The Plum Line

So what's happening? Who won the dawn?

* Not backing off: Anthony Weiner just doubled down on his rant in an MSNBC interview, saying his eruption was about exposing GOP tactics:

"We needed to respond. Frankly, the Republicans have now, as you know, over the course of the last couple of years, this has been their strategy. They say, `We like the bill, but we don't like the way you're doing it. We don't like the style. We don't like the time, how many pages you're using.' So that's what I was responding to...This is the Republican tactic."

* But: Steve Kornacki tells liberals why they shouldn't develop too much of a crush on Weiner.

* Interesting observation from Chuck Todd: Obama's successful bailout of the auto industry -- which Mitt Romney and other GOPers opposed -- may emerge as a key issue in the 2012 presidential campaign.

* Takedown of the day: Steven Pearlstein versus the Chamber of Commerce and other business leaders over their opposition to the auto bailout. Great read.

* Republicans are rebuffing Dems' demand that they return the massive amounts of cash donated to them by the Wyly brothers, the Texas billionaires who were charged by the SEC with making $550 million on insider trading -- by turning the conversation back to Charlie Rangel. NRCC spox Paul Lindsay emails:

"The more important question is when does the DCCC plan to donate the $2.5 million they have received from ethically-challenged Charlie Rangel, not to mention the nearly $1 million in campaign cash from him that vulnerable House Democrats are holding on to?"

* To which DCCC spox Ryan Rudominer responds:

"The Wyly brothers were charged with using secret foreign bank accounts to massively defraud American taxpayers and reap $550 million dollars while giving millions of dollars to Republicans, so it's no wonder Washington Republicans would desperately try to change the subject."

* Rangel may get off with just a "reprimand," but more House Dems are still calling on him to resign.

* Interesting: Former Bushie Michael Gerson skewers Senator Lindsey Graham for joining the movement to revoke birthright citizenship, which suggests how hard the immigration wars are pulling the GOP to the right.

* Duncan Black responds to the criticism of liberals who have been deemed insufficently enthusiastic about Obama's presidency.

* Profoundly important exchange of the day: The RNC attacked Obama today for taking a question about Snooki on The View, arguing that the president should spend more time on the economy than on the Jersey Shore. DNC spox Hari Sevugan responds with a barb about the RNC cash spent at the bondage-themed nightclub:

"What's clear is that while the President took bold action to pull our economy out of the ditch that Republicans had left it in, the GOP sat on the sidelines playing political games that didn't do a thing to help American families. So, thanks, but we'll pass on advice from a party that spent more time helping the Southern California sex club economy than the American economy at large."

* Adam Serwer sends the Anti-Defamation League back to Hebrew school.

* And: Krugman says the ADL has forgotten where they came from.

* Still more evidence the Beltway is deficit-obsessessed: A new CNN poll finds Americans see the economy, rather than the deficit, as the most important issue facing the country by nearly four to one, 47-13.

* Quite a fair-and-balanced lineup on Fox News this Sunday: Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and Sarah Palin.

* And this explains all that chatter about mosques and sharia law we're hearing from Newt Gingrich lately: Newt is convinced Palin is running for president.

What else is happening?

You regularly hear critics of the Arizona immigration law argue that public support for it mainly reflects a broader desire for Federal immigration reform. And, of course, we'd all like to believe that that's true.

Which makes this finding from Rasmussen all the more depressing:

Which is the better approach to dealing with illegal immigration -- allowing individual states to act on their own to enforce immigration laws or relying upon the federal government to enforce immigration laws?

53% Allowing individual states to act on their own to enforce immigration laws

41% Relying on the federal government to enforce immigration laws

This really underscores the urgent need for action on the Federal level -- and illustrates the catastrophic consequences of inaction thus far. As more states step into the breach, people are simply losing faith in the Federal government's ability to solve this problem.

Result: People are warming to the idea that states are the appropriate level of government to handle it. This will make it tougher for the Federal government to contest such laws on the grounds that state-based solutions will create an unworkable patchwork across the country, as the Obama administration argues. It will also embolden local pols to float more and more onerous solutions.

The cycle will continue, and probably get a whole lot worse. Time to move on this, Dems!

President Obama just delivered a rousing speech at an auto plant in Detroit, and it gave us a glimpse of how the fall elections could go for Dems if things start trending their way.

The tanking economy has left the public highly skeptical of Obama's larger goal of restoring faith in government as an effective agent for reform and a necessary corrective to the excesses of free enterprise. Indeed, a CNN poll out today finds that a whopping 61% thinks the government is doing too much that should be left to private individuals and businesses.

But today, Obama gets to claim that on one front, at least, he was absolutely right about the need for government intervention in the economy -- and that his critics were absolutely wrong. Last year, Republicans derided Obama's auto industry bailout as a dire threat to capitalism as we know it, but today, the auto industry is once again turning a profit and adding jobs in key communities.

And Obama, in his speech, made this point explicitly:

So here's the bottom line. We've got a long way to go. But we're beginning to see some of these tough decisions pay off. We are moving foward.

I want you to remember, though, if some folks had their way, none of this would have been happening. Just want to point that out. This plant, and your jobs, might not exist. There were leaders of the `just say no' crowd in Washington, they were saying, standing by the auto industry would guarantee failure. One of them called it `the worst investment you could possibly make.' They said we should just walk away and let those jobs go.

I wish they were standing here today. I wish they could see what I'm seeing in this plant, and talk to the workers who are here taking pride in building a world-class vehicle.

I don't think they'd be willing to look you in the eye and say that you were a bad investment. They might just come around if they were standing here and admit that by standing by a great American industry, and the good people who work for it, that we did the right thing. It's hard for them to say that. They don't like admitting when I do the right thing.

It's worth noting that the public record is chock full of examples of this. When Obama pushed out GM CEO Rick Wagoner, Senator Bob Corker declared that it "should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise."

Senator Lamar Alexander proclaimed: "The sooner the politicians get out of the way, the sooner auto jobs and taxpayer dollars will be secure."

The emerging White House line is this: Yes, it's tough out there, but some of the tough decisions Obama and Dems took early on -- in the face of staunch GOP opposition -- are beginning to show results. So be patient, and bear with us. The auto bailout is a good example of this. So is health reform: Though there's still a long way to go, the public is slowly warming to it as the provisions of the new law kick in.

The question is whether this argument will be enough to offset public anxiety and impatience over the overall state of the economy and get people to stay the course. A few more moments like Obama had today would go a long way towards helping make the larger argument stick.

As you have probably heard, the Anti-Defamation League came out against the Ground Zero mosque today. I wanted to highlight this extraordinary bit from their statement:

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain --unnecessarily -- and that is not right.

That's just amazing. This is basically a concession that some of the opposition to the mosque is grounded in bigotry, and that those arguing that the mosque builders harbor ill intent are misguided. Yet ADL is opposing the construction of the mosque anyway, on the grounds that it will cause 9/11 victims unnecessary "pain."

But look: The foes of this mosque whose opposition is rooted in bigotry are the ones who are trying to stoke victims' pain here, for transparent political purposes. Their opposition to this mosque appears to be all about insidiously linking the mosque builders with the 9/11 attackers, and by extension, to revive passions surrounding 9/11. To oppose the mosque is to capitulate to -- and validate -- this program.

On this one, you're either with the bigots or you're against them. And ADL has in effect sided with them.

UPDATE, 11:54 a.m.: Edited slightly for clarity.

Everybody is talking about Anthony Weiner's high-octane rant on the House floor last night, in which he fulminated over Republican opposition to a bill that would have spent billions on health care for people sickened by the smoke and debris from 9/11:

Dems pursued a procedural tack that required two thirds of the House to prevail, enabling Republicans to defeat it, and obviously opposing this bill was a morally questionable thing to do. But I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that Weiner's rant doesn't do anyone any good -- least of all Dems. Republicans want Dems to respond this way -- to fulminate and rant about procedure and about their inability to pass legislation, even though they enjoy comfortable majorities.

Whatever their substantive objections to each piece of legislation Republicans oppose, their larger game plan is to render government ineffective in order to deny Dems victores, create a sense that government is broken and has failed to deliver, stoke anti-incumbent fervor, and ensure that Dems bear the brunt of blame for government dysfunction.

Thats's hardly a groundbreaking point, obviously, but Dems need to stop responding superficially to Republican opposition, and tailor their response to the GOP's underlying strategy. Weiner repeatedly yelled about the GOP's "shame," but this misses the point. Republicans are not going to be shamed into doing what Dems want them to do. Republicans are pursuing a concerted game plan here that Dems need to reckon with more directly.

Indeed, Dems would be far better served if they kept calmly repeating that Republicans want government to fail, in order to breed cynicism and to get voters to give up on the idea that government works for them.

By the way, there's precedent for this. Remember when former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle erupted on the Senate floor in 2002 in response to Bush's rank politicization of national security in the runup to the midterm elections? That didn't work, either.

To be clear, I'm all for the kind of passion Weiner is showing here, but let's direct it properly. Don't get into a shouting match about procedure. As emotionally satisfying as it may be to watch, raging against the GOP opposition machine's successful efforts to tie Dems in knots just makes Dems look whiny, weak and impotent.

UPDATE, 11:02 a.m.: Judging by the comments, I need to be a bit clearer here. I'm not saying that Weiner isn't right on the issue, or that he shouldn't show passion about it. That's all good. All I'm saying is that raging against successful Republican efforts to block individual Dem initiatives isn't enough. Raging about GOP obstructionism in general isn't enough, either. The point is that Dems need to build an effective larger case that transcends individual issues and reckons more directly with the strategy underlying all the GOP obstructionism. That's all I'm saying.

* The White House wants to know: How can it get the public to focus on the administration's isolated successes, when early tough decisions made by Obama that worked are now getting forgotten amid widespread anxiety about the ailing economy?

Today, the president will try to push the argument that in the case of the auto industry, the decision to pursue much-maligned bailouts actually paid off, and administration officials have fanned out in advance to make this case.

"Some tough decisions had to be made about the auto industry about a year and a half ago," press sec Robert Gibbs said on MSNBC this morning. "But what we're looking at now is an auto industry that for the first time since 2004, the Big Three are all reporting operating profits. And we're adding jobs for the first time in more than a decade."

The White House will focus more and more on Obama's early decisions, pushing the line that the public will eventually come around to the view that the tough calls made by the president early on were the right ones.

* David Axelrod lays out the emerging Dem balancing act: Dems must argue that voting Republican would take us back to the Bush policies that landed us in today's mess -- without appearing to want to relitigate the past.

* A near-perfect summary of Nancy Pelosi's dilemma in the midterms:

The 2006 and 2008 campaigns, which built Pelosi's power, were assaults on an established Republican order in Congress and the White House. Now in a punishing economic environment, the roles are reversed. If Democrats are to survive, aides predict the tough-minded Pelosi will face a painful chore: performing the triage needed when money runs low and old friends and allies must be cut loose to save those who have a better chance of winning.

* And this is great timing: It looks like Charlie Rangel's high profile ethics trial is set to unfold this fall, just in time for the midterms.

* But: Also in the above link, Pelosi is pointing to Rangel's travails as proof that Dems are succeeding in delivering on their promise to "drain the swamp."

* Meanwhile, the House GOP guide to campaigning this summer during the recess features Republicans from the distant past. No George W. Bush, for instance.

* And Charlie Cook says the Republican wave may have already crested.

* New Las Vegas Review Journal poll finds the Nevada Senate race deadlocked.

* An important point from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: Even if a GOP filibuster of climate change legislation was inevitable, Dems should have staged that fight anyway. Keep that in mind for next time!

* Charlie Crist really may pull it off: A new Quinnipiac poll finds Crist leading the three-way Senate race over Marco Rubio and either possible Dem candidate.

It's Crist over Rubio and Jeff Greene, 37-32-17, or Crist over Rubio and Kendrick Meek, 39-33-13.

* Picking Elizabeth Warren to head the new consumer protection agency would go a long way towards repairing Obama's problems with the base.

* Here's today's installment in the Michele Bachmann chronicles, in which she throws her lot in with Tom Tancredo and impeach-Obama talk.

* And Sarah Palin clearly wants you to judge her book by its cover.

What else is happening?

* Dan Balz says the House Dems' ad spending patterns show clearly that they're running scared.

* And the unveiling of "13 very serious allegations" against Charlie Rangel will only make it easier for the GOP to argue that Dems failed in their vow to drain the swamp.

* People are noticing! The New York Times article on the GOP blockade of the small business bill says in its first paragraph that it's all about denying Dems "any further legislative accomplishments before November's midterm elections."

* Steve Benen lists a bunch more Republicans whose comments about unemployment entitle them to coveted membership in the "Let Them Eat Want Ads" Caucus.

* And: Gop Rep Zach Wamp also signs up as a member:

"This is creating a culture of dependence which we do not need. We want people out there scraping and clawing and looking for work and not just sitting back waiting."

We want them out there "scraping and clawing." Nice!

* Obama likes to mock polls, but Sam Stein notes he's spent more on them than Bush.

* Shirley Sherrod says she'll sue Andrew Breitbart. News orgs will love this story, and covering it means they have to discuss Breitbart's credibility implosion, right?

* Takedown of the day: Yglesias versus that "emotionally manipulative" Time mag cover.

* Bonus takedown of the day: Joe Conason versus Fred Barnes over the latter's Journolist-bashing claim that he's not on a "team." Riiiight....

* Glenn Greenwald notes the escalation of the Obama administration's war on WikiLeaks and other leakers and sardonically notes "this week in change."

* Lefties gear up for a massive fight against Republicans and the Obama administration over Social Security.

* And it's unclear whether this is related to the passions unleashed by the Arizona immigration law, but Raul Grijalva's staff has announced that the Yuma office has been closed because a "shattered window and bullet inside the office were found earlier today." The investigation is ongoing.

What else is happening?

As I've argued a bunch of times before, no matter how many times Dems scream about GOP obstructionism, the jury is out on whether Republicans will take any of the blame for its consequences. Dems run the place, and the public may tune out any argument over Senate procedure as so much Beltway white noise.

The latest: In the Senate today, Republicans blocked a bill to create a $30 billion fund to enable community banks to boost lending to small businesses. Republicans decried the move as another bailout, and it's now unlikely that it will pass before Congress goes home for vacation in August, with little in the way of jobs bills under its belt.

So how will this story play? This paragraph in the Associated Press write-up says it all:

Congressional Democrats started the year with ambitious plans to pass a series of bills designed to create jobs. But if negotiations on the small business lending bill fail, they will have little to show for it just a few months before midterm elections that will determine whether Democrats keep their majorities in the House and Senate.

And there you have it. Is this how the story will be understood by the American people? Very possible.

Republicans claimed Dems blocked votes on the amendments they wanted. Dems countered that they agreed to votes on the GOP amendments, only to have the GOP demand more votes. Get what's happening here? The larger story is all getting subsumed in a bunch of Beltway white noise.

So here's the question: What storyline will the American people take away from all this?

At the press briefing today, Robert Gibbs tried to tell the story the administration's way. Speaking about the small business bill, he said:

"Why on earth would that fall prey to the same old tired partisan politics, unless one side was much more concerned about playing politics than it is about helping this economy along? That is the fight that this president has had to wage in many cases since the very begining of his administration. He will continue to make the tough decisions. And those that are more interested in playing politics rather than helping small business get the help they need, I assume they'll hear from their constituents about how unproductive that really is."

Whatever their substantive objections to this bill, it appears Republicans have calculated that the failure of Dem legislation, and Dem griping about the GOP's role in blocking it, will only feed a sense that government is broken and has failed to deliver, which will reflect badly on the ruling party. Indeed, if that AP paragraph captures the way the storyline is understood by the American people, Dems are in serious trouble.

Okay, we have another Republican applying for membership in the "Let Them Eat Want Ads" Caucus.

GOPer Scott Bruun, a state representative in Oregon who's running to unseat Dem Rep. Kurt Schrader, told a local radio program that extending unemployment benefits beyond two years is "European," adding that an extension would bring "shame on our government" for "encouraging" joblessness.

Asked by KPAM radio host Victoria Taft whether he would have supported extending benefits, Bruun responded that he wouldn't have:

"When we're talking up over close to two years and longer with jobless benefits, I think we really start talking about a European style system and all the problems that that sort of system brings if you try to bring that sort of system to the United States."

A bit later, Bruun said that we have to adopt a new approach to those who have been receiving benefits for a long time:

"We need sort of a new game plan going forward, a new accountability. Shame on our government, if you will, if the government is in a position where we're encouraging people to stay out of the workplace longer."

This comes after Michele Rollins, a GOP Congressional candidate in Delaware, was caught on tape saying that if people get unemployment benefits extended, they "will continue to do nothing for a very long time."

This is not the official position of the GOP leadership, which argues that extending benefits is okay as long as the cost is offset and doesn't increase the deficit. Be that as it may, the "Let Them Eat Want Ads" Caucus is growing. In addition to these two new members, it includes Sharron Angle, Senators Richard Burr and Jon Kyl, and Wisconsin Senate candidate Ron Johnson.

Separately, on the substance of this debate, Andy Kroll points us to Harvard economist Raj Chetty's finding that unemployment aid is rarely a disincentive to finding a job.

Also: If there are any studies that show that employment suddenly increased among those whose benefits have been cut off, I haven't seen them.