Salon.com > Ed Kilgore http://www.salon.com Wed, 30 May 2012 09:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Why immigration won’t go away in 2012 http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/why_immigration_wont_go_away_in_2012/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/why_immigration_wont_go_away_in_2012/#comments Mon, 24 Oct 2011 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10134860 According to the chattering classes, 2012 was supposed to be the election year when the “culture wars” of recent decades faded into unimportant skirmishes, as candidates and voters alike focused exclusively on economic and fiscal issues. But at least one culture war issue, immigration, has already shaken up the Republican presidential contest and is key to Barack Obama’s success in winning the Hispanic votes he desperately needs to get reelected.  With Congress missing in action, it is the battle over punitive new state immigration laws, in the legislatures and in the courts, that keeps this issue in the national spotlight.

The enduring potency of the immigration issue has been apparent since Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Senate Bill 1070 in April of 2010. The measure signaled the intention of conservatives at the state and local levels to protest what they considered lax federal enforcement of immigration laws by inducting regular police officers into the unaccustomed role of harassing, detecting and arresting people without citizenship documents.  Though portions of the law were immediately struck down by lower federal courts, the measure became a litmus test issue in 2010 congressional and gubernatorial contests around the country, particularly among Republicans.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/10/24/why_immigration_wont_go_away_in_2012/feed/ 13 November ballot is a death match for Ohio unions http://www.salon.com/2011/10/10/november_ballot_is_a_death_match_for_ohio_unions/ http://www.salon.com/2011/10/10/november_ballot_is_a_death_match_for_ohio_unions/#comments Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10106474 After fierce but inconclusive battles in Wisconsin, the great labor struggle of 2011 is now centered in that ultimate swing state of Ohio. A richly funded national right-wing effort to break the economic and political power of the labor movement in its Midwestern heartland is now facing a ballot test in a Nov. 8 referendum to affirm or overturn a union-busting law, known as Senate Bill 5.

As in Wisconsin and other states, conservatives in Ohio have focused their fire on public-sector unions, which are easy to identify with unpopular levels of government spending and taxation. But just as there is little doubt the assault on public-sector unions this year is part of a broader effort to weaken collective bargaining rights and undermine labor’s political strength, efforts to repeal Senate Bill 5 will depend on the solidarity of private-sector union members who are not directly affected by the legislation, but can see the handwriting on the wall.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/10/10/november_ballot_is_a_death_match_for_ohio_unions/feed/ 21 The truth about voter suppression http://www.salon.com/2011/09/30/votesuppresion/ http://www.salon.com/2011/09/30/votesuppresion/#comments Fri, 30 Sep 2011 11:45:00 +0000 The national trauma of the 2000 presidential election and its messy denouement in Florida and the U.S. Supreme Court made, for a brief moment, election reform a cause célèbre. The scrutiny of election administration went far beyond the vote counting and recounting that dominated headlines. The Florida saga cast a harsh light on the whole country's archaic and fragmented system of election administration, exemplified by a state where hundreds of thousands of citizens were disenfranchised by incompetent and malicious voter purges, Reconstruction-era felon voting bans, improper record-keeping, and deliberate deception and harassment.

The outrage generated by the revelations of 2000 soon spent itself or was channeled into other avenues, producing, as a sort of consolation prize, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, an underambitious and underfunded law mainly aimed at preventing partisan mischief in vote counting. The fundamental problem of accepting 50 different systems for election administration, complicated even more in states like Florida where local election officials control most decisions with minimal federal, state or judicial oversight, was barely touched by HAVA. As Judith Browne-Dianis, of the civil rights group the Advancement Project, told me: "The same cracks in the system have persisted."

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/09/30/votesuppresion/feed/ 120 An absurd, candidate-killing spectacle returns http://www.salon.com/2011/08/12/kilgore_iowa_straw_poll/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/12/kilgore_iowa_straw_poll/#comments Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/08/12/kilgore_iowa_straw_poll In the college town of Ames on Saturday, the American political calendar will once again intersect with the arcane folkways of Iowa, as the state GOP's much-derided, much-anticipated presidential straw poll kills off a few candidacies and perhaps gives fresh life to others.

Held only in competitive presidential cycles, the straw poll began as a publicity stunt in 1979 (following the precedent of a Democratic straw poll that had been held in 1972 and 1975, but that was then discontinued), quickly became the Iowa GOP’s major fundraising event, and assumed gigantic proportions as the first formal test of the nominating process by the mid-1990s.

Those who deplore Iowa’s outsize (but zealously defended) role in presidential politics often point to the straw poll as a monstrous extension of the distortions and parochialism imposed on the rest of the country by Heartland Hegemonism. The event has lengthened the campaign season, made ethanol subsidies a crucial issue in Republican presidential politics, increased the already formidable power of the Christian right, and in general complicated the lives of candidates and their strategists, who are forced either to propitiate or defy the Corn Idol months before the first real votes are cast.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/12/kilgore_iowa_straw_poll/feed/ 22 The hypocrisy of “states’ rights” conservatives http://www.salon.com/2011/08/07/kilgore_states_rights/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/07/kilgore_states_rights/#comments Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/08/07/kilgore_states_rights During the last two weeks, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, by most accounts on the brink of a presidential candidacy, has reversed himself on the question of the proper venue for dealing with the two of the hoariest cultural issues in American politics, same-sex marriage and abortion.

First, at a Republican governors meeting on July 22, he referred to the recent decision by the New York legislature to legalize gay marriage as something that was "fine with me," and said further: "That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business." But then, in a matter of days, he was performing what can only be described as a public act of penance on Christian right potentate Tony Perkins’ radio show, trumpeting his support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage nationally.

Meanwhile, on July 27, Perry took another hard-line states’ rights position, this time on abortion:

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/07/kilgore_states_rights/feed/ 201 The Tea Party is bigger than the South http://www.salon.com/2011/08/03/kilgore_lind_tea_party/ http://www.salon.com/2011/08/03/kilgore_lind_tea_party/#comments Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:07:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/08/03/kilgore_lind_tea_party Michael Lind is a very smart and wonderfully erudite writer with a bit of an obsession. His understanding of the deeper cultural wellsprings of American history and politics has left him, as a sort of side effect, with an abiding fearful hostility toward a particular group of people, the "Anglo-Celtic" Southerner. Lind sees them everywhere in our politics as a baleful, disturbing presence spreading bacilli of violence, bigotry and religious fanaticism. And in his recent Salon essay arguing that the Tea Party movement is an essentially Southern phenomenon, his prejudices blind him to a rather important and unprecedented phenomenon: the virtual disappearance of geography as a significant factor in the ideological character of the Republican Party.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/08/03/kilgore_lind_tea_party/feed/ 98 The first GOP presidential death match http://www.salon.com/2011/07/29/kilgore_minnesota_twins/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/29/kilgore_minnesota_twins/#comments Fri, 29 Jul 2011 13:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/07/29/kilgore_minnesota_twins The bickering between the two Minnesota Republicans running for president, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Michele Bachmann, is getting pretty loud and angry. But it’s not surprising. It reflects their different roles in the GOP, and the white-knuckle pressure they both face as the 2012 contest moves toward its first real test in Iowa.

Pawlenty has made his "executive experience" and "results" as governor a centerpiece of his campaign, complemented by his eager adoption of harsh Tea Party stances that seem less than perfectly authentic coming from this mild-mannered Minnesotan. But recently, subthemes critical to his two most prominent rivals have been creeping into his self-laudatory discourse:

"We got one leading candidate in this race who's running away from his record. We got another leading candidate in this race who has no record. I'm running on my record. That's a big difference," Pawlenty said.

He continued: "Well I think when you want to think about making somebody president you want to know some things. You want to know what have they done, not just by flapping their jaw or giving speeches or offering failed amendments in Congress. What have they really done? What results have they achieved?"

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/29/kilgore_minnesota_twins/feed/ 18 The difference between understanding Obama’s strategy and celebrating it http://www.salon.com/2011/07/26/kilgore_greenwald/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/26/kilgore_greenwald/#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 19:37:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/07/26/kilgore_greenwald The estimable Glenn Greenwald has taken issue with a piece that I wrote about President Obama and the left, which appeared Monday on Salon.  

In part, he contested my interpretation of the evidence about progressive rank-and-file support for Obama, seizing on two new data points that appeared between the time I sent my column to Salon and the time Glenn seems to have read it.

One is a new weekly Gallup tracking poll showing Obama's approval ratings among self-identified liberals dropping from 75 percent to 70 percent, which Glenn calls "the lowest it has been in many months." Actually, it's the lowest it's been in three months, but still higher than it was for a two-week stretch last December. It's been bouncing around the 70s for the last year.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/26/kilgore_greenwald/feed/ 123 Why the liberal base has so little leverage with Obama http://www.salon.com/2011/07/25/left_obama_leverage/ http://www.salon.com/2011/07/25/left_obama_leverage/#comments Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2011/07/25/left_obama_leverage Progressive elite disgruntlement with the administration of Barack Obama has been aired so many times during the last year that it is sometimes difficult to remember how deep and wide it has become. Like lights blinking off in house after house late at night, the number of liberal opinion-leaders willing to offer robust support for Obama’s policies and political strategy and tactics has steadily dwindled to the point where it appears as an occasional dull glimmer on the cable news shows and in the op-ed pages and the blogosphere. But up until now, signs of any rank-and-file liberal Democratic "base" revolt against Obama have been few and far between. Perhaps that’s why a poll from CNN last week publicized as showing that liberals were the main source of his latest drop in approval ratings got more attention than a random survey normally captures.

There has certainly been a persistent and growing gap between elite and non-elite progressive attitudes towards the 44th president and his administration. Liberal elite defections from the Obama camp started early and have spread steadily.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2011/07/25/left_obama_leverage/feed/ 178 The Republicans’ 2012 problem http://www.salon.com/2010/04/18/gop_2012_problem_kilgore/ http://www.salon.com/2010/04/18/gop_2012_problem_kilgore/#comments Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion//feature/2010/04/18/gop_2012_problem_kilgore Talk to most Democratic activists, and they'll concede that a Republican takeover of the House this fall is entirely possible. Some will even contemplate the nightmare scenario of losing the Senate, though that remains arithmetically improbable. But they’ll cheer right up when talk moves to 2012.

The reasons for this midrange optimism are many. Though President Obama's approval ratings are nowhere near the post-inaugural peak they reached early last year, he remains the most popular figure in national politics. There’s also the possibility that the economy will have improved enough by 2012 to sweeten the country’s mood.

More to the point, smart Democrats understand that one of their chief liabilities right now figures to be an asset in 2012: the shape of the electorate. Turnout in midterm elections invariably skews toward older and whiter voters. Yet Obama’s 2008 performance varied inversely with age categories and also depended on a historic ethnic-minority turnout that isn’t about to be repeated in a midterm election. Add in the ripe targets, particularly in the House, created by two straight boffo Democratic cycles, and it should have been clear the very day after the 2008 elections that Democrats were cruising for a bruising in 2010 — even before the economy sank to its ultimate depths and well before the first Tea Party protest.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/04/18/gop_2012_problem_kilgore/feed/ 141 The return of the welfare queen http://www.salon.com/2009/08/31/welfare_wedge/ http://www.salon.com/2009/08/31/welfare_wedge/#comments Mon, 31 Aug 2009 10:29:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion//feature/2009/08/31/welfare_wedge The healthcare reform debate took a rather remarkable turn last week when the Washington Post published an Op-Ed piece by Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele telling retirees that his party would fight any effort to modify the benefits they derived from the government-run Medicare program in order to offer similar benefits to others. The Op-Ed was immediately supplemented by an item on the RNC Web page trumpeting a "Seniors' Health Care Bill of Rights," similarly pledging the GOP to a to-the-death defense of Medicare benefits and procedures, allegedly under dire threat from universal health coverage.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/08/31/welfare_wedge/feed/ 184 No, let sleeping “Blue Dogs” lie http://www.salon.com/2008/07/29/blue_dogs_lie/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/29/blue_dogs_lie/#comments Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/opinion//feature/2008/07/29/blue_dogs_lie DINOs. Vichy Democrats. Bush Dogs.

Anyone who listens to the regular talk among progressive activists on- and offline is familiar with such terms of opprobrium for Democratic politicians, particularly in Congress, who are alleged to be ideologically unreliable, insufficiently partisan, too cozy with corporations, or subversive of efforts to fight the Bush administration. These terms often involve members of the official congressional Blue Dog Coalition, which houses many party dissidents while exerting starboard-side pressure on the Democratic leadership. But discontent with Democratic incumbents frequently goes deeper.

Such talk reached new levels of intensity last year during futile efforts to cut off funding for the Iraq war, and again just last month when sizable Democratic defections paved the way to reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

And naturally, the unhappiness is leading to revived talk about a systematic effort in the future -- presumably in 2010 -- to intimidate or even defeat selected Democratic members of Congress, preeminently Blue Dogs, through primary challenges.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/29/blue_dogs_lie/feed/ 108 Sorting out the dueling education coalitions http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/education_wars/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/education_wars/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/11/education_wars If you've had enough pure politics for the week, here's some recommended reading for the weekend: a fine article by Richard D. Kahlenberg in The American Prospect analyzing the two big education coalitions recently formed to influence progressive politicians.
The first coalition, led by the self-described "odd couple" of the Rev. Al Sharpton and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein of New York City, casts the debate in civil-rights terms. Calling itself The Education Equality Project, this faction, which also includes Mayor Cory Booker of Newark and Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee of Washington, D.C., sees recalcitrant teacher unions as a major impediment to poor- and minority-student achievement, and alleges that unions care more about their own members than they do about students...

On the other side of the current debate is a second group, organized by the labor-friendly Economic Policy Institute, which recently put out a statement (in full-page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Post) calling for "A Broader, Bolder Approach to Education." The No Child Left Behind Act and other traditional school reforms are failing, the EPI argues, because such programs take a "schools alone" approach and ignore the importance of societal inequality that prevents the narrowing of the achievement gap between affluent whites and low-income minorities.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/education_wars/feed/ 22 Legal expert says McCain may not be eligible for White House http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/mccain_eligibility/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/mccain_eligibility/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:42:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/11/mccain_eligibility At the end of a pretty stressful week for John McCain, he's now being told by a constitutional scholar from his own state that he may not eligible for the presidency in the first place.

Professor Gabriel J. Chin of the University of Arizona wrote the analysis suggesting that McCain's birth in the Panama Canal Zone while his father was on active military duty qualified him as a citizen under a law later enacted by Congress, but didn't make him a "natural-born citizen," which is what the Constitution requires for the presidency.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/mccain_eligibility/feed/ 72 Wall Street joins the “whiners” http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/stocks_plunge/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/stocks_plunge/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:58:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/11/stocks_plunge Wall Street appears to have joined the ranks of "whiners" contributing to the "mental recession" today, as worries about mortgages and oil prices plunged the Dow below 11,000 points for the first time in two years.

According to a wire story via Talking Points Memo:

"You have two issues, crude popped back up $10 to $11 in the last few days, and that is causing some concern. The second point is the financial services sector, there is concern and speculation that Freddie, Fannie and Lehman won't be around on Monday. That's obviously causing worry," said Phil Orlando, chief equity market strategist at Federated Investors.

It's hard to imagine that Americans' economic pessimism can get much worse, but we may only be looking at the bottom from a distance right now. And that's not good news for the party that controls the White House, or its designated candidate to keep things pretty much the same.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/stocks_plunge/feed/ 6 More about McCain’s 300 economists http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/mccain_economists_2/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/mccain_economists_2/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:37:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/11/mccain_economists Following up on the Politico's discovery that some of the 300 economists touted as endorsing John McCain's economic plan hadn't read it and don't support it, Nico Pitney and Sam Stein of the Huffington Post decided to dig deeper. They sent e-mails to about half of these dismal scientists questioning their attitude toward McCain and his platform, and a fifth of those responded.

Seems a lot of "McCain's economists" aren't all that supportive, with his "gas tax holiday" proposal and his first-term balanced budget pledge (the central point of his "plan") earning widespread mockery.

You can read it all, but my favorite response was from Peter J. Van Blokland of the University of Florida, who said he didn't support making Bush's tax cuts permanent, didn't support the gas tax holiday, didn't support the balanced budget pledge and hadn't, in fact, endorsed McCain. Other than that, I guess, he's a pretty solid member of McCain's economic team.

Combined with yesterday's over-the-top repudiation by McCain of his top economic advisor, Phil Gramm, it appears this hasn't been a great week for McCainomics.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/mccain_economists_2/feed/ 9 Learning to live with the “new” Obama http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/obama_netroots/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/obama_netroots/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:16:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/11/obama_netroots Amid the anguish being expressed in the progressive net roots about Barack Obama's vote for FISA legislation (and to a lesser extent, his recent positioning on the death penalty, Iraq, abortion and faith-based initiatives), there's an interesting subtext of resignation about the presumptive Democratic nominee's basic ideological nature.

This is nowhere more evident than at the influential site OpenLeft, whose founders, Chris Bowers and Matt Stoller, have long argued that Obama is a centrist pragmatist rather than a reliable progressive.

Stoller was particularly blunt in a post Thursday titled "Why It's Important to Note That Obama Is NOT Liberal or Progressive."

After assessing Obama's policy positions, Stoller has this to say about the attitude progressives should have toward his candidacy going forward:

Obama isn't ours, he never was, and we shouldn't pretend he is or else we are throwing away the opportunity to have real progressive policies enacted sometime over the next few years.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/obama_netroots/feed/ 116 McKinney to join Barr on ballot? http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/mckinney_barr/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/mckinney_barr/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:22:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/11/mckinney_barr I don't know what it is about my home state of Georgia. In recent decades, it has produced more than its share of unusual political figures.

There was Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer who came out of nowhere to be elected president in 1976. Then there was Newt Gingrich, the wonky right-wing tactician who improbably stood athwart Washington for a brief time in the mid-1990s. Then there was Zell Miller, the populist Democratic governor and senator who morphed into George W. Bush's attack dog in 2004.

This year Americans are being treated to the antics of not one but two former Georgia members of Congress who are heading up fringe-party presidential candidacies: Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr and Cynthia McKinney, the odds-on favorite to win the Green Party nomination this weekend in Chicago.

Barr and McKinney have long had parallel careers. Both were elected to the U.S. House in the early 1990s (McKinney in 1992, Barr in 1994), and quickly became known in Washington as ideological firebrands. Both lost their seats in primaries the same day in 2002 after many constituents got tired of their acts (Barr's loss to colleague John Linder was aided by gerrymandering).

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/11/mckinney_barr/feed/ 31 More timetable talk from Iraq http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/iraq_withdrawal/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/iraq_withdrawal/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:06:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/10/iraq_withdrawal John McCain may dismiss it as just politics, but there is growing evidence that recent calls for a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops made by Iraq's prime minister and national security advisor are reflecting a widespread view in that country.

As HuffPo's Seth Colter Walls reports today, both of Iraq's leading Shi'a parties are talking U.S. withdrawal:

In an interview published Thursday by the Saudi-owned Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, Iraq's Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi said any renewed security agreement between Baghdad and Washington must "restrain or end the mission of multinational forces."

Abdul-Mahdi is a leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), formerly known as SCIRI, the main Shi'a rival to the Sadr Movement. Sadrists, unsurprisingly, feel similarly. As Walls notes:

Even among two rival Shiite political cliques, there is agreement over one thing: the potentially damaging influence of an extended American military presence, and their mutual willingness to consider doing without it.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/iraq_withdrawal/feed/ 10 McCain’s unfortunate schedule today http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/mccain_gramm_2/ http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/mccain_gramm_2/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:56:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/news/politics//war_room/2008/07/10/mccain_gramm So exactly how unlucky was John McCain today, who happened to be campaigning in Michigan when he had to deal with the unfortunate comments of his surrogate and top economic advisor, Phil Gramm?

Michigan, as you may know, is a state absolutely loaded with "whiners" who have been in a state of "mental recession" for years.

Forced to deal with this unforced error, McCain was asked if he'd consider Gramm for an important economic post in a McCain administration, and responded: "I think Sen. Gramm would be in serious consideration for ambassador to Belarus, although I’m not sure the citizens of Minsk would welcome that.”

I guess you could call that a repudiation.

The whole fracas is a reminder of why Gramm himself ran one of the most disastrous presidential campaigns in history. Its sole legacy is this:

Republican campaign operatives call it the Gramm-o-meter, the money a candidate spends per delegate won, in honor of Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator who spent $25 million and won just 10 delegates, or $2.5 million per, in 1996.

Continue Reading...

]]> http://www.salon.com/2008/07/10/mccain_gramm_2/feed/ 8