I was thinking about the following quote from today’s White House Briefing:
The question: “If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him.”
AfterDowningStreet.org reports on the results .
“By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans say that President Bush should be impeached if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll. . . .
“The poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,001 U.S. adults on October 8-9.”
The Zogby poll in June found 42 percent of respondents agreed with a very similar statement.
If I was running for a US House seat in 2006, I would definitely consider running on a pro-impeachment platform. As far as I can tell, Healthcare, Social Security, the decline in median wages, are all critical pocket-book issues that voters ignore when they get into the voting booth. No, they just think about gay marriage and abortion, and this makes them pull the lever for a Republican. Of course, I know it’s not an actual lever, just as surely as I know that Diebold has probably pre-determined the 2006 electoral outcome anyway.
What I’m saying is that the Left needs a wedge issue that works just as well as these other issues work for the Right. And I believe that wedge issue is impeachment. Here’s my proposed slogan: Vote yes to impeach Bush in 2006, it’ll make America stronger.
I think it’s a winner.
When I was going over to Henry Farrell’s talk last night, there was a pro-impeachment demonstration going on at Farragut North, with a chorus singing, people waving flags, banners. Unfortunately it was the LaRouchites, so it was actually a step backward, probably managing to alienate people who were beginning to think of impeachment as not such a crazy idea.
—Keith • 6:13 pm
Heh. The anti-gay marriage people have Fred Phelps, we have Lyndon LaRouche. We all have our crosses to bear, so to speak. -_-
—StealthBadger • 2:26 pm, October 13
Yeah, but for the Freedom Walk we got to have Fred Phelps “on our side” as well.
—Keith • 2:55 pm, October 13
Um. >.>;
Please don’t creep me out like that.
Oh, don’t think I’m going to make it tonight, unfortunately.
—StealthBadger • 4:08 pm, October 13
Re: the poll, I like those numbers, but we still badly need to get to a point where 50-44 believe Pres. Fraud DID lie. And then maybe Americans can be convinced why he should be impeached. At least one attempt at beginning the impeachment process has already failed. We really need to publicize future efforts in the House. Re: the pro-impeachment platform, a good way to challenge Republicans might be simply to ask the Republicans why they’ve been so loyal to a failed president. There really aren’t many Republicans in either house who can claim to be taking an independent line. The Pres signed off on all the bills they passed (most of which were vehemently opposed by Dems), and they also made sure to get his bills through Congress just like he asked. The basic line would be “the Bush Loyalists only added to the power of a president who was already overstepping his bounds early in his presidency (secrecy, Patriot Act). By deferring to the president’s wishes and playing defense for the president whenever trouble arose (war in Iraq, Valerie Plame affair), the Republicans on Capitol Hill became nothing more than an executive branch agency in Congress.”
—Jesse • 11:57 am, October 14
“As far as I can tell, Healthcare, Social Security, the decline in median wages, are all critical pocket-book issues that voters ignore when they get into the voting booth.”
I think a lot of these pocket book issues are not addressed appropriately because too many “liberal” and all “moderate” Democrats buy into many of the myths of neo-classical economics. Usually, those liberals who oppose neo-classical economics do so in such a reactionary manner that they lose all credibility among anyone who has ever taken econ 101.
This may be changing as many of the cutting edge areas in academic economics are undermining the neoclassical paradigm. These areas include behavioral finance, evolutionary economics, and network economics.
—Jason Bradfield • 12:02 pm, October 14
Jason,
I know little about neoclassical economics beyond the phrases “supply and demand” and “free hand of the market.”
My question is: does neoclassical economics allow for a role for government to act as a moderating influence when the “free market” becomes monopolistic or abuses its position in some other way?
Does modern economic theory have some kind of a model that allows for manipulation through propaganda and disinformation? (If you will operating under the influence of the un-free market)
—AltHippo • 1:33 pm, October 14
Neoclassical economics certainly has a role for the government to act as a moderating influence. But that role has been attacked on both the empirical front and on the theoretical front. However, a lot of these attacks were aimed at the post-war style mixed economy, they have not really updated their attacks against government for the information age. As much as the right-wing econo-propagandists love to blather on about techno-futurism, their models are really stuck in the industrial age. You can see this whenever economists theorize about some “firm” that mass produces “widgets.”
As far as I am concerned modern economic theory has no serious model allowing for persistent information manipulation. Almost all models taught on the undergraduate level assume explicitly that not only is accurate information is immediately available, but that there are no costs involved in acquiring this information. Of course, common sense and more sophisticated economic models reject such naivete.
—Jason Bradfield • 6:08 pm, October 14