Levees Not War

We prayed for a one-two punch of good news, and the Saints and the voters delivered (helped no doubt by the prayers of the nuns and priests in Saints owner Tom Benson’s posse). It is a delicious feeling of rejuvenation only four short years after the storm left us feeling devastated, unsure of the future. Now the nation and the world too are rejoicing for New Orleans and the Saints—everybody loves an underdog—and that too is a sweet thing. Not to downplay the significance of the Super Bowl triumph, but the first victory, Mitch Landrieu’s in the mayoral race on Saturday (66% of the vote), may turn out to be the most enduring consequence of this Super Weekend. We shall see. (Karen Dalton Beninato tweeted, “The New Orleans mayoral election is now on Superbowl Eve while we dodge 8 parades to vote. Only in New Orleans.”) We wish the new mayor and the amazing team and all their fans the best of luck—we’re with you. We know the city will have a Carnival season like no other, more turbocharged with joie de vivre than perhaps any Mardi Gras there’s ever been. (Fat Tuesday is Feb. 16: What a delirious week this will be.)

•  See Oyster’s commentary on the mayor’s race at Your Right Hand Thief.

•  Clay at NOLA-dishu points out in “Saints, Race, and Moon” that it’s no exaggeration to say we wouldn’t have the Saints without Moon Landrieu and others like him. (This legacy of racial liberalism helps explain why Moon’s son won 63% of the black vote.)

Super Bowl XLIV in Pictures

Mitch Is the Man

New Orleanians, the best way to make the Saints lucky on Sunday in the Super Bowl is by casting your ballot early and often (encore, repetez!) for Mitchell J. Landrieu as mayor of the great City of New Orleans. This is also the best way to boost the city’s fortunes for four years (at least). We are indeed fortunate to have a candidate so thoroughly qualified, politically able, well liked, and, yes, ethical. Let’s make it a Super Weekend, a one-two punch, Saturday and Sunday. Who dat say dey gonna beat Mitch?

Among many admirable qualities in this New Orleans native (he grew up in Broadmoor, graduated from Jesuit, and earned his law degree at Loyola), one that particularly impresses us is the fact that as lieutenant governor he was an early and vigorous supporter of the America’s Wetland Conservation Corps: he pushed America’s Wetland to affiliate with AmeriCorps to combine AW’s conservation agenda with the youth public service program to make Louisiana a better, greener place. Mitch gets it, and it’s working. The AWCC is administered by the Louisiana Serve Commission in the office of the lieutenant governor. Our regular readers know that we have been pushing for a new Civilian (or Coastal) Conservation Corps for the urgent job of restoring the Louisiana coastline to serve as a critical buffer from hurricane storm surges. Levees are not enough. Read more about AWCC here, and our plan for a new CCC here (at LaCoastPost).

In addition to the highly coveted endorsement of this blog, Landrieu has been endorsed by the Times-Picayune, Gambit Weekly, the Louisiana Weekly, New Orleans CityBusiness, the New Orleans firefighters, and the Alliance for Good Government.

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Postively Flamin’

Of all New Orleans’s wonderful (and some rather sedate) Carnival krewes, Krewe du Vieux is the sassiest, fiestiest, and wittiest, and it pains us to miss even one parade. Led by the great Dr. John as King, this year’s parade’s theme was “All Fired Up” (there was a fire last summer in the krewe’s Den of Muses, quenched by the NOFD).

The krewe’s full name is Krewe du Vieux Carré, and its subkrewes include Krewe de C.R.A.P.S. (shown here), Krewe of Space Age Love, Krewe du Mishigas, Seeds of Decline, Mystic Krewe of Spermes . . . you get the picture. So, to show you what you’re missing when you miss the Krewe du Vieux parade (always three Saturdays before Mardi Gras—Feb. 16 this year), we present some pix from our friend Maitri Erwin’s Flickr photostream (also see her smart, cool VatulBlog). The theme of her subkrewe, C.R.A.P.S., was “Walk on Burning Sphincters.”

Here are some good readers’ photos posted at NOLA.com.

Oh, and did we mention the Saints are in the Super Bowl? Who Dat? Who Dat? Feelin’ “Glory Bound,” y’all.

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As train-lovin’ infrastructure freaks, we applaud Friday’s announcement by President Obama and Vice President “Amtrak Joe” Biden that the administration will dedicate $8 billion of stimulus funding for high-speed rail projects in 13 major rail corridors in 31 states around the U.S. The president calls this investment a down payment on the most significant step forward in the nation’s transportation system since the interstate highway system was launched in the 1950s. The OneRail coalition cheers the news: “Investment in rail will create jobs not only in those corridors, but  around the nation as American companies develop, build, and operate systems that will reduce energy consumption, mitigate air pollution, enhance the reliability of passenger and freight rail, and create more livable communities.”

We see the investment as a most welcome advance that will help reduce the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels (a point repeated by Transportation secretary Ray LaHood) and on automobiles. The train projects are energy-efficient and reinforce U.S. national security. (The less foreign oil we use, the fewer soldiers we have to send overseas to oil-rich zones.) As we’ve noted before, “the U.S. must reduce its dependence on automobiles and on importing foreign oil (and extracting it from off the Gulf Coast). Carbon emissions aggravate global warming, which intensifies hurricanes and raises sea levels.”

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“To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills.” —President Obama, Jan. 27, 2010

That was our favorite line of the State of the Union address. Now, the president and the general public should keep reminding the congressional Democrats of this fact every day, for how easily they forget. In a speech that did not shrink at all from his ambitious agenda—but that wisely set the necessity of reforms in the context of economic necessity—the president challenged everyone in the room to keep working, and work harder, to deliver the change that the American people voted for in 2008.

Probably our second most appreciated challenge was the one that followed, directed at the cool-handed Republicans:

And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town—a supermajority—then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. [Applause] Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

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“Work as if you are in the early days of a better nation.” —Alasdair Gray

We were delighted to see President Obama’s fiery, fightin’ spirit Friday as he swung into Elyria, Ohio, in full campaign mode with his “never stop fighting” speech. You go, O.

But, listen, populist rhetoric alone won’t do it. Democrats—and the White House in particular—must take strong actions (take stands, build support, gather coalitions, and cast votes). Be specific and firm about health care and banking reforms. Don’t be so vague, aloof, and passive. Stop letting opponents frame the debate. Take strong action. Grab them bankers by the throat. Make ’em gasp. (See the example of JFK vs. U.S. Steel in 1962 in Frank Rich’s column “After the Massachusetts Massacre.”)

In our last post we urged Democrats to be boldly populist and fight for the ordinary voters. We called on Democrats—and independents and any elected officials who want to make this a better, internally stronger nation—to speak up for the positive role of government. It is imperative to counter the conservative/Republican con job about government’s being “the problem” (as Reagan famously accused, though Jimmy Carter had done the same before him—thanks a lot) and give definite examples of how the public benefits from good government.

To start with some good talking points, the message is well summarized in the following passages from our friend Joe Conason in his bestselling book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth (hailed by Paul Krugman as “must reading for anyone who wants to understand America today”):

“. . . remember that America in the twentieth century was built on liberal policy, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the GI Bill, and the Great Society. The modern economy—a private enterprise system that relies on government safeguards against depression and extreme poverty—is the legacy of liberal leadership, from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. . . . Conservatism in power always threatens to undo that national progress . . .

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Stand up straight. No cringing, no cowering.

The loss of the Massachusetts senate seat is dismaying but unfortunately not surprising. What worries us is that Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from the loss—they have a way of doing that. Some have said “we should slow down, ease off.” But to all the members of Congress who have phoned in to ask our advice, we have one clear, concise bit of counsel: Be boldly populist and fight for the ordinary voters. To hell with what pleases Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup. Wake up from the sweet dream of “bipartisanship.” If they’re going to call you a “socialist,” then by all means earn the title. Press harder on the progressive issues of health care reform, oversight of the financial industry, and aggressive jobs programs (WPA, CCC style), and for God’s sake speak up for the positive role of government (or call it the public sector). Focus the message. (See Jeffrey Feldman’s HuffPo column “The Lesson of the Lunch-Bucket Democrats.”)

Don’t douse the base with cold water. Remember how poorly Democrat Creigh Deeds fared in his bid for governorship of Virginia last November? Perhaps not. Few remember his name at all. He lost by 18 points. As Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos observed:

1. If you abandon Democratic principles in a bid for unnecessary “bipartisanship,” you will lose votes.

2. If you water down reform in favor of Blue Dogs and their corporate benefactors, you will lose votes.

3. If you forget why you were elected—health care, financial services, energy policy and immigration reform—you will lose votes.

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Two posts that should be read in full—“A Wake-Up Call” by Robert Kuttner on what the Massachusetts special election for senator tells us about the Rahm Emanuel White House’s wrong priorities—and another by a reader at Talking Points Memo who was calling voters in Massachusetts to vote for Martha Coakley and found too many presumed Democrats who are planning to vote for the Republican—to fill the seat once occupied by the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy.

From “A Wake-Up Call” by Robert Kuttner:

How could the health care issue have turned from a reform that was going to make Barack Obama ten feet tall into a poison pill for Democratic senators? Whether or not Martha Coakley squeaks through in Massachusetts on Tuesday, the health bill has already done incalculable political damage and will likely do more. . . . The measure is so unpopular that Republican State Senator Scott Brown has built his entire surge against Coakley around his promise to be the 41st senator to block the bill—this in Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts. He must be pretty confident that the bill has become politically radioactive, and he’s right. . . .

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