Politics

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Going over the cliff?!

The Senate is back in town with very unhappy members who would rather be kicking back at home and who can blame them.  Senator McConnell who really, really doesn’ t want to make a fool of  himself a la Boehner and Plan B, keeps asking for a proposal from the President.  I thought the President had made at least two proposals, but I guess Mitch doesn’t follow the new much.  Meanwhile the House is called back into session on Sunday night.  That is the night of December 30 a little more than 24 hours before the cliff.  So what is going on here?  Not being an economist, I can’t explain it all but I have found a couple of things this morning that have given me some things to think about as we play chicken with the deadline.

First is this handy chart from the New York Times from the Debt Reckoning blog.

It was posted last night with this explanation.

The deadline for resolving the pending fiscal crisis is less than a week away and, absent a breakthrough, spending cuts and tax increases on every income level will go into effect on Jan. 2. During their negotiations, President Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner have sought to keep tax rates at their current level for some taxpayers while letting them rise for high earners, but they have not agreed on where to set the income threshold. Mr. Obama has called for rates to go up on income above $250,000 (he later increased his offer to $400,000), Congressional Democrats have said they would agree to $500,000, and Mr. Boehner has called for a $1 million threshold.

So we aren’t talking about a lot of taxpayers here since the vast majority of us make under $250,000 in taxable income.  As I understand it, none of these proposals would impact investment income.  (Which as we have learned from Mitt Romney, is taxed differently.)  But we do pay a lot more taxes than just income tax and if we go over the cliff, these will go up.  Payroll taxes, business taxes, various tax credits like for child care, and unemployment insurance will all be affected.

The other thing I read this morning is from the Washington Post’s Wonkblog, They have put together a set of very helpful Frequently Asked Questions – with answers.

For example

What is the fiscal cliff in one sentence?

Much too much austerity, much too quickly.

And since this is Ezra Klein and company, there are a couple of helpful graphs.

On or around Jan. 1, about $500 billion in tax increases and $200 billion in spending cuts (see table 1) [ above] are scheduled to take effect. That’s equal to about four percent of GDP, which is according to the Congressional Budget Office, more than enough to throw us into a recession

Next question:  What matters most?

It’s important to recognize that the austerity crisis is a collision between deficit reduction and stimulus. The good news is that if you look at the various components of the fiscal cliff separately, you’ll see that the parts that do the most for deficit reduction do the least for the recovery, and vice versa. This suggests the possibility of “a la carte” approach to the fiscal cliff, in which we extend the most stimulative policies and wave goodbye to the most costly policies. And if you’re looking to go a la carte then here, via the Economic Policy Institute, is the menu.

I recommend that Senator McConnell take a look at this list and the chart showing the impact of various tax increase proposals, pull out his own calculator and make a proposal.  Of course given the House and Senate rules, we will probably go over the cliff before anything can be passed.

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Fear and 2013

OK.  That is not a very cheerful title for a post during the holidays, but between baking and cooking and family, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and I think there is a direct connection between what is being reported in the new Washington Post poll and the intransigence of many about instituting any kind of new rules about guns and gun safety as well as the inability of Congressional Republicans to put country over party and negotiate a budget deal.

According to the Post,

A bare 53 percent majority of all Americans are “hopeful” about their lives in 2013; some 44 percent say they are instead more “fearful.” The assessment about what’s in store for the world is even more grim: a record low 40 percent report being hopeful about the next year, with 56 percent saying they are more fearful.

Much of the “fear” is being generated by the failure of Congress to act on any measures related to the budget and so-called “fiscal cliff”, but that fear is also grounded in President Obama’s re-election.  Let’s look at some poll results.Nearly six in 10 are very concerned about the national economy if a budget agreement is not reached soon. Among those with high level concern, 53 percent are fearful about the future.

Not all the perceptions are slipping. Fully 53 percent say that based on their own experiences the economy has begun to recover, a sentiment that’s crept up steadily from 36 percent in November 2011 to a new high point. Still, even among those who see recovery happening, most see it as a weak one.

But what is really shocking is the difference between Democratic and Republican attitudes.

Republicans and Democrats report far different readings on the recovery as well as the hopes for their personal lives. Over seven in 10 Democrats say the economy is beginning to recover, but fewer than half as many Republicans – 35 percent – see the economy making a turnaround.

And this difference really shows up when the chart above is broken down by political party.

So why this stark difference?  The Post observes that Democrats are just more optimistic.

Democrats are far more positive, with 75 percent hopeful about their personal lives, exactly the same as 2008. Even during George W. Bush’s presidency, majorities of Democrats expressed a hopeful outlook. Independents splits about evenly between hope and fear.

In separate questions about the coming year, the public divides narrowly between optimism and pessimism about the state of the economy, the way things are going in the country overall and chances for bipartisan agreement in Washington.

A 55 percent majority are optimistic about the policies Obama will pursue in the coming year, a bit of a comedown from the 68 percent who were optimistic when he was first elected in 2008. The current rating is propped up by 85 percent optimism among Democrats, a point shy of their rating four years ago.

So what does this divide mean?  Do pessimistic people get drawn to the Republican Party and optimistic ones to the Democrats?  I think the answer is yes and that we have to figure out why this is if we are going to get back to some kind of national consensus with government actually functioning again.  This fear is also why so many Republicans are buying guns, opposing even simple measures to insure gun safety, and why so many think that secession is the correct response to Obama’s re-election.  I can’t imagine what it must be like to live in constant fear about the future, fear about change, and fear of people who look or act differently than you.  It can’t be healthy.

So if you are a Republican and reading this, for your own mental and physical health resolve to work on your pessimism and fear next year.  Resolve to learn more facts and to think about them.  I think this will not only help you personally, but it might help end gridlock. 

Maybe looking at some great pictures of Bo, the Obama dog, will help put you in the right frame of mind.  And if you are Democrat look at them because they are wonderful.  (Even to a cat person!)  Here is a sample.

President Obama talks with White House budget chief Jack Lew; at left, Bo waits for the president inside the doorway of the Outer Oval Office.

Peeking out

President Obama talks with White House budget chief Jack Lew; at left, Bo waits for the president inside the doorway of the Outer Oval Office.

(Photo: White House)

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Replacing John Kerry or potential food fight in Massachusetts

John Kerry has not been appointed to anything as of this writing.  He has certainly not been confirmed by the Senate.  Neither of these facts are keeping the speculation about the race to replace him from heading toward some kind of crescendo.  Ben Affleck, Ted Kennedy, Jr., Congressman Ed Markey, or my former boss, Congressman Mike Capuano.  Will one of them get appointed by Governor Deval Patrick as interim and then be allowed to run or will it be Vicki Kennedy or former governor Michael Dukakis neither of whom will run.  Rumors. Rumors and speculation.

One thing I do know is that Scott Brown is running for something.  He just came out in support of an assault weapons ban which is a change in his previous position.  If he votes for the President’s fiscal cliff plan then we can be absolutely certain he is running.  The cynic in me would say that he likes being a senator more than he values loyalty to his party which, by the way, he didn’t mention much in his campaign against Elizabeth Warren.  It is Republican.

But let us play the game.

Ben Affleck and Ted, Jr. both campaigned for Elizabeth Warren.  Both appear to have good solid Democratic left politics.  Both probably have good name recognition (an issue for Ed Markey and Mike Capuano – although if I remember correctly, Mike came in second to Martha Coakley in Democratic primary to run against Scott Brown in the last special election.  Some, including me, said at the time that Mike would have pushed back harder against Brown than Coakley did).

For one, Ted, Jr. doesn’t really live in Massachusetts even though a lot of people probably think he must.  He would have to hurry and change his residence and registration.

The Boston Globe ran a piece speculating on all of this and said this about Ted, Jr.

The younger Kennedy would have to go out and campaign for the seat, just as his relative, Joseph P. Kennedy III, just did with his recent US House campaign.

Edward Jr. could rely on his father’s legacy, but also highlight his own work with the disability community, as well as his private-sector experience heading a New York-based health care advisory firm.

One immediate challenge, though, is residency. Kennedy may spend time each summer at the family compound on Cape Cod, but he lives in Connecticut.

Massachusetts election law does not require US House members to live in their respective House districts, only that they be an “inhabitant” of the state when elected. The same is true for senators, who don’t represent geographical districts but the entire state. Candidates for both offices, however, have to be registered voters in the state to circulate nomination papers.

President John F. Kennedy famously maintained his voter registration at 122 Bowdoin St., an apartment building across from the State House, all the way until his assassination.

Edward Kennedy Jr. would have to make some sort of formal commitment to Massachusetts before voters made a formal commitment to him.

Ironically enough, Hillary Clinton – the person whose departure may clear the path for a special election campaign – did just the same sort of thing in New York before winning her own seat in the US Senate

Then there is Ben.  His mother lives in Cambridge, but I thought he lived in California.  Anyway, I think he probably has the same residency issues as Ted, Jr.  But, hey, if Sonny Bono could become a Congressman.  A better example for Ben would be Al Franken who went home to Minnesota and visited everyone without cracking a joke.  Franken has made himself into a very good senator.  Unfortunately Ben doesn’t have time to do this.  He does go to Senate hearings, however.

Jay Westcott/POLITICO

The Globe didn’t have much to say about Ben, but Politico reported

“That’s not what I’m here to talk about,” Affleck told POLITICO. “I’m here to talk about what role we can place in making the Eastern Congo a better place.”

Earlier this week, reports surfaced that he was being touted as a possible candidate for Senate in Massachusetts. Affleck campaigned for Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) when she beat freshman Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) in November.

So will Massachusetts go for star power, legacy or a seasoned politician?  And the bigger question:  who can beat Scott Brown?

Photograph of Ted Kennedy, Jr. – Brian Snyder/AP

Photograph of Ben Affleck  – Jay Westcott/Politico

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The electoral college votes

The Electoral College voted on Monday.

As the Washington Post pointed out

President Obama hasn’t officially secured a second term in the White House. Technically, that won’t happen until the electoral college casts its ballots Monday — presumably in favor of the winner for each state.

Even then, Congress has to formally declare Obama the victor after counting the electoral votes on Jan. 6.

Other than saying that every state has an elector for each senator and representative, the Constitution provides little guidance.  Federal law provides the framework.

Federal law requires state electors to meet in their respective state capitals every four years to cast their votes for president and vice president on the Monday after the second Wednesday of December. Otherwise, states largely set their own rules. In most states, an equal number of electors pledge themselves to each candidate, and the popular vote dictates which team of electors casts its votes.

So how did the voting go on Monday?  The Boston Globe had two stories:  One on the voting generally and one on Massachusetts.  I quote from both.

Ceremonies around the country had their share of pomp and electors in red, white and blue ties. Wisconsin’s electors donned pin-on buttons with headshots of the president. A bit of controversy erupted in Arizona, where a few electors voiced doubts that Obama was ‘‘properly vetted as a legitimate candidate for president’’ by raising debunked claims about his birth certificate.

In New Hampshire, electors supporting Obama signed their four ballots and then certificates that were sealed in envelopes with wax that has been in the secretary of state’s office for more than 70 years.

Vermont’s meeting of three electors was witnessed by a fifth-grade class.

Connecticut’s electors convened in the state Senate chamber and solemnly remembered the victims of last week’s school shooting before carrying out their task.

In Mississippi, which Romney carried comfortably, six men chosen earlier as electors met in a small committee room in the state Capitol and cast their votes for the GOP candidate. Well aware they were doing so in a lost cause, they opted for humor. The state’s Republican governor, Phil Bryant, joked that Billy Mounger, an 86-year-old elector, probably wished to vote for Calvin Coolidge, a renowned small-government conservative president in the 1920s.

And is Massachusetts

The electors, who are chosen by the respective state party committees, entered the chamber  dressed in formal attire to a standing ovation.

Galvin [Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin]  said afterward that each party committee chooses a slate of people to sit on the Electoral College, and the slate from the winning party casts the final vote. Though they are not legally bound to vote for the winner of the November election, all of them have pledged to, Galvin said.

“It was a nice visit to history,” he said of the ceremony, which included classical music from Project Step, a group that provides musical instruction to minority youth, and a rendition of the national anthem from the Boston Children’s Chorus.

Now we wait for Congress to count the votes on January 6.  Then the re-election of Barack Obama will be official.  Until then some historical perspective.

Votes in the Electoral College, 1824.

Votes in the Electoral College, 1824. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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Let’s talk about gun safety

This morning Nate Silver published two charts I found very interesting.

If the news coverage is any guide, there has been a change of tone in recent years in the public conversation about guns. The two-word phrase “gun control” is being used considerably less often than it was 10 or 20 years ago. But the phrase “gun rights” is being used more often. And the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is being invoked more frequently in the discussion.

In the chart below, I’ve tracked the number of news articles that used the terms “gun control,” “gun rights,” “gun violence” and “Second Amendment” in American newspapers, according to the database NewsLibrary.com. (Because the number of articles in the database changes over time, the figures are normalized to reflect the overall volume of database coverage in any given year, with the numbers representing how often the gun-related phrases were used per 1,000 articles on any subject.)

The usage of all four phrases, but particularly the term “gun control,” has been subject to sharp but temporary shifts based on news events.

The second showed five year averages.

As we can see, discussion of gun control has dropped off sharply.  Silver points out

The change in rhetoric may reflect the increasing polarization in the debate over gun policy. “Gun control,” a relatively neutral term, has been used less and less often. But more politically charged phrases, like “gun violence” and “gun rights,” have become more common. Those who advocate greater restrictions on gun ownership may have determined that their most persuasive argument is to talk about the consequences of increased access to guns — as opposed to the weedy debate about what rights the Second Amendment may or may not convey to gun owners. For opponents of stricter gun laws, the debate has increasingly become one about Constitutional protections. Certainly, many opponents of gun control measures also argue that efforts to restrict gun ownership could backfire in various ways or will otherwise fail to reduce violence. But broadly speaking, they would prefer that the debate be about what they see as Constitutional rights, rather than the utilitarian consequences of gun control measures.

Their strategy may have been working. The polling evidence suggests that the public has gone from tending to back stricter gun control policies to a more ambiguous position in recent years. There may be some voters who think that the Constitution provides broad latitude to own and carry guns – even if the consequences can sometimes be tragic.

But this morning I heard Representative Carolyn McCarthy say something very interesting when she was talking to Chris Hayes on MSNBC.  She wants to call for changes that lead to gun safety not gun control.  She wants to add a new term that is less politically loaded to the conversation.  She pointed out that the word “control” has negative connotations.

This morning in the Boston Globe, Adrian Walker wrote

By now the sites of tragedies practically roll off our tongues. Columbine. ­Aurora. Tucson. And now tiny Newtown can be added to this roster of unthinkable, preventable tragedy.

Yes, I said preventable. Every single one of these might have been prevented if getting hold of a gun in this country was as difficult as, say, getting a driver’s ­license.

Don’t talk to me about the right to bear arms. There is no right to open fire on defense­less children or a congresswoman meeting her constituents or a theater full of moviegoers. Don’t bother trying to tell me that the Founding Fathers intended access to guns as a “right” with almost no limits. That insipid argument is an insult to history, even if a majority of our highest court seems persuaded by it.

Those of us who do not believe that everyone has a right to own and carry a weapon because of the myth of “self-protection” need to step up.  To push our congressmen and women, to push our Senators and to push President Obama.  We know the statistics:  We are up there in gun ownership with Yemen.  Should be proud of that?  We know that guns kept in cars and homes are often used to kill family members, commit suicide, or in a mistaken effort at self-defense.

I remember seeing an interview after Congresswoman Giffords was shot.  The young man said he had been getting coffee and heard shots.  He rushed out to find a man on the ground who was being held by another.  He had a gun and thought about using it.  If he had done so, he would have shot, not the gunman, but the person trying to disarm the shooter.

Let’s work to make owning a gun as difficult as getting a driver’s license.  Let’s talk about gun safety the same way we talk about traffic safety or driver safety.

Carolyn McCarthy ran for office after her husband died and her son was injured by a gunman on the Long Island Railroad.

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About the Republican request for a balanced approach

Ezra Klein posted this today

This is a very sharp point by Josh Barro:

The Republicans’ main problem in this negotiation is that they know President Barack Obama will not agree to cut in the area they want to cut: aid to the poor. The signal Obama has sent is that he is willing to make a deal that cuts old-age entitlements, meaning Medicare and Social Security, and Republicans are internally conflicted over those programs.

He’s right. Think back to Mitt Romney’s proposed budget. Medicare and Social Security were held harmless for at least 10 years. Defense spending got a lift. PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts were on the table, but they cost so little it hardly mattered.

And there is the Ryan budget problem which remains the basic Republican budget outline.  It is what they ran on.

These are, however, classes of cuts the White House won’t even consider. A year ago, they were open to modest cuts in Medicaid, but after the Supreme Court’s health-care decision, even that door has shut. As for discretionary spending cuts, so many of those were made in 2011, there’s just not much left to do.

That leaves Medicare and Social Security. It’s possible that the negotiators will enact a backdoor, but significant, cut to Social Security by changing the government’s measure of inflation. But they’re not going to come at Social Security from the front. It’s too politically potent. Even Ryan’s budget left Social Security alone.

As for Medicare, as Barro says, if “Republicans ask for near-term Medicare cuts, that will mean reversing a position that is popular with a core constituency (old white people) and giving up a cudgel that they feel they have used effectively to beat up the president since 2009.” It’s a pickle.

In addition, as Steve Benen on the Rachel Maddow blog reminds us, the President has already offered spending cuts, of about 1.7 trillion over 10 years.

The White House keeps saying it wants a ‘balanced approach’ but this offer is completely unbalanced and unrealistic,” a Capitol Hill Republican said yesterday. “It calls for $1.6 trillion in tax hikes — all of that upfront — in exchange for only $400 billion in spending cuts that come later.”

Let’s put aside, for now, the irony of hearing Republicans talking about “balanced” debt-reduction plans. Instead, the importance of complaints like these is that they overlook everything that happened a year ago. Jonathan Cohn had a good piece on this.

…As part of the 2011 Budget Control Act, Obama agreed to spending  reductions of about $1.5 trillion over the next ten years. If you count  the interest, the savings is actually $1.7 trillion. Boehner should have  no problem remembering the details of that deal: As Greg Sargent points out, Boehner at the time actually gloated about the fact that the deal was “all spending cuts.”

And now, with this latest offer, Obama is proposing yet more spending  reductions, to the tune of several hundred billion dollars. Add it up  and it’s more than $2 trillion in spending cuts Obama has either signed  into law or is endorsing now. That’s obviously greater than the $1.6 trillion in new tax revenue he’s seeking. (And that doesn’t even take into account automatic cuts  from the 2011 budget sequester, which Obama has proposed to defer, or  savings from ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.)

I can understand the temptation to block 2011 from memory, but what transpired is clearly relevant to the current debate. Obama wanted a “balanced” approach last year — some cuts, some new revenue — but didn’t get it. Instead, faced with the prospect of Republicans crashing the economy on purpose, the president accepted a deal with a whole lot of spending cuts.

How much new tax revenue came as the result of last year’s deal? Zero. The entire package came in the form of spending reductions and savings.

So with the new tax revenues and the already proposed budget cuts, President Obama is offering exactly what the Republicans keep asking for:  a balanced approach.  I’m not sure what they are waiting for.  Senator Harry Reid is mystified and so am I.

We need a comprehensive solution that lasts for a couple of years at a minimum because this non-economist doesn’t think the economy will improve as long as we seem to be in a continuous a budget or debt ceiling crisis.

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Playing with Medicare and Social Security

I retired recently from a white collar, management, high stress job at the age I have always expected to retire, 65.  I think I can say that my retirement was a cause of envy among many of my co-workers who are just as tired and stressed as I was but have many years before they can retire.  As I said to my former staff members at lunch the other day, you don’t realize how tired you are until you retire.  And even then it takes time to de-stress.  So I can imagine if I were working a job that was physically demanding (and maybe also stressful) and how it would make me feel if I knew I had to work until 67 or 70 to get any kind of benefits which is where many Republicans (and some Democrats) want us to end up.  I don’t think that some of the corporate CEO’s and elected officials understand this which is why this piece by Ezra Klein caught my eye.

I’ll be clear: Raising the Medicare eligibility age makes no sense. It cuts federal health-care spending but raises national health spending, which is what really matters. It doesn’t modernize the system or bend the cost curve. It doesn’t connect to any coherent theory of health reform, like increasing Medicare’s bargaining power, increasing competition in Medicare, ending fee-for-service medicine, or learning which treatments work and which don’t. I’m not opposed to cutting Medicare — quite the opposite, actually — but this is a particularly brain-dead way to do it.

Its importance in the negotiations is attributable to the fact that raising the age at which Americans can receive Medicare and Social Security has a weird, symbolic power in Washington. As House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi puts it, the eligibility age is “a trophy” that Republicans can bring back to their base. Though the policy is deeply unpopular with voters, it’s quite popular among Republican elites.

Klein floats this idea

If it’s age increases that the political system wants, there’s a better way to do it. Ezekiel Emanuel, who advised the Obama administration on health care and now works with the Center for American Progress, calls it “graduated eligibility,” and it would link the age of eligibility with lifetime earnings:

Here’s how it would work. People in the bottom half of the lifetime earnings distribution would become eligible for normal retirement benefits at age 65 for Medicare and 66 for Social Security, just as they are today. But people in the next quarter of the lifetime earnings distribution would become eligible for the respective programs at 67 and 68, and those in the top quarter would become eligible at 70 and 71. All eligibility ages would increase over time, as they are scheduled to now.

This makes sense on a few different levels. For one thing, a favorite argument for raising the age at which benefits begin is that seniors live longer today than they did when these programs began. But those gains aren’t equal: Richer seniors live six years longer than poorer seniors, on average. “Graduated eligibility” accounts for that fact.

This does make a certain amount of sense, but I still worry about those who work physically demanding jobs like construction.  I’m not even sure about the scheduled age increases for full benefits.  Maybe we should lower ages at the bottom, leave the middle, and raise it even highter at the top.

I remembered that I heard somewhere that the average retirement age is 62 and went looking for confirmation.  I found this story in the Financial Advisor from April 2012.

More than one third of pre-retirees (35%) surveyed think they will never retire, an increase from 29% in the 2009 survey. Only one in 10 pre-retirees thinks they will retire before age 60. Half of pre-retirees say they will wait until at least age 65.

In reality, 31% of retirees quit work before age 55, 20% before age 60, and another 10% before age 62.

“There is a major disconnect between when people say they plan to retire and when they actually do,” the survey says. Some of it may be because of health problems or because they are downsized. “Many who lose jobs in their 50s and 60s experience more difficulty finding new employment,” the survey adds.

The survey was taken of 800 pre-retirees and 800 retirees, ages 40 to 80. It is the sixth survey of this type taken by the Society of Actuaries since 2001.

So there is also a disconnect between the proposals on age eligibility and what people so in real life.

I am worried that we are going to end up with a policy that has very bad unintended consequences.  I saw Nancy Pelosi in an interview a few nights ago when she said she hadn’t seen how raising the Medicare age was going to create savings.  She said, “Show me the money.”  I would go further and say, I don’t think that anyone has done the math and I can only hope that the President, Democrats in Congress and maybe some Republicans will do the math first.

Photograph:  Alex Wong

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The death of the Republican party? Part 2

Maureen Dowd calls them  “A Lost civilization”. likening them to the lost tribes of civilization.

The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys.

Just another vanishing tribe that fought the cultural and demographic tides of history.

…

Someday, it will be the subject of a National Geographic special, or a Mel Gibson movie, where archaeologists piece together who the lost tribe was, where it came from, and what happened to it. The experts will sift through the ruins of the Reagan Presidential Library, Dick Cheney’s shotgun casings, Orca poll monitoring hieroglyphics, remnants of triumphal rants by Dick Morris on Fox News, faded photos of Clint Eastwood and an empty chair, and scraps of ancient tape in which a tall, stiff man, his name long forgotten, gnashes his teeth about the 47 percent of moochers and the “gifts” they got.

Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.

As the historian Will Durant observed, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

…

Who would ever have thought blacks would get out and support the first black president? Who would ever have thought women would shy away from the party of transvaginal probes? Who would ever have thought gays would work against a party that treated them as immoral and subhuman? Who would have ever thought young people would desert a party that ignored science and hectored on social issues? Who would ever have thought Latinos would scorn a party that expected them to finish up their chores and self-deport?

Calvin Trillin puts it this way

Mitt Romney Explains Why He Lost

Obama was clever as clever could be;
To targeted groups he gave gifts that were free:
Say, healthcare for free until age 26,
And free contraceptives (for sex just for kicks).
Debates in the primaries left our team bruised
From harsh accusations the White House then used.
Whatever the reason for losing might be,
Of one thing I’m sure: it could not have been me.
I’m perfect.

But those of us on the other side should remember that the Democrats have also had some near-death experiences – like after the 1972 election – and we have spent our time in the wilderness, too.  The party has had internal struggles and differences, but, correct me if I’m wrong, there has never been a point where the Democratic party was this close to making itself irrelevant.

Trillin again.

Republican Soul Searching   

We’re searching our souls and we’re wondering why
We got beat so badly our rivals are gloating.
It’s obvious now where our campaign went wrong:
We should have prevented more people from voting.

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Why Mitt Romney will never be Tom Menino

Yesterday Joanna Weiss wrote a column in the Boston Globe in which she asked her readers to imagine Mitt Romney as Mayor of Boston.  After I stopped laughing, I began to think of all the reasons why this was not only a bad idea, but why Mittens would never make as good a mayor as Thomas M. Menino.

Weiss said

The beauty of a mayorship, as far as Romney goes, is that it’s less an ideological job than a technocratic one. Without the desire to use his office as a stepping stone, Romney would be free to problem-solve, to do the kind of work that made him an appealing public servant in the first place.

She goes on to cite several examples like the new flyover to Cape Cod which fixed the Sagamore Bridge problem and Massachusetts Health Reform (which was a largely Democratic idea) of examples of his technocratic skill at work when he pretended to be governor of Massachusetts.  Weiss seems to be under the impression that Mitt could be another Michael Bloomburg.  Somehow I don’t think so.  Can you see Mittens taking the Orange Line to work from his new mansion in Jamaica Plain?  Or the Red Line from Savin Hill?

So what if he never did well with the little folks? Mayor Mitt wouldn’t have to go to every ribbon-cutting or community meeting. That’s Menino’s thing. Mitt could be the fixer, the big-picture guy, ensuring that Boston keeps wielding an outsized influence on American life.

Right, Joanna.  A large part of what makes TMM a success is that everyone who lives in Boston has met him.  At least it seems that way.  And he cares about the 47%, a large number of whom make up the Boston population.  This is why a new idea was unveiled today.

Starting Wednesday, residents can pay parking tickets and tax bills, get a library card and dog license, even register to vote, at a van dubbed “City Hall To Go.” A newly refurbished bomb squad van, the vehicle was made to resemble a food truck, but is essentially a rolling office, outfitted with laptop computers, wireless access, and the necessary paperwork from a host of city departments.

City officials say the program is the first of its kind nationally, and they hope it proves a convenient alternative for residents who do not use the Internet or rarely get downtown.

The interior of the City Hall To Go truck has laptop computers and wireless Internet access.

The interior of the City Hall To Go truck has laptop computers and wireless Internet access.

Staff in the mayor’s office say the rolling City Hall provides “one-stop shopping, where residents can take care of several tasks at once.” Workers can provide information from school registration forms and summer camp guides for parents to tax exemption forms for the elderly.

…

The idea for the moving service sprang from meetings in City Hall this summer and was later proposed by several residents as a suggestion for The Mayors Challenge, a national competition designed to spur ideas to improve cities.

Menino, known for his atten­tion to neighborhood concerns and quality-of-life issues, quickly lent his support.

In a statement, Menino said the pilot program will show that “government can change” to become more flexible and convenient.

“City Hall To Go builds on our mission to shake up the status quo in municipal services and offer a new way for Boston residents to get information and engage with the city on a whole host of services we offer,” he said.

I do hope that Weiss was trying for humor in her promotion of Mitt for Mayor, because somehow I doubt that at idea like City Hall to Go would have been either solicited as an idea or implement by him.

Given his age and health, it may be time for Mayor Menino to retire gracefully from the picture, but there are many homegrown candidates who could be mayor.  Men and women who know where Hyde Park and Mattapan are and care about our neighborhoods.