Posts by David Sirota

David Sirota is a veteran political strategist and author of Hostile Takeover, a New York Times bestseller about the corruption of both political parties.

Fox News Spins History (Again)
Posted by David Sirota, Daily Kos on December 25, 2008 at 12:00 PM.

I appeared on Fox News yesterday to discuss both the Blagojevich flap and the imminent economic recovery package from the Obama administration. You can watch the clip here. As you'll see, on that latter issue, Fox News is starting its campaign to stop Obama's big spending plan by stating - as assumed fact - that "historians pretty much agree" that Franklin Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression, and that therefore, Obama shouldn't try another New Deal.

When I say Fox News' assertion about historians is patently false, they literally laugh at me as if I've said something so clearly untrue, something Americans supposedly assume is so obviously stupid, that it's worthy of ridicule.

The Depression issue was brought up by conservative pundit Monica Crowley - not surprising since this is the conservative talking point du jour ever since the "center-right nation" meme started looking idiotic and ever since fringe-right-wing bloviator Amity Shlaes published her since-discredited book claiming FDR essentially created the Great Depression. Crowley supported her the "FDR ruined the country" meme with the very authoritative-sounding statement that "based on all kinds of studies and academic work done on the great depression" she knows that the New Deal's "massive government intervention prolonged the Great Depression."

Of course, she doesn't offer up a single study or "academic work" as any kind of proof, and yet, when I say her assertion is absurd, Fox News anchor Greg Jarrett starts laughing at me - as if my assertion that FDR's New Deal helped end the Great Depression is so fantastical as to prompt guffawing. Jarrett proceeds to state that historians "pretty much agree" that FDR prolonged the Great Depression, and resorts to insisting that he knows that's true because "it's in the books" - whatever the hell that means. Indeed, Fox wants us to believe that what was only very recently the deranged propaganda of a handful of conservative political pundits is now such a consensus opinion among historians that to say otherwise is to evoke laughter.

Now, it's true - back in 2004, two UCLA professors published a little-noticed report claiming the New Deal's government intervention prolonged the Great Depression. But that assertion has been subsequently eviscerated by, ya know, actual data.

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Maddow Busts Morgan Stanley Board Member for Lack of Transparency
Posted by David Sirota, Blog for Our Future on December 24, 2008 at 8:34 AM.

Last night, Rachel Maddow did something I never thought I'd see a journalist do: In the name of transparency, she went back and clarified that a bailout-justifying guest of hers actually had a blatant conflict of interest. Watch the clip here.

On Monday, Maddow had on Berkley professor Laura Tyson to talk about the bailout. You can watch that clip here. As you'll see, Tyson defended the firms that have received bailout money, saying they are not at fault in either how they are using the money, or in how they are refusing to answer questions about their use of the money. She also insisted that companies that get bailout money should be able to keep paying dividends to their shareholders.

Yet, Tyson didn't tell viewers that she sits on the board of directors of Morgan Stanley, a bank that has received $10 billion in bailout money. That's right - according to Morgan Stanley's SEC filings, Tyson makes about $350,000 a year from Morgan Stanley in total compensation from that position, and she now owns about 79,000 shares of the company. In other words, she has a direct financial interest in defending the bailout, absolving bailout recipients of wrongdoing, and justifying the use of bailout money for shareholder dividends.

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Obama Backs Off Promise to Pass Windfall Profits Tax on Big Oil
Posted by David Sirota, Blog for Our Future on December 3, 2008 at 4:14 PM.

Good news and bad news in the last day. The good news: Barack Obama has appointed a NAFTA critic, Rep. Xavier Becerra, as the next U.S. Trade Representative (more on that here). The bad news is this just off the Reuters wire:

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President-elect Barack Obama is not planning to implement a windfall profit tax on oil companies because prices have dropped below $80 a barrel, an aide said on Tuesday...

Obama, who signaled early in his campaign for the White House that he would take an active approach to oil markets as president, had planned to use the revenue from a windfall profits tax to fund a tax rebate for low- and middle-income families struggling with high energy prices.

Between this move and the move to wait to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, it seems like the Obama team is buying into the right-wing frame that raising any taxes -- even those on the richest citizens and wealthiest corporations -- is bad for the economy. Of course, that frame is debunked by history. And while sure, it's OK to rack up deficits so as to spend our way out of the economic crisis, it's sorta silly to ignore the tax moves that could be implemented to limit those deficits where possible.

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Scathing Editorial in the NYT Critiques Obama's Economic Team
Posted by David Sirota, Open Left on November 25, 2008 at 7:41 AM.

The New York Times editorial board, which vigorously endorsed Barack Obama for president, has a fairly scathing editorial today about the President-elect's economic team:

Both men, however, have played central roles in policies that helped provoke today's financial crisis. Mr. Geithner, currently the president of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, also has helped shape the Bush administration's erratic and often inscrutable responses to the current financial meltdown, up to and including this past weekend's multibillion-dollar bailout of Citigroup.

Given that history, the question that most needs answering is not whether Mr. Geithner and Mr. Summers are men of talent - obviously they are - but whether they have learned from their mistakes, and if so, what.

We are not asking for moral mea culpas. But unless they recognize their past mistakes, there is little hope that they can provide the sound judgment and leadership that the country needs to dig out of this desperate mess.

Sound criticism, if you ask me. But I wonder -- will progressives now start claiming the New York Times "hates" Obama? Or can we actually consider the merits of this argument, and consider how to organize pressure around the reality it elucidates?

Study Shows 'Center-Right Nation' Narrative Spiked Immediately After Election Day
Posted by David Sirota, Blog for Our Future on November 22, 2008 at 9:19 AM.

When I wrote my first column about the "center-right nation" and subsequently launched the "Center-Right Nation Watch" series on this blog I predicted that the news media would actually increase its usage of this term after Obama won. I did a Lexis-Nexis search of the term, and was the first to note the trend and make the prediction that "if Obama wins, expect more frantic talk from the fringe about how electing a black man billed as an Islamic Karl Marx obviously means our country is more conservative than ever."

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Are There Any Other Qualified People In America Other Than Clintonites?
Posted by David Sirota, Open Left on November 19, 2008 at 4:12 AM.

I ask this question without making a value judgment - are there any other qualified people in America other than permanent Washington, D.C. dwellers who were part of the Clinton administration?

I ask this based on the Obama appointments - my back-of-the-envelope estimate is that they are 90 percent Clinton administration officials.

Now, I don't think this means that the Obama administration will automatically be Bill Clinton's third term, with all the corresponding incrementalism and triangulation.

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Why Are Democratic Leaders at War With 'the Left'?
Posted by David Sirota, Open Left on November 18, 2008 at 3:03 PM.

Seems to me that House and Senate leaders have declared an all-out war on "the Left." In fact, "seems" is the wrong word. It doesn't "seem" like that. They are actually saying it explicitly. Here's this excerpt from the Washington Post (h/t FDL):

Asked what it would mean if Lieberman kept his chairmanship, one Senate Democratic aide said bluntly: "The left has been foiled again. They can rant and rage but they still do not put the fear into folks to actually change their votes."

Here's the Hill newspaper today:

Democratic leader says party won't turn left

By Mike Soraghan

As the House prepares to elect its leaders, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is challenging the idea that the expanded Democratic majority and its leaders will make a hard left turn.

To show that these aren't errant, uncommon statements, make sure to read Glenn Greenwald's review of how this hatred for "the Left" now reaches all the way to the top of the new Obama administration through Rahm Emanuel.

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Conservative Think Tank Admits America Is a Center-Left Nation
Posted by David Sirota, Open Left on November 17, 2008 at 8:04 AM.

The Hoover Institution is one of the major conservative think tanks in this country, so this op-ed in the Washington Post today is pretty incredible for its honesty:

Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, in Outlook last week: The United States "is indeed, as conservatives have been insisting in recent days, a center-right country." On election night, former Bush guru Karl Rove opined on Fox News, "Barack Obama understands this is a center-right country, and he smartly and wisely ran a campaign that emphasized it." And it's not just conservative pundits and operatives singing this song. Take Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, who wrote an Oct. 27 cover essay entitled "America the Conservative," which argued that Obama will have to "govern a center-right nation" that "is more instinctively conservative than it is liberal."

The only problem: It isn't true. Or at least, not anymore.

Here's the stark reality: It is now harder for the Republican presidential candidate to get to 50.1 percent than for the Democrat. My Hoover Institution colleague David Brady and Douglas Rivers of the research firm YouGovPolimetrix have been analyzing data from online interviews with 12,000 people in both 2004 and 2008. It shows an overall shift to the Democrats of six percentage points. As they write in the forthcoming edition of Policy Review, "The decline of Republican strength occurs by having strong Republicans become weak Republicans, weak Republicans becoming independents, and independents leaning more Democratic or even becoming Democrats." This is a portrait of an electorate moving from center-right to center-left.

Read the whole admission here. It's dead-on.

Excellent Maddow Piece Spells Out Why Lieberman Must Be Stripped of His Chairmanship
Posted by David Sirota, Open Left on November 14, 2008 at 11:15 AM.

Many in the blogosphere, including OpenLeft (here and here), have noted that the removal of Joe Lieberman from his committee post isn't about revenge -- it's about political pragmatism. In specific, it's about making sure a guy who has repeatedly displayed his deep personal and irrational hatred for Barack Obama doesn't have the subpoena power to embark on witch hunts against President Obama. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow last night took all of those arguments and summed them up in a really great piece:

So, to reiterate -- removing Lieberman is not about revenge, it's about helping make sure the next administration doesn't have to spend all it's time fending off a crazed McCarthyist with subpoena power.

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Discussing McCain's Faux Populism with Rachel Maddow
Posted by David Sirota, Campaign for America's Future on October 17, 2008 at 11:47 AM.

During my trip to Rochester and now New York City, I appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show to review John McCain's latest economic ideas. You can watch the clip here (and if you like the discussion and appreciate them having on progressive voices like me and others, shoot the show an email at rachel@msnbc.com and let them know):

What we are seeing from McCain is old-school right-wing populism first made famous by Ronald Reagan. Package tax cuts for the wealthy as a gift to regular folks at a time of economic crisis. In the extended entry, I'll break down the key tenets of McCain's plan to see who it really benefits.

Up first is McCain's proposal to slash capital gains tax rates. Let's ignore the fact that the Wall Street meltdown means most Americans right now don't have much capital gains. Let's just look at who a capital gains tax cut benefits: namely, millionaires.

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Ron Paul Will Help Obama in Montana
Posted by David Sirota, Open Left on September 9, 2008 at 9:41 AM.

This is good news for Barack Obama:

"U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, runner-up in Montana's Republican presidential caucus last winter, will appear on Montana's November ballot as the presidential nominee of the Constitution Party of Montana, it announced Monday. David Hart of Kalispell, who ran Paul's campaign in Montana, predicted that Paul's candidacy would hurt the other four candidates on the state's presidential ballot, particularly McCain. 'Here in Montana, I think it's pretty much sealed the deal that McCain will not win Montana,' Hart said. 'If he doesn't win, Ron Paul will probably be blamed for it. They only need to look in the mirror and blame themselves for nominating someone who doesn't represent true Republican values and causes like Paul.'"

Bill Clinton won Montana in 1992 because of Ross Perot. Obama, who is already close in the polls in Montana, could very likely win the state because of Paul.

The Framing of the Political "Center"
Posted by David Sirota, Open Left on July 18, 2008 at 8:56 AM.

I'm filing this column dispatch at a rest stop outside of Waco, Texas on my way to the Netroots Nation conference. On the drive from Dallas, I've been listening to talk radio and obsessing over the concept of "the center."

I'll admit it -- I'm more than a bit obsessed with the ongoing attempts by today's propagandists (read: politicians and Washington pundits) to distort where the mythic "center" is. Whoever controls the definition of the center, controls a huge amount of political power because they control the very parameters of what policies are -- and are not -- acceptable for serious consideration.

Back in 2005, I wrote this article for the Nation on how forces inside the Democratic Party exist almost exclusively to make Democratic politicians believe the "center" is far to the right of the American public.

Now this week, I wrote this new column looking at the debate surrounding Barack Obama's recent policy shifts.

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GOP Brags That McCain Will Continue Bush's Economic Legacy
Posted by David Sirota, Brave New Films on July 16, 2008 at 8:17 AM.

Last week, I appeared on Fox News to discuss the inflammatory comments by Phil Gramm (John McCain's top economic advisor) and how those comments really epitomize the Republican Party's country clubbish, let-them-eat-cake outlook on the economy. Notice about half-way through as the Republican strategist I'm debating actually acknowledges that McCain's major idea for fixing the economy is continuing George W. Bush's tax policies - and that when she's called out for saying that, she tries to deny what she just said.

The interchange is instructive for two reasons.

First and foremost is the admission: namely, that Republicans still want America to believe that the way to steady the economy is to follow Bush's efforts to slash taxes for millionaires. As I show in the very first chapter of my book, this is a prescription being rejected even in some of the most conservative parts of the country.

Second, there is the denial: When called onto the carpet for wanting to continue the policies of the most unpopular president in history, Republicans start running for cover to the point of claiming they never said what they just said. The denial is a tacit acknowledgment of the power of the populist uprising now boiling throughout the country. The GOP knows the country is very angry at conservatives' free market fundamentalism - and so will deny and obfuscate to pretend they aren't championing such fundamentalism.

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Progressives Discover That Obama's no Messiah
Posted by David Sirota, Huffington Post on July 15, 2008 at 5:00 AM.

The New York Times write two days ago on Barack Obama's recent policy shifts. The headline (not surprisingly) distorts the frame of debate, calling the Illinois senator's critics the "far left." I'll be writing on why that is such a distortion in my upcoming newspaper column this week. But beyond that distortion, let's consider the substance of what's going on. Here's my take, as quoted in the article:

"I'm not saying we're there yet, but that's the danger," said David Sirota, a liberal political analyst and author. "I don't think there's disillusion. I think there's an education process that takes place, and that's a good thing. He is a transformative politician, but he is still a politician."

This follows a lot of the underlying message of my book, THE UPRISING: namely, that politicians -- whether Obama or others -- are not messiahs, but mere vehicles for the change we do -- or do not -- force them to embrace. If Obama's moves force more people to learn that truism, then I think that's a positive silver lining to his disappointing shifts.

Jeralyn Merritt over at TalkLeft says I'm wrong -- that Obama isn't a transformative politician. What do you think? Do you think what I told the Times was right, and that Obama is transformative, but that his moves potentially undermine his brand? Or do you think I'm wrong, that Obama isn't really transformative, and that his moves prove that?

Pelosi Plays Hardball on Trade: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Posted by David Sirota, Open Left on April 9, 2008 at 4:28 PM.

This just off the Reuters wire:

The House of Representatives will decide on Thursday whether to put off indefinitely a vote on the Colombia free-trade agreement that President George W. Bush submitted to Congress this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. Pelosi, announcing the move to reporters on Wednesday, would not give a time frame for when the trade pact might be debated and put up for a vote on passage in the House. The vote on Thursday would change rules for considering the deal by eliminating a 90-day deadline for Congress to approve the Colombia trade deal.

This is good news, bad news and potentially ugly news.

The good news: Finally, a Democratic leader is trying to use some modicum of legislative power to halt our economically destructive and wildly unpopular trade policies. It's a start.

The bad news: Pelosi has yet to say she will work to kill the pact outright. In fact, she issued a press release earlier this week merely worrying that Bush's tactics jeopardize the final passage of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Meanwhile, other top Democrats like Jim Clyburn have gone on record saying they want this deal to pass (Clyburn has since amended his statement - but sometimes the truth is in the first reaction).

The potentially ugly news:

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