doubt? Or would he already be on Rushmore?
From time to time the Dish likes to acknowledge some of the more colorful critics from the in-tray. Two of our all-time favorites were featured here and here. A new fave to emerge this year gets especially animated over the Dish's occasional use of vulgarity and our regular use of brackets when we adumbrate quotes from other bloggers. A representative sample:
"Complete shit" sounds different to American ears. It's just wrong. And "fucking" is tavern brawler to our ears. Have a heart. Parents want their eleven year olds to read Newsweek but are forced to decide otherwise and come off unfairly as blue nose censors. Please think it over.
Anyway, Clinton isn't a complete shit. Perry is a complete shit.
Another:
Why do you use brackets? Nobody else does, it's a horrible f]ucking affectation. [Y]es, Mr. Sullivan, a F]UCKING FUJUCKING AFFECTATION! Fuck Fuck stop using B]RACKETS! They are dis]tracting. Fuck!
More than a dozen emails focused on brackets. Another:
"[C]ar mandates and broccoli mandates". Looks like Cjar. [F]uck you. Fjuck you. Nobody else does uses brackets and nobody else says reax. NOBODY. or gobsmack. Brits have a tin ear.
Another:
What in FUCK is Ctd!?
It is annoying and affected to use expressions or abbreviations nobody but a few know. I "googled" it and there are hundreds of translations. Stop using it. It's not real. Maybe it's British, like innit.
Another:
Using VFYW for View from your window? Don't kid yourself. Nobody is such an avid fan they accept that as worthy of a fucking acronym.
Another:
"Money quote"? A porno reference to money shot. Stop being repulsive and gross.
Another:
Jock-sniffing? Restaurant pooping? You're getting repulsive again.
Another:
Pictures of condoms, what THE FUCK is wrong with your MIND. FUCK YOU!
One more:
Stop with all these arcane, insider-meaning bull fuck crap words nobody likes or uses except you, like hathos and reax. And why is the Sagan video called a mashup, and what is a mashup? I swear nobody else kept on using those non words, only you. Also the JIZZ pants post was back to your gross self you were improving on. Be nice, don't be graphic and gross. Be what we expect from Newsweek.
That's it for now.
Your friend
Be assured we feel the same way about you.
Martin Wolf tells it like it is:
Before now, I had never really understood how the 1930s could happen. Now I do. All one needs are fragile economies, a rigid monetary regime, intense debate over what must be done, widespread belief that suffering is good, myopic politicians, an inability to co-operate and failure to stay ahead of events. Perhaps the panic will vanish. But investors who are buying bonds at current rates are indicating a deep aversion to the downside risks. Policy makers must eliminate this panic, not stoke it.
In the eurozone, they are failing to do so.
Jeremy Stahl flags more evidence that Obama's marriage equality support is helping the cause:
It has only been a month since president Obama came out in favor of gay marriage, but multiple polls have demonstrated that his support seems to be making a difference. The latest came [yesterday] from PPP, with 49 percent of Minnesotans saying they now oppose the state’s proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and 43 percent supporting the measure. This is an almost mirror reversal from the 44-48 number in the last PPP survey from January.
My own beloved Dusty has it down: the slow eruption of whines and squeals to start with, the accelerating unspooling of joy, the need to run around somewhere else just to calm down a bit, the return to loving, and the gentle dissipation of the bag pipes of beagle ecstasy. A heroine’s welcome, in other words.
A sad postmortem to a what should have been – and still is – a wakeup call. But I'd hesitate before judging the long term impact of Peter's act of conscience. First: because an act of conscience in the writing of a book should not be judged by the book's success in changing the world immediately. The best books are often slammed when they arrive, only to achieve serious status in retrospect. To point to an obvious example, The Israel Lobby was subjected to the full AIPAC treatment, with every single possible weapon hurled at it to discredit the authors, smear their reputations, and prevent the arguments in the book being disseminated. At the time, the book was dead on arrival. Years later, it seems to have shifted the parameters of the Washington debate in decisive ways.
I truly had no expectation that my book on conservatism would have an iota of an impact on the current GOP. But I wrote it anyway, as a marker to myself of what I believed, as a way to clarify for myself – and anyone else interested – what conservatism is for me, and why, in my view, today's GOP has so brutally assaulted the tradition whose name they claim. I wish more books were written for these reasons, and their success judged not by their immediate sales and impact, but by their long-term salience. So as the president said to Peter, hang in. There are far worse things for a writer than being dismissed as a failure. Like being a huge, pandering success.
The Dish 