The Plum Line

In the wake of today's disappointing jobs numbers, a bunch of people around the Web have been lamenting that Dems will take it on the chin for the bad economy even while Republicans have done everything they can to block Dems from implementing their solutions.

That's true. But there's another layer of perversity to consider here that makes the situation even worse: The sputtering recovery is actually making it tougher politically over time for Dems to take new steps to solve the problem. The sluggish recovery has undermined public confidence in the Dems' general approach to solving the problem, making Dems more reluctant to attempt the next round of ambitious solutions. That, in turn, insures that the jobs numbers remain grim. And so on.

As Josh Marshall notes today, it's getting tougher to avoid the conclusion that Dems erred badly by not passing a larger stimulus package:

[I]t was always clear there was only going to be one real bite at this apple. And it just wasn't enough. Why the White House predicted a max out at 8.5% unemployment I'll never know since that was not only a politically unhelpful number, it was also deeply unrealistic. I suspect a lot of Democrats are going to go down to defeat because of it.

What makes this even worse is the perverse dynamic I noted above. Republicans have pursued a very deliberate strategy to feed public pessimism about Big Government's ability to lift us out of the doldrums, pointing to the sputtering recovery as proof that the Dems underlying philosophy has been discredited.

The result is that it's even less likely that Dems will risk taking "another bite at this apple," as Josh puts it. The public doesn't focus on the details, and the failure to pass an ambitious enough stimulus has ensured that the Dem solution fell short of expectations, which paradoxically has left the public increasingly pessimistic about govenment spending as the best means to fuel the recovery. That in turn led Dems to conclude that further ambitious government action is politically unfeasible.

In other words, Dems won't reach for the sword that can cut this Gordian Knot. As bad as GOP obstructionism has been, Dems may also be caught in a trap of their own making.

UPDATE, 2;03 p.m.: I perhaps should have been clearer that the stimulus has clearly made things better than they otherwise might have been. The point is that perversely enough, its falure to meet expectations risks undermining confidence in the governing philosophy underlying it, making further action harder. I've tweaked the above to clarify.

Sharron Angle has taken some extreme positions, but this one is remarkable even by her standards: She said on a candidate questionnaire that she would refuse political contributions from a private company that backs equal rights for gays and extends benefits to partners of gay employees.

Angle laid out this position in a candidate questionnaire that she filled out for the Washington-based Government is not God PAC.

In question 35A of the questionnaire, Angle was asked:

Would you refuse PAC money from those who are fundamentally opposed to your views on social issues?

Angle checked the Yes box. The questionnaire then asked:

In reference to question 35A, Intel Corporation supports "equal rights for gays" and offers benefits to "partners" of homosexual employees. Would you refuse funds from this corporate PAC?

Angle again checked the Yes box.

The questionnaire was first obtained by the Associated Press, which did a story about it without noting this question and answer from Angle. The AP story noted other eyebrow-raising answers in the questionnaire, such as her support for clergy making political endorsements.

A copy of the full questionnaire is right here. The answer to the question on gays was first noted in passing by Nevada Journalist Jon Ralston.

Angle's position is striking. It's one thing to oppose gay marriage, or to oppose equal rights for gays. It's quite another to refuse to accept campaign contributions from a company that chooses of its own free will to support gay rights or extend benefits to partners of its own employees.

The Republican strategy has been to seize on the ailing economy to feed public pessimism about the ability of Big Government to fix the economy -- and to revive the old canard that government is the problem, not the solution -- and Republicans are pointing to today's disappointing jobs numbers to press the case.

Here's Eric Cantor:

"For the last 18 months, Republicans have focused on cutting spending and creating jobs offering better alternatives than the Democrat majority. Now, President Obama is set to preside over one of the largest tax increases in American history, but there is a better way. Washington has a spending problem, and the policies of the Obama Administration and the Pelosi/Reid Congress have caused the size and reach of the government to explode. What the President touts as the 'Recovery Summer' is built upon the misguided notion that government expansion creates prosperity, when in reality it creates debt and deficits. We need to cut spending immediately and House Republicans, whom have already offered hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts, will continue to fight against the Democrats' spending spree and for enabling small business people to invest and grow so that we can get America working again."

And here's Michael Steele, with a backhanded barb at Timothy Geithner's ill-timed Op ed entitled "welcome to the recovery":

"For the millions of Americans who are unable to find work, this White House's empty cheerleading rings hollow. President Obama has been more focused on growing government than growing jobs, and it shows. The cumulative effect of his $2.5 trillion health care takeover, his overreaching financial regulatory bill, and his looming small business tax hike has created a climate of uncertainty that has left employers unable to expand their payrolls. If persistently high unemployment, crushing debt, and a continued assault on the private economy is the 'recovery' President Obama is welcoming the American people to, Congressional Democrats will be the ones getting a pink slip in November."

Republicans are pressing the case that Dem spending and regulatory policies are to blame for impeding the recovery, in hopes that voters forget what landed us in this mess in the first place. Dems appear to have decided that more government action to create jobs is not politically feasible, forcing them to gamely insist that the current policies have put us on the road to recovery. But then bad jobs numbers -- and the reality on the ground -- allow Republicans to argue that Dems are out of touch with how badly their policies are failing, feeding a sense that they aren't in touch and aren't in control.

If the Dem argument is that we can't hand the keys to Republicans because they drove us into a ditch last time, the Republican argument is that Dems had their shot at driving and have lost control of the wheel -- and don't even know it.

* Another jobs report, another spin war: It's due out this morning, and economists forecast some 87,000 lost last month and an unemployment rate ticking up from 9.5 percent to 9.6 percent.

"Nonsense": Senator George Voinovich on the GOP claim that tax cuts for the rich aren't a cost: "You don't need to pay for them? To me, that's nonsense."

Most of the division over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts has been among Dems, but Voinovich's broadside is the first hint of GOP opposition to the extension.

* Indys giving up on government? At the start of the Obama presidency independents were very receptive to an expansive role for the Federal government in our lives. Now the conventional wisdom is that indys are giving up on Big Government. This seems like a dynamic worth digging into a bit more deeply. Paging Nate...

* Dems keep milking that state aid: The DNC goes after John Boehner's suggestion that cops and teachers are "special interests" with a web video featuring teachers hitting back, another sign of how intent Dems are on milking their successful passage of billions in state aid -- over GOP opposition -- for maximum political gain.

* But: No end to the skittishness as some vulnerable Dems grumble that the vote for state aid could be a political loser that reminds voters of Dem overspending.

* The alternate reality known as the U.S. Senate: Mitch McConnell congratulates himself for successfully filibustering the Senate to a halt, but when Al Franken makes a few funny faces in his direction, McConnell erupts in fury at this unacceptable breach of Senatorial decorum.

* But: In fairness, Franken did apologize and does seem to think he stepped over the line.

* Didn't some folks predict this would happen? The DSCC prepares to slash the amount of campaign cash it's giving to Blanche Lincoln, as it becomes clearer that she's likely a goner.

* But...but...Obama is Spock! Now that the Gulf spill has been halted, Peter Baker notes that it may not have destroyed Obama's presidency after all, and points out that (unlike other major crises) Obama has been able to continue moving forward with his agenda.

* Also in the above link: Many will dismiss this as spin, but Rahm Emanuel argues that the public, in retrospect, may decide it isn't a big deal that Obama didn't respond to the spill by pounding the podium with rage or by weeping hot tears into the Gulf.

* Never again: Joe Klein lashes himself mercilessly for his passing support of the Iraq invasion and doesn't hide behind the phony-baloney argument that it wasn't clear at the time that the war rationale was transparent BS.

Klein writes: "The issue then was as clear as it is now." Refreshing.

* Toomey on the fringe? The Joe Sestak campaign is out with a new Web video that hits Pat Toomey for his ties to Angle, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin. Fun stuff, though it's unclear who the audience is here or what kind of resonance this has for Pennsylvania voters worried about the economy.

* And Sharron Angle's holy war continues: Now it emerges that she believes clergy should be allowed to endorse political candidates and that gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt children.

What else is happening?

* Elena Kagan is confirmed by the Senate, 63-37, almost exactly the margin everyone has predicted for months. Which makes you wonder what all those hearings were really for in the first place.

* Harry Reid decries GOP tactics as the "Charlie Brown theory of government," a reference, of course, to Lucy and the football.

* Paul Kane reports that Mitch McConnell stanunchly defended the filibuster today because it enabled him to practically grind the Senate to a halt to block Obama's agenda, and vowed more of the same.

* Here's some video of McConnell saying that if Obama wants compromise, he needs to move to the "center right."

* Steve Benen translates McConnell's idea of compromise: "I'm willing to compromise with you, unless it means you getting some of what you want, in which case, forget it."

* But: McConnell says there are some potential areas of common ground. For instance: Deficit reduction.

* A small problem for Illinois Dem Senate candiate Alexi Giannoulias? The NRSC is circulating video of Dem Rep. Bobby Rush of Chicago telling local news he's "not sold" on Giannoulias as of yet.

* Takedown of the day: Ezra Klein versus Chris Dodd over the latter's puzzling opposition to filibuster reform.

* Matt Yglesias keeps hitting the crucial point that the current level of filibustering is a recent development, and filibuster reform would be restoring what once was closer to the norm.

* Bold pronouncement of the day: William Saletan says Newt Gingrich's anti-mosque campaign has allied him with Osama Bin Laden.

* John Boehner says the Dem ethics travails may not have a big impact on the midterms.

* Brian Beutler gets inside the murky workings of the White House deficit commission and finds that GOP opposition to tax increases is making entitlement cuts more likely.

* Daily Kos is back in the polling game after hiring the Dem firm Public Policy Polling, which will be of interest to insiders, since Daily Kos has a history of surveying under-polled races and conversation-driving topics.

* And Palin Nation is an irony-free zone: Sarah Palin claims, wait for it, that we're in our current fix because Obama wasn't thoroughly vetted before the election.

What else is happening?

I'd be genuinely curious to know how David Broder would answer the following question: How much are Republicans to blame for the current dysfunction in the Senate?

Broder has a column today entitled: "The Senate, running on empty." He says the real problem is "the absence of leaders who embody and can inculcate the institutional pride that once was the hallmark of membership in the Senate." And:

Its best leaders have been men who were capable, at least on occasion, of rising above partisanship or parochial interest and summoning the will to tackle overriding challenges in a way that almost shamed their colleagues out of their small-mindedness.

Many forces -- from the money chase, to the party realignments, to the intrusiveness of 24-hour media -- have weakened the institutional bonds of that Senate. But it is the absence of the ethic embodied and enforced by its leaders that is most crippling.

Jon Chait dismisses this diagnosis, arguing convincingly that the problems are institutional and historical. But for the sake of argument, let's assume leadership is the problem. Shouldn't we say which leaders are to blame?

The words "Mitch McConnell" don't appear in Broder's article. The words "Harry Reid," however, do appear in passing, when Broder writes that Reid "threw in the towel on energy legislation." Broder points to this as another sign of Senate dysfunction. But he doesn't say anything about the lockstep GOP opposition to energy legislation that was partly responsible for forcing Reid to throw in the towel.

Yes, Republicans said Dems were to blame for GOP opposition to energy reform because Dems didn't do this, that or the other thing. Maybe Broder agrees with this. Maybe he thinks Republican opposition was indefensible. The point is, he doesn't say.

On MSNBC just now, DCCC chair Chris Van Hollen made it explicit:

Dems will argue that the ethical travails of Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters prove that Dems are making good on their promise to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Congress. Even if it's their own who are swirling around that drain.

Also: Van Hollen rolled out another line of attack: He contrasted the Dem leadership's response to the Rangel mess favorably with the GOP leadership's proposal in 2004 to change the rules to allow Tom DeLay to remain in a leadership post if he were charged by a grand jury.

Republicans have signaled that they will pound away relentlessly at the Rangel and Waters affairs as proof that Dems failed to clean house. Asked if this is a liability, Van Hollen answered:

"We've actually strengthened the ethics process. The reason people are hearing about the cases of Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters is because we put in place accountability measures to make sure that we have high standards and that people are held accountable to those standards.

"If you recall back when the Republicans are in charge, and Tom DeLay was about to be indicted, the Republicans actually weakened their rules. They changed their rules to say, even after he's indicted, he can still be the Republican leader.

"We were very clear. Charlie Rangel is not the chair of the Ways and Means Committee. He stepped down as a result of allegations. And now we're going through what is a very much strengthened process, with more outside oversight."

In other words, Dems are hoping to make lemons into lemonade.

That seems to be one of the core political questions in the wake of the overturning of Proposition 8. How can the president continue opposing gay marriage while supporting the decision to strike down Prop 8, on the grounds that it's "discriminatory," as the White House said in a statement last night?

Making it more dicey, the White House statement also said that the president continues to push for "full equality" for gay and lesbian couples. How can that not include support for gay marriage?

This morning, senior White House adviser David Axelrod struggled to defend this position on MSNBC. Here's what he said:

"The president opposed Proposition 8 at the time. He felt that it was divisive. He felt that it was mean-spirited, and he opposed it at the time. So we reiterated that position yesterday. The president does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples, and benefits and other issues, and that has been effectuated in federal agencies under his control. He's supports civil unions, and that's been his position throughout. So nothing has changed."

But as John Aravosis says, everything has changed.

Here's another problem: In the interview with MSNBC this morning, Axelrod clarified that Obama believes that gay marriage is an issue for states to decide, and it's true that Obama opposes the Defense of Marriage Act, which codified a federal ban on gay marriage.

But as Michael Shear notes, his administration has yet to actively seek a repeal of DOMA, and is acquiescing to Congressional leaders who insist that the current political reality dictates that repeal is impossible. And his administration continues to defend DOMA in court against appeals.

Also: Obama has in the past claimed there's no inconsistency between opposing Prop 8 and opposing gay marriage by arguing he thinks gay marriage is wrong but we shouldn't be prohibiting it legally.

Are your stimulus dollars really being wasted on getting monkeys high on crack and cocaine?

In recent days, select Republicans and conservatives have taken to bashing the Obama administration over this claim. Sharron Angle has blasted Dems for giving money to "coked-up stimulus monkeys," and many others on the right have taken a similar tack.

Turns out, however, that this money is actually being spent on research into how to treat drug addiction in humans. And the Obama administration is going on record forcefully defending the project, sending over a statement pointing out that drug addiction is a rather serious problem and wondering whether GOP critics would prefer that we experiment on humans instead.

In case you missed it, senators John McCain and Tom Coburn got a lot of attention the other day when they issued a report alleging all kinds of ludicrous stimulus waste.

One bullet point in the report that got a ton of attention: "Monkeys Getting High for Science."

The McCain/Coburn report claimed this was a reference to a Federal grant of $71,623 to the Winston-Salem college to "study how monkeys react under cocaine."

And that's true. But the report didn't tell you why the monkeys' reaction to cocaine is being studied: To develop our understanding of how the brain chemistry of addiction works, in order to better combat drug addiction.

* Obama to say government intervention worked: He enjoyed a much-needed victory lap last week when he gave a speech at a Detroit auto plant about how his widely-criticized decision to bail out the auto industry paid off. Today Obama will do the same at a plant in Chicago.

The president will "continue to tell the story of how the tough choices he made to save the American auto industry were necessary to save a million American jobs, stave off economic devastation in our auto communities and revitalize an entire American industry," a White House official emails.

There are multiple examples on record of Republicans predicting that the only right course was for government to get out of the way. The question is whether the emerging White House argument -- that Obama took tough decisions early on that are now bearing fruit -- is enough to offset generalized anxiety and pessimism about government's ability to right the economy.

* Dems getting tough? It's looking more like Dem leaders and the White House will in fact stage a big fight this fall over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich, despite some skittish Dems who inexplicably think it's bad politics.

* But: Some Senate Dems are still privately pushing for the top-end tax cuts to be extended, and they're still privately debating how to wage this fight.

* Attack of the day: Republican Senators say it's out of bounds for the White House to spend taxpayer money informing seniors who were misled by the right's massive health care misinformation campaign how they can benefit from the new law.

* Dems turn up heat under Tea Party Republicans: The DNC is set to renew its push to define the GOP as indistinguishable from the Tea Party, by pressuring local reporters in some 80 House districts to ask GOPers whether they support the Tea Party agenda.

Tea Party or no Tea Party, the success of this all hinges on whether Dems can successfully get Republicans to detail precisely what they're for.

* Devastating: Marc Ambinder breaks down the ruling overturning Proposition 8 and finds that it's "devastating," which could be key if it goes to the Supreme Court.

* And: Dahlia Lithwick concludes the ruling is brilliant and powerful, and says the Supreme Court is its intended audience.

* Reigniting the culture war? Advocates on both sides think the ruling will increase the pressure on Obama to come out and endorse gay marriage already.

* And the gang at Americablog keep up the pressure.

* The filibuster works politically -- for Republicans: Jed Lewison explains why filibustering will continue to be a political win-win for the GOP all around. Are any Dems listening?

* This is odd: Did Crown Publishing delay pubiication of George W. Bush's memoir because Bush concluded it would hurt the GOP in the midterms?

Bush friends tell the Financial Times that the former president wanted the date moved to help the GOP. But Crown says it decided the media environment would be better for book sales after the elections. Hmm...

*Headline of the day: From Gawker, on the silence of Chuck Schumer and Anthony Weiner on the Ground Zero Islamic center:

New York's Two Loudest Democrats Dead Silent on Ground Zero Mosque

* But Dem Rep. Jerrold Nadler of Manhattan steps up, sending over a new statement blasting the center's opponents:

"As an elected official who believes strongly in the separation of church and state, I contend that the government has no business deciding whether there should or should not be a Muslim house of worship near Ground Zero. And, as a representative of New Yorkers of all faiths and cultures, I find the singling out of Muslim-Americans -- because of their faith -- for animus and hate to be shameful and divisive. We should instead work toward building tolerance and understanding.

The key there is Nadler's nod to the fact that he represents Muslim constituents, too. What a controversial notion!

What else is happening?