Elizabeth Edwards, who as the wife of former Senator John Edwards gave America an intimate look at a candidate’s marriage by sharing his quest for the 2008 presidential nomination as she struggled with incurable cancer and, secretly, with his infidelity, died Tuesday morning at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C. She was 61.

• Barack Obama is a wretched excuse for a president and leader of the Democratic Party. Nevermind this nonsense about a blanket “anti-incumbent” fevah. This was a repudiation of our party’s leaders and their policies. Instead of offering voters anything in the way of changed course—mortgage moratorium? Timothy Geithner’s head?—the White House decided to essentially ride out the clock. The thing about congressional politics is this: most representatives are hack politicians—one way or the other. Not every Democrat that voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, corporatist health care “reform,” etc., was Barney Frank or Obama. That is to say, left-wing agents of finance capital. The vast majority of these folk merely toe the line. Consequently the onus is on this president and he sacrificed a great deal of decent people last night. Many of them would have been willing to go down for a hell of a lot more than Mitt Romney’s health care plan. This man has to go.

• A Republican rout of 60+ seats in the House of Representatives will probably retire Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mrs. Pelosi was—nay, is—a tough broad, a trailblazer and a savvy operator. Over the past two years, her considerable talent has been in the service of either flawed or outright failed policies and that’s regrettable. I continue to regard Mrs. Pelosi as a relatively decent establishmentarian who would have been fantastic if given a real Democratic president on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

• Grandpa Edwin is Governor of California again. Ironically, I suspect the failure of Proposition 19 will engender the least bit of griping from the progressive base. For all intents and purposes, ganja is already legal in the Golden State. There isn’t much either Gov. Brown or a Gov. Meg Whitman could have done to arrest the systemic problems the state faces otherwise, so it’s a wash.

• Florida’s Marco Rubio bested both Charlie Crist, the orange governor who pole-vaulted to independence, and Rep. Kendrick Meek, the good guy. Once again President Obama disgraced himself. (Granted, Mr. Meek was an early, enthusiastic and loyal supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008.) There wasn’t any reason to believe Marco Rubio would lose in either a two- or three-way race and many of us said so. Kendrick Meek may be a meek, small-time politician, but there’s no reason why Gov. Christ had to siphon as many Democratic votes from the Democratic nominee as he did. Meek’s supposed vulnerability was an entirely self-fulfilling prophecy. Barack Obama’s condescension towards the only possible black U.S. senator—aren’t we supposed to care about that kind of thing?—was stunning. “Don't say I never gave you anything,” Obama quipped after buying Kendrick Meek a sandwich while in town for a token visit.

• In 1952 Barry AuH₂O ousted Senate Majority Leader Ernest McFarland in Arizona. Harry Reid managed to avoid the same fate. This is a crowning achievement, to be sure, but pales to the point of transparency in comparison with him making a liar out of Jack Landsman. The latter was quite certain the harlot from Reno, Sharron Angle, would dispatch Mr. Reid electorally. Guess that “2nd Amendment” solution is back on the table, eh?

• What else can possibly be said for our patron saint Russ Feingold—murked last night by a random reactionary named “Johnson” or some such? Ultimately Sen. Feingold has no one to blame but himself. In conservative districts around the country, numerous Democrats took the extraordinary step of running against their own House speaker or professing support for John McCain in 2008. And it was necessary. For his part, Russ Feingold should have thrown in with the left opposition to Barack Obama months ago. Obama and Feingold are not the same kind of liberals, but he nevertheless allowed himself to be caricatured as such. Instead of going out like a boss—a fitting end to the lone dissenter against the Patriot Act in October 2001—Russ Feingold went out like a punk, carping about outside expenditures, as if anyone cared about process. I want to believe he’ll be back in some fashion or another.

“Voters aren’t much swayed by promises to improve upon all the unprecedented legislation we’ve achieved for bankrupt financiers, insurance companies, and so forth. This is a recipe for debacle and Democrats can expect an unlikely, super-undeserved Bush recovery to persist thereafter.”

Nevermind the “shock” polls. Wait until W. is respectfully campaigning in safe, or relatively safe, districts in 2012. There’s your coup de grâce.

Barry, you’re doing a heckuva job. Dude.

(h/t: dcwildcat97)

The incompetent hustler Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is in the news. I have long assumed the much-maligned chairman wouldn’t seek, much less stand a chance of being elected to, another two-year term  in January. For what it’s worth, he’s been playing it cute. “We'll worry about my re-election after I get through this election.” It’s over. More coffee?

Or so it seemed. It now looks as if Steele’s recent bus tour of 48 states served to bolster his standing with conservative grassroots activists, though it didn’t affect the dynamic of the campaign. In addition, Chairman Steele continues to have the support of Sarah Palin, the conservative movement’s North Star. After Palin quit Alaska in July 2009, Michael Steele joined yours truly, Ann Althouse, and the rest of my peeps, in recognizing the potential of Palin’s liberation, even though he dismissed an immediate campaign for president. He engaged in incredible spin to support her in hostile quarters. Months later, there was speculation as to whether Palin would replace Steele, but it was ridiculous. From jump street Sarahcuda has always wanted to seize the White House, not a sop.  

Nowadays Steele is heartily campaigning with Sarah Palin. After she does run for president and takes off, as I expect her to, it is possible Mr. Steele could parlay his goodwill towards the Palins into an unlikely second term. It certainly couldn’t be narrower than his first election.

To be certain, Mr. Steele is wrong concerning just about everything except Afghanistan. Nevertheless he is fascinating. And for the time being it looks as if he won’t get that severance box of chocolates after all.

In December 2012, the country will be ruminating its recent election of the first woman president: a polarizing survivor. President Obama will welcome Steve Scully, C-SPAN political editor and occasional host of Washington Journal, to the Oval Office for a wistful interview. Mr. Scully may invite the president to admit any mistakes.

That is where Cynthia Tucker’s op-ed, “Obama tried too hard to work with Republicans,” in yesterday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution comes in. Tucker’s piece helpfully captures establishment thought. Undue emphasis on the lack of bipartisanship is an almost complimentary critique and will be articulately embraced by a reflective 44th president in his exit interview with Mr. Scully. Of course it is ridiculous, but Steve Scully is too classy to prod. In his 2008 interview with President Bush, Mr. Scully graciously allowed Bush to incredulously ponder how anyone could think of him as mendacious.

Boasts of bipartisanship are a fatuous but necessary aspect of campaigning. In handling Republican opposition, President Obama struck an appropriate tone in the early days of his administration. Bipartisanship for the Obama administration has meant peeling off one or two Republican votes and maybe hailing such as unprecedented unity. And that’s perfectly fine. Generally speaking, Republicans are nihilistic and unserious. For his part, the president is plagued by the failed substance of his policies. That’s the fundamental part that escapes the logic of Cynthia Tucker et al. Various exceptions to his tone, lack of emotional attachment, and his futile attempts to reach across the aisle are ultimately mild critiques.

Paul Krugman was exactly right regarding the size of the stimulus. To be sure, the Recovery Act was a measure worthy of support. I have seen reports in TIME on the Recovery Act’s administrative success and they are impressive. (One program to hit a few snags is the weatherization program, but it isn’t devastating.) This is good, but there was never any reason to believe the other hype; specifically the White House’s claim of keeping unemployment below 8% as a result of the Act.

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It would be a damned shame if we finally lost a constituency as prized as seniors because of the current Democratic president. And yet that appear to be exactly what’s happening. In the summer of 2009, there were reports of a Democratic “problem” with seniors. Victoria McGrane and Chris Frates, writing in POLITICO, described how the town hall rage was being fueled by senior citizens. Seniors, angered by proposed cuts to Medicare floating around Congress, controversial talk of “death panels,” and the like, promised to be a concern for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. In 2008 they backed John McCain over Barack Obama by 8 points.

More than a year later, the news hasn’t gotten any better according to The Washington Post. A full 66% of older voters are enthusiastic about voting in November and most of them ready to cashier the Democrats. And they should be. Since they are free of the responsibilities of governing, the vocal conservative opposition has often been right.

In addition to the ones that exist with private insurance, governmental rationing regimes are not beyond the realm of possibility. People often confuse them with the completely innocuous concept of end-of-life counseling, which had been supported by Republicans in years past. The death panels, however, are notions of governmental bureaucrats—full of fulsome praise for the British system of rationing—with the power to deny care for the sake of cost-cutting. Responding to the criticism his work has engendered, bioethicist and administration official Ezekiel Emanuel assured us he was “writing really for political philosophers. [T]he average person, it's not what they're used to reading.”

As far back as 2009, there were new reports contradicting the president’s public statements that there were no cuts to Medicare in any of the proposed legislation. These days you find conservative activists warning us in the pages of The Wall Street Journal that the new reform law will: “Cut $818 billion from Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) from 2014-2023, the first 10 years of its full implementation; [Cuts] for Medicare Part B (physicians fees and other services) brings the total cut to $1.05 trillion over the first 10 years.”

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Things are not going particularly well for President Obama. Not wanting to contribute to his troubles, there is an area where I think the president deserves a passionate defense: the recent contretemps over his iPod. Like most controversies in the news, this is extremely late. People offended by Jay-Z and Lil Wayne’s place on the presidential iPod should know that Obama betrayed a love for rap some 2½ years ago. On the morning after a particularly bruising debate with Hillary Rodham Clinton, then-Sen. Obama met with a throng of supporters, flipped off Sen. Clinton, and then brushed his shoulders off, a la Jay-Z.  

What do you think of rap? Has it been unfairly attacked for destroying family values?

By definition, rock & roll is rebel music, which means if it's not being criticized, it's probably not doing its job. I am troubled sometimes by the misogyny and materialism of a lot of rap lyrics, but I think the genius of the art form has shifted the culture and helped to desegregate music. Music was very segregated back in the Seventies and Eighties — you'll remember that when MTV first came on, it wasn't until Thriller that they played Michael.

I know Jay-Z. I know Ludacris. I know Russell Simmons. I know a bunch of these guys. They are great talents and great businessmen, which is something that doesn't get emphasized enough. It would be nice if I could have my daughters listen to their music without me worrying that they were getting bad images of themselves.

That was Barack Obama in Rolling Stone on June 25, 2008.

Obama came off as a thoughtful, mainstream listener of all kinds of music, including rap. While almost no one embraces the violent gangsterism of some rap, its more talented promulgators like Jay-Z, Tupac Shakur, and even Lil Wayne, to a degree, are enthralling figures. In other words, they spit catchy stuff.

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In 2008 the liberal media establishment became unmoored from any pretense of journalistic integrity and destroyed—a flawed and sometimes loathsome—Hillary Rodham Clinton in the service of Barack Obama’s candidacy. This experience considerably warmed me to Sarah Palin later in the campaign.

But to be sure, I never considered voting for her and John McCain. It’s important for contrarian liberals, PUMA-types, or whatever our designation is, to remember what Gov. Palin ultimately represents. Like President Obama, her personal dynamism cult of personality is a clever cloak for a disastrous set of policies: In her case corporate Republicanism or honest-to-God Tea Party libertarianism. It’s not immediately clear which Sarahcuda would show up to take the oath at noon on Jan. 20, 2013.

I don’t hate or despise the woman (nor do I hate Barry), but if you disregard the personal invective here, it’s hard to argue with the Godlike Oliver Stone:

(h/t: OneNationMatch)

Given the current trajectory of things, I think it is fairly reasonable to predict Republicans will seize control of the Senate on November 2. The RealClearPolitics poll aggregate projects +8 GOP pickups. In addition, I think Linda McMahon will probably beat lethargic fabulist Dick Blumenthal in Connecticut. Rather than saving Harry Reid, Sharron Angle’s weakness will make her the Jim Webb of the 2010 class, who narrowly skated past the terribly flawed Macaque Man. For the time being anyway, Washington state is one to watch.

Consequently, the radicalism of South Carolina senator Jim DeMint is big news. We should ponder what it means for the 112th Congress that convenes in January. In short, I believe Sen. DeMint is nicely positioned to be the shadow majority leader and this does not bode well for the Democratic administration on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Before peeling back DeMint’s recent public statements in BusinessWeek and POLITICO, we should take a moment to look back at “DeMint Condition,” a profile of Sen. DeMint from this past January.

The New Republic:

... DeMint fell into a funk. “There was a period of time after that where he was pretty depressed and eating lunch a lot by himself and didn’t really have any friends in the Capitol,” recalls the former staffer. But soon, DeMint and his people began casting about for like-minded conservatives he could bond with. Traveling around the country communing with the grassroots and hawking his book Saving Freedom, DeMint once more found comfort, acceptance--and opportunity. “It really opened up some doors for him and sort of showed him this was something to pursue and push,” says former DeMint speechwriter Mike Connolly. Realizing he “was never going to be part of the club,” recalls Connolly, the senator had to make a choice. “He looks at himself and looks at the party and asks, ‘What can I do? Am I just here to be the right flank and try to influence a few little amendments here and there, or am I really going to try and change’” the conference? Thus was cemented DeMint’s role: perpetual burr in the butt of his party’s leadership.

It is exceedingly hard not to admire the brazen balls and remarkable political judgment on full display here. It frankly doesn’t matter if you agree with Mr. DeMint’s philosophy or bask in the ascendance of the Tea Party movement (I do not). All of this was fairly predictable. My only wish is that Mr. DeMint had lent some of his fortitude and sense of urgency to progressive avatars like Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. I wonder if Mr. Feingold would have found himself in as much trouble as he presently is had he accumulated more anti-Obama street cred.

Feingold’s lone vote against the Patriot Act makes him morally superior to every one of his Senate colleagues, as far as the current writer is concerned. To the average voter, however, his principled stand in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 probably sounds like some quaint war tale. And while he certainly cast the right votes on the TARP and Dodd-Frank monstrosities, he failed to passionately indict the rotten (bipartisan) system that produced these things. It therefore bears the appearance of political posturing: Casting troublesome but safely inconsequential votes. Jim DeMint’s lonely PB&J lunches in the Senate cafeteria are convincingly portrayed by Michelle Cottle. When Russ does it, it looks a tad bit gimmicky.

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As this enormous yawn that was September draws to a close—anybody catch that God-awful season premiere of The Office?—it has become nearly impossible to deny the teabaggers are on the cusp on something big in the November elections. Despite their public protestations to the opposite effect, I am quite certain the apparatchiks in the White House (i.e. the ones that haven’t already saluted the president before pole-vaulting to freedom), the courtiers in the speaker’s office, and the logo designers at the Democratic National Committee have already procured their spirits and Bicycle playing cards for the long night that awaits them on November 2.

For those of us who inhabit the out crowd—they have so many names: we’re everything but children of God—we must continue to lead the way whether the Democratic establishment appreciates it or not. In terms of electoral politics, 2010 is a lost cause and 2012 is the most relevant consideration—specifically the two people most likely to challenge our hopefully post-Obama nominee: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor.

Let’s do Sarahcuda first. While I was never convinced Sarah Palin hurt John McCain’s electoral prospects in the final analysis, I do believe the erratic, poorly-considered decision spoke to McCain’s lack of judgment which is an entirely different matter. (Barack Obama was always most fortunate in the opponents he faced.) Having established that, I have always maintained that Sarah Palin is essentially Barack Obama without the benefit of an Ivy League pedigree, a reasonably high IQ, and more talented ghostwriters. They possess the same sort of charisma—markedly different from recent smooth operators like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan. These were self-effacing politicians who were sharp on their feet and could genuinely make you crack up. Dick Morris says he faced a recurring challenge in that Bubba was far more impressive extemporaneously than on the script. In those tumultuous 80s, Reagan’s foremost task was to spout killer witticisms in East Room press conferences while his minions ran wild. While W. had the ridiculous bit of business on the deck of that aircraft carrier, he also had the Bullhorn Speech under his Texas belt. Whatever one’s opinion of his miserable policies, incompetence, and larger stupidity, the Bullhorn Speech was an iconic moment in presidential rhetoric.  

Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are charismatic only because of the attractive exuberance they possess. Their cults of personality are products of modern identity politics. These are tabula rasas whose appeal transcend the normal workings of Politics for the cultural niches they represent. She is the hot, fecund Christian warrior woman; he the postracial black man on a fascinating journey of self-discovery.

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