With Democrats like Ben Chandler, who needs Republicans? [The Arena].

Schroedinger explained a central paradox of quantum mechanics with an analogy of a cat inside a box and a situation that boils down to the idea that anything you do to detect whether the cat is alive or dead, kills it.  So you can’t ever know whether it is alive or dead because any attempt to find out, makes it dead.

Business school students and entrepreneurs find a similar paradox in business.  Profits are a result of a well run business.  If you focus on running your business better, increased profits usually follow.  If you focus on increasing your profits, they disappear.  This is why, contrary to what every business student thinks as a child, business plan’s don’t start out with the objective of “make money”.

Our political class has not figured this out yet.  When things happen there is a reality of what happened.  At the end of the day there is going to be a public perception of this reality.  The idea of “spin” is born of a desire to manage the public perception of this reality.

The political class has gotten so focused now on spinning the public perception of reality that they have completely lost sight of the actual reality in the first place.  They now make all of their decisions on the basis of the impact it will have on the public perception of reality and, like the physicist who has to see whether the cat is alive or dead, or the business leader who is willing to do anything under the sun to increase profits, they are ending up doing exactly the things that they shouldn’t be doing and they end up damaging public perception instead of managing it.

The Sherrod case at the USDA puts this into stark relief.  When Fox News started pushing the made up story that the White House was incompetent because they harbored a racist, the White House immediately became incompetent by demanding, with no due diligence, with no investigation, with no questions, that this person resign.  They were so desperate to manage the perception of their competence that they actually had her pull her car off the road she was driving on so she could text message them her resignation.

Our entire system of governmental checks and balances exists to protect balance the rights of individuals with the demands of mobs.  But there was no balance at all here.  The mob said they would be considered incompetent if they didn’t fire this woman so they fired her immediately!  Immediately!  This was an incompetent thing to do, and as the incompetence became clear just as immediately when the mob’s information turned out to be patently false.

Now how do they look?  They look incompetent, which is exactly what they did not want to look!  But had they actually been competent, they would have come out of this situation looking competent, because they would have been competent!

This is by no means a unique situation for this administration.  This same dynamic has plagued the Obama administration since the campaign.  They have consistently and persistently reacted to charges of incompetence by becoming incompetent instead of ignoring the charges and focusing on actually being competent!

It isn’t even unique to this administration.  Both Hillary Clinton’s and John McCain’s entire presidential campaigns were so focused on how the public perceived them that they abandoned all reality of what they were… and ended up being perceived as people who would abandon all reality of who they were to manipulate public perception!

And this isn’t unique… to any of them at this point.  This problem has completely swamped the entire Republican party, and great huge portions of the Democratic party are infected too.

Politicians desperately need to learn that the only way to appear competent is to be competent!

$200 Million GOP Campaign Avalanche Planned, Democrats Stunned.

This is unfortunate, but the dynamics described on the left are pretty accurate, and for good reason.  Unions and the progressive activist base have been focused on issues advocacy and primary challenges over Democratic Party solidarity because the Obama administration and the Democratic Party leadership have made it perfectly clear that they will not advocate for our issues.  At the very least they’ve made it perfectly clear that they won’t advocate for our issues while the bastards we’re waging primary challenges against still cling to power! And they’ve made it perfectly clear that they don’t give a damn about union and progressive issues because after the conservative Democrats we’re challenging in the primaries totally wrecked the progressive and labor agenda… they backed them for re-election anyway!

What was Joe Lieberman’s punishment for stripping healthcare reform of the public option after even the public option that was left had been watered down to practically nothing?  What was Bill Nelson’s punishment for the damage he did?  What was Mary Landrieu’s punishment for the damage she did.  What was Blanche Lincoln’s punishment for the damage she did?  What was Stupak’s punishment for the unbelievable way he sold out two generations of progressives fighting desperately to hold on the gains they’ve made for women’s health?

The answer?  Nothing! They all have the full support of the administration and Democratic leadership.  Joe Lieberman included!

But the administration can’t have it both ways.  If they want the money and energy of progressive activists and union families they have to give us a reason why we should give it to them.  We don’t give a rats ass about their priorities or their careers.  We were unified during the election because they were supposed to be the path to our priorities.  They weren’t.

We are fighting for the same thing we were fighting for before… our issues.  But now we’re also fighting to reform the entire system because if there’s one thing that we’ve learned from our landslide electoral victory and our anorexic legislative victories is that the system ain’t working.  And where are they on that?  Nowhere.  They seem to be fine with the system the way it is.  Whatever.  Everybody makes choices.  Back Blanche Lincoln.  Coddle Joe Lieberman.  But do it without us.  Call us after the elections if you’d like to rethink how you are going to handle the next two years.