A libertarian memo is circulating that progressives ought to thank the Kochs for their support of organizations that fight for gay marriage, drug decriminalization and lower defense spending. But Chait disagrees:
[The] implication is that, if you're horrified by the Bush administration's civil rights record and supportive of gay marriage, the Koch brothers are for you. In fact, they're not. They work very hard to elect Bush and members of Congress who will support his agenda. They support think-tanks that oppose right-wing defense and civil liberties as long as they also support right-wing economic policies.
Another way to put this is that the Kochs will happily put their money behind candidates and intellectuals who agree with their economic agenda but disagree with their social agenda. They will never put their money behind candidates or intellectuals of whom the reverse is true.
Now, there is a coherent view here. The view is that libertarianism ought to be organized around economics, and especially opposition to progressive taxation and any attempt to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions. The Kochs have helped make this the dominant strain of American libertarianism. You can defend that if you want. But to pretend that people on the left should feel half-gratitude toward the Kochs because the Kochs support them on a bunch of issues is disingenuous. The Kochs are overwhelmingly in the business of supporting the Republican agenda.
Minor-party candidates often grumble about being excluded from debates by gatekeepers, and in the Memphis mayor's race, they seem to have run an experiment in including everyone.
Candidate X, who is either a better debater or the underdog, challenges Candidate Y, almost always a weak debater and/or frontrunner. Candidate Y declines or dodges (frequently citing the ample chances voters have already in the primary or soon will in the general to see the candidates).
Then Candidate X (or approved surrogate) counters the counter with some varation of accusing Candidate Y of being chicken.
To wit, today's statement from the Republican Party of Virginia after GOP gubernatorial nominee Bob McDonnell challenged Dem gubernatorial nominee to doing a series of 10 debates and Deeds declined.
“I don’t know what the guy is afraid of,” said Republican Party of Virginia Chairman Pat Mullins.
Joe Wurzelbacher doesn't immediately turn up in the Ohio voter registration database, leading to some speculation last night that he's not registered to vote.
Linda Howe, executive director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said a Samuel Joseph Worzelbacher, whose address and age match Joe the Plumber’s, registered in Lucas County on Sept. 10, 1992. He voted in his first primary on March 4, 2008, registering as a Republican.
Ms. Howe said that the name may be misspelled in the database.
(This is, incidentally, the reason people worry about purging the voter rolls. They're such a mess to begin with.)
The debates are over, but the debate debate isn't.
The bi-partisan group of online activists pushing to liberate debate footage from copyright restriction, and more broadly to remold presidential debates for a new age, says it will involve itself in other debates in the off-years, and gear up for 2012.
The conservative activist Grover Norquist is also joining the group, he said last night.
"I'm happy to join the Open Debate Coalition in calling for dismantling the Commission or fundamentally reforming it so it is accountable to one constituency only: the public," he said in an email. "And, if the Commission wants to show any bit of responsiveness this year, they'll make sure that debate footage is put in the public domain so people can put clips on YouTube and otherwise share key moments without being deemed copyright lawbreakers."
The group's organizer, Larry Lessig, laid out the group's plans in a memo that one member passed on, after the jump.
"2008 should be the last year that the Commission on Presidential Debates exists as we know it," he wrote. "All of us can help make clear that, in the future, voters must 'own' the debates--and we demand debates that are democratic, transparent, and accountable to the public."
Two readers with access to the Ohio voter file say that Joe Wurzelbacher's inluence on this cycle will be limited in one way: He doesn't appear to be registered to vote.
(And yes, the freelance opposition research on Joe began before the debate ended.)
CORRECTION: The Ohio press reports that he is registered to vote, under a slighlty misspelling of his name.
Katie gets the first interview with Joe Wurzelbacher and, like everyone else in America, he talks like a pundit.
"McCain was solid in his performance," he says. "I still don't know where he stands," he says of Obama. "I'm middle class. I can't have my taxes raised any more."
He also says he actually isn't in the bracket where Obama would raise his taxes -- but he's worried that Obama will shift the bracket down.
He also said that, in his encounter with Obama, the Illinois Senator "a tap dance...almost as good as Sammy Davis, Jr."
A really interesting point from a smart colleague: Talking about special needs, McCain repeatedly brought up autism, even when the questions seemed to refer to Sarah Palin's son, who has Down Syndrome.
One possible reason: Autism has a much, much, higher incidence in this country right now.
He's Joe Wurzelbacher, an Ohio man looking to buy a plumbing business who came to symbolize the middle class in Wednesday night's presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain....
So what does he have to say about literally being at the center of the debate.
He says his name being mentioned in the campaign is "pretty surreal."
Obama spent the primaries debating health care with Hillary Clinton, and that polish shows on an issue that's been the center of his campaign in the states.
"If you’ve got an employer-based health care plan you keep it. Under Sen. McCain’s plan there is a strong risk that you’ll lose your employer-based health care," he says. "The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that this plan could lead to the unraveling of the employer-based health care system."
One McCain slip: He said the only health care plans would be lost would be "Cadillac" plans that include cosmetic surgery and transplants. He presumably meant hair transplants.
