The Plum Line

Former top labor leader Andy Stern has privately informed deficit-commission co-chair Erskine Bowles that he will vote against the commission's package of proposals, a source close to Stern tells me, effectively ending hopes of getting the desired 14 members to support it.

Stern is the fifth of 18 commission members to decide against backing the commission's proposals. While it has long seemed unlikely that the proposals, which are filled with controversial spending cuts, would get the needed supermajority in tomorrow's vote, his opposition appears to officially put this out of reach.

Stern also retains influence among Dem politicians, so his opposition could build further resistance to the proposal among Dems who are still undecided.

Describing Stern's opposition to the proposals, the source close to him would only say the following: "In the end, there is not enough investment to create jobs, economic growth, and increase America's competitiveness."

The other commission members who have come out against the proposal are Dem Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Senator Max Baucus, and GOP Reps. Paul Ryan and Dave Camp.

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HAPPY HOUR ROUNDUP:

* So what's next on the Bush tax cuts? A senior Senate aide says Harry Reid may hold votes as early as tomorrow on the House-passed bill to extend just the middle class tax cuts.

Senate Dems are also set to vote as early as tomorrow on Chuck Schumer's proposal to extend the tax cuts just for those under $1 million, and the GOP proposal to extend all the cuts, which is necessary to gain GOP cooperation in holding votes at all. None is expected to pass, but the votes will put all senators on record.

* A key moment at today's hearing on Don't Ask Don't Tell: Senator Susan Collins directly undercut one of the chief arguments John McCain has been making against repeal, potentially giving moderates more cover to climb aboard.

McCain has been arguing rather obtusely that the Pentagon report is flawed because it didn't directly ask service-members to state whether they want DADT repealed. But as Collins pointed out in her testimony today, servicemembers weren't asked whether they wanted go to Afghanistan, and the report does convey a very clear sense of where they are on this issue.

* Jonathan Capehart skewers McCain's "ignorance, stubbornness and willful disregard for the leadership of the military."

* Steve Benen gets it exactly right on Robert Gates' testimony: "For Republicans open to even the slightest bit of reason, this should offer them all the cover they need." Keep an eye on the moderates.

* Quote of the day, from an anonymous Dem aide, exasperated by all the talk about a deal in which Republicans would allow a vote on New START in exchange for concessions from Dems:

"The idea that Republicans would give us a vote on their f*cking treaty -- I mean, this was Ronald Reagan's treaty, we're just extending it -- is crazy."

Indeed it is.

* Is all the chatter about a pending deal on the Bush tax cuts wrong? Robert Gibbs emails:

"The talks are ongoing and productive, but any reports that we are near a deal in the tax cuts negotiations are inaccurate and premature."

* Ezra Klein has a very good, if dispiriting, post gaming out what might have been on the tax cuts.

* David Kurtz's reaction to the House Dems' successful vote today to extend the middle class tax cuts: "Now that wasn't so hard, was it."

* The White House has compiled an impressive dossier of newspaper editorials from around the country calling for DADT repeal.

* White House officials want to add the "Obama tax cuts" to the Bush tax cut negotiations.

* And in case you're wondering why Nigerian authorities are coming after Dick Cheney, Michael Scherer explains all.

What else is happening?

With everybody beating up on Obama's handling of the Bush tax cuts fight, it's only fair to note one crucial thing in the White House's defense: It isn't Obama's fault that Congressional Democrats punted on holding a vote on just the middle class tax cuts before the election. Indeed, the White House appears to have wanted just the opposite.

As many commentators have noted already, the failure to do that vote left Dems with precious little leverage in the current lame-duck showdown over the tax cuts. As David Leonhardt argues today, Dems "had their chance to win on this issue." Before the election, forcing Republicans to vote on just the middle class tax cuts would have thrown them on the defensive. Now they can basically run out the clock.

It's important to remember that the White House is not to blame for this. My understanding from the reporting I did at the time is that White House officials repeatedly signaled to Dem Congressional leaders that they wanted the vote to happen. Nancy Pelosi, too, wanted it to happen. But she and Steny Hoyer ultimately deferred to moderate Dems who feared such a vote would allow Republicans to paint them as tax hikers. Dem leaders also worried that they might lose the vote, though it's unclear why this should have mattered: It still would have forced House GOPers to make a tough choice before the election.

It's also key to keep in mind that when the possibility of the vote was still hanging over the elections, Dems were on the offensive. They were winning. As Ezra Klein reminds us, Republicans were clearly caught in a bind. House GOPers like John Boehner and Dave Camp were actually saying they might vote with the Dems. That was a clear signal that Dems held the cards at the time. Yet they punted anyway. Now Republicans are in a stronger position: Dems have been "shellacked," Republicans are no longer facing an election, and the tight timing of the lame-duck session has given the GOP more leverage.

You could argue that the White House could have been more vocal about their desire for a pre-election vote or pushed Dem leaders harder to make it happen. But the White House was right to grant Congressional leaders the leeway to chart their own course. And at a certain point, it's tiresome to hear Dems blame the White House for their own lack of spine or leadership. Amid the roar of criticism of the White House, let's keep in mind that they aren't to blame for a key aspect of the Dems' current predicament.

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UPDATE, 3:52 p.m.: The House just passed an extension of only the middle class tax cuts, by a comfortable margin. There are now 229 votes in favor. Recall that one key argument against holding the vote before the election was that Dems might lose. And maybe moderate Dems would have been more reluctant to vote Yes before facing voters. But I doubt it. It's far more likely that when it came down to it, enough Dems would have voted Yes to pass it. More proof that punting on the earlier vote was a profound error.

UPDATE, 4:01 p.m.: In fairness, though, whatever the mistakes of the past, House Dem leaders do deserve props for getting this done today, even if it's a non starter in the Senate. It's another sign that Minority Leader Pelosi is likely to be every bit as confrontational as we've been led to expect.

It's important that we be 100 percent clear on what happened at this morning's Senate hearings on Don't Ask Don't Tell. Military leaders essentially pleaded with GOP Senators to support repealing DADT, arguing that the failure to do so would put the state of our military at serious risk.

Remarkably, despite this clear plea, many Republican Senators still appear unwilling to allow the military leadership's request to do what they believe is right by our military to be a serious factor in their thinking.

In his testimony this morning, Defense Secretary Robert Gates put this as clearly as you could ask for. He noted that the courts are getting more involved in DADT, and said he worried that if the courts abruptly overturn the policy, it could leave the military leadership utterly incapable of responding without harming the armed forces.

"We would have zero time to prepare," Gates said. "No time to train. No time to prepare. That is the worst imaginable outcome as far as I'm concerned, and has very high risk to the force." By contrast, Gates said, if Congress repeals DADT, it would afford him more control over the timetable, allowing him to monitor the impact of repealing the policy and to adjust accordingly.

That's not all. Along these lines, there was also an exchange with Senator Scott Brown, who is considered a potential vote for repeal, that stood out.

Brown asked Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon official who wrote the report on DADT repeal, if he thought it could be potentially harmful if the courts, rather than Congress, overturned DADT. Johnson cited an October court decision that called for immediate repeal that has since been reversed.

"In terms of timing, we are in a very unpredictable environment," he said. "We got a taste of that in October, where all of a sudden we had a court order that required the Secretary of Defense to shut down this policy worldwide." Johnson reiterated Gates' point from above, adding that this had caught military leaders completely off guard.

The bottom line message from these military leaders to GOP Senators couldn't be clearer: Please repeal this policy, so we can carry out repeal in a judicious, careful way, before the courts force us to do it in a rushed and haphazard manner, potentially harming our military.

The burden of proof is on Senator Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) to show that monitoring Russia's nuclear arsenal is more important than making sure the top 2% get a tax cut. Whatever genuine substantive concerns Republicans have about the START treaty--the ones they've come up with aren't convincing--the dispute over the Bush tax cuts shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not the treaty is ratified.

Today, five former Republican secretaries of state urged Republicans in the Senate to ratify the new START treaty:

It is a modest and appropriate continuation of the START I treaty that expired almost a year ago. It reduces the number of nuclear weapons that each side deploys while enabling the United States to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent and preserving the flexibility to deploy those forces as we see fit. Along with our obligation to protect the homeland, the United States has responsibilities to allies around the world. The commander of our nuclear forces has testified that the 1,550 warheads allowed under this treaty are sufficient for all our missions - and seven former nuclear commanders agree. The defense secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the Missile Defense Agency - all originally appointed by a Republican president - argue that New START is essential for our national defense.

Yesterday, however, Kyl, who once complained that the Obama administration wasn't moving fast enough to extend those verification procedures, made ratification of the START treaty contingent on extending $700 billion in tax cuts for top earners, suggesting that if no deal was reached on the cuts by Monday, there wouldn't be any time left to deal with START.

Consider Kyl's actions -- and those of anyone in the GOP caucus who would join him, as a statement of the Republican Party's true priorities. Republicans say their goal is deficit reduction, but they are willing to hold verification of Russia's nuclear arsenal hostage to budget-busting tax cuts that will have little stimulative effect on the economy. A "strong national defense" is supposed to be one of the pillars of American conservatism, but the Senate GOP stands ready to undermine a key part of the global non-proliferation regime--one put in place by a Republican president--at a time when international pressure is needed to curtail the nuclear ambitions of countries like Iran.

There's been some recent indication that some of Kyl's colleagues aren't quite as interested in playing games with the START treaty, and that's a good sign. But New START still hangs in the balance.

At bottom, this controversy really amounts to a struggle over the soul of the GOP on foreign policy. Is the GOP still the party of James Baker, George Schultz, Henry Kissinger, Larry Eagleburger and Colin Powell, or has it finally become nothing more than the party of John Bolton, John Yoo and Liz Cheney?

Now this is a pretty in-your-face move: The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which yesterday unveiled a new ad hitting Obama as weak in the Bush tax cut fight, is now going to run the ad in Iowa.

Yesterday, PCCC announced that the ad -- which you can watch below -- would run only on D.C. cable, which meant it would only be seen by political elites. But Adam Green of the PCCC says that the group has since yesterday raised more than $50,000 from some 3,000 people to fund the ad, allowing the group to put it on the air in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids.

This means actual voters will see the spot, the first hitting Obama from the left of the new cycle. Iowa has special significance, because it's there that Obama made his 2007 campaign promise to let the tax cuts for the wealthy expire, which is the centerpiece of the ad. The spot demands that Obama stick to his promise and not "cave" to Republicans by extending the tax cuts for the rich.

"We're bringing our ad to the place President Obama made his core campaign promise of letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire," Green tells me. "There is no room for compromise on an issue where the promise is so clear and where the Republicans are standing with the wealthiest 2% of Americans against the entirety of the American people."

Between this spot and the new one unveiled this morning by MoveOn, it's clear that the left has settled on a strategy of actively trying to damage Obama politically with the base and with left-leaning independents by painting him as weak, to force him to draw a harder line against Republicans. The left, clearly, has no intention of stopping with these efforts.

Surely some will insist that it only helps Obama to be attacked from the left. But efforts to encourage the perception that Obama is weak and refuses to fight -- which is gaining some traction with the mainstream media, whether fair or not -- could very well damage Obama politically over the long term. And the White House will probably have to deal with it sooner or later.

* Five GOP heavy-hitters make the case for New START: Now that the secretaries of state for the past five GOP presidents have argued that we must ratify New START, surely that will be enough to overcome Jon Kyl's objections.

Key nugget: The five conspicuously note that the Obama administration has provided "reasonable answers" to all lingering questions about the treaty.

Oddly enough, none of those five saw fit to mention the relevance of the Bush tax cuts, which Kyl wants to see resolved by Monday for New START have a prayer of passing this year.

* Dems set to accept "compromise" on Bush tax cuts? All signs indicate that Dems and Republicans will agree to temporary extension of all the cuts.

If that happens, the key question becomes: What are Dems getting in return for agreeing to do it the GOP's way temporarily, kicking the can down the road on the understanding that we're just going to have this conversation again in a few years?

* Dems resigned to the inevitable: Democratic aides on the Hill are already preparing themselves for Dem leaders to give in on the tax cuts without getting much of anything in return.

* What to watch today: The Senate Armed Services Committee this morning kicks off two days of hearings on Don't Ask Don't Tell. Keep an eye on how GOP moderates respond to the Pentagon's report -- if they seem to be signaling that the report was persuasive, this will increase the pressure on Harry Reid to allot the time necessary for debate and amendments, removing the final pretext moderates have for opposing repeal.

* Question of the day: E.J. Dionne marvels at the perfect confluence of the deficit-commission report coming out just as Dems appear ready to "cave" on the Bush tax cuts:

How can anyone take a deficit-reduction proposal seriously when the main order of business in Congress is to make sure we widen the deficit by keeping all of the Bush tax cuts?

Easy, E.J.: Because in this town, all things produced by bipartisan wise-man panels that derive their authority from nothing more than the approval of centrist opinionmakers are by definition serious.

* Dems too scared to fight in this media environment? Jonathan Cohn seems to agree with yours truly that Dems tend to decide in advance they can't win protracted struggles once Republicans go on the attack:

The wimp factor is also a problem. Many Democrats are simply too scared to fight right now. They think the merits of arguments don't make a difference -- that, between Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, they just can't win media arguments anymore.

* New MoveOn ad demands Obama get tough with GOP: MoveOn goes up with a new spot on national cable calling on Obama to stop getting "pushed around."

Key takeaway: This is another sign that the left will continue encouraging the perception of Obama as weak and spineless -- something that could prove very damaging politically in the long run -- until he draws a much harder line against Republicans.

* Looming fight to keep an eye on: In a sign of the times, the Environmental Protection Agency, which is preparing new measures to curb carbon dioxide and other pollutants, braces for a massive backlash from the new House GOP majority.

* History lesson of the day: Dana Milbank reminds us that the push by some House GOPs to allow states to nullify federal laws they don't like bears a passing resemblance to the events that led to the Civil War and Jim Crow.

* Filibuster reform update: It's a good thing that there's a new crop of young Dem senators who do not share the old-guard's delusions about the current dynamics in the Senate.

* Bold pronouncement of the day: Kevin Drum, on Obama's continuing quest for bipartisan compromise:

"Obama has another two or three weeks to prove he's not an idiot."

* And the Tea Partyers demand full repeal or else: In another sign that GOP leaders will be hard pressed to keep the Tea Party happy on health reform, the movement's leaders are now insisting that even "repeal and replace" is unacceptable. Only full repeal, without any "replace" nonsense, will do.

What else is happening?

* With House Dems set to hold a high-stakes vote tomorrow on extending just the middle class tax cuts, it's worth noting that a fair amount of moderate Dems may buck the leadership and vote No.

A partial list of Dems who may vote against extending the middle class tax cuts: Heath Shuler, Jason Altmire, Gary Peters, Glenn Nye, Dan Boren, and Joe Donnelly.

These are Dems who want to see all the tax cuts extended. The question is whether they will oppose a middle class tax cut as a result.

* Also: It doesn't help Dems when you have Reps. like Rush Holt out there arguing that some families over $250,000 "don't consider themselves rich."

* Questionable assertion of the day, from David Broder:

Both sides have been sobered by the midterm elections and have emerged chastened and prepared to talk.

That must be why a sobered and chastened Mitch McConnell released a letter just today vowing to block all Dem initiatives unless Republicans get their way on the tax cuts for the wealthy. Moving right along...

* Speaking of McConnell's threat letter, Jonathan Bernstein has a really interesting suggestion: Dems now have the perfect pretext to respond with the nuclear option, i.e., doing away with the filibuster...

In response to the GOP threat to hold up absolutely everything in the lame duck session apart from tax cuts and appropriations, there's nothing to stop Harry Reid from going to the Senate floor, blasting Republicans for obstructing the business of the nation, and threatening to go nuclear -- to eliminate the filibuster by majority vote -- unless Republicans knock it off.

* Ezra Klein has a nice post endorsing the filibuster reform proposal from Senator Jeff Merkley I wrote about earlier.

* Contra McConnell's threat letter, two more moderate GOP Senators, Dick Lugar and Lisa Murkowski, may be willing to vote to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell even if the Bush tax cut standoff isn't resolved.

* Indeed, as Brian Beutler notes, when Harry Reid forced the issue on Wall Street reform, he broke the GOP filibuster. Time to do the same on DADT?

* And: Joe Lieberman, who's been working DADT hard behind the scenes, reiterates that he's still convinced GOP moderates are there to support repeal in the end.

* Steve Benen has a nice overview of the increasingly interesting battle over ethanol subsidies.

* And a bloc of Senators has now come out in defense of the subsidies. I'm telling, you, this is a story to watch.

* Senator Jon Kyl says New START is on hold unless Reublicans get the tax cuts resolved to their satisfaction by Monday at the latest.

* Which prompts a very good question from Josh Rogin:

"Did the price of New START just go up by $700 billion?"

Apparently so! Clearly, the midterms left Kyl "sobered" and "chastened" too.

What else is happening?

With House Dems set to hold a high-stakes vote tomorrow on extending just the middle class tax cuts, Republicans are fanning out to denounce the move as a tax hike. The idea is that a plan to extend just the low end tax cuts would mean that the high end ones would expire at the end of the year. Presto: Tomorrow's vote is a vote for a tax hike.

But Dems have their pushback at the ready: They will point out that some House Republicans themselves said a few months ago that they would vote to extend just the middle class tax cuts, if given just that option.

For instance: Today, House GOP Rep. Dave Camp, one of the top GOP negotiators in the standoff over the Bush tax cuts, denounced the Dem plan for a vote today as a "push to raise taxes."

But back in July, when another such vote was being mulled by Dems, Camp said he might support it:

Camp said it would be difficult to block a bill extending middle class tax cuts, even if it doesn't stop tax rates from increasing for high earners.

"I'll probably vote for it myself," Camp said.

Similarly, John Boehner also said back in September he would support an extension of just the middle class tax cuts if that were his only option, before reversing himself.

With Republicans certain to widely denounce tomorrow's vote as a tax hike on small businesses, expect Dems to point to these previous GOP quotes to argue that even Republicans have acknowledged that a vote to extend middle class tax cuts is, well, just a vote to extend middle class tax cuts.

Outgoing Ohio Governor Ted Strickland erupts in an interview with Sam Stein, blaming Dems for failing to win the argument over the Bush tax cuts:

Strickland said he was dumbfounded at the party's inability to sell the idea that the rates for the wealthy should be allowed to expire.

"I mean, if we can't win that argument we might as well just fold up," he said. "These people are saying we are going to insist on tax cuts for the richest people in the country and we don't care if they are paid for, and we don't think it is a problem if it contributes to the deficit, but we are not going to vote to extend unemployment benefits to working people if they aren't paid for because they contribute to the deficit. I mean, what is wrong with that? How can it be more clear?"

I understand Strickland's frustration, but he's wrong in a crucial sense. If you judge by public opinion, then Dems were winning the argument over the Bush tax cuts, and were in fact successfully selling the idea that the high end rates should expire.

Here, for instance, is a new Gallup poll out today finding that 44 percent want to let the tax cuts expire for various categories of wealthy Americans, while only 40 percent want to keep all the tax cuts. A Marist-McClatchy poll earlier this week found that 51 percent favor extending only the tax cuts for those under $250,000 (the position of most Dems), while 45 percent favor extending them all (the GOP position).

Meanwhile, a recent NBC/WSJ poll found that the Dem position of extending only the middle class tax cuts has far more support than any other option on the table right now.

At risk of overgeneralizing, the problem isn't that Dems aren't capable of winning an argument. It's that they don't think they're capable of winning a protracted political standoff, even on an issue where the public is on their side, once Republicans start going on the attack. They seem to set their goal early on at salvaging a compromise, rather than going for the win. As a result, they tend to telegraph weakness at the outset, sending a clear message that they'll essentially give Republicans what they want as long as they can figure out a way to call it a compromise.

Conservatives and right-wing Republicans have come up with an interesting response to the WikiLeaks scandal: They're linking it to their ongoing "American exceptionalism" attack, in order to advance the narrative that Obama, in terms of culture and identity, is fundamentally un-American.

As Greg wrote earlier this week, the abstract Republican attack line about Obama not believing in "American exceptionalism" -- premised on an isolated quote that ignores his later endorsement of the concept in the same speech -- is really about harnessing all the lies about Obama's background into a narrative that isn't as easy to refute as birtherism or false rumors about Obama being a Muslim. Having settled on this narrative as the one they intend to carry into the 2012 elections, Republicans are insisting that Obama won't aggressively pursue WikiLeaks because he's not really American.

Yesterday, in an exchange flagged by Mediaite, Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) told a right-wing radio host that the leaks didn't bother Obama because "his entire political upbringing has been on the left, when he was in school and they talked about great American heroes of the 1960s, 1970s, no one was greater than Daniel Ellsberg. That's just part of the DNA of that liberal group that is in the White House today. This is how they were raised, this is their whole political culture."

"The underlying problem, thus far with this administration," King said, "apart from everything else, apart from issues where you can have a debate on, on the issues of American exceptionalism, on the issues of absolute necessity to put American security first, rather than thinking we can resolve it and somehow sit around and sing Kumbaya with third world countries."

I'm no cryptologist, but this, roughly translated, says that Obama won't prosecute WikiLeaks -- or declare them a terrorist organization, as King has suggested -- because he doesn't believe in American exceptionalism. Never mind that the Obama administration is already looking for ways to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. And never mind that there are real legal obstacles to doing just that, which, if surmounted, could jeopardize the work of mainstream media organizations as well. Ultimately the mainstream press may be King's real target -- years ago he was calling for the prosecution of The New York Times for revealing the existence of a government program tracking alleged terrorist finances.

King isn't the only one pushing this narrative. Yesterday, Dave Weigel talked to Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who gave a similar analysis:

"I believe this ought to be pursued with the greatest intensity," said Sessions. "I think the maximum sentences should be sought whenever anybody is proven to have violated the law, and I think it ought to be relentless. The president from on down ought should be crystal clear on this. And I haven't seen that. I mean, he comes out of the left. The anti-war left, they've always glorified people who leak sensitive documents. Now he's the commander-in-chief, so he's got a challenge. I haven't researched the law but I hope that they're working on it. I'm sure that they are."

Sessions's statement offers another example of how detached from reality this narrative truly is -- even after escalating troop levels in Afghanistan, Republicans identify Obama with the "anti-war left."

It's strange that we're relitigating the Vietnam War. It's stranger still that the right still seems to regard Ellsberg leaking the Pentagon Papers as a greater crime than the government lying to its citizens about the course of the war. The other thing worth noting is that, for all the talk about Obama not believing in American exceptionalism, the right's understanding of how freedom of speech works is one that would be more at home in one of those despotic, "third world countries" Republicans act like they have contempt for.

Adam Serwer is a staff writer at The American Prospect, where he writes his own blog.