Good morning and hello and welcome again to another edition of the teevee-is-on-and-I-type-fast Sunday morning political chat show liveblog. My name is Jason. Today we got battlin' pols galore! Coons and O'Donnell! Bennet and Buck! Cornyn and McCaskill! Plus, Meghan McCain is on a show, for some reason? I woke up for this so you didn't have to! Please, please, stay ensnuggled with your loved ones! Or, if the spirit moves you, write a comment, send an email, and stay abreast with my pointless tweets.
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
So, the aforementioned Cornyn and McCaskill are here today, to talk about the Senate. Plus, terrible CEO Carly Fiorina is here, and I think a panel. So exciting! Meanwhile, my cat, Declan, is "live-meowing" the shiny motes of reflected light on the ceiling, which either bother or fascinate him. I think he will end up learning more about American politics than I will. Certainly, he will take longer naps. (I will eat better food, however, so, suck it, animal kingdom.)
Cornyn and McCaskill are here, to talk about how great they are. For Cornyn, the election is about unpopular policies and a Congress that hasn't read any bills (hasn't he read the bills himself by now?) and spending a debt. Will the GOP take back the Senate? "We're going to fight for every seat we get...but it might be a two-cycle process." McCaskill -- oh Lord -- SHE IS GOING TO SAY THE DEMS WILL HOLD THE SENATE, RIGHT? Well...she says that the coming GOPers are extreme freak-o's. She is a moderate herself, she says, and reminds people that she doesn't vote for the White House every time out. O-kay!
Cornyn says BLAH the country is center-right, so Obama should be more center-right, by which he means "really right" or "why didn't he just let us write the bills for the past two years." McCaskill says, I'M SUPER MODERATEY, DON'T FORGET? And, she describes the past two years as a period where "policy" took a backseat to "politics."
BUT WILL THE PRESIDENT BE MORE CENTER-Y, asks Wallace. McCaskill says that the White House has been really accomodating, and yet here are the GOP, wanting to repeal FinReg, which "stops taxpayer bailouts." Heh. We'll see.
Cornyn reminds that he'd also repeal the health care bill, and Obama's "aggressive agenda" to aggressively attempt to prevent more Americans for having to crawl off in the woods to die penniless because they happened to get sick, which is the "center right" thing to do.
Tax cuts! Cornyn is shocked that the Dems put off making a decision, and on that score, I can't blame him. McCaskill says she's open to compromise on allowing the very top brackets to keep their tax cuts -- which means that the rest of the brackets get to enjoy four trillion being added to the deficit. SUCH DEFICIT HAWKS, these people! And right on cue, McCaskill starts talking about the need for entitlement reform, because, TEH DEFICITZ OMG. (We have two wars going on? And a lot of wasteful farm subsidies? And massive Defense Department bloat? But, yes, let's cut the olds a hole, for the glory of center rightness? And maybe we can have the youngs invest their retirement in a market that's still allowed unrestrained synthetic derivative orgies, because when the market goes kerblooey, AGAIN, I'm sure the best possible outcome is for us to have more people from the productive economy lose their livelihoods.
"I'm not sure how serious these guys are about the deficit," says McCaskill, who's also not serious about the deficit.
"Should Democrats be preaching about being serious about the deficits?" asks Wallace, who also should not be pretending that he is serious about deficits.
By the way, I can get serious about the deficit!
McCaskill is asked about Harry Reid, who hasn't polled very well in Nevada, lately. She says that Angle is nuts (which is true) and that a lot of state GOP types are endorsing Reid because of it. "He's a nice guy who has a very tough job." That's fair, I guess. Depending on the way the wind blows, Reid can frustrate me with his lack of balls or surprise me with some sudden sack. He's an old guy with a system beyond my scrutability, for making it work, I guess. One thing I always keep in my mind, as far as "having something nice to say about Harry Reid" goes, is that I remember that Elizabeth Warren wouldn't have come to Washington if it weren't for him.
But, wow, Nevada has a "none of the above" choice on their ballot. People should ask for that on their own ballots. Anyway, Cornyn thinks Angle is awesome because she raised a lot of campaign money, and Reid is the guy who led to massive foreclosures.
Cornyn picks Connecticut for McMahon and West Virginia for Raese. McCaskill says Carnahan will beat Roy Blunt and Jack Conway will beat Rand Paul. I predict both of them being wrong, how's that!
I think it really says something about the Democrats' woes that Carly Fiorina, the next guest, has a decent shot at the California Senate. This is a woman who has essentially been in mulitple headlong collisions with the Peter Principle from the moment she slipped the womb. But failures in both private and public like really mean nothing in American politics, circa now.
Barbara Boxer was also invited to be part of this segment, but declined, so I'm sort of angry at her for leaving me alone with this crushing dimwit.
Anyway, polls! Boxer is favored in most! Fiorina says yes, but she rarely gets over 50%. California, she says, has a lot of people out of work! Her message, I guess, will be, that there isn't a "God-given right to a job" anymore.
This interview is going like so:
1. Fiorina blandly mouths the talking points she's heard other, more effective GOP politicians make.
2. Chris Wallace gets bored and cuts her off.
3. She makes this facial expression that makes her look like she's getting goosed with morphine.
4. Repeat.
We have to cut spending and grow the economy, she says! And then some magic stuff will happen. Our R&D is only seventeenth in the world, she complains, oblivious to the Reagan-era war on R&D in America.
She also blasted the Deficit Commission -- which I will write up as a display of "accidental competence." Except now she's saying she didn't "blast" the commission, she "believed it was a feint for tax increases." And she seems to think this commission is likely to suggest a value-added tax, which is hilarious to me, unless "value added tax" is now the secret code term for "massive cuts in entitlements." Wallace asks her to name an entitlement cut, and Fiorina says the same old crap you hear every quisling pol say: "We have to put everything on the table." IT'S SO BRAVE, TO SAY YOU BRIEFLY LOOKED AT AN IDEA. "But we can't cut off those nearing retirement." IT'S SO BRAVE, NOT ANGERING THE POWERFUL AARP VOTING BLOC.
And in the next breath, she goes on to slag "career politicians!" Who does she think she sounds like, if not a career politician! The most solid argument for having Fiorina in Washington is that she already fits in so well, here. (And let's face it, NOBODY wants her to have her fingers in anything private sector ever again.)
Wallace tries "one last time" to ask about a single benefit cut she would make. Her response: "engage people" with "bipartisanship" and "put everything on the table" and "engage people in conversation." "We can't continue to just jump over the fact that we have to deal with it," says Fiorina, having landed on the other side of the jump she just described that we can no longer make.
The lady is very comical.
Panel time, with the regular panel, except Elizabeth Bumiller is in for Juan Williams.
According to the pre-mortem post-mortem, the White House is prepping for a course correction. Hume says he deserves time to make the adjustment, but blabbers about how Obama hasn't figured out "what went wrong." Let's not stray into policy here, for a minute, because I can pull stuff I don't like about a lot of the policies enacted. If we're only talking politics, here, I'll tell you that the White House isn't looking forward to having to contend with GOP majorities, but to their mind, they got a lot of the policymaking they wanted to get done, done. The notion of being chastened doesn't even cross their mind -- they got the health care reform they wanted, it's not going anywhere unless the GOP does something that historically redounds to the Democrats' benefit (shutting down the government), 2011 is going to be about a big foreign policy matter in Afghanistan, and the White House doesn't really much need the Congress' approval in that arena.
My feeling is that the "Obama 2.0" that Liasson describes is a gameplan that was drawn up in May or June of 2009 and they're going right to it, right on time (which is why they have this pre-mortem/post-mortem thingy all rolled out). Now, you might say to yourself, "Well, it would seem that the White House was pretty indifferent to the fates of the Democratic members of Congress!" And I'll say, "YEP, SURE SEEMS LIKE IT!"
People in the media, still divining the "seeds of a plan to adapt?" As usual, they are the furthest behind the curve!
Bill Kristol thinks that Obama now regretting "looking like a tax-and-spend liberal Democrat" is the very first White House concession that should dispirit lawmakers. That is pretty funny to me, because it just goes to show that Kristol is maybe eighteen months behind the rest of the political universe.
Bumiller thinks people should read the New York Times in print. PLEASE? PLEEEEAAASE?! Read the Weekender, maybe?
Brit Hume remembers covering Bill Clinton, and recalls that he was a governor of a Southern State! Fascinating! He thinks that it was easy for Clinton to make a shift to accommodate the GOP -- AGAIN, HE HAS NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION. (Meanwhile, as the editor of his law review and a state lawmaker, Obama did a lot of deal-making with all sides, and successful at that. So, he does actually have it in him to make deals, it's just that he's been way more successful reaching compromise with people who weren't, at the time pursuing the strategy of "pointlessly obstructing everything in the world."
Bill Kristol says the GOP will pick-up sixty seats, which may be the best news for Dems in a long time, but I would not get too invested!
Elizabeth Bumiller reminds everyone about the thing she wrote in the New York Times. Please subscribe! Buy an online subscription! Or check out the Kindle edition! PLEASE SOMEBODY.
Hume says that the polls and prognosticators are right, and at best, the Dems might be able to win at the margins with a massive Get Out The Vote effort, which all Dem activists now believe wholeheartedly is something that Jon Stewart is going to destroy, because it's much easier to blame someone else for massive losses that would have happened anyway, than to face up to the fact that their own candidates aren't that compelling as people, that all your GOTV volunteers would just schlep off to DC to watch comedy, finding it to be more sustaining to their lives. (HINT: Got feckless campaign volunteers? Well, then, you probably have a feckless candidate. Do better next time!)
Kristol says that Reid lost the "one debate" he agreed to, but that's not true! (Not the losing part, I mean. Angle made the most of hysterically low expectations.) But it's Angle who notably chickened out of a debate with Jon Ralston!
And I think that's it? Anyway, go to Starbucks and buy a copy of Sunday Styles, for Elizabeth Bumiller.
THIS WEEK, WITH CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR
Okay, more coffee and then on to the next one.
[Liveblog is coming, please be patient, and hit refresh in another few minutes.]
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