Earlier this week, Sen. Scott Brown made a consequential and costly decision for his campaign: to release his recent tax returns and to challenge Elizabeth Warren to do the same.

Talk about a major blunder.

First, it turns out Brown has a haircut problem. The Boston Herald reported that last year, Brown took a deduction of $1401 for hair, make up and grooming. Wow. This is something that will haunt Brown for the remainder of his campaign. Voters don’t much like career politicians who claim to be earnest everymen while spending so much money on their vanity and grooming.

Second, it turns out that Scott Brown and his wife made $2.5 million over the past six years, far more than the Brown campaign and the Massachusetts Republican Party have let on in all their vitriolic and over the top advertisements attacking Warren’s own income. What’s more, Brown’s income has skyrocketed since he entered public service — news that has caught the eye of pretty much every Massachusetts paper.

Earlier this year, Brown claimed his income was “not a heck of a lot. I mean, you know, I don’t make a heck of a lot.” He will have a tough time explaining that given the latest revelations about his income and the fact that he has a healthy place in the top 1 percent of American earners.

Brown’s latest problems were put on display with a new Web ad the Massachusetts Democratic Party posted early this morning, highlighting the enormous, $675 price tag for his famous barn jacket, the six properties he owns, and his newfound “A-list” stature in the Washington social circuit.

Brown is likely to find it difficult to put this toothpaste back in the tube.

Karl Rove is spending a lot of money trying to help his close friend Sen. Scott Brown, but his ads just aren’t passing the laugh test. Just last week, an ad from Rove’s Crossroads GPS was saying Elizabeth Warren was too radical because she was so close to the Occupy movement, but that didn’t work: her numbers actually went up, and she is now leading Brown by 7 points in the latest polling. So now Rove, — who, according to sources of mine in the banking industry, has taken millions of dollars from the big banks for his secret slush fund, American Crossroads — is saying Warren presided over big bank bailouts.

It’s hard to decide whether this blatantly dishonest ad is more pathetic or funny. It does once again show that Rove and the Wall Street boys giving him money have absolutely no shame. To take Wall Street millions to run an ad tying Warren to the TARP bailouts because she was an independent watchdog of the fund is theater of the absurd — especially given that the reason she became so well-known was because she took both Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner to task for being too easy on the big banks. It’s classic Rove: attack your opponent’s greatest strength. And the fact that Rove’s group just one week before had run an ad trying to tie Warren to Occupy Wall Street because it was so “radical” makes this funny on a grand scale.

Here is the ad in case you haven’t seen it:

OK, go ahead and pick your jaw up off the floor. I know what you are probably saying: “I know this is Karl Rove, but I didn’t think even he could be this brazen and ridiculous.” Well, he can — on behalf of his close friend Scott Brown. These guys will say anything, do anything, and go to any lengths to try to stop Warren from winning, simply because they know what an incredible voice she would in the Senate in speaking up for the 99% and taking on the Wall Street bigwigs. It is richly ironic that because they are finding out their anti-Occupy messaging didn’t work, they are now taking our message to attack Warren because they know it works better. We will see a lot more of this before we are through — in this race and others.

Here’s the fundraising page where you can go help Warren’s campaign directly.

Here’s a petition on Wall Street accountability her campaign is doing.

Pass these around and sound the alarm: Karl Rove is blatantly lying again to help out his dear friend Scott Brown. Do whatever you can to help.

The Massachusetts State GOP released its first attack ad against consumer advocate and U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren Wednesday. The Web ad comically attempts to use selective quoting and distorting camera effects to make Warren look anti-business, or violent, or like an inarticulate speaker, or… something. They are clearly trying to make her seem like a very scary class warrior. Republicans don’t like the fact that she has pointed out that wealthy businesspeople did not make it on their own, and that the entire society played a role in their success by building roads and educating workers and paying cops and firefighters they rely on. These points seem pretty obvious to me, but to Scott Brown and the Republican Party this is frightening, violent rhetoric.

This video makes a few other things clear. Brown and the Republicans are obviously going to try to tie Warren to Harvard at every chance, even though polling suggests voters couldn’t care less about where Warren teaches. And other than sexism and empty and tired claims of “class warfare,” Brown really doesn’t have much to work with in his fight for reelection.

Having done some polling on the class warfare stuff, and knowing it doesn’t work for the Republicans, my guess is that this ad isn’t really aimed at voters at all, but at their corporate donors. The campaign clearly wants to scare the wealthy corporate special interests that support Brown, so they will drop even more money in his lap.

Check the ad out, and contrast it with the actual remarks in full Warren made on this topic:

Continue reading »

It's funny how things just slip away from the grasp of this administration, isn't it?

There's no reason in the world why those loans should be serviced by profit-making companies -- except for those morally craven members of Congress, of course:

WASHINGTON — Four months ago, it appeared all but certain that the White House and Democrats in Congress would succeed in overhauling the student loan business and ending government subsidies to private lenders.

President Obama called the idea a “no-brainer” last fall, predicting it would take billions of dollars from the profits of private lenders and give it directly to students, and many colleges were already moving to get loans directly from the federal government in anticipation of the next move by Congress.

But an aggressive lobbying campaign by the nation’s biggest student lenders has now put one of the White House’s signature plans in peril, with lenders using sit-downs with lawmakers, town-hall-style meetings and petition drives to plead their case and stay in business.

House and Senate aides say that the administration’s plan faces a far tougher fight than it did last fall, when the House passed its version. The fierce attacks from the lending industry, the Massachusetts election that cost the Democrats their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and the fight over a health care bill have all damaged the chances for the student loan measure, said the aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

If the president's speech seemed full of vague generalities and not the inspirational partisan battle cry you might have wanted, that's because the speech wasn't really aimed at us, but at independents. And in that light, it was a resounding success.

From Democracy Corps, a Democratic polling firm:

Democracy Corps conducted dial testing of the speech with 50 independent and weak partisan voters in Nevada, followed by focus group discussions with voters who shifted toward approval of Obama’s performance in office. This difficult audience for Obama was a heavily Republican-leaning group (46 percent Republican, 20 percent Democratic) that split their votes in 2008 (52 percent Obama, 46 percent McCain) but had moved away from him over the past year, with majorities expressing disapproval with his job performance and unfavorable views of him on a personal level.

Obama saw a substantial, but not overwhelming, spike in his overall numbers with his personal favorability rating and job approval both increasing by 16 points. But his speech drove much bigger shifts among these initially skeptical swing voters on several key issues.

Most important, Obama managed to decisively reverse the view that he was too close to Wall Street. In a Democracy Corps survey from just before the Massachusetts election, we found that a 49 to 41 percent plurality said Obama and Democrats were more concerned with bailouts for Wall Street than creating jobs for regular Americans. Entering the evening, swing voters in this group agreed with a 48 to 16 percent plurality saying Obama “puts Wall Street ahead of the middle class.” But after the speech, the number disagreeing with that statement jumped a remarkable 50 points, to 66 percent. Moreover, Obama saw a 38-point increase in support for his banking reform plan and a 40-point increase in the percent saying that he “stands up to special interests.” Obama’s strong words for the banks clearly resonated and generated some of the strongest scores on our dials of the night from Democrats, Republicans and independents.

[...] For these voters whose attitudes shifted from disapproval to approval of Obama’s performance as president, one consistent question remained: can he deliver? Unlike most attributes that shifted during the speech, “promises things that sound good but won’t be able get them done” remained very high (78 percent pre-speech to 74 percent post-speech). The “shifters” in these post-speech focus groups are waiting for results, and they pointed specifically to passing health care reform and job creation initiatives as critical reforms that must be delivered. While they see the Republicans as obstructing every Obama initiative, they nonetheless expect Democrats to pass major legislation with their large majorities.

Among their findings:

* While everyone had a strong negative response to the banking bailout, the Democrats hated it even more.

* The strongest positive response was a 99 from both Democrats and independent on the idea of removing tax breaks for businesses who outsource jobs.

* There was an 80% positive response on the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.

(HUGE h/t to the always hilarious Blue Gal for the video)

I don't know how you feel, but to me, last week was truly a horrible, terrible, very bad, no good week for progressives and America in general. Looking at the schedule, I'm not seeing it get much better. Obviously, there will be much crystal ball gazing at the Massachusetts election and what that means on a larger level for the 2010 midterms. And with President Obama's first official State of the Union speech scheduled for this week, I'm sure that our perennial Sunday guest, John McCain, will have lots of doom and gloom to anticipate. White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod scored two appearances on This Week and State of the Union to spin the last week's disappointments into positives. Sadly, he's going to be followed by Jim DeMint and Orrin Hatch, respectively. WH Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett will be on Meet the Press, only to be followed by Mitch McConnell. And WH Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will be on Fox News Sunday, only to be followed by John Cornyn. Noticing a trend?

ABC's "This Week" - White House senior adviser David Axelrod; Sens. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Jim DeMint, R-S.C.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: David Brooks, Savannah Guthrie, Clarence Page and Kathleen Parker. Topics: Will Obama Recalibrate His Agenda In Response To Voter Outrage? White Flight: Why Have Working Class Whites Abandoned Obama? Meter Questions: Can Dems Neutralize the Throw-the-Bums-Out Attitude by November? YES: 4 NO: 8; Have the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Helped the Fight Against al-Qaeda? YES: 7 No: 5

CNN's "State of the Union" - Axelrod; Menendez; Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski on how to move forward in Haiti. Then, the people of Massachusetts sent a strong message to President Obama earlier this week - should he go left, right, or straight down the middle? Fareed and his panel of historians give their perspectives on what he should do next.

CNN's "Amanpour" - The rebuilding effort in Haiti.

"Fox News Sunday" - White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

A commenter over at Matt Taibbi's blog makes some excellent if painful points about this week's election results, and it was so good, so much to the heart of the matter, that I thought you would all want to read it:

The idiot pundits proclaiming this as a protest to Obama’s “overreach” are just morons and deserve to be ignored by anyone with half a brain. In a just world, bankers would wipe out their savings, after which they’d be fired and have to stand in today’s unemployment lines.

The lesson Obama should take from this is that people are not fooled by Obama throwing out platitudes like “I didn’t run for President to please fat-cat bankers” and then appointing people like Tim Geithner of Goldman Sachs to Treasury, keeping Ben Bernanke around, and having people who caused the economic pain for so many people like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin as his economic advisors. And are not fooled when he does nothing but mouth platitudes, or makes a scene of phoning a bank to tell them not to buy a plane, as the largest round of banking bonuses is handed out the year after they did the financial equivalent of blowing up the world. And are not fooled when he gives a speech to Wall Street politely requesting them not to be so greedy, and that they don’t need to wait for him to enact legislation to change their behavior. And are not fooled when all the popular elements of reform like a public insurance option are gutted out of the health care reform bill in order to “pass something” and call it a win, and then lie that you “never campaigned on a public option” (for someone who ran such a new-media campaign, it’s pretty brazen to act like in 2010, people don’t have the YouTubes!).

Continue reading »