Looking Back at the Cliff

I'm late to this post, so I'm just going to do it scattershot-style...

First, I'll give you some links. Of course you're going to want to start with what Sarah Binder says. See also Simon Jackman on voting in the House, And Jared Bernstein is worth reading on the policy and the politics.

Meanwhile, I wound up not having a post-length reaction, but I have a bunch of small points, so here they are before they get too stale:

* "Permanent" in budget-speak is meaningful and important, but it doesn't mean what "permanent" means in ordinary language. If Democrats have the votes to do it in the future, there's nothing to stop them from raising taxes on the $250 and up group that they failed to raise taxes on this time. Same thing if Republicans have the votes to cut the upper-level tax rates.

* There's a difference between wanting to vote against something and wanting it to lose. It's very possible -- likely, in my guess -- that a majority of Republicans in the House wanted the deal to pass. They just didn't want to vote for it. If that's true, then they might be a lot more happy with Speaker Boehner than they will admit in public.

* What about the role of the Plan B fiasco? It never made much sense in the first place; what exactly does Boehner have to show for it if he does get Plan B through the House? Maybe it helps in the spin war, but it's hard to see how it changes the negotiations. However, while I don't want to say he planned it this way, it probably did help in the endgame. Remember when the conference reportedly rebelled at the thought of passing the final package, and decided to add spending cut amendments and then send it back to the Senate? That collapsed quickly -- most likely because it rapidly became obvious that they didn't have the votes to do it themselves...which might have taken less time to realize because they had already realized they didn't have the votes for the vaguely similar Plan B.

* The blow-by-blow reporting, of course, is focused on personalities. And it's possible that Joe Biden and Mitch McConnell were able to work together in a way that Boehner and Obama, or Boehner and Harry Reid, couldn't. But be careful about that: we don't know if what changed were the negotiating partners -- or the clock.

* Which leads to another point: it's in the nature of these things that they come down to the last minute. We shouldn't assume the process ran badly just because it played out over New Year's. It's in everyone's interest to work for their best deal, and that usually means holding out up to the deadline. When the deadline is fuzzy, it's no surprise that they'll sort of go past it.

* There hasn't been very much talk about the Democrats' votes. Why wasn't there a parallel incentive on the Democratic side to want the bill to pass but not to vote for it?

* And barring that: surely it must have been very tempting for Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats to mess with Republicans during the final vote. If indeed there were Republicans who would have supported the bill only if necessary, Pelosi could have withheld Democratic votes, at least for a while, to try to make Republicans play their hands. At the very least, she could have demanded that Republicans provide a respectable number of votes for the package. I think she got that, especially with Senate Republicans strongly supporting it, but it wasn't a sure thing until well into the vote.

OK, I think that's about enough. Time to switch over to the new Congress, anyway.

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Joe Biden, 70. The Practically Perfect Veep.

Some good stuff:

1. Lessons from 2012 from The Gamble, the campaign book by John Sides and Lynn Vavreck.

2. Jonathan Chait on the fiscal cliff.

3. Rod Dreher on Marco Rubio, Genesis, liberals and conservatives. I think he's right in principle about (many) liberals, but to be fair: there are plenty of Republican politicians who do, in fact, seem to be actually anti-science, whether or not particular strains of Christian belief are inherently anti-science.

4. "The Rich People Who Don't Know How Tax Rates Work," from Dave Weigel; see also Kevin Drum's "Handy Tax Table for Innumerate Rich People."

5. And Paul Krugman on Paul Ryan.

Elsewhere: Unraveling, Old Ideas, Electoral College

Three things today. My column at Salon for the weekend is already up. I looked at Paul Ryan's assertion that Barack Obama's foreign policy is "unraveling" and noted that it's substance-free, concluding that it's yet another consequence of the closed information loop.

At PP, I said that I'm ignoring the electoral college. Which, really, I am. To the extent I pay attention to state polls, it's as signals to what's happening nationally, mostly as helpfully translated by the better aggregator sites.

And over at Greg's place, I riffed off of Joe Biden's line that "Their ideas are old, and their ideas are bad."

How about a non-existent link? I started writing a post about Martha Raddatz, but it wound up getting long and dull before getting to the point. Which is basically: excellent grade for moderating style, questions could have been a good deal better. So I'll just drop that in here and spike the longer post.

Veep Wrap

My take on the Biden/Ryan showdown is up over at Plum Line. Basically, I predicted that reactions would be mostly determined by whether people like Joe Biden or not; he dominated that much.

I'll just add a few random points here...

1. I strongly suspect that Ryan will come off worse on the transcript than he did live on TV. We'll see, but that's my guess.

2. It remains amazing the extent to which Republicans, despite having a perfectly fine real target, are running against a fictional Obama. There was a bit of the real target tonight; Ryan had a riff he repeated at least once about this being a lousy recovery. That's true! But mostly, Ryan's (and Romney's) targets are, as Biden said, a bunch of malarkey about apology tours, a fictional war Catholics, an "unraveling" foreign policy, and an economy worse now when Obama took office.

3. It surely doesn't matter, but Biden seemed to hit a point with, I don't know, 15 or so minutes remaining where he apparently decided he risked overkill and shut down the stuff that was dominating the debate up to that point (where "dominating" just means keeping the attention on him). I suspect that was a mistake, even though few were still watching and the pundits had surely made up their minds by then, because I think there was a chance Ryan would rattle further.

4. There was apparently a phony "AP poll" released after the debate which went around twitter rapidly. Seems like a smart, if totally slimy, thing to do; the instapolls do drive coverage.

5. Just a guess, of course, but I think that once everything settles down the polls will judge Ryan a clear winner. Why? GOP spinners and GOP-aligned media have already settled on a simple, clear, line of what happened (That jerk Biden was a jerk and everyone hated him). Democratic spinners, from what I've seen, do not have nearly as clear a line, and the Dem-aligned media is far less efficient. They'll say Biden won, but they won't have a story to use to convince people of that. Therefore, more people will buy the GOP "Ryan won" story.

6. Nevertheless, I agree with the conventional wisdom that the goal here for Biden was to rally Dems, and he did that effectively; the polling consensus won't be strong enough to dilute the Democratic spin that Biden won.

7. Dems also may benefit if they push substantive points while Republicans are obsessing about Biden's demeanor.

8. It's just amazing how poorly placed the Republicans are to criticize Obama on foreign policy and national security. That's true generally, of course; what the House Republicans have done over the last two years (with Romney basically on board) is just so far from the mainstream that it's constantly tripping them up. For example, on diplomatic security. Mind you, I don't think that logic matters all that much in these things, but to the extent it does it's a real problem for them.

Okay, that's it for now. I'm not even sure I'm going to post a "Read Stuff" in the morning...

Veep Time

Dan Drezner:

So, the veep debate won't matter all that, but the probability of gaffes are high. In other words, it is perfectly designed for Twitter.

And that's where I'll be! Follow me...with any luck, Paul Ryan won't get to me as much as he did in his convention speech, although if he does praise Simpson-Bowles again and blame Barack Obama for sinking it, I can't promise I won't lose my temper. Mostly, right now, I feel that the ballgame in Cincinnati pretty much wiped out any emotions I might have, so I should be watching it more dispassionately than I otherwise might. On the other hand, once you see someone as Eddie Haskell...

I linked to one preview earlier today; I'll link to Ezra Klein's preview now. What I'd generally say is that I tend to think experience is important in these things, but mainly in the sense that lack of experience -- and Ryan is about as inexperienced at presidential-style debating as it gets -- involves a lot of downside risks. Now, Ryan certainly knows enough about domestic policy to more than get by, and while he's very inexperienced in foreign affairs I'm sure he knows enough to avoid getting in trouble if he were, say, taking an exam. But debating can be different, as we've all seen. As is speaking on behalf of someone else. As for Biden, I've always thought he was pretty good in this format -- and he is the practically perfect VPOTUS -- but it's been four years, so who knows if he'll be at his peak or not.

At any rate, feel free to use this one as a debate comment thread. I'll be posting to Plum Line after it's over, and then I've usually wound up posting back here also, but if I do it won't be until late.

Biden's Career Path

Dave Weigel makes an interesting aside in the midst of a preview of Joe Biden's debate style which I enthusiastically recommend. He says that after the 1988 presidential campaign fiasco, "Biden quit the race and followed the pattern of senators who’d had their dreams crushed in front of national TV audiences. He focused on the work."

That's exactly the kind of claim that goes right to that part of my brain that spent the better part of the 1980s and 1990s reading and rereading Bill James. Is there such a pattern? How common is it?

Well, the problem is that it's a little hard to do this one, at least for a quick blog post. But I'll take a shot. And guess what? The generalization holds a whole lot better than I would have expected.

1972: Ed Muskie returned to the Senate, and was Budget Committee Chair for a long stretch, and then briefly Secretary of State. I get the sense that his biggest legislative accomplishments were before his presidential campaign, but as far as I know his reputation as a serious Senator was basically the same before and after. Tom Eagleton had an excellent reputation as a serious Senator in the mid-1980s. George McGovern had eight more years in the Senate; I don't think he was particularly productive, but I think it's probably true that he "focused on the work."

1976: Does anyone really fit? Some Senators lost in the race for the Democratic nomination, but none really came all that close to winning. Bob Dole become one of the most successful Senators of his era. Scoop Jackson ran in 1972 and 1976, and died a Senator in 1983.

1980: Ted Kennedy certainly counts as perhaps the greatest example of someone who had originally sought the presidency but, after (repeated) humiliations on the national stage, wound up focusing on becoming an excellent Senator. Howard Baker and Bob Dole fit, too.

1984: Gary Hart is the counterexample, although the humiliation part doesn't come until his 1988 run. But he had already left the Senate, choosing not to run in 1986. I'm guessing that John Glenn was a more serious Senator after 1984 than before.

1988: Beyond Biden, there's Al Gore. You know about him.

1992: No one really humiliated. Bob Kerrey was re-elected once and then retired; Tom Harkin is still in the Senate.

1996: Bob Dole, of course, resigned from the Senate during his run. Phil Gramm, like Kerrey, was re-elected once and then retired. The others were Lugar and Specter.

2000: Again, no real dream-crushing. John McCain you know about.

2004: John Kerry has probably been a better Senator since then, right? Joe Lieberman continued as before, except even more sanctimonious. Re-elected once, then retired. John Edwards was on the Gary Hart path, except that his term was up in '04.

2008: Well, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, again, you know about. There was also Chris Dodd, who had a very busy two years in the Senate and then retired. If you want to count Evan Bayh, who got out very early in the cycle -- he's a clear counterexample.

(Note: I didn't include everyone, especially those with very brief campaigns, in an effort to keep this reasonably short.)

During the entire modern era, there are only a couple of Senators who ran for president without continuing on in the Senate long enough to get re-elected -- excluding, of course, those such as Clinton who were snatched out of there. Quite a few of them, including several whose presidential runs were embarrassments, wound up taking their work in the Senate more seriously than they previously had.  I would have thought that there were other examples similar to Gary Hart, who found the Senate too small after being on the big stage, or similar to Evan Bayh, who seems to decided that if he couldn't be president he'd just give up on politics. Or even Edwards, who was up for re-election and chose to go presidency-or-bust, something he shared with Fred Harris in 1972, but that's about it. Overall, it turns out that those are the exceptions; what Biden did in 1988 really does seem to be the more normal approach.

Sunday Question for Liberals

I already asked this about the debates in general, but might as well go back to it now: looking forward to Ryan/Biden, or afraid of Ryan/Biden?

Day 3 Preview

Just a couple thoughts, and then this can also be an open thread if anyone wants to comment during the convention. As I have the last couple nights, I'll be posting over at PP after they close up, and then most likely have further thoughts here after that. Oh, and I'll still be tweeting.

A couple things as the convention was just gaveled into order...

1. Kudos to the Democrats for doing the full roll call. Best moment: they passed to Ohio to put Barack Obama over the top. Because, you know, that's the thing that's really going to swing the general election. Especially since instead of doing it normally this afternoon or yesterday afternoon, they did it after Bill Clinton's speech last night, which as everyone knows ran a wee bit late. Also, it meant that I was trying to write my post-speech items during the roll call, and I got distracted and didn't hear whether South Dakota mentioned the Corn Palace or not. I did finished a bit before they did, and discovered when I looked up that the arena was practically empty by the time they got to Wyoming. So better to do it than not, but not exactly the best ever. Clear edge for GOP on that one.

2. As I check today's schedule, I notice that the most urgent choice they should make is to pre-emptively bump James Taylor from the schedule because they might run behind schedule later.

3. Oops. I'm writing this so slowly that he's already out on stage. I guess that nails down the PBS pledge break volunteers vote. Three songs? Weren't the guys from Tap available?

4. Anyway: if the Democrats asked me, my advice for the Joe Biden speech would be to have a foreign policy focus, and go as substantive and wonkish as possible -- bookending the Clinton focus on mostly domestic policy, and contrasting with the Republican ticket's historic lack of foreign policy and national security credentials.

So that's what I have for now. Oh, and apparently Gabby Giffords is doing the Pledge tonight, and Gabby Douglas did it yesterday. No idea who did it Tuesday -- who is the third-most-beloved Gabby, anyway?

Elsewhere: Biden, Other Stuff

I've fallen behind on doing these, so I never got around to mentioning here that I had a fun Salon column over the weekend in which I argued that he's the Practically Perfect Vice President. At least, that's what I had; they added quotes around it. Oh well. The best part of that one was this response.

Anyway, today at PP I said that the broadcast networks should broadcast the conventions. And I did a fiscal cliff post at Greg's place. As regular readers know, I'm not really one to be upset by a little hypocrisy, but I do think it's worth noting that the austerity-minded Republicans are blaming Obama for, well, the CBO-predicted consequences of sudden austerity.

Might as well give you one more: back on Friday, I had one at PP saying that Romney does, in fact, have an easy way to knock down the criticism of his tax plan; he's just not going to take it.

Dogs, Not Barking

Special "where's the irresponsible press?" edition. One could interpret this one as congratulating the press.

1. I have to say that I'm disappointed in the failure of the irresponsible press to press harder on creating rumors and speculation about Barack Obama dumping Joe Biden, including the perfectly natural (if, you know, not gonna happen) idea that Biden and Hillary Clinton will switch jobs. There was a fair amount six and twelve months ago, but just because it's been denied and just because it's preposterous doesn't mean people have to drop it -- does it?

2. I'm also...well, not exactly disappointed, but I guess surprised that we haven't had a good Mitt Romney hair and/or plastic surgery scandal. In fact, I've been expecting one for some time, but have been reluctant to note it because I don't really want to be the one who starts something. My vague understanding of it, not immediately knocked down by thirty seconds of searching, is that he claims to not dye his hair, which is presumably not true at all. I do recall that Ronald Reagan's claim that he didn't dye his hair was in fact a minor scandal from time to time, or at least people made a fuss over it; I'm not aware of anyone talking about Mitt's hair, other than to praise it. (And I'd still love to see evidence of how old people think the Mittster is; my guess is that he's about ten years older than people think).

3. And it's a little early yet, but where is all the irresponsible speculation about an October Surprise?

4. OK, enough with the press, and back to the original: yeah, yeah, Fairness Doctrine.