The Overton Window.  When “The Public Option” becomes the edge of accepted political discussion to be traded away and off of, when “Single Payer” walks into the room, it is not visible and ceases to exist, and slides to the accepted point.  This is the example of such a thing.

The interesting thing with FAIR, and this FAIR article that FAIR cites with good frequency  is that we have gotten to a point where Bill Clinton and his presidency is not defined, generally, as “Liberal”.  This is in part to leave that narrative for Obama, and in part because the political need to place him there has subsided.
There are certain caveats in our fiction-laced political universe. The NRA has tacked to a goodly weird “absolutist” position, such that as gun control has fallen off the political table nationally, it marches forward.  Was that National Parks rally a show of thanks to the Obama Administration for signing legislation allowing people to carry guns in national parks?  Meantime, certain niche gun groups stage “Take Your Guns to Starbucks” rallies — theatrical curiosities all.
I can’t tell if the NRA endorsement of Harry Reid is a chink in the weird politics of the NRA or not.  Lest Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate is either Schumer or Durbin, and the chances that gun control just may slide back on the table increases.

Say something for Russ Feingold.  He voted against the Financial Reform package, for the misgivings you’d expect.  Criticized here in that it made Scott Brown the point-person for final approval.  Mostly we’re just back to the problem of the 60/40 rule, and the problem with the significance of what it means that 60 is the new 50 always.  But in “Overton Window” terms, this whence the “Perfect becomes the enemy of the good” rule falls apart, “perfect” and “good” being relative concepts prone to good tugs of “acceptable” definitions.  Being autonomous Senators has to mean something.  Feingold, and company’s, bluff of what they were willing to settle for was called with the Health Care Reform package — in the end, passing something was more meaningful than passing nothing.  With regard to financial reform, the problem facing Feingold was the difference of degrees in what the financial industry’s pressure beared on the Senate.

With respect to the autonomous Senator Jim Webb — yep, I knew this editorial was coming — only a matter of when, not if.  How did I know?  Because I read his book.
‘Tis the price Democrats paid to barely edge out a victory against a “Macaca” tossing Incumbent in the capital state of the old Confederacy.  There are a few things that might be said about the editorial — a theory of affirmative action is that we may just as well slide it to class, and it will manage to pick up race on a defacto basis.  Read up on the legacies of the “Mudsill Theory” to come up with the historical contours of class and race.
But if Shirley Sherrod should have a conversation with Obama about race, maybe she should also check in and converse with Jim Webb — arguably the point at which Webb stands is to ask not to befall those poor white farmers that Sherrod ended up helping.  This poll question comes back to the front, and I guess Webb falls right in with them.
It’s curious that the awkwardly discussed discourse on how “Obama’s experiences differs from the general black experience”, bubbled about in the 2008 campaign, resurface with regard to Sherrod.

Frustration with Obama and his administration’s treatment of Sherrod stem back to what it tells us about that “Overton Window”.  Watch Shephard Smith on Fox News speak of the problem here, and the phrase that plucks out here is “widely discredited website that has had inaccurate postings of videos in the past“.  Widely considered as such is not widely considered enough.  The term should long be affixed to Breitbart long time ago.  Instead, the Democratic Congress stripped federal funds for ACORN, and that particular story lives on.  The “Overton Window” placement equivalent of Breitbart is — perhaps Michael Moore.  Watching this odd little tiff with Rachel Maddow and Bill O’reilly, the telling point with O’reilly comes with his statement of incongruity — “And you have to be kidding with this fake ACORN scandal stuff. Unbelievable… do you live in this country?” — I’ll just say that he’d excoriate Moore for far less than Breitbart’s sins.

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