The Unbearble Burden of Wealth

“What about when I get to the convention? Last time, I was sitting in a box. This time, I may not even get a ticket!”

―Anonymous Bush Donor

Among theses you just don’t hear much about was one that arrived in a college catalog some years ago, showing off the work of their graduates. A Master’s degree was awarded for a paper connecting the French Revolution to fashion styles demanding distressed clothing. Think professionally-ripped, stone-washed skinny jeans circa the hair-glam years. And, to be certain, it makes sense. Tattered, battle-weary revolutionaries stumbling home victorious; ’tis a romantic image, we might suppose, if the horrors of war count for romance.

The late Benjamin DeMott called the modern phenomenon Omni Syndrome, in which the object is to conform to the styles and standards of the largest demographic classifications within a society. Thus the dictator plays up his revolutionary history; politicians argue about log cabins and bread bags; the rich and famous want to be seen as just like everybody else, but only as long as it advances their careers.

There was a time when being a millionaire meant something in these United States. Omni Syndrome is so easily twisted that a presidential candidate can argue that a multimillionaire is “middle class”. And now these middle-class millionaires hope to complain that their extraordinary influence is waning.

“Staffers”? Politically engaged millionaires have been reduced to hearing from aides rather than the candidates themselves? The horror.

Evidently, in this new environment, with a proliferation of hyper-wealthy donors, mere millionaires don’t receive the consideration and responsiveness to which they’ve grown accustomed. Neese told the Post that the major Republican presidential hopefuls are “only going to people who are multi-multi-millionaires and billionaires.”

One former Bush Ranger complained, “What about when I get to the convention? Last time, I was sitting in a box. This time, I may not even get a ticket!” ....

.... The piece added that there’s “palpable angst” among donors who used to receive VIP treatment, but whose phones no longer ring: “One longtime bundler recently fielded a call from a dispirited executive on his yacht, who complained, ‘We just don’t count anymore.'”

(Benen)

Kansas, Like Only Kansas Can Do

Do we really have to re-introduce the one and only Kris Kobach? You know, the Kansas Secretary of State who consults around the country on development of anti-immigration and vote-fraud laws? The Birther who threatened to keep President Obama off the 2012 ballot in the Sunflower State?

Right. That one.

During last year’s election, the Kansas Secretary of State chastised U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom, complaining to the media that Kobach’s office had referred examples of voter fraud to the Kansas-based federal prosecutor, but Grissom has refused to prosecute. Worse, Kobach said the U.S. Attorney didn’t “know what he’s talking about” when Grissom said voter fraud doesn’t exist in Kansas.

The AP reports today that when Kobach made these claims, he appears to have been brazenly lying (thanks to my colleague Tricia McKinney for the heads-up).

[I]n a Nov. 6 letter sent from Grissom to Kobach and obtained by The Associated Press through an open records request, the prosecutor responded that his office received no such referrals from Kobach, and chided the secretary of state for his statements.

“Going forward, if your office determines there has been an act of voter fraud please forward the matter to me for investigation and prosecution,” Grissom wrote. “Until then, so we can avoid misstatements of facts for the future, for the record, we have received no voter fraud cases from your office in over four and a half years. And, I can assure you, I do know what I’m talking about.”

Wait, it gets worse.

Kobach now concedes that when he said he’d referred voter-fraud cases to the U.S. Attorney’s office, he had not, in reality, referred voter-fraud cases to the U.S. Attorney’s office. But, the right-wing official told the AP, Kobach’s predecessor had alerted the federal prosecutor to two relevant cases and Grissom ignored those referrals.

It turns out, that’s not true, either: federal investigators looked into those 2011 allegations and, as the AP report noted, they concluded they were not voter fraud.

Or so explains the inimitable Steve Benen, whose narrative is as compelling as always. It is drawn from an Associated Press article, which for its own part explains:

Grissom told the AP last week that Kobach never replied to his letter.

“We want to uphold the integrity of the voting system and people’s ability to exercise their right and have their voice heard as part of the process,” Grissom said. “And we have the ability, we have the resources, to prosecute any case in which someone believes there has been any voter fraud or voter misrepresentation.”

Kobach acknowledged in an email to the AP last week that his office never has sent suspected voter fraud cases to Grissom, citing instead what he said was inaction on cases referred by his predecessor.

Grissom said the FBI determined two cases referred before Kobach took office in January 2011 were not voter fraud.

Kobach said last week that his office “felt it would be more productive to refer cases first to Kansas county attorneys rather than sending them first to Mr. Grissom’s office.”

“That is the approach we have taken for the last few years,” he said.

Another Detail

A certain point works its way to the fore; but does it really matter?

The conservative narrative of a nationwide Republican wave is incubating in these states, where Democrats are underperforming Obama. It must therefore be true that allegiance to Obama is a decisive factor everywhere.

But that narrative cannot account for the GOP’s remarkable underperformance in Georgia, Kansas, and Kentucky. Mitt Romney won those states by eight points, 22 points, and 23 points respectively. Right now, also respectively, Republican David Perdue is leading Democrat Michelle Nunn by two to six points; GOP incumbent Pat Roberts is running behind Independent Greg Orman by about a point; and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is leading Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes by three to five points. Grimes is outperforming McConnell’s 2008 challenger Bruce Lunsford, who lost by six points in a Democratic wave year. Kraushaar attributes this better-than-the-fundamentals resilience to “her attempts to appease both the party base and more-conservative voters in her state,” which have been “painfully awkward.”

If I had to, I’d put money on Democrats losing all three. But you have to be really invested in a certain conception of politics to explain races that close in states that red as evidence of a national anti-Obama wave. Or to attribute their losses to insufficient Obama bashing.

(Beutler)

That is to say it would seem this should be obvious to any reasonably attentive political observer, but the preponderance of evidence suggests otherwise. It is, however, somewhat gratifying to know that we aren’t the only ones who noticed.

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Beutler, Brian. “It Won’t Be Obama’s Fault When the Democrats Lose the Senate”. The New Republic. 30 October 2014.