Arthur urges us to go read David Swanson on...

... how and why John Conyers, once an admirable politician in many ways, slowly and inevitably surrendered certain key principles that Conyers himself had repeatedly declared to be of supreme importance to him.

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. And as for surrender of key principles...

nycweboy, who I obviously should read more often, has a post that captures the zeitgeist perfectly:

Off year election season is just kind of weird; in the "24 hour news" age, there's a whole political evaluation machine sitting around, little to do... and there's always a "trend report" needed for the next year.

And of course, there's the off chance that something real is actually happening.

[I]t seems clear that the real hurdle for candidates right now is incumbency. Voters are mad, they're especially mad about the economy, and they'd love to take it out on the nearest politician. ...

I think the left would do well to pay more attention and be less cheerfully dismissive of what's happening - the anger that [upstate NY Republican DCOW] Doug Hoffman and his supporters are counting on to drag him into a weak three way plurality is clearly real, and it can work. ...

And it would matter more, really, if there was more to it than simply frustration; nothing about Hoffman, or other current right darlings, including McDonnell, suggests that Republicans, or conservatives have really solved the fundamental problem of a dearth of good, new ideas to offer as alternatives to our current problems. ...

George Washington has another interesting guest post up over at Yves place: Capitalism, Socialism or Fascism? The bottom line:

So what do we really have: socialism, fascism or an economy which calls itself “capitalism” but which allows looting?

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. They are just different brand names for the same basic type of economy. All three systems allow giant businesses which are friendly to the government to keep enormous private profits but to pass the losses on to the government and ultimately the citizens.

Whether we use the terminology regarding socialism (”socialized losses”), of fascism (”public and social losses”), or of looting (”left the government holding the bag for their eventual and predictable losses”), it amounts to the exact same thing.

I'd argue that any electoral politician* who doesn't make put this simple fact at the foundation of their thinking is doomed to irrelevance -- whether they're left or right. (The center is already irrelevant if Obama had his chance for an FDR moment, and blew it. We won't know whether that's true for awhile, but it sure feels to me like it's true.)

Isn't it time to have a Democratic President? A long quote from Taibbi, but a good one. And I'm glad we're starting this discussion now instead of in 2010 or, heaven forfend, 2012:

I’m personally of the opinion that our main problem lay with the fact that the Democratic Party as currently constituted is more afraid of losing the financial support of Wall Street and the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry than it is of losing progressive voters. In fact, I think I’ve put that wrong, because it implies that the Democratic Party pushes the agenda of industry insiders out of fear. That is a misread of the situation, I think.

Via the terrific Interfluidity, this very important post. First, let's look at "vanilla products," in this case for financial services:

Vanilla products would be very popular, which is why they are so threatening. Financial services are an area where markets not only fail due to informational problems, but where participants are very aware of that failure. Consumers know they are at a disadvantage when transacting with banks, and do not believe that reputational constraints or internal controls offer sufficient guarantee of fair-dealing. Status quo financial services should be a classic "lemons" problem*, a no-trade equilibrium. Unfortunately, those models of no-trade equilibria don't take into account that people sometimes really need the products they cannot intelligently buy, and so tolerate large rent extractions if they must in order to transact.

Lambert here. The 30 cents of every health care dollar that goes to health insurance companies is one such rent. "Progressives" believe that such "large rent extractions" are painless, and that we should not only tolerate them, but subsidize them for people who cannot pay. Single payer advocates believe that the extraction is not painless, but pernicious, and that we should abolish it entirely. Since health care insurance reform is the administration's signature domestic initiative, most of us have had our attention focused there. If the focus had been financial reform, a similar conflict would no doubt have played out, with the Neo-Broders seeking to ameliorate and preserve rent extraction by banksters, while the left would have sought to abolish it, through proposals like making banks into regulated public utilities, and so forth.

... despite what anyone says, and I'm totally confident that Obama's vetting process will continue to produce public servants of the most awsum and unimpeachablest integritude, despite blips like chief speechwriter Jon Favreau, Commerce Secretary-designate Bill Richardson, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, but doesn't this pose the appearance of conflict?

[Daschle's] finances [include] more than $300,000 in income from health-related companies that he might regulate as secretary....

And, even though a substantial proportion of that $300,000 must come from the insurance parasites that single payer would remove from the health care system, it's impossible for me to imagine that this would influence Daschle's views of what's "politically feasible [rhymes with weasel] and what isn't.

[Welcome, Crooks & Liars readers!]

Why is it that Barack Obama’s rhetoric sounds so strangely familiar?

Oh, I remember. There was this charming young fellow from Arkansas – what was the name of that town? Anyway, he had this awfully nice idea, about a “third way” alternative to right-left partisanship. I wonder what became of him and that darling wife of his....

Wait, yes, it’s all coming back to me. She's pursued that third-way agenda herself, in the Senate and in a run for the presidency.

And so has the man from Honolulu/Indonesia/The South Side. (If this path doesn’t lead to the White House, it certainly qualifies him for one of those “New Sanfrankota” ads.)

So, which of our frontrunners do I prefer? To use the essential word of Obama’s generation: whatever.