Last Night

While they were definitely disappointing, let's also not make too big a deal of the Democratic defeats last night: Republicans were always going to do well, and two successive Democratic "wave" elections meant there were a lot of Democratic seats that really had no business being Democratic. Couple that with a typical midterm slump, ridiculously high unemployment and not much to excite the Democratic base, and it's no surprise what happened.

Three of the last three elections have now been "wave" elections, and at some point that term has to stop meaning something. It's pretty clear that at this point, Congressional elections have been highly nationalized - if Democrats are doing well, Dems will win a ton of seats without regard for much of what's happening in those individual districts. That might be a sign of something, or it might just be noise.

It's also sad to see Prop 19 go down, and particularly because it doesn't look like it really brought a high level of young voters to the polls, which had been my hope. But 2012 will be a very different election, with Obama back on the ballot and hopefully a reinstatement of gay marriage as well, so the electorate voting in California in 2012 will be vastly more predisposed to legalize marijuana than this one. 46% is a great place to build from, and considering this was our first bite at the full-legalization apple in decades, and considering there was basically no money behind this proposition until the very end, I'd say we're in pretty good shape.

Hah!

Glenn Greenwald is the best political writer in the Americas today

"And then there's the more amorphous but arguably more significant self-justifying benefit that comes from condemning "Muslims" for their violent, extremist ways. I'm always amazed when I receive e-mails from people telling me that I fail to understand how Islam is a uniquely violent, supremely expansionist culture that is intrinsically menacing. The United States is a country with a massive military and nuclear stockpile, that invaded and has occupied two Muslim countries for almost a full decade, that regularly bombs and drones several others, that currently is threatening to attack one of the largest Muslim countries in the world, that imposed a sanctions regime that killed hundreds of thousands of Muslim children, that slaughters innocent people on a virtually daily basis, that has interfered in and controlled countries around the world since at least the middle of the last century, that has spent decades arming and protecting every Israeli war with its Muslim neighbors and enabling a four-decade-long brutal occupation, and that erected a worldwide regime of torture, abduction and lawless detention, much of which still endures. Those are just facts."

It's the politics, not the policy

The controversy over Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a perfect illustration of what the Obama Administration has gotten right the last two years, and where it still falls short. To begin with, they're absolutely correct on the policy merits: DADT must be defended vigorously by the Justice Department, unless there is no conceivable case for its constitutionality. While I believe it's definitely a bad policy, and quite possibly unconstitutional, I concede that an argument could be made against the latter. To therefore refuse to defend the policy, or to give it a halfhearted defense, would be an abject rejection of why Obama's election seemed so important: defending DADT while attempting to repeal it in Congress is the mature, adult, responsible, pragmatic and long-term-oriented decision.

Not only would refusing to defend a potentially-constitutional policy be a terrible precedent (what future constitutionally-valid policies would you like to see a Republican president fail to defend, if you disagree?), it's not just about precedent. One of many reasons our government is so broken is that it operates with a complex system of unwritten rules, and when those rules are violated, the country becomes harder to govern. For instance, while it's been possible to mount a filibuster for a century, it's been rare up until now because of those unwritten rules, and the current despicable Congress is a direct result of abandoning that system of genteel restraint. Presidents defending laws with which they disagree, while seeking to repeal them, is likewise a very important part of that tradition.

Perhaps more significantly for some, it makes much better long-term sense to repeal DADT through Congress. Doing otherwise would further entrench the notion that democracy is being subverted by an activist judiciary. It would leave DADT on the books, just waiting to be reinstated by a single judge who decided that, oh look, it actually is constitutional after all. It would keep GLBT soldiers in a much more precarious situation, knowing that if they disclose their sexuality, all that stands between them and discharge is a single federal judge, somewhere in the country. It would waste an opportunity for the public to express its will that Don't Ask, Don't Tell no longer should be the law of the land. It would violate what I imagine is the deal Obama made with the military, to work towards repeal and not do it overnight. And ultimately, as a law passed by Congress, the most appropriate way to reverse it would be for Congress, which initially created the injustice, to do it themselves.

What I find so illustrative about this situation, however, is that the Obama Administration is doing the right thing, and doing it in such a way as to send the biggest "fuck you" possible to its base at the same time, without even attempting to ameliorate the damage and for no good reason. I think the policy merits of this approach are something the left generally could be completely convinced to believe, if anyone in the Obama Administration had made the slightest attempt to do so. Instead, they've hunkered down and complained, as always, that their base - which currently believes it's getting reamed yet again by the Administration they elected - is whiny. This is just a stupid reaction, and the fact that they're doing it yet again just unnecessarily increases the frustration on the left, a week and a half before the midterm elections. This is such a huge unforced error that it beggars belief.

Compounding the situation, the person the Administration has sent to defend the policy is perhaps the person in the White House least suited to do so right now. Valerie Jarrett, who just last week referred to a dead gay teenager as having made a "lifestyle choice", has a serious credibility problem on this issue at the moment. Being gay is as much a "lifestyle choice" as being white or black, and to use that term as the Administration's senior GLBT outreach advisor is completely tone-deaf. To then send her out to defend the Administration's DADT policy, a policy they had to know would be extremely unpopular with a community that they have gone out of their way not to do any favors for since being elected, is just stupid. To so aggressively attempt to undermine any enthusiasm for Democrats among a substantial portion of their base a week and a half before the election hurts my brain.

But at this point, it's no surprise to see this White House get the policy right and the politics wrong. And frankly, after having spent the previous 8 years doing the exact opposite, I guess I can live with this arrangement.

Best political ad since...

Despite disagreeing wildly with the content, this really is one of the best political commercials of the decade:

In fact, I can't remember an ad I liked more than this one. As James Fallows notes, it evokes a foreign menace so pitch-perfectly, not as a threat in themselves but as the beneficiaries of mistakes we make ourselves, that it's remarkable for that fact alone. But it's also the production values, the art direction, the vision of the future 20 years from now (I want a future iPad!)...

Seriously, what was the last political ad this great? I really can't think of one, and I suspect that's because of Citizens United - CAGW was able to spend God knows how much money on it, and what they got was expensive, high commercial art. Since money's always been such a tight constraint on political organizations, they've always had to get cheapo commercials, with tacky, unoriginal visuals, cheesy music and voiceovers, and no imagination.

The artistry of political ads is, of course, not quite worth the further corporate capture that Citizens provided our democracy. But I guess it's a nice side benefit.

Boxer - Fiorina Liveblog

Got here a little late, but looks like this one is going to be bloody! Boxer takes a swing at Fiorina's "making no sacrifices" by taking $100M from HP while laying off thousands.

And now here's a question from a former HPer! SNAP!

7:21 - Fiorina pivots and makes the question about what she'll do to compete with China, Brazil and Texas. Well done.

7:22 - Now a pay-for-performance question about her $21M severance after HP's stock got killed. Nice! Fiorina claims "every dollar [I received] was tied to performance," and throws out some nice stats, but I don't think she can save this one. Boxer gleefully tries to jump on it and completely whiffs. Boxer is trying so hard to make this about jobs, and she's got some substantive points but they just don't land.

7:23 - Why did you say something mean to a general? WTF? I guess the question makes her sound a bit arrogant and elitist, but it's kind of left-fieldish. Her answer's ok, but the question is strange. Fiorina doesn't really know what to do with the question, so Fiorina tries to get mad about Boxer "using" HP as a "political football" - that makes no sense (isn't Fiorina only running because she was HP's CEO? Doesn't that make it just a little bit relevant?)

7:28 - Prop 8 question. Fiorina defends DOMA. Jerk. The voters "were quite clear" on Prop 8, and for that decision to be overturned by "a single judge"...yeah man, she's right! Fuck separation of powers! Fuck the Constitution! Especially when it means that two dudes can get a marriage license!

7:31 - What do you disagree with Obama on? Come on, Babs, hit him from the left! So far so good...Afghanistan exit strategy, Elizabeth Warren appointment. Fiorina again with the "only 4 bills" argument - that's pretty hard to believe, it's gotta be a bunch of procedural junk.

7:37 - Over 100 "Boxer provisions" on her website! Well then! And now she's on to Schoolhouse Rock.

7:40 - Fiorina FINALLY makes it about unemployment - what the hell took her so long?

7:42 - Yeahhhhh! Fiorina wants more money for Berkeley! Locavore weed for all! Wait...

7:43 - Do you support Prop 23? *HEM**HAW**HRM* You mean AB 32? I guess my opponent is kinda used to creating jobs in China. SNAAAAAAAAAAAP!

7:48 - Soooo...Carly Fiorina's explanation for why she wants to allow people on the no-fly list to have guns is that she pals around with terrorists?

First-to-market with Democracy

People like Wilbur Ross, who argue America is about to become a "second-rate country," are wrong. It's not that the United States is slipping into mediocrity; rather, America's failure has become more interesting than America's success. In reality, the United States is the most prosperous nation on the planet, and that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

So why do people constantly make this argument? Aside from the fact that it's always easier to see your own flaws than anyone else's - that's the "grass is always greener in China" argument - the reason is simple: America has been so successful for so long that American success isn't fun to talk about anymore. People prefer reading about some young upstart working their ass off to steal first place than they do reading the same story about the frontrunner maintaining their lead.

In a sense, America has been the frontrunner for a very long time - you could date it all the way back to our founding at the end of the century. As the first large-scale democratic country, we've been the model for countries and revolutions for three centuries now. We weren't the richest or most powerful country on earth for the first two centuries of our existence, but we were always the first democracy. And that was both a blessing (then) and a curse (now).

As George Packer's recent New Yorker article demonstrates, our governing institutions are largely operating under rules that have been in place for, literally, centuries. When we were competing with countries ruled by kings, that was less of an issue. But now, other countries have remade themselves in our image, decades and centuries after we first did, and were able to take our best ideas while discarding our worst. In essence, they're running more recent upgrades of our democratic operating system, while we're still running the original version with some patches here and there - a system that was state-of-the-art 200 years ago, but that is beyond showing its age today.

There are many examples of these phenomena in today's technology industry, where change happens with a rapidity that seems like history on fast-forward. Microsoft, for instance, was first to market with a cheap personal computer operating system. They minted money for decades, but the initial blessing of being first-to-market became a burden, as they remained tied to decisions made in the 1980s - or at least to perceptions formed of them at that time. They continue to mint money today, but are struggling with a corporate culture that's become ossified and a series of products that have all sorts of legacy problems baked into them. If they could start over from scratch today, without any of their dominant positions in software but also without all the strategy taxes and legacy issues that plague a company that's been releasing products for decades, they'd be a totally different institution.

There's another similarity between Microsoft and the US: Microsoft has an ungodly amount of money, and is bringing in ridiculous amounts even today. The technology press loves to write stories about their demise, and has largely written them off, but in reality 99% of companies in America would absolutely love to be in the position Microsoft is in. In Microsoft's case, the story that's fun to read and write isn't the same as the story that resembles reality, however dull.

The same is true of Google (my employer). As the first company to really make money off the Internet, Google was a really great story for years - a fast-growing, hungry tech wunderkind that could do no wrong. But after a while, the sheen wore off, and the same company that inspired such glowing press started inspiring legions of articles about how it had lost its edge, was being supplanted by competitors like Facebook and Twitter, and just wasn't cool anymore. And yet, Google makes tons of money, and 99% of American companies would love to be Google.

So it is with the United States. We're an enormous country, operating on a scale matched only by China and India, but we're also totally industrialized and extremely prosperous. Demography alone guarantees that our economy will be the biggest in the world for at least another decade or two, and unless we totally melt down, we should be the biggest for longer than that. But people love to write about our decline, because it's so much more interesting than our maintenance of a dominant position. You can't be the young upstart forever - we were once, but are no longer, and until we have another revolution and become reborn, we're only going to be getting older and older (until we have a "second act" and briefly become sexy to write glowingly about.)