There are few Americans who do not remember James Earl Jones’ famous speech in Field of Dreams:

Ray, people will come, Ray. They’ll come to Iowa for reasons they can’t even fathom. They’ll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they’re doing it. They’ll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past.

This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again. Ohhhhhhhh, people will come, Ray. People will most definitely come.

Although he was speaking about baseball, the biblical voice of James Earl Jones could have just as easily been evoking another American innovation known as the Iowa Caucus that takes place on what I term the Fields of Paradox.

Every four years, in Iowa paradox grips the gray days of winter so the season where life lies enshrouded does not mark an ending, but the possibility of a new beginning as America remakes itself in a democratic metamorphosis. The attention of the world focuses intently on these fallow fields, waiting with the eagerness of a child to see the results of the transformation. As if on cue, reporters, pundits and candidates call forth from the drying cornstalks not old-time baseball players, but long-dead Presidential contenders sporting frock coats, spats, top hats, a bow tie or two and one pair of leg braces.

Snow-flecked rows amidst hump-backed hills and sleepy-watered creeks sprout satellite trucks with gleaming metallic towers, motorhomes plastered with red, white and blue signs and nosy reporters sporting microphones that seem to be permanent appendages. The flocks of raucous crows hovering over one candidate and then flocking to another almost always witness a surprise. Just ask Howard Dean. He was the nominal front runner for the Democratic Presidential nomination before he came to Iowa, but not long after he left the state trailed by the sound of a corvine squawk, his campaign imploded. Or ask Hillary Clinton. She had a large lead in the national polls but, as we all know, she, like Dean, misjudged Iowa, limped into New Hampshire and lost the prize she thought hers.

The Current Ballgame

This year has the makings of another surprise. On the eve of the Iowa Caucus the race has become too close to call. The final Des Moines Register Poll, which has picked more winners than any other newspaper has Romney and Paul in a dead heat with another group of Gingrich, Perry and the surging Santorum anywhere from eight to ten points behind.

This race has already made and then broken a few hopes. Michele Bachmann came out of nowhere to win the preliminary poll this summer. Then Rick Perry was the new darling of the media. The last candidate to ride the GOP roller coaster was Newt Gingrich, who for awhile was the front runner and now seems to be falling to the back of the back like a marathon runner who has hit the proverbial wall.

The new surging candidate is Rick Santorum who seems to be peaking at just the right moment with the potential for a Seabiscuit-like come-from-behind surge that may not win the race but could put him in Gingrich’s seat to the right of Mitt Romney in the next debate.

Then there is Romney whose poll numbers have stayed in the high twenties and low thirties for most of this year, meaning that anywhere from two-thirds to three-quarters of potential Republican voters prefer someone else.  No supposed Presidential front-runner has enjoyed such weak support from his own party in recent memory.

How do we make sense of this paradox? What clues are there to the results in Iowa?

What to Watch For

If you are one of those who will be glued to the television screen following the results as they come in or just a casual follower of the results below are a few hints that will allow you to make your own predictions perhaps even before the networks make their call (which may be late in the evening).

Key Number One: The Battle of the Lutherans: Much has been made of the religious vote in Iowa, but as usual the media have not told the real story. If you actually go through the Census records for Iowa counties you find that in quite a few of them religious affiliation is split between two very different branches of the Lutheran church.

The first is the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church. Its rival is the ultra-conservative Missouri Synod which split from the main church many decades ago. Without going into all the differences between the two, suffice it to say one branch is politically middle-of-the-road or moderately conservative while the other is far right. Which Lutherans show up will determine the winners and losers.

An important aspect of this is the fate of Michele Bachmann. Her religious affiliation is Wisconsin Synod Lutheran, which is even to the right of the Missouri synod. The Wisconsin synod also has very few churches in Iowa, meaning as much as she touts her record as a religious conservative, Bachmann does not have a chance in Iowa.

Although none of the polling has identified voters by church affiliation, my guess is that the Missouri Synod Lutherans have been responsible for the surge of Santorum. These are not voters who change their mind once it is made up, so that is bad news for Perry and Gingrich.

Five Key Counties

Since the networks will probably not give you the Lutheran story, the best way to follow the results is to concentrate on five key counties. These results may come in by city, so I have identified the key cities in each county to help you track results and make your own predictions.

The five key counties are: Blackhawk, Jasper, Linn, Polk and Story. Going from first to last, Blackhawk’s major city is Waterloo. The county has as diverse a collection of churches as any in the state. In short it is a swing county. What happens here will tell you a lot about the undecided vote everyone is concentrating on. This is also the “home” county of Bachmann. She has to make a respectable showing here or she is done.

The major city in Jasper County is Newton, the former home of Maytag. This county will be an indicator of which of the candidates has the best economic message. The county has seen a resurgence, in part as a bedroom community for nearby Des Moines along with a concerted effort by local citizens to rebuild after Maytag left.  Although mainly rural, Jasper County will be a key indicator of which candidate has national strength. This should be Romney country. If he does poorly here, it will not bode well for his results statewide.

Linn County is home to one of Iowa’s major cities, Cedar Rapids. According to Census data Linn’s largest religious denomination is Catholic, so obviously abortion will be a big issue here. Bachmann and Santorum have the strongest pro-life records among the candidates, so this county will be a gauge of their strengths. If Santorum does well here, watch out for him in the rest of the state. This area will also be a test for Romney. He has to capture a respectable number of non-Catholic voters to do well statewide.

Polk County is the home county of Des Moines.  Although a good-sized city, Des Moines is like no other city in America, so its results are difficult to translate nationally.  It has high end suburbs which should go for Romney and a large Catholic vote. Romney needs to win Polk if he wants to win the state.  The wild card in Polk is that it harbors significant numbers of two religious denominations that have received little attention: the Disciples of Christ and Assemblies of God.  The Disciples identify themselves as a mainline church focused on “world and national programs of education, agricultural assistance, racial reconciliation, care of the developmentally disabled and aid to victims of war and calamity.”  The Disciples are unique in that they are the only major denomination headed by a woman. When the media speak about evangelicals and so-called values voters they could be referring to the Assemblies. Which of these two churches turn out voters will have a big impact on the Polk vote.

Story County may be the most diverse in the state in that it contains the college town of Ames (Iowa State University) and a large rural area. If there is one county to focus on this is it. Romney has to win or do well here. It will also be a key for Gingrich and Paul who has strong support from college youth.

A Paul Bounceback?: The media have been talking about how the other candidates have been piling negative ads on Paul, hoping to dislodge him from his tentative lead. Polling shows that Paul has remained around 20-25% throughout this assault. Negative ads will not change these voters’ minds. In fact it will have the opposite impact–they will be angry enough to recruit like-thinking friends and neighbors to an event where bodies count. Iowans also do not like to be dictated to by the national media whether in the form of ads or talking heads who tell them Paul is a nut who will make a mess of American foreign policy.

The Undecideds

This has always been an issue for Iowa. People like to play their cards close here, especially for an event where they have to stand in front of people they may meet in the grocery store and proclaim their political beliefs. Too much is made of the undecideds. These are people who have made up their minds; they just don’t want to tell some nosy reporter or pollster who calls them on the phone. Iowans I know make liberal use of call screening during this time because today being a holiday there will be non-stop calling by candidates, PACS and assorted others.

The Supreme Court

The real question in Iowa is will the real winner be the Supreme Court that issued the most influential political decision of this new millennium–Citizens United. The new Super PACS created by the Citizens United decision have been extremely active in Iowa clogging the airwaves with ads, many of them trying to create doubts about Paul and Gingrich.

Romney has been especially coy about this, allowing the PACs to play bad guy while he runs positive ads under his own name.  Iowa will be a test of whether this strategy has traction.  If it does it could be a long election year.

The Iowa Myth

Every four years the media like to come to Iowa and portray it as a backwater of people with manure on their shoes. If anyone is stepping in cow pies it is the reporters. Iowa has done about as much as any state in the country to get technology to every citizen.  Its citizens are more educated than the national average with almost 90% of its people having a high school diploma versus 86% for the nation as a whole.  Its home ownership rate is also over the national average–72.9% versus 66.9%.   In short, the rest of the country needs to pay attention to Iowa.

Predictions

Let us start with the easy ones. Bachmann will finish near the bottom. Her balloon has totally run out of air. At this point she needs to be very nervous about her political future because voters in her home state are not happy with her having missed too many votes while chasing after the key to the White House. Candidates in Minnesota can’t wait to run ads of her proclaiming she really is an I0wan.

The other person whose hot air has peaked is Newt Gingrich. One nice aspect of the Iowa campaign has been that the man who is as much responsible for the current negative political climate as anyone has finally had to take some of his own medicine. My prediction is he will finish behind Perry but ahead of Bachman, probably around 9%.

Perry will finish ahead of Gingrich by several points. He, Bachmann, Gingrich and assorted minor candidates will garner 30-35% of the vote leaving the rest for Romney, Paul and Santorum.

This where things get interesting. When the positive ratings are inconclusive, look to the negative ratings. Paul has the second-highest negative rating (21%) in the Register poll behind Gingrich (23%). That does not bode well for him.  Santorum has the lowest negative rating of any candidate (3%) and is tied with Perry at 15% for the highest total among second choice voters.

If we add first and second place percents and subtract the negatives here are the results:  Santorum 27%, Romney 25%, Perry 20%, Paul 12%, Bachmann 5%, Gingrich 0% and Huntsman -3%. In short, Gingrich and Paul are the two candidates whose support is the softest.  Santorum and Perry have the fewest negatives and most positives.

The second key is the trending. The graph below shows those results.

The graph and the polls show show some similarities, most notably the slide of Gingrich which is why I predict he will finish just ahead of Bachmann. The other fascinating part of the graph is that Romney was the prime winner and loser of the Gingrich and Perry surges. This confirms the observation that people are looking for a Romney alternative and that his support is also soft.  Will Santorum become the third candidate to prosper at Romney’s expense?

I think so. Here are my predictions: Santorum 24%, Romney 22% and Paul 20%.  Like all predictions this one is part hunch; part projection. The projection is based on the data above, which show Santorum with the fewest negatives and the major upward-surging trend. The hunch is based on my feeling the anti-Romney factions may have finally united behind a candidate.

Afterthoughts:

Regardless of where Santorum finishes he will have made one of the great political come-from-behind runs in recent memory. He has made it a three-person race, each with a major piece of the Republican Party: Romney the traditional pro-business, Chamber of Commerce types; Santorum the religious right and Paul the anti-government faction.  Given that the GOP is only a party of convenience whose control lies with PACS, Paul has little chance of winning the nomination.  If Santorum can continue his hold on the religious right in future contests it could create a GOP mess that Barack Obama would welcome: a battle between the two major constituencies of the Republican Party.

Final Results

Romney first with 24.6%, Santorum Second with 24.5%, Ron Paul finished third with 21%, followed by Newt Gingrich at 13%, Rick Perry at 10%, and Michele Bachmann at just 5%.

Amazingly the prediction got everyone right except Gingrich.  Sometimes it pays to be lucky. Santorum’s total was half a percent off from the prediction.  Romney’s was 2 1/2%–or within the margin of error.  Paul received 1% more than predicted, or within the margin of error. No other prediction either by a blog or network pundit got it this close.

The prediction also said the other candidates would garner 30-35% of the vote which missed by .1%.

A lingering question: did Gingrich benefit from Romney’s negative ads? Did Romney’s PAC supporters blow it by spending A LOT of ad money attacking a candidate who already had high negative ratings?

A bit strange to hear Karl Rove name four of the five counties on the above list as counties to watch.

Some more predictions: with Bachmann and Perry out, their support will probably go to Santorum not Gingrich. Some may go to Romney.  Santorum now will enter the media meatgrinder, which has totally ignored him up to now. Expect to see some negative media coverage of Santorum over the next few weeks.  If he can weather this we could well have a contest for the soul of the Republican Party.

Is it possible we could have our first real convention floor fight in a generation? With much time left it is too early to say, but if the religious right unite around Santorum they will not bow out to give Romney a clear path, nor will supporters of Ron Paul.

The one sure thing is that the Republicans have moved even further to the right.  If you are an independent like me you have to shaking your head about November.

Whether you like Santorum or not, the feel-good story coming from Iowa is that a candidate virtually ignored–even treated badly– by the media in the debates and who had far less money actually came within 800 votes of winning Iowa.  If I were his ad people I would run some Seabiscuit ads, especially the one of the race where the horse gets knocked around and comes back to win after trailing the field by multiple lengths.

The X-factor: Romney’s tax records.   So far he has refused to release these.  My guess is that he has used some liberal deductions. If Romney paid a lower percentage of his considerable income in taxes than the average American it could severely cripple his campaign.

Thanks and Apologies:

This has been the first new post in months. During that time you readers have kept coming back. I appreciate your interest and support.

That time has been spent trying to finish the new book and working on a consulting project. At one point a major public figure was interested in the book and offered to send it to his publisher,  so the project went into overdrive.  It looks like nothing will come of that so the book is looking for another home. The First Long Depression focuses on the most neglected era in American history–the economic upheaval covering the last three decades of the nineteenth century that precipitated the equivalent of a second civil war over America’s future.

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I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
Alive as you and me.
Says I “But Joe, you’re ten years dead”
“I never died” said he,
“I never died” said he
-Alfred Hayes

There are many versions of this song, one by Joan Baez used in the movie of Hill’s life is especially moving, but there is only one definitive recording and that is the one sung by Paul Robeson, whose other-worldly deep bass voice seems to come from a higher place.

I thought about Robeson and Joe Hill and a lot of others when I checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics– which I do every Labor Day weekend. In this climate of BS and raucous indignation that reminds me of a flock of ravens fighting over road kill, some of us sometimes seek the solidity of numbers to provide perspective.

Current Union Statistics

In late January of this year the BLS issued one of its periodic reports on union membership. For those who bothered to read it or even managed to catch the small box-like articles that a few newspapers printed about the report, it made for sobering reading. In America these days, press releases tend to fall from the air like dead leaves, most of them so dry and desiccated that their words sound like feet scuffling across a late October forest floor littered with Summers past.

The release from the Bureau on January 21, 2011 seemed yet another nondescript addition to this pile, right down to its generic format and matter-of-fact headline, probably written by a staff member buried deep amidst dozens of coffin-like cubicles who had grabbed a piece of stationary and filled in some boiler plate prose from the network hard drive.

In 2010, the union membership rate–the percent of wage and salary workers who were
members of a union–was 11.9 percent, down from 12.3 percent a year earlier, the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of wage and salary workers be-
longing to unions declined by 612,000 to 14.7 million. In 1983, the first year for
which comparable union data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 per-
cent, and there were 17.7 million union workers.

The language may sound dry, but like a forest littered with dead leaves they have the power to become a conflagration if someone touches a match to them. They point to a serious American crisis, one that for many may kill the American Dream and this nation’s ideal of a level laying field.

The release “highlights” state:

• The union membership rate for public sector workers (36.2 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private sector workers (6.9 percent).

• Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate at 37.1 percent.

• Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white, Asian, or Hispanic workers.

What the press release refers to as “highlights,” record one of the most dramatic shifts in American culture, economics and politics since the beginnings of the union movement during the industrialization of the 19th century. Nowhere in these numbers can you find the old stereotypical union member–a blue collar worker in a steel mill, mine or automotive plant. Instead the new union worker is a teacher, a government bureaucrat, a police officer. The BLS also pointed out,

Within the public sector, local government workers had the highest union membership rate, 42.3 percent. This group includes workers in heavily unionized occupations, such as teachers, police officers, and fire fighters. Private sector industries with high unionization rates included transportation and utilities (21.8 percent), telecommunications (15.8 percent), and construction (13.1 percent). In 2010, low unionization rates occurred in agriculture and related industries (1.6 percent) and in financial activities (2.0 percent).

The conventional arguments for this immense shift state that industrial workers are no longer interested in unions or that the economy has changed to a service, technology-driven environment far different from the one that spawned the old craft unions that were the heart of Samuel Gompers’ original AFL. Yet the unions themselves point out that independent surveys and data show most workers would join a union if they could. One reason may be that BLS stats from that January press release show union workers:

In 2010, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $917, while those who were not represented by unions had median weekly earnings of $717.

The difference of $200 a month is more than all the tax increases, stimulus packages and trickle-down economics that have passed for public policy since the dawn of this new century.

Why the Decline?

A major force preventing brother and sister workers from joining a union lies with the GOP Counterrevolution, which has identified busting the unions as a major priority. After all bust the unions and you’ve carved the heart out of the Democratic Party just like one of those gory scenes in a Mel Gibson movie. How have they done this?

Mainly they have made it harder to form a union. A September 2000 report by a respected international organization makes this nation sound like a third world plantation. In Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards, which was based on an 18-month survey, Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that in the United States, “workers’ freedom of association is violated routinely, protections for workers forming unions are inadequate and enforcement of existing laws are much too weak.” The report’s online introduction lays out the grim realities of American workers:

A culture of near-impunity has taken shape in much of U.S. labor law and practice. All that awaits an employer determined to get rid of a worker who tries to form a union is a years-later reinstatement order the worker is likely to decline and a modest back-pay award. For many employers, it is a small price to pay to destroy a workers’ organizing effort by firing its leaders.

But the Democrats and so-called progressives have not been much friendlier.  The Obama Administration has done little to straighten out the abuses of labor law and so-called progressives have all but forgotten working class America while they pursue their various crusades (one great example was when they ran a millionaire business owner despised by organized labor against Joe Leiberman).

The result of this assault is that union membership in the private sector is the lowest since 1900. Karl Rove, who has stated he wants to take this country back to the days of William McKinley, no doubt is smiling at these statistics. But anyone who knows their history has to find the idea of returning organized labor to the McKinley era frightening. Most of us vaguely remember those times as an era of labor strife. We may remember the Homestead Strike and a few other events, but I’ll bet my mortgage no one reading this has heard of the far more deadly, more vicious Lattimer Massacre.

Lattimer

Most of the account that follows comes from Michael Novak’s, The Guns of Lattimer (highly recommended–but hard to find) and a web site maintained by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.The sanitized history many of us received in school, never mentioned such events, for they would destroy the myth of the robber barons as people whose worst sin was manipulating money. But people died so that you and I might enjoy the right to organize and some of those people died in the Lattimer massacre.

Lattimer was a company town built in 1869 in the midst of the Pennsylvania coal fields. Lattimer founder Ariovistus Pardee and his son Calvin, two of the wealthiest people in the United States at the time, rented the houses to the workers, sold them whatever they needed through the infamous “company store” and literally controlled the lives of those who toiled long hours underground as if they had been slaves or prisoners in a gulag labor camp.

The strike that prompted the march from Harwood to Lattimer began when mine superintendent Gomer Jones, whom one local mine official described as “the worst slave driver who ever set foot in the coal region,” beat a miner with an axe handle, setting off a series of strikes that escalated into a larger and more dangerous struggle about wages, working conditions and a newly-passed Pennsylvania law taxing foreign-born miners. The mournful sounds of breaker whistles announcing another mine had joined the strike echoed across the hills until more than 5,000 men had walked away from their jobs, some symbolically carrying “miner’s needles,” the slender metal rods used to tamp dynamite.

In the coal country strikers would besiege any mines still operating to call out their workers. Lattimer was one of the last holdouts, but those miners told the union they would join their comrades if asked. To lead the Lattimer mission, the United Mine Workers selected the Harwood miners, who were mostly Slavs new to America, for what would be their first union action. Although many did not understand English, organizers felt it would be an easy assignment because of the invitation from the Lattimer miners, in contrast to more combative sieges that required a delicate dance between miners, strikers and mine officials.

Over 300 left Harwood, some of them with that nervous cockiness that accompanies a first mission. As they marched through the town of Cranberry on the way to Lattimer others joined them, raising their spirits. At the center of a blurred photograph of the march is a man wearing a white shirt and a derby hat sitting at an angle that betrays his old country ways. He carries a tattered American flag mounted on a newly-cut sapling stripped of its branches. Behind him one marcher clutches a wooden club. It would be no use because they were marching into a trap.

Luzerne County Sheriff James Martin was enjoying the vices of Atlantic City when he received an urgent message from the mine owners to return immediately to quell the strike. Martin recruited 150 “deputies” from local business and professional men along with seasoned mine enforcers, then broke out the owners’ gifts to them—fresh-from-the-factory repeating Winchesters and enough three-inch long armor-piercing bullets to fill their sixteen-shot magazines multiple times.

The “deputies” formed a line on both sides of the road leading into Lattimer. If the Harwood miners’ mission was clear so was that of the deputies: to halt the march and prevent more miners from striking. When the strikers crested the hill outside Lattimer, the adrenaline must have started pumping at the sight of the deputies lining the road in a V formation holding those brand new rifles.

Anticipating violence, mothers pulled their children out of school. Like a bell setting off a heavyweight fight, the mine whistle shrieked as the marchers neared the deputies. Martin held up one hand in a signal to stop as he ordered the strikers to disperse. In the scuffle that broke out when the sheriff grabbed for the flag he drew his sidearm.

What lit the fuse is still not clear, but some heard an audible click as Martin’s revolver misfired, followed by a volley from the deputies. The guidon bearer fell quickly, his last words the Slavik invocation to God, “O Joj! Joj! Joj!” Witnesses reported the shooting lasted from a minute and a half to four minutes, but the sound of deputies reloading to shoot fleeing strikers in the back would forever haunt witnesses.

In less time than it takes to listen to a CD track, an estimated nineteen marchers died and thirty-six were wounded in what has become known as the Lattimer Massacre. No one really knows the real number of casualties because many were treated by mine families rather than the company doctors or local hospitals.

A twenty-seven day courtroom drama that riveted the nation ended with the acquittal of Martin and the deputies. Some reactions to the verdict contained thinly-veiled threats of further violence. The Carpenter wrote, “It is the coal operators and corporations that should be blamed…They have ‘sowed the wind’ now let them ‘reap the whirlwind.’” Railway Age, the industry’s trade journal, warned:

The longer the real American people plays and palters with the spirit of anarchy and insurrection which the leaders are so loud to proclaim with their mouths and which their poor befooled followers—the Poles and Slavs and Lithuanians and Magyars, who do not know what the riot act means—pay for with their lives, the worse will be the reckoning when it comes, and the greater the bloodshed; for that bloodshed there must be, many times more than has yet been spilt at Hazleton, there can only be a matter of question.

The Century provided a different perspective in an article that saw outside agitators and “ignorant, hulking Slovaks and Polacks, and the brawny, cunning Italians” as the cause in what was little more than a diatribe against foreigners. For The Century’s writer, Lattimer symbolized, “The problem of enacting and enforcing laws which will keep undesirable immigrants out of this country.”

In 1972, Pennsylvania erected a monument to the massacre which reads:

It was not a battle because they were not aggressive,
nor were they defensive because they had no weapons
of any kind and were simply shot down like so many
worthless objects, each of the licensed life-takers
trying to outdo the others in butchery.

Actor Jack Palance, who worked the Lattimer mines as a youth and maintained a house there after he became famous, thought about making a movie about the Massacre, but never was able to put it together.

Joe Hill

Five years after the Lattimer Massacre, Joe Hill emigrated to America, becoming an organizer and song writer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). He was executed by firing squad on Nov. 19, 1915 in a trial that is still the subject of rumor and speculation.

A new biography by William Adler has uncovered a letter that indicates Hill was probably not guilty.  According to a New York Times story last week:

Mr. Adler uncovered a long-forgotten letter from Hill’s sweetheart that said that he had been shot by a rival for her affections, undermining the prosecution’s key assertion. The book, “The Man Who Never Died,” also offers extensive evidence suggesting that an early suspect in the case, a violent career criminal, was the murderer.

Labor Day Today

The point of Lattimer and the death of Joe Hill rests on that little-noted statistic, that union membership is now what it was in 1900. We have had no Lattimer Massacres, but what we have had is perhaps as deplorable: workers in America, as Human Rights Watch pointed out, now face a tilted playing field unless the Democratic Party or some other group reaffirms the values of Liberal America. The Republican Party threatens to pick off workers one-by-one, figuratively shot in the back, just like those who died at Lattimer.

When you are disabled and in pain there are nights the combination of drugs, sleep medicines and pain itself results in some bizarre dreams. One night as I was drafting this post, I found myself in what I took to be a basement full of file drawers. The labels on the front of them said something about the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Thinking they were full of more reports and press releases like those above I pulled open a drawer. What I saw were bare feet with a tag on one toe, like in a morgue. In a frenzy I pulled open drawer after drawer. Each held another body. Outside I could hear the sound of gunshots.

NOTE:

Some of the above material is from my forthcoming book and is strictly copyrighted.

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If anything confirms what this blog has been saying for over a year about the Republican Party this debt extension mess confirms it. When House Republican leader John Boehner announced that he was pulling his bill because he lacked the votes it confirmed the theory I have been throwing out that there no longer is a Republican Party, that what passes for the organization with that name is nothing more than an alliance of convenience between a variety of interest groups that have no common ground.

Many have been quick to blame Boehner with a death watch already started in the press as to how long he will last. There have even been several references to bring back the era of Tom “the Hammer” DeLay, the former GOP House leader who was sentenced to three years in jail for illegally funneling campaign contributions.

DeLay’s jail sentence and Boehner’s frustrations show how different life has become for the Republican Party. DeLay actually started it all when he formed his own PAC to funnel money to GOP candidates, an idea he borrowed from Newt Gingrich. The Republican Party no longer controlled the votes in the House, DeLay’s PAC called the tune.

Today with the changes in campaign finance in part spurred by the Citizens United decision, politics has now become the play ground of the PACS, with the parties becoming more irrelevant except as coalitions of convenience.

Delay’s PAC was his “hammer,” but Boehner has no such hammer. That he has been able to hold his coalition together for this long is a tribute to his leadership.

The Tea Party Myth

The media continue to blame what they loosely describe as “the Tea Party” for the problem. Let me repeat one more time: there is no Tea Party, period. Any reporter who says there is is either stupid or lazy or both.

There are actually several potential claimants to the title of Tea Party and none of them like each other and all of them have questionable ties. All this was reported here last year. One group, the Tea Party Patriots has as one of its spokespeople a woman who owes back taxes and whose husband ran a company that recruited foreign workers for American jobs. The other, the Tea Party Express, is the creation of a political consulting firm.

Neither of these qualify as a political party. In addition there are a host of local organizations that call themselves tea parties, some affiliated with the above organizations, and some not. All of this adds up to the reality that there is NO monolithic national tea party calling the shots for people in Congress.

Now that is not to say the Express and the Patriots do not have power. They did contribute money, expertise and grassroots organizers to several campaigns, so in that sense they do have some power over those members.

In the Shadows

More to fear–and to blame–for this mess are the shadowy figures like the Koch brothers and not so shadowy figures like Karl Rove who have been making their will felt behind the scenes. Rove’s American Crossroads “super Pac” was a significant player in the midterm elections that put some of the current GOP Congress in place. As a result they answer to Karl Rove not John Boehner.

As the New York Times reported last October:

Republican operatives have embraced the use of nonprofit issue groups that can keep donors’ identities secret.

Now those chickens have come home to roost: those secret donors are the ones gumming up the works in DC.  Until they come out of the shadows no one will truly know why the extension of the debt ceiling is being held hostage–and given the current Supreme Court that is not likely to happen any time soon.

The Big Picture

What we have, to quote a famous movie line, is a failure to communicate. The media, as usual, have totally botched the job by not explaining the roots of this crisis or dragging up nonexistent scapegoats like the tea party.

The issue of extending the debt ceiling is without a doubt one of the most serious crises to hit this country in quite some time. BUT…it is the symptom of something far more serious–the failure or our current party and political system. What the debt ceiling crisis tells us is that neither party controls its members any more. Instead they are controlled by various shadowy political groups and PACs that finance and help run their campaigns.

In short there are some people out there whose names you will probably never know who are willing to let this country default of its debts for the first time in history because they stand to gain from it. This is not a half-crazy paranoid fantasy, the evidence is there for all to see in John Boehner’s inability to control his own caucus.

The bigger question is if the GOP is no longer calling the tune who is?

The bigger issue is how can we take back our country from the likes of Karl Rove and these shadowy PACs?

When James Madison wrote about the evils of faction in Federalist #10 one of his major points was that money was the most insidious form of faction.  He feared that more than any other threat to our democracy. Madison thought that the division of powers in the Constitution would help dilute the power of money, but from a systems point of view he missed one thing–in a system with a division of powers its is EASIER for money to hold the rest of government hostage.

Right now that is what a minority of people are doing. There needs to be a better way.

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Image Source: Reuters

The conventional wisdom now has scored the winners of the July 13 New Hampshire Presidential debate as Mitt Romney and Michele Bachmann.  But is it possible the real winner was Barack Obama? As those of you who follow this blog know, I am now an independent and lukewarm about Obama, mainly because he seems the second coming of Bill Clinton and will not rid himself of the Clinton (and Reagan) economic advisors that have this country still in the doldrums.  More on that in a minute; but first to the debate.

Winners and Losers

There is little question that Mitt Romney was the most Presidential of the Gang of Seven (they definitely were not the Magnificent Seven). Since the last campaign when he seemed to be walking on eggshells most of the time, Romney has developed into a polished debater and speaker. His answers sounded Presidential and showed a good grasp of the facts.  He now exudes a solid confidence in his ability to handle the mess we are in. That will go a long way in 2012.

Even more in Romney’s favor is that where once he seemed aloof he now has developed—or shows—a sense of humor as in his remark about the Stanley Cup finals. In the last campaign Romney seemed disconnected from the lives of ordinary Americans, a policy geek who had no interest in things like the Stanley Cup or any sense of what a day is like for most of us—work like heck, get home, try to figure out supper and collapse in front of the TV with doses of driving the kids around and in the back of our minds worries about bills and jobs. Romney seems to get it now and my sense is that he will get stronger not weaker as the campaign moves ahead.

The surprise to some people was Michele Bachmann, but if you have read this blog you also know I have come to be an admirer of how she has grown as a politician.  In contrast with Sarah Palin, who thinks she can just have photo ops and wing it, Bachmann is serious and clearly has put time into improving her knowledge, speaking abilities and networking. When you get a new job you can do one of two things: you can focus on doing it the best you can with an eye to the future or you can just walk through it. Palin is walking through it. Bachmann is for real.

I put the two together not out of any sexist belief that there cannot be two female candidates but because the two appeal to the same constituencies. Were one of them More like Romney or Paul it would be different. If you are a politics junkie watch over the next two months where the money goes between Palin and Bachmann. Bachmann at the moment has no big-name donors, but she will start attracting them. The big question will be which ones and how much. Expect some fence-sitting for awhile until Palin makes up her mind to officially declare.

The other thing to watch with Bachmann will be now that she is really in the spotlight how she plays the media prying into her past. As a state legislator she did some pretty goofy things (wait till the media find the video of her hiding in the bushes at a gay rally at the state capitol).  In her favor she has grown out of such behavior, but she sill still have to answer for it. How she does that will make or break her candidacy.

Speaking of declaring, as everybody has remarked it was a stroke of genius on the part of Bachmann’s team to spring her candidacy during the debate. It worked in two ways. First, no matter what else she said, it would be a major story line in coverage. Second, because of that I believe it helped to take the pressure off Bachmann. She already had a “home run” (or to use Romney’s hockey analogy—a goal) with the announcement, so anything else was gravy.

The biggest loser according to the pundits was Pawlenty, but then if you read the last essay on this site you should know why.  Anyone who lasted through Pawlenty’s two terms in Minnesota should have been prepared for his one step forward; two steps back response to the probing about his anti-Romney ads.

His most notable example of that in Minnesota was to precipitate a budget crisis and a state shut down over his “no taxes” pledge then to go ahead and raise taxes and call it revenue enhancement. As I said before this is the guy the Democrats would love to run against, but unfortunately it does not look like they will get that chance. Right now he is in the running maybe—and that is a long shot—for VP or a cabinet post.

The biggest loser was Herman Cain who supposedly was the most polished speaker of the bunch. He is done because of his embarrassing answer to the question about Muslims in this country. It ranks with one of the top debate gaffes—or maybe revelations—in history. His own money will keep him in the race, but that is all.

As for the others, Gingrich has become a parody of himself. Little Newtie (as his mother called him) has been searching for a mother figure for decades going through a succession of wives. He may have finally found his mother figure, a wife who seems to be plotting his career just as Newtie’s mother did.

Paul and Santorum are fringe candidates. I hope Paul will stay for awhile just because his take on issues is different. He did not show enough of this in this debate.  He needs to emphasize it further.

Did Obama Win?

This debate helped Barack Obama in several ways. First it showed how badly fragmented the Republican Party has become. There really is no Republican Party, only a lose confederation of ideologues, consultants and special pleaders. The national party is badly in debt and has no power.

The debate showed this fragmentation in that the real reason the candidates did not trash each other is each of them needs the other’s constituencies. Trash Michele Bachman and you have lost the Tea Party. Trash Santorum and you lose the religious right.

It was kind of like one of those office parties where everyone hates each other or is secretly plotting to get ahead, but when everyone gets together they try to be overly nice to each other because they need each other or are worried about getting knifed in the back. Unfortunately for voters, the GOP nomination may be decided by back room dealings between these coalitions and their consultants. Much of the real maneuvering will take place behind the scenes more than it has for quite some time.

All this is good for Obama in that like or not, most Democrats will unite behind him in 2012. I also heard an astounding fact the other day—he has a war chest that will make the coming Presidential contest the first time we have seen a billion dollar campaign.

Obama also won in that even if you just focus on the two winners—Romney and Bachmann—they clearly do not represent the same people. There will have to be a show down and it has the potential to cripple the final candidate.

The situation for the GOP is reminiscent of 1896 when the Populists and the Democrats worked out an uneasy marriage to nominate William Jennings Bryan, enraging enough regular Democrats that they ran a third party candidate. Much like today’s Republicans, the split in the Democrats was between big money plutocrat donors like August Belmont and the grassroots folks who helped to make the Populists a force.

Did Obama Lose?

Despite these GOP problems Barack Obama will have difficulty because of the economy. His ex-Clinton advisors have been telling him things will get better, but people have been waiting for that for too long.  Some data (homes near foreclosure, drop in home values, job problems for younger Americans and people of color) do not show signs of improving and, in fact, could get worse.

Obama rolled the dice with his stimulus program, which did put a finger in the dike for awhile, but it is over now and there is no way he can ask for another one. I wrote a comment in another forum that Keynes was “dead meat.” Where I come from that means road kill. What I meant by the remark is that the classic Keynesian options have all been used. Obama cannot ramp up spending to deal with the problem without draconian cuts to the budget or controversial ones.

What he desperately needs to do is to get rid of Geithner and company and get a new economic team—his own, not Bill Clinton’s.  They are dragging him down and the sooner he realizes that the better.

So here is another prediction: expect Geithner and some of the others to quietly fade away. Their resignations will come over the next nine months. If Obama really wanted to turn things around he would borrow one tactic from Bill Clinton. When Clinton lost after his first term as Arkansas governor he ran again on an “I’m sorry I screwed up” platform. He admitted he had made mistakes and was going to be a different governor. He won.

Obama needs to admit he has made some mistakes and pledge to do better, at the same time detailing that new approach. His Presidency may depend on it. He needs to do that before the end of the summer or it will be seen to be too political as the primaries loom closer after the first of the year.

Mitt Romney had the sound bite of the debate when he reiterated the famous Reagan question about Jimmy Carter, “Are you better off now than five years ago?” If Obama does not want to end up like Carter he needs to make sure people do not answer “yes” or at least have to think about their answer.  By putting the question in voter’s minds, Romney also made Obama a loser.

One thing is clear. This promises to be a very interesting election. It could very well become one of those watershed years that redefine politics for the next decade or so. Clearly neither party has the answers and they better find them fast or we are in for some tough times.

CODA:

I have to apologize for the lack of postings but I have been knee deep in finishing the next book, which is now near completion. I cannot say much about it at this point as that will be up to the publisher to decide about publication and publicity.  I can say it will be far more eye-opening than Strange Death–and more interesting. It has been a back-breaker, though, in terms of writing and research. If you read it you will never look at America quite the same way again.

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