David Weigel on political stories about "what will matter" come election season:
Journalists, in real time, are not the best arbiters of what people will come to believe months later. The fact that one party is spinning an incorrect story does not mean voters will buy that story...The journalist--any journalist--is better equipped to find the truth than he is to explain how someone might lie about it, and how the lie might work.
It was a surprisingly active week in the Collins-Bellows race. It started late Friday with the news that Shenna Bellows had managed to outraise Sen. Susan Collins in the 4th quarter of 2013.
That development, taken together with Tuesday's endorsement of Bellows by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), spurred a flurry of Bellows coverage in the national press, culminating in a National Journal piece that called the former American Civil Liberties Union of Maine executive director, "nothing short of a progressive's dream candidate."
(Coverage from local outlets Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News exhibited the usual pathologies, with PPH privileging the senior senator's point of view and BDN waiting four days to deliver a slanted piece built on bizarre assumptions.)
It's striking how quickly Bellows has been able to move from nationally-unknown long shot to progressive standard bearer. This is a function of the ever-accelerating pace of the news cycle, enabled by social media and in particular Twitter--which was not a factor in the 2008 Maine Senate race. But it's also a function of the growth of left-of-center media infrastructure.
Bellows has adeptly leveraged TV, radio and webcast to get her message out. And link by link, retweet by retweet, her candidacy has edged onto the radar of literally tens of thousands of activists, political junkies and potential donors.
Of course, even with PCCC calling her the "Elizabeth Warren of civil liberties" it's far from certain that Bellows and her campaign will emerge as a key progressive focus in 2014. But the odds are exponentially better than they were just seven days ago.
From their statement:
Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) is endorsing Shenna Bellows for the U.S. Senate in a key Senate upset race against Republican incumbent Susan Collins..."We call Shenna Bellows the 'Elizabeth Warren of civil liberties' because she's campaigning boldly on constitutional freedom and economic populism," said PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor. "Like Elizabeth Warren's challenge to former Sen. Scott Brown, many insiders thought Susan Collins was unbeatable. Until now."
By claiming to support a two-state solution while helping to bolster the occupation, Scarlett Johansson is acting as a Susan Collins for the occupation, pretending to be moderate, while acting to bolster extremists.
I think if we can get women to look at [Republican] economic policies, they will find them very attractive.
Is there any other way to interpret this?
The President's decision to issue Executive Orders, to make recess appointments, or to suspend enforcement of certain laws is inconsistent with our Constitutional system of checks and balances.
Of course, every president except for William Henry Harrison--who served about a month in office--has issued executive orders. That includes Collins's beloved George W. Bush, who'd issued far more than Obama by this point in his presidency.
Does Collins think the actions of all of these presidents were "inconsistent with our Constitutional system"? Where was Collins's outrage during the last administration?
Or could it be that Collins, in a bid to woo a skeptical Maine GOP base, is parroting a right wing talk radio narrative that lacks any factual or historical foundation?
Bellows [9:15]:
Susan Collins refuses to say whether or not she supports the freedom to marry.Now, the [Mainers United for Marriage] coalition very much wanted her support during the campaign. We reached out multiple times to ask her to come out in favor of the freedom to marry. She did not do so then. She still has not done so, even though the voters of Maine have spoken.
And I think that this shows a lack of courage because presumably in 2012 she either voted yes or no. Presumably she didn't leave the question blank.
Interesting.
I would just point out that--at least as far as I can recollect--there's been no public suggestion by Collins or her team that the senior senator did actually vote one way or the other on the referendum.
I'm also not aware of any Maine reporter having asked Collins the kind of direct question that would have teased out that information.
Why do I almost feel like Sen. Susan Collins is forgetting something?
Unemployment insurance is critical to those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own and are diligently searching for work but are unable to find it. That is why I recently voted to proceed to debate a bill that would extend federal emergency unemployment compensation benefits for three months, as the president requested.When it became clear that this proposal would not have enough support, I worked, in good faith, with a group of colleagues on a proposal that could pass both the Senate and the House with bipartisan support.
Oh, right. It's that she voted against the very policy she's working overtime to insinuate that she supported.
It's not the first time Collins has tried to occupy both sides of the fence simultaneously. (Or the second. Or the third.) But it's another glaring example of the kind of duplicity that's bound to crop up when a powerful pol operates without any real accountability.
Commentary worth reading on the Forty Hours is Full Time Act, which Sen. Susan Collins has proposed as a partial Obamacare "fix":
The kicker is the Collins-Donnelly proposal would put millions more workers at risk. Overall, we estimate that 6.5 million employees would be immediately vulnerable to hour reductions under their proposal, nearly three times the number under current law. That's because the cost of cutting hours from 40 to 39 hours a week would be negligible for the vast majority of employers and many more employees work 40 hours a week or more compared to those who work close to 30.By effectively eliminating the employer penalty, this proposal would also result in more people losing job-based coverage. In July, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the one-year delay in the employer penalty would mean one million fewer Americans with job-based coverage. Half would shift into subsidized coverage through a state or federal marketplace or onto Medicaid. The other half would become uninsured.
The Collins-Donnelly plan also has important implications for the federal budget. The CBO estimates that the employer penalty will bring in $140 billion in revenue between 2014 and 2023. Little if any of this revenue will be collected if the 40-hour change is made. Meanwhile, the additional federal cost of health care for those workers suddenly without coverage through their job would add to the fiscal pain.
The President’s decision that the metadata collection should continue but that the data should not be held by the government requires considerable scrutiny. Having the telephone companies or other non-governmental entities responsible for holding this information might well make it far less private and secure than it is currently.
On January 3, Sen. Susan Collins spoke with WCSH6's Pat Callaghan:
CALLAGHAN: I think 1.3 million Americans lost their [unemployment] benefits at the end of the year. Millions more may if action is not taken. So your, your approach is, is what?COLLINS: My approach is that we should extend the program for three months. That would help us find funds to pay for it.
Today Collins voted to filibuster a bill which would have extended the program for three months on the grounds that, um, well, er...
Shenna Bellows on marijuana legalization:
When we waste government resources in locking nonviolent offenders up and more resources on spying on ordinary Americans, then that is reducing resources available to really focus on those people who would do us real harm.
Impressive numbers from Shenna Bellows, and equally impressive is the breakdown:
Shenna Bellows, the Democratic candidate attempting to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, has only been fundraising for a few months, but her campaign will soon be touting more than $332,000 in donations.[...]
According to the Bellows campaign, 81.7 percent of the 1,771 contributions were $100 or less, while over 80 percent of her donations came from Mainers.
"Our fundraising represents our values," she said in a statement. "The majority of our contributors are Mainers giving $100 or less. One of the biggest threats to our democracy is big money in politics, so it is refreshing to see that grassroots giving can triumph over special interests from out-of-state."
She added, "That is what a US Senate campaign should look like: local, grassroots-funded and representative of the entire state."
Something strange and revealing happens at the tail end of Pat Callaghan's two-part, 18-minute Friday interview of Sen. Susan Collins. At 12:01 the following exchange unfolds:
CALLAGHAN: Some people get concerned about who's influencing Congress. Your husband is, runs a lobbying firm or is a partner in it. Is that...?SENATOR COLLINS: No.
CALLAGHAN: Oh okay.
SENATOR COLLINS: It's, he is the COO [Chief Operating Officer] of a small consulting firm. He does no lobbying--
CALLAGHAN: Okay.
SENATOR COLLINS:--whatsoever.
CALLAGHAN: So he's not twisting your arm.
SENATOR COLLINS: Does no lobbying whatsoever.
CALLAGHAN: No conflict of interest here?
SENATOR COLLINS: None. Zero.
It all seems pretty straightforward: Collins, disabusing her interlocutor of a mistaken impression, corrects the record and Callaghan hustles the conversation onto another topic.
Except that Collins's denial that her husband Tom Daffron runs a lobbying firm is utterly--and blatantly--false.
Is Collins really in the dark about the fact that her spouse, who she's known since she first came to Washington DC in the 1970s, is a former registered lobbyist? That his K Street firm Jefferson Consulting Group has done plenty of lobbying over the years? That it lists "lobbying" as one of three practice areas on its corporate website? And that Daffron's COO responsibilities include "oversee[ing] Jefferson's administrative and financial functions as well as the day-to-day operations of the firm"?
In short, is she really unaware that, given the firm's profile and Daffron's role, Callaghan's formulation is perfectly accurate?
It seems implausible. And so the denial of easily verifiable facts comes across as reckless and even bizarre: How does a savvy, seasoned politician manage to blurt out such a transparently dishonest reply to such a basic question?
There's no simple answer. But the context of Collins's decades-long Washington journey from fresh face to veteran pol, taken together with the Maine media's extreme skittishness about scrutinizing the state's senior senator in general or the Collins-Daffron relationship in particular, probably sheds some light.
For starters, it's no accident that Collins's denial recalls in its terseness and peevishness former President George W. Bush's performance at 2004's first presidential debate or, more recently, Director of National intelligence James Clapper's testimony before Congress: Collins, after spending the better part of the last 40 years inside the bubble of power worship and status deference that is the Washington DC beltway, has clearly grown unaccustomed to being challenged directly on sensitive subjects.
It's within that same bubble that she's transitioned from squeaky clean freshman lawmaker--refusing to attend a 1997 fundraiser because donors were promised a chat with her--to ethically flexible beltway fixture, so inured to the amoral DC culture that she let corporate lobbyists throw her a birthday-bash-slash-fundraiser at a corporate-owned townhouse that stands as a monument, almost literally, to the abuse of campaign finance rules.
And it's inside the same corrosive power-and-privilege-fueled feedback loop that she "evolved" from pledging to serve no more than two terms to campaigning, unapologetically, for a fourth.
Put simply, when you're used to making up your own rules--and then revising them when they no longer serve your ends--it makes sense that you might bristle at a query about ethics and integrity from a lowly news anchor.
You might even feel justified blowing off his insolent question, facts be damned.
Of course, that Collins has become acclimated to the imperial treatment--and being insulated from anything that falls short of it--is no defense for dishonesty. Nor is the history of Maine press deference, which is to say silence, on the subject of her husband's career any excuse: You don't get to mislead viewers and deceive your constituents just because you've been asked a question you didn't see coming and would prefer not to answer.
If anything, Collins's uneasiness about the question underscores its importance, and the many legitimate concerns that stand behind it. Just for openers:
--Do any of Daffron's corporate clients have business before Congress in the coming term?
--How does Collins handle the potential confluence with and/or conflict between the oversight responsibility of the Intelligence Committee on which she sits and Daffron's firm's role as a consultant to the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI? Or between her role as Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development and his firm's consulting work for the Department of Housing and Urban Development?
--What about Jefferson's work for CGI Federal, the company behind the botched Healthcare.gov rollout? Or Halliburton? Or Apple?
These are obvious, public interest-minded questions that constituents deserve a response to.
And while the curt and sweeping nature of Collins's brush-off strongly suggests that she has no intention of answering them, it hints as something else as well: That she hasn't actually thought through the implications of being married to someone who heads a firm that makes money from the government; from companies that want to do business with the government; and from still other companies that want to sway the government in one direction or another.
That's a problem because, contrary to Collins's flat denial, a close personal relationship between a sitting senator and the head of a firm in the "government relations" racket is a significant and inherent conflict.
That's not to say that the conflict can't be managed and mitigated. But you can't manage a conflict that you're trying to pretend doesn't exist.
If her performance with Callaghan is any guide, Collins simply isn't ready to face up that reality. It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks and months whether that's a tenable position.
[Sen. Susan] Collins' perceived independence is largely a matter of public relations. But it's excellent public relations that allows her to say one thing and vote in the opposite direction, to speak disparagingly of special interests while her husband runs a lobbying firm, to leverage contrasting procedural votes to allow her to claim to have backed whatever side is most politically advantageous at the moment.Somebody in the GOP who's not suffering from congenital wacko syndrome should be taking Collins to task for her ambiguous record and adroit maneuvering around any position that might conflict with her moderate image.
Former Sen. Olympia Snowe speculating about what former Republican Sen. Margaret Chase Smith would think of the modern GOP:
"Oh my, gosh! She’d be appalled...I don't think she could conceive of how it's all evolved today. Even in my own experience, it's hard to comprehend."
If Wall Street was really smart, they'd start getting the less crazy Republicans, like Mark Kirk and Susan Collins, to switch parties, reinforcing the ranks of Wall Street Dems in Congress and giving the corporatists a functional governing majority. And if that happened, it would be our turn for a good ol' civil war, just like the one the GOP is currently waging.
There's no other way to read this:
Q: Some are concerned that Social Security will be targeted in the next round of budget talks. There are concerns that a change to the so-called chained CPI will erode benefits.A: Well, I think we have to be very careful as we take a look at the Social Security and Medicare programs. If we change the consumer price index, we could not do so without increasing the minimum benefit for Social Security.
Collins doesn't reject switching Social Security to a chained CPI model, which would slash benefits. She's just saying that the switch should be coupled with an increase to the minimum amount given out by the program.
That might help make up some of the difference for some of the three Maine seniors out of every five who count on Social Security for more than half their income.
But in a state where one in five residents receives Social Security and where the median elderly househould relies on Social Security for 74% (!) of its income, Collins's minor caveat shouldn't provide much solace.
AP:
Republican Sen. Susan Collins won't be unopposed on the primary ballot.The head of a group that opposed same-sex marriage in Maine says he'll offer a conservative voice in the GOP primary. Erick Bennett, director of the Maine Equal Rights Center, said he’s filing his paperwork Monday.
Predictably, there's already been more focus on Bennett's quirks--particularly from Maine journalists--than there's been on his policy positions, his standing with Maine Republican voters or his high profile activism.
Which is not to say reporters are wrong to paint Bennett as something other than a mainstream figure.
But of course the GOP isn't a mainstream party. And its primary electorate is even further to the right than its leadership.
So no one really knows for sure how this will turn out.
Granted: Collins may beat Bennett in a rout. She certainly ought to given the size of her war chest, the disparity in campaign experience and the amount of time she's had to prepare for exactly this challenge.
But if she wipes the floor with him, it will likely be because she ran a smart campaign--painting herself as inevitable, discrediting Bennett via whispers, playing the Maine media like a fiddle--rather than because she's closer to Republican primary voters on the issues than he is.
Sen. Susan Collins, March 1997:
A classic approach incumbents use to scare off future opponents is to raise a lot of money early.
