Gov. Christie, still unpopular in his home state

By Richard K. Barry

Just because I like to point to anything that counts as bad news for that pompous bully governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, I note a recent Public Policy Polling survey on how Christie would fair against Obama head-to-head in the state. The results were 56 percent for the president, 39 percent for the pompous bully.

It is true that Obama won New Jersey by 15 points in 2008, and the state hasn't gone Republican since 1988, as Daily Kos points out, but isn't Christie supposed to be a cut above?

His current approval rating? 43 percent approve of the job he's doing and 53 disapprove, so maybe not.

I know that a lot of people think Christie could win the White House for the GOP if he would only run, but if the guy can't even come close to carrying his own state, that might be an overly optimistic assessment.

For the record, Obama beats all comers in "The Garden State" with the following breakdown: Romney (53-39); Bachmann (55-35); Pawlenty (54-32); Cain (55-29); and Palin (59-33).

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Would someone please tell Chris Matthews what American exceptionalism means?

By Richard K. Barry

We hear a lot from the right about American exceptionalism, which they seem to think means that America is and Americans are simply better by virtue of identity. Failing to comprehend the genesis of the term they seem to understand it as a matter of common language as in, "Hey, America sure is exceptional."

I don't really care to get into a long treatise on why that is a facile understanding of the term. But in short, it's really an idea used by social and political philosophers to explain aspects of America's development as a nation that are different than, say, aspects of the development of European states. It doesn't mean better, it mean different.

Professor Louis Hartz, for example, emphasized the lack of a feudal tradition in America. He argued that this helped to explain the lack of significant left/socialist tendencies on the one hand and aristocratic tendencies on the other, which, it's been suggested, helps to explain the origins of a sort of centrist, liberal consensus in America.

Like I said, I'm not trying to get into it, only to say that it's a theory, or a set of theories, that explains difference. I'm not denying, however, that some writers have interpreted the term to suggest superiority, only that it would be giving too much credit to the current mis-users of "American exceptionalism" to believe that this is the origin of their interpretation.

The problem for me is when progressives start throwing the idea around. It's like they feel they have to do conservatives one better by agreeing that great things are only possible in the USA and other countries are second best by the simple fact of not being America.

You may have seen Chris Matthews on MSNBC doing a little segment about how Obama once commented that his story would not be possible in any other country and that America was exceptional in this way.

I can only say that for anyone who believes this, you really should get out more.

America has had more than its fair share of challenges as a leader in securing racial equality for its people and Obama's rise to the presidency should be seen as the extraordinary event we all know it to be, not an opportunity for blind self-congratulations. Obama was and is swimming against the current, not with it.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the clip to which I refer, here it is:

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Organizing to beat Republicans, one freshman at a time

By Richard K. Barry

One of my favourite political stories of the year thus far has been about the letter that House GOP freshmen sent to President Obama encouraging him to reject "playing politics with key issues facing the country." This was code language for asking that the President not draw attention to the fact that Paul Ryan's budget plan will destroy Medicare as we know it -- that he not "use it" against Republicans in a partisan way.

The fact is that House Republicans voted almost unanimously last month in favour of the Ryan budget that would reform entitlement programs, including creating a voucher program for Medicare recipients to buy private insurance. As we know, all hell broke loose from there. Public opinion polls are showing that most Americans are not impressed with this approach to the point that Democrats may steal a special election in New York's 26th Congressional District at the end of the month, an otherwise strong Republican seat, mostly on the strength of voter concerns about this proposed 'restructuring' of Medicare.

In other words, House GOP freshmen, many of whom owe their seats to wild misrepresentations of Obama's own health care plan, are begging the president not to make partisan hay out of the precise and undisputed meaning of this unpopular Republican plan.

Are they out of their fucking minds?

I must say that I was pleased to see that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been targeting Republican members of Congress, who are back in their home districts this week, on this very point.

According to The New York Times, the Committee:

has 20 Republican-held Congressional districts in its sights this week, hitting voters with automated phone calls denouncing the House Republican plan to revamp the nation's Medicare program and arming those who want with signs to protest at town hall meetings across the country. 

A web site sponsored by the campaign committee lists town hall meetings scheduled to be held by Republicans, mostly freshman, during the week. The group encourages voters to show up -- as many did during the Easter recess -- to protest or ask pointed questions of the members about their plan for Medicare, which would convert the program into one that subsidizes future retirees in private insurance plans.

This is in fact my favourite kind of politics -- organizing people to show up and ask questions of the other side in a good-faith exercise intended to elicit only the truth. If forcing new Republican members of Congress to speak the truth to their own constituents on their plans for Medicare reform is what this new class thinks of as "playing politics," I am at a loss for words.

Good on the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. More of this please.

(By the way, the picture above is of newly-elected Republican Representative Nan Hayworth from NY-19, the district where I was born and raised. Democrat John Hall lost the seat to Hayworth in November. I'd like to get it back.)

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)