Over at Burlington Pol, Haik likes to use “Rocky” graphics to cast Bernie Sanders in the role of underdog prizefighter. It’s compelling imagery, but in my own opinion, the campaign that is most analogous to a ring match thus far is Welch vs. Rainville, where the Welch campaign has followed a trajectory and a strategy that is easy to compare to boxing.

Welch came out to a slow start in the early months of the year (when his campaign was focused on fundraising to the near exclusion of all else). Rainville provided a few opening due to inexperience and confusion, to which Welch responded with careful, guarded jabs – never taking full advantage. Nor did he take full advantage of his position as the more experienced fighter (and as Senate President Pro Tem – sorry, can’t find a boxing analogy for that position) to go after his opponent in the early rounds for maximum advantage.

But now that the fight has been joined in earnest, Welch looks like a champ. Made unsteady by her rookie mistakes, and further set off her stride by the tentative jabs of her opposition, Rainville is on the ropes, and has been playing a rope-a-dope strategy ever since. Welch has been steady, sure and far more aggressive in these middle rounds of the match, steadily (but not excessively) pounding away and keeping her on the ropes and off balance. Clearly Welch is going for a victory on points, rather than a KO, and so far he remains in firm control of the debate.

Rainville has been flailing for an opening. She feels Welch has vulnerability through her so-called “clean campaign pledge,” phony as it is (and more on my concerns about its implications for bloggers like me in a later post), but try as she might, she can’t connect from that angle.

[And trust me, as a former hack, I’ve seen campaigns try to make these sorts of things into issues on the left and it NEVER works – even when there’s a legitimate point to be made. It’s too abstract to an electorate more worried about bread and butter issues – and who generally assume that ALL politicians deal in too much – or too DIRTY – campaign money, so what’s the point? I daresay the only reason the matter of Rainville’s own record of accepting sleazy contributions got any legs at all was NOT because the Welch campaign turned it into an issue, but rather that the Rainville campaign’s continual waffling and dissembling on the matter made it into a COMPETENCE issue]

Rainville is now been pushed into the corner by Welch, who has launched his campaign conversation series with Rainville’s primary opponent, conservative darling and State Senator Mark Shepard of Bennington County. This will continue a steady, easy pounding into Rainville’s exposed gut that will continue, even as it starts doing real long-term damage to her ability to continue the match.

[And for those who might think that Shepard is playing the role of Democratic dupe, think again. This is the best thing that could have happened to the Shepard campaign, and will show Republican primary voters that he is ready, willing and able to take the issues most near and dear to the right-wing base right to the public and the Democratic candidate. All he has to do is hold his own and his numbers against Rainville will start to rise.]

Though nowhere near being knocked out, Rainville was clearly saved by the bell. She’s now caught her breath and has come out aggressively swinging with a new assault on Welch’s defenses:

It has been confirmed that US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) will come to Vermont on behalf of Republican Martha Rainville’s US House campaign.

The potential is there for Rainville to score big standing side-by-side with the popular McCain. A lot of Vermonters like him. Still, there is serious lemonade potential here. Much of the far right GOP base – even in Vermont – loath McCain for what they see as too many compromises and points of common ground with Democrats – which is truly ludicrous when you examine the facts: The Nation:

In fact, McCain has always been far more conservative than either his supporters or detractors acknowledge. In 2004 he earned a perfect 100 percent rating from Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and a 0 percent from NARAL. Citizens Against Government Waste dubs him a “taxpayer hero.” He has opposed extension of the assault-weapons ban, federal hate crimes legislation and the International Criminal Court. He has supported school vouchers, a missile defense shield and private accounts for Social Security. Well before 9/11 McCain advocated a new Reagan Doctrine of “rogue-state rollback.”

The pro-life, pro-school prayer, fiercely pro-Iraq War McCain’s record is hardly that of a liberal, and the “maverick” image which has given way to his courtship of the Religious Right was always more about campaign manuevering, rather than reality.

Regardless, it’s that same far-right GOP base that fancies Shepard. A couple well-orchestrated counter events that served to highlight that fact could actually cause a McCain event to further erode her support among this contingent, if things went just right.

In any event, as Welch continues to lead on points, Rainville is going to have to start looking for knockout opportunities as Election Day approaches.

Around Labor Day, start watching for some wild swings.

Here is an article which arrived in my email this morning.

I copied the chart he refers to and posted it at

http://stevemoyer.us/images/debtchart.jpg

As the author of this piece notes, the presumption
is that interest rates will remain where they are, at a historically low level.  If they rebound to higher levels the chart gets much worse much faster.

Basically, there is a structural deficit which leads to government bankrupcy or, in simple terms, economic collapse.

There are things we could do to avoid this fiasco.
For example, we could import a lot of people from other countries ( immigrants ) who would further expand our economy.  But the direction of the econmy is destined towards disaster unless there is a rapid expansion of it to increase the GDP and therefore the tax base. 

This curve also means that things like universal health care are being taken off of the table by the Republicans.  There simply isn’t the money for  it in the current system.

Please read the article which follows and add your own thoughts.  I’d like to know how you view this.

Steve

Government Debt: Termites in the House
By Bud Conrad

Recently I had the pleasure of having lunch with the Comptroller General of the United States, David M. Walker. He heads up the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the government’s internal watchdog. As he was about to give a talk on out-of-control government deficits, he had in his briefcase a chart on the size of the government’s obligations over time. Our discussion about those obligations over lunch was followed by an email exchange, and Walker kindly helped me source additional GAO data, all of which allowed me to confirm my analysis of the budget with projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

I have also met with Douglas Holtz-Eakin, head of CBO, who can competently recite the situation of six different budget projections without notes. The combined scenarios of the GAO and CBO provided me with the basis to create the following projection of the U.S. budget:

A clear picture emerges of a government completely out of control. The blue line is the history of the U.S. Federal Government debt. The green line shows the path we are now on, with debt soaring to impossible levels against projected GDP. Importantly, the source isn’t some crazy hand-waving blogger: these are the government’s own projections–and we all know they have every incentive to accent the positive. If this is the best they can do at this point, then you know things are not just bad, they are calamitous.

This glimpse at the future clearly shows that the debt of the U.S. will, in the foreseeable future, go from being a troubling yet manageable fraction of the economy to being several times the size of economy. That can’t happen without serious repercussions.

The government will be spending money they don’t have, which means creating more of it out of thin air and diluting the value of all the dollars that came before. It doesn’t take a Harvard MBA to know that the kind of deficits projected above guarantee a persistently weak dollar, higher inflation and higher interest rates going forward.

You may be right to criticize this analysis as only one of many scenarios being developed all the time and that there are other assumptions that lead to other estimates, and you would be right.

But I’ve looked at the assumptions, as has David Walker, and it is more likely that the assumptions have underestimated how serious the situation could become, maybe by a significant margin. For example, in the projections above, the interest rate paid by the government stays flat. Interest rates fell for 23 years and have only just recently bounced off of 45-year lows. The odds of interest rates staying at these low levels for decades into the future are, in my opinion, nil. I have analyzed the scenario of the impact of higher interest rates. The problem can get out of hand because it feeds on itself: higher interest rates lead to higher interest on debt, which leads to higher debt, which leads to greater loss in confidence in the dollar, which leads to higher interest rates… and the loop makes itself worse.

The Blame

Who is responsible for this sin of profligate spending? You could start by pointing a finger at the House of Representatives as they are constitutionally charged with holding the purse strings of the U.S. government. They voted for the spending and programs we are now saddled with, they pass tax programs, and vote in the big supplemental bills that fund the wars.

Entrusted with allocating the biggest sums of funding in the world, they clamor for more and, in the process, act like termites chewing away at the fiscal underpinnings of the economy, assuring the future bankruptcy of the nation. And it is not just the modern politicos that are responsible, but a failure to pursue sound monetary policies that extends back decades. Why do they do it? That answer is easy and reflective of human nature… they do it to curry favor with their constituents in order to get reelected.

Which further points the finger at us, the American public, who instead of voting the bums out for wasting our money and handing a legacy of debt to our grandchildren’s grandchildren, happily pocket the pork belly doled out and reward the most prolific spenders with our votes.

The bottom line is that debt and deficits are baked into the cake, exacerbated by the demographics of retiring baby boomers and a government that not only shows no intention of slowing its spending, but quite the opposite. In fact, like a penniless smoker breaking a child’s piggy bank to buy a pack, the debt-addicted government has already spent the supposed “Trust Funds” of Social Security and Medicare.

The government is closer to bankruptcy than anyone who has not studied the situation can guess. You will hear government apologists claim that the government can’t go bankrupt because they are the government, and along with a complicit Federal Reserve, they can meet any debt obligation because they have the printing press. That is precisely the problem. They can print any amount of money they want. That has been theoretically possible since we went off the gold standard in 1971.

It is this loss of any constraint on government spending that has let the genie out of the bottle. The track is now laid. The long-term future of the dollar is not in question. And to the extent that it is the basis of all other currencies, the reserve currency of the world’s central banks, all currencies are doomed.

Gold and the quality companies that produce or competently explore for it (our focus in the International Speculator) should no longer be viewed as entertaining speculations, but as portfolio requisites.

Reference: http://www.caseyresearch.com

In this current installment of Darren Allen SnarkWatch (OK, this is the first – and, who knows – maybe the last), I’d like to address two items that he is SHOCKED, SHOCKED to learn about…

One, he finds the Welch campaign’s response to learning of $21,000, spent on Martha Rainville’s behalf, to be whiny and insincere. And speculates that when the next quarterly reports come out, we’ll be sure to see that “the Democrat money machine in Washington is spreading its largesse to Welch.”

But, PoliticsVT is reporting a somewhat different story (my emphasis):

According to reports, the Republican’s national US House campaign spent over $21,000 on Vermont’s US House race further dividing a possible clean campaign pledge between Democrat Peter Welch and Republican Martha Rainville.

Rainville, according to the press, was shocked [SHOCKED, SHOCKED] when she learned that the national GOP had done a poll in Vermont. Rainville said that she would call the GOP in Washington and ask them what questions were being asked and if it was a “push poll.”

Wow, that’s a little different scenario, isn’t it?

And second, he’s troubled by the Sanders campaign’s response to learning of Tarrant staffers videotaping his campaign stops. He writes (my emphasis)…

Sanders and Welch and Tarrant and Rainville and James Douglas and Scudder Parker and every other major candidate always send emissaries to their opponents [sic] events. It’s as old a trick as they come…

But, uh oh, Peter Freyne has this to say (my emphasis)…

P.S. Yes, confirmed Lennon, that was the “Tarrant for Senate” campaign’s office manager Layla Gray grilling Bernie about his sugar contribution at the spaghetti dinner Sanders’ campaign held on Saturday in Swanton. Eyewitnesses say the Tarrant staffer did not tell the crowd who she worked for, and kept interrupting Sanders when he attempted to answer her question.

Lennon told “Inside Track” Ms. Gray had every right to be there and ask questions as a private citizen.

Technically, yes. But it is in rather poor taste, Ol’ Tim, for a campaign staffer. At least in Vermont. Can’t remember it ever happening before in the Green Mountains.

Maybe it’s kosher in your native New Hampshire, but in Vermont, the paid-staff doesn’t play “average citizen” at an opponent’s campaign event.

OK, so who’s right? (And I recognize that they are commenting on two slightly separate topics: Allen adds the videotape angle).

Odum was nice enough to say at the Political BBQ last Sunday that it was good that I don’t have any real inside knowledge of Vermont pol’s proclivities; that I might be able to report from the perspective of the average Vermonter’s media-generated perspective of the political climate.

So, I say again, who’s right, here?

Is Darren Allen correct when he says that “Politics, as most observers know by now, is a dirty game that has only one acceptable outcome — to win.”

Or is Peter Freyne accurately positing a much rosier portrait of the traditions of the Great State of Vermont?

(By the way, it appears that the reference to the BBQ and Odum are missing from the print edition of Freyne’s Inside Track. I’m sure (hope?) this was just edited down for space concerns, but…

Does the Inside Track blog Freyne says is looking for sponsors – read: Seven Days is trying to find funding to pay Peter for a few more hours a week – not want to highlight the consistent work being done by the future competition?

Who knows? But, fun to speculate about, eh?)

[Crossposted at What’s the Point?]