Yesterday I wrote about liberal handwringing over Markos' book American Taliban. Meanwhile back at the reality ranch, David Kopel at the Volokh Conspiracy writes about Anne Coulter's claim that President Obama is an atheist:

Ann Coulter’s column today argues that Obama is not a Muslim; rather, he “is obviously an atheist.” [. . .] I disagree with both the facts and the conclusion. Coulter is accurate in calling Jeremiah Wright “a racist nut.” However, that does not prove that Wright (and by extension Obama, to whatever extent Obama believes in Wright’s theology) is not a Christian. Some practitioners of “liberation theology” (including the black liberation theology variant) may simply be Marxists looking for some broadly-appealing rhetoric to add to their political program.

(Emphasis supplied.) This discussion of "liberation theology" of course is the new talking point delivered by Glenn Beck. Glenn Reynolds also writes about it:

I'm getting confused - I thought the apologist story for the inadequate economic policies of the Obama Administration was that the Obama Administration saved the economy from hitting bottom. Now Jon Chait tells us that actually Obama had the bad luck of having the bottom hit after he became President:

[A] useful lesson for liberal[s] who compare President Obama with President Roosevelt [--] The latter's political success owed an enormous debt to the fact that he took power after the economy had hit bottom and begun to rebound. Indeed, Obama's situation is more like an election that took place in 1929, leaving him to take the oath of office in early 1930, just as the bottom was falling out.

So 2010 is 1932? Remember that Hoover was in the Presidency for only a matter of months when the Stock Market crashed, starting the Great Depression. In a way, Obama was lucky that the Financial Meltdown did not take place 6 months later - he could really be on his way to being considered a Hoover. Of course, these silly Obama apologias are not to the point - which is that the Obama Administration has done an inadequate job, to say the least, on the economy. Argue if you like that the GOP obstruction is why, but you have to accept the bare facts that the stimulus of February 2009 was inadequate to the task. FDR, perhaps because he could, provided bold leadership on the economy. Obama has not, maybe for good political reasons. But he hasn't.

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Reading and commenting about this Scott Lemieux article about baseball managers and how much they matter (not much generally imo), I started looking for Bill James' writings on managers (specifically on Casey Stengel), and ran across this Joe Posnanski piece:

So, last night, I was doing what I often do … I was reading some old Bill James stuff in his wonderfully written but somewhat awkwardly named This Time Let’s Not Eat the Bones. The book is a collection of excerpts and essays and thoughts from the Baseball Abstracts along with several other magazine articles he wrote.[. . . A]s often happens, I came across a paragraph that set my mind racing. In this case, the paragraph is about baseball managers and the general concept that nice guys finish last[:]

“Every good manager effectively threatens his players with professional extermination if they don’t give him the best effort they are capable of giving; Casey Stengel, Billy Martin, White Herzog and Earl Weaver are masters at it, as was Durocher. These are not nice people. They are manipulative, cunning SOBs, hard and crass and they drink too much. Nice guys finish last because a nice guy is not going to coldly exploit the insecurities of his players. Nice guys finish last because a nice guy is not going to kick an old friend out of his comfortable sinecure the minute that old friend becomes a milli-second too slow on the fastball.”

[MORE . . ]

Apparently, the GOP wants all the "credit" for the Iraq Debacle. John Boehner:

“Some leaders who opposed, criticized, and fought tooth-and-nail to stop the surge strategy now proudly claim credit for the results,” Mr. Boehner’s speech said.

You want the Iraq Debacle on your list of "achievements," GOP? You got it is what Dems should say.

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Jay Cost tries to convince and persuade that it's health care reform, not the economy, that has led to Dems' political woes:

It would be difficult for any strong partisan to admit that such an accomplishment was so deeply unpopular. Yet the polling is pretty unequivocal on the relationship between the Democrats' fortunes and the health care bill. It was during the health care debate that the essential building block of the Democratic majority - Independent voters - began to crumble. It was evident in the generic ballot. It was evident in the President's job approval numbers. It was evident in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

Reconstructing the Democrats' meme, we can fairly say that the economy is a huge problem for the party. Of this, there can be no doubt. We can also say that the stalled recovery denied the Democrats a chance to win back the voters they lost over health care. But the process and passage of health care reform were crucial elements in the story. That's when the party started losing the voters it needs to retain control of the government.

I'm no fan of the health care bill but if you believe this nonsense, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. I would love to think that the American People are thinking beyond their wallets, to civil liberties issues, or the intricacies of the health care debate, the wars, or even the deficit. They're not. The economy drives public opinion on all the issues. So while numbers for support for the health bill fell in August, that obviously has to do with the economy, and the lack of confidence in the Obama Administration's competence seeping over into other Obama initiatives. Yes, it's the economy, stupid.

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Gallup generic ballot:

Republicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP's largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress.[. . .] Republicans are now twice as likely as Democrats to be "very" enthusiastic about voting, and now hold -- by one point -- the largest such advantage of the year.

Blind Obama loyalists are jumping ship:

Rather than looking helpless, the administration should just start making the argument that we have a choice between prolonged high unemployment or another big stimulus package. Make the election a referendum on that choice. Setting aside that [Obama's] delivery was uncharacteristically terrible, the president's statement on the economy today was pretty pathetic. This ain't getting it done on any level.

This is an interesting critique, but not to the point. The problem was in February 2009 when an inadequate stimulus was sold as a great progressive victory. It's late in the day now for finger pointing.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about a Kevin Drum post in which he declared that in terms of enacting transforming change, President Obama was "clearly better than Carter and Clinton and quite possibly the equal of Reagan." I questioned the premise in terms of not only crediting Obama with transformative change but also crediting Reagan with having achieved it.

In an e-mail exchange with Drum, he fleshed out his argument that Reagan was transformative - stating that Reagan won the tax argument for a generation and made the case for the triumph of unfettered capitalism. Drum also mentioned Social Security reform and nuclear reduction treaties as transformative change. The last two points strike me as silly - certainly conservatives do not think of the last two as great triumphs for Reaganism. But I would like to consider the first 2. Let's discuss them on the flip.

Paul Krugman:

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment — at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list. Now it’s happening again — except that this time it’s even worse. [. . .] Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. [. . .] It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither.

Wishing away politics was never going to work. Good governance would have helped a lot. With the economy in shambles, what political card can the Dems play now? Negative branding is all I can see. Dems will need a Gingrich to play off of.

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WaPo:

During an interview on "Fox News Sunday," which was filmed after Saturday's rally, Beck claimed that Obama "is a guy who understands the world through liberation theology, which is oppressor-and-victim." "People aren't recognizing his version of Christianity," Beck added.

Beck made the remarks in answer to a question about his previous accusation that Obama was a "racist" who has "a deep-seated hatred for white people." He contended that that statement "was not accurate" and that he had "miscast" Obama's religious beliefs as racism.

Heretic! Burn the heretic! Pretty funny coming from a Mormon. I'm pretty sure Beck has not the first clue what liberation theology actually means. Hell, I doubt it has any political potency (who in the hell in America knows what liberation theology means? I do but that comes from my college days, which were not yesterday.) If he did, he'd know better than to associate Obama with it (for better or worse), but no matter. Ross Douthat fluffed Beck in today's NYTimes. Do we expect any comment on this from Beck from Douthat?

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I do not have particularly strong feelings about Sarah Palin. To me she is a fairly standard issue wingnut, with some decent political skills. She may be a force in the Republican Party, but the reality is Sarah Palin will never hold high national office (she could of course be a Senator from Alaska anytime she wants to be - where she can join the likes of Inhofe, Coburn and DeMint in the Know Nothing extreme right wing of the Republican Party, but she will never be President.) Because of that, this column seems startlingly off base:

Since the 2008 election, progressive leaders have done little to address the obvious national appetite for female leadership. And despite (or because of) their continuing obsession with Ms. Palin, they have done nothing to stop an anti-choice, pro-abstinence, socialist-bashing Tea Party enthusiast from becoming the 21st century symbol of American women in politics.

Say what? This strikes me as ridiculous. Palin is a run of the mill extreme right wing Republican Know Nothing, who happens to be a woman. There is nothing about her stances that addresses womens issues, nor could there be in the Republican Party, which finds womens issues to be anathema. Of course many women are Republicans, but not because of womens issues. Sarah Palin is no symbol of women in politics. She's just an extremist in the Republican Party, who happens to be a woman. While the column's thesis that a strong political female figure fighting for womens rights is necessary seems right to me, using Palin as the takeoff point of this argument makes it a silly column.

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Earlier this year St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa decided to announce his support of AZ SB 1070. Free country. But what is not free is La Russa's attempt to pass off his appearance (with Albert Pujols) at the offensive Glenn Beck event tomorrow as "non-political." Missourian David Kuhn of TPM writes:

[W]hile I feel a twinge of disappointment, what really jumped out at me is that La Russa says he and Pujols agreed to appear because it's a non-political event. "I made it clear when we were approached: I said, 'If it's political, I wouldn't even approach Albert with it.' I don't want to be there if it's political," La Russa told the Post-Dispatch.

(Emphasis supplied.) La Russa is full of it. And no way he does not know it. That he has attached himself to one of the most offensive figures in American Media says a lot about La Russa. I do not know if Albert Pujols has any idea what La Russa has got him into. But shame on La Russa either way. He has every right to tarnish his own image with this Beck association. But he should not be dragging Pujols into it.

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Good post from kay at Balloon Juice:

It occurs to me that Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald don’t claim long-term membership in the Democratic Party, and don’t base their careers on membership in the Democratic Party. They’re not “Democrats” so much as they are “liberals” and they don’t support a Party platform so much as they support individual issues. But that’s not true of Carville and Rendell and Reich and the rest. They’re Party people.

I wouldn’t expect individual liberals or issue advocates to rally ‘round Obama. Instead I would expect the people who identify as members of the Democratic Party to rally ‘round the Democratic President and broader Democratic platform, because that’s one of the roles of a political Party.

The "Professional Left" does not work for the DNC, where the Professional Dems reside. You have to ask yourself if the Professional Dems are earning their money. I'd say not.

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