It’s hardly a secret or an accident that much of politics revolves around the elimination of doubt among voters on public policy issues. Base-mobilization strategies for elections typically involve convincing people with clear preferences but weak civic engagement (or doubts about their own “team”) that any given trip to the ballot box is of epochal importance. Swing-voter persuasion strategies also tend to focus on efforts to convince the undecided that one’s party or candidate will make the country a much happier place. And while doubt’s evil twin, fear, most definitely has a place in both base and swing strategies, it’s still aimed at convincing voters there is a clear and unambiguous, if largely negative, difference between the consequences of voting this way or that.

I mention the dubious political status of doubt in the context of a long and fascinating piece I just published on The Democratic Strategist by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, director of The Progressive Project, entitled “Zero For Thirty-One: Lessons From the Loss in Maine.” A veteran of the struggle for LGBT rights and marriage equality, Beach-Ferrara concludes that ballot measures to stop gay marriage keep winning in no small part because equality advocates don’t talk much to conflicted voters, particularly those for whom religious dogma pulls them away from their own personal sense of fairness--i.e., non-bigots who are lumped in with bigots in most LGBT-rights strategies.

Based on her first-hand interviews with torn voters, Beach-Ferrara contends that marriage equality activists would do well to spend some time convincing such voters to reflect their true convictions by conscientiously passing up the opportunity to make a choice they aren’t prepared to make. In other words, rather than pushing people to come down on one side or the other, activists should have looked at doubt as a political asset.

There has been a lot of talk lately about whether Obama is or is not losing support among independents.   Charles Franklin, writing at Pollster.Com, insists there is no evidence of defection among independents or Democrats. “There is no evidence that any group of Democrats, especially liberal Democrats, are unhappy with Obama,” Franklin writes. But the most recent Gallup Poll shows significant signs of defection among independents and Democrats.  Obama lost 18 percentage points – from 62 to 44 percent approval – among independents. 

And what about Democrats? The figures here are disturbing. Obama has increased his approval among non-white Democrats from 90 to 92 percent over the year; but his approval rating among white Democrats has dropped from 87 to 76 percent, and his overall approval among whites by 22 percentage points. If you put these figures together with a 19 percentage point drop in approval among people who have attended college, but don’t have post-graduate degrees, it looks very much like Obama is hemorrhaging support in the middle and upper reaches of the white working class, where he had some trouble in the primaries against Hillary Clinton, and where Democrats have been vulnerable since 1968. It’s the McGovern problem. Obama can, of course, regain enough of these voters by 2012 to win re-election, but it’s still a danger sign for him and the Democrats.

From the A.P.:

ELLENWOOD, Ga. -- Someone made off with loot from a Georgia church but also left behind an apology. A note scrawled on the wall said: "Sorry but I'm poor. Forgive me Lord." The Rev. Roger Davis tells WSB-TV that expensive equipment including microphones and a laptop containing important records were stolen over the weekend from Berean Baptist Church. The robber broke locks and the church's safe, but it was empty.

It was the fourth time the church in Ellenwood, southeast of Atlanta, has been robbed in two years.

Davis joked he's considering putting up a note of his own telling potential robbers to call him instead and the church will take up a collection for them.

I detect a serious moral hazzard problem with this scheme.

I don't normally read Victor Davis Hanson, who's a fruitcake even by the standards of National Review Online, but i was intrigued by the headline of his latest column, "The New War Against Reason." Hanson's thesis holds that, despite promising to heed science, the Obama administration has gone to war against empiricism. Since this is one of the few things the right has not previously accused Obama of doing, I thought I'd see what Hanson's evidence is. Here we go!

For decades, the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has maintained a rational, scientifically based, and nonpartisan system of reporting the nation’s “seasonally adjusted unemployment rate.” Presidents of both parties respected its metrics. Their own popularity sunk or soared on the basis of officially released jobless numbers, as tabulated and computed by the nonpartisan Bureau. The public trusted in a common standard of assessing presidential job performance.

The BLS is still releasing its monthly report, but alongside it the Obama administration has created a new postmodern barometer called jobs “created or saved.”

Over the last nine months, the official government website Recovery.gov has informed us how the stimulus has saved jobs — even as hard data reflected the unpleasant truth of massive and spiraling job losses.

In other words, not the real number of jobs lost, but rather the supposed number of jobs saved by Barack Obama’s vast dispersion of borrowed money, was to be the correct indicator of employment.

Ok. Hanson doesn't say that the Obama administration has suppressed or altered the BLS's calculation of unemployment. He charges it with creating another website that attempts to calculate how many jobs were saved by the stimulus -- a premise that is shared by the major macroeconomic forecasting firms. Hanson seems to further believe that this figure is intended as a substitute for the unemployment level, betraying an inability to grasp the distinction between the current unemployment rate and how many jobs were saved as a result of the stimulus. How can anybody not understand the difference between these two things? His chain of reasoning is just so wildly illogical you can't even refute it.

A new Washington Post poll shows that the proportion of Americans who believe global warming is occurring has dipped by one tenth in the past year (from 80 percent to 72 percent). Leave aside the fact that most of this shift might be explained by the margin of error. Isn't it still remarkable that a majority of Republicans still believe warming is occurring? Several years ago that fact alone would have been cause for a headline.

As its "Arena" question to pundits this morning, Politico has "Obama's Charisma: Where Did He Leave it?"

The implication seems to be--and I feel as though I've heard a variation on this question asked not infrequently of late--that Obama was such a dazzling, inspirational, transformational campaigner that it's hard to fathom where this wonky, chilly, pathologically measured grind of a president came from.

What? Are we all suffering from short-term memory loss? Especially early during the presidential primary, the big storyline on Obama was that he was a big ol' dud, boring audiences throughout Iowa and New Hampshire with his non-uplifting trail talk. As for the above-it-all, pointy headed, non-emotive streak, that has long been the rap on him.

Yes, Obama has the juice to thrill the globe with his from-the-pulpit-esque speeches. (Which he still delivers when occasion calls.) But it's not as though the guy has ever been known for his overwhelming warmth or charisma in the daily ebb and flow of things. He is as he has always presented himself to us.

Just when momentum was starting to build for increased capital requirements as the core element of an approach that will reign in reckless risk-taking, Morgan Stanley effectively demolishes the idea.

In “Banking – Large & Midcap Banks: Bid for Growth Caps Capital Ask,” (no public link available) Betsy Graseck, Ken Zorbo, Justin Kwon, and John Dunn of Morgan Stanley Research North America dissect the coming demands for more bank capital. 

“In short, we think the demand for growth and access to credit will trump desire for unprofitable capital levels…

For the large cap and midcap banks, we expect normalized median common tier-1 ratios to come in at 8.4% and 10.0% respectively.”

That’s less capital than Lehman had just before it failed--11 percent. (If you doubt this, read the transcript of the final Lehman conference call--link is in this NYT.com piece or try this direct link; see p.7, for example)

President Obama is about to badly alienate antiwar Democrats by sending more troops to Afghanistan. So who will lead the charge on their behalf against the new policy? David Obey seems to want the job. The Wisconsin congressman, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee and opposes the troop increase, put forth legislation last week that proposes to finance the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by raising taxes. “I went through the Vietnam years when the cost of that damn war drained away the ability to do anything else,” he told Politico. “I chair the committee that has to say no to effort after effort to rebuild economy.” Few think the legislation could pass Congress. But don’t expect Obey to drop the matter. The 40-year House veteran has endured more than his share of Washington fights, and he doesn’t have a history of backing down.

After being elected to Congress in 1969 at the tender age of 30, Obey rankled his senior colleagues by pushing a number of ethics reforms. He made sure that committee hearings, often held behind closed doors, were open to the public and corralled colleagues into disclosing their financial affairs in order to reveal potential conflicts of interest. In 2002, Obey sparred with the Bush administration, which tried to humiliate him by including a color photo of an ice sled on its 2003 budget plan—a reference to the congressman’s earmark for an $80,000 rescue sled to be used on frozen lakes in his home district. Obey responded that the administration had “a severe attitude problem.” At the same time, he attacked Bush for not sharing information about homeland security with Congress. “No information, no money,” he said. Obey won a partial victory when homeland security chief Tom Ridge met behind closed doors with a House Appropriations subcommittee.

But it was the Iraq war that truly brought Obey into the national spotlight. In 2007, against all odds, he pushed a supplemental war spending bill that included a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq through the House. He lashed out at antiwar protesters who opposed the bill, calling them “idiot liberals.” He also disseminated false information to various Democratic colleagues in order to ferret out leaks. (He apologized for the former but not the latter.) The measure was vetoed by Bush, but Obey refused to let it go. Months later, he introduced an income tax bill to help pay for the Iraq war. Arguing in favor of the tax, he chastised his opponents: “Some people are being asked to pay with their lives or their faces or their hands or their arms or their legs. It doesn’t seem too much to ask the average taxpayer to pay $30 for the cost of the war so we don’t have to shove it off on our kids.” 

Now Obey sounds like a man who would welcome the mantle of chief antiwar spokesman. “I’m not president,” Obey recently said, “but I can certainly try to influence policy any way I can.”

• The Next Paris Hilton: Why Sarah Palin Isn’t Going Away Any Time Soon by Jason Zengerle
• How the Obama Administration Is Dangerously Misreading the Recession by John B. Judis
• Obama's Latest Afghanistan Hurdle: Congressman David Obey by Jesse Zwick
• Sarah Palin’s Path to the Presidency?! by Michelle Cottle
• ‘Share the Sacrifice’: The Long History of War Taxes by Amanda Silverman
• The New ‘Twilight’ Movie, as a 280-Word Tone Poem by Christopher Orr
• Reading Obama’s Mind on Health Care by Jonathan Cohn
• Is the Obama Administration Warming to the Idea of a Second Stimulus? by Mark Muro

As always, be sure to check out economic news on The Stash, environment and energy coverage on The Vine, the latest on health care at The Treatment, metro policy debate on The Avenue, and Marty Peretz's The Spine. Also be sure to take a look at TNR's new blogs by William Galston, Simon Johnson, Ed Kilgore, Damon Linker, and John McWhorter.

It was nice to see City Journal run a critical review of Paul Johnson's forthcoming Churchill biography, but Mark Riebling's piece contains one of the more ridiculous lines you will read all year:

In more than 40 books, Johnson has attacked what liberals defend (modernity, secular intellectualism) and defended what liberals attack (Judaism, Christianity, America).

"Secular intellectualism" is one of those phrases that is completely indecipherable (what does it possibly mean to support or oppose it?), and yet Riebling's motive in combining these two words is obvious enough. Still, I can't quite decide whether this comment is more insulting to liberals or conservatives. The former are accused of being bigoted anti-Americans, yes, but the clear implication here is that liberals are the only ones who will defend modernity.

Jonathan Martin brings us yet another former McCain adviser stepping forward to accuse Sarah Palin of being a dunce. In this telling, Palin canceled a sit down with Spanish-language channel Univision because she felt uncomfortable talking about Hispanic issues. A campaign aide described it as “a near-crisis situation, with McCain officials worried that [Univision anchor Jorge] Ramos would say on the air that Palin wasn’t appearing because she was not capable of discussing” the issues.

I can see why a campaign adviser might think that this would constitute a “near crisis,” but I think the anecdote is actually sort of redeeming. After all, what always irked me about Palin was how brazenly confident she seemed in her own ignorance, the way she championed her mothering skills as a qualification for the presidency, and that she “didn’t blink” when offered the VP slot (she only winked.) But here’s an instance of her taking a step back and recognizing the limits of her knowledge on an issue and then refusing to speak publicly about it. Of course, she should have followed this self-correcting instinct a lot more frequently (which probably would have meant not accepting McCain’s offer in the first place) but I still think it’s nice to see that, in at least one instance on the campaign trail, she was struck with self-doubt.

On a similar note, Glenn Thrush flagged a rare flash of introspective thought from Michele Bachmann in an interview with the St. Cloud Times today. “I wish I could be more artful in the way that I say things,” she said. She continued:

But the other thing I’ve noticed that is kind of interesting is it seems like there’s also a double standard and bias in the mainstream media.

Polls today say that the American people more than ever think the mainstream media is biased in favor of the liberal position. And so conservatives, especially conservative women, are held to a completely different standard than liberals.

 Well, one out of two ain’t bad.

In recent weeks, Barack Obama's foreign policy has been derided by critics who say he has almost nothing to show for his first 10 months in office. But on one of his most important priorities--stopping Iran's relentless march towards a nuclear weapon--he may be quietly reaping a critical diplomatic turnaround: Russia may finally be getting serious about Iran's nuclear program.

That would be great news for Obama. In recent weeks Iran has shown little sign of cutting a good-faith deal with the West to freeze its nuclear program. It increasingly looks like the only way to stop Tehran's nuclear ambitions--short of military action with potentially disastrous consequences--will be through harsh sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council. Of the council's five permanent members, America, France and Germany are all ready to proceed. China may be the toughest nut to crack; but that won't matter if Obama can't first bring Russia aboard. (China may also be more reluctant to water down U.N. sanctions without Russia's vote to give it cover.)

For most of this year, Russia seemed skeptical at best of an international full-court press on Tehran. Moscow has plenty of reasons not to gang up on a country with whom it has extensive economic ties. As recently as mid-October, Russia's foreign minister warned that sanctions talk was "counterproductive." 

But the month of November has brought two important developments that indicate a Kremlin that is becoming more an ally than an obstacle in the Iran squeeze. "They're not  at all happy with the Iranians," says Cliff Kupchan, a Russia and Iran specialist at the Eurasia Group. "I think there's been a significant change in Russian policy."

Two recent flare-ups suggest a quickly souring relationship between Moscow and Tehran. The first is the escalating dispute between Russia and Iran over delivery of a potent anti-missile system that could help Iran defend its nuclear facilities from an Israeli attack. An Iranian general lashed out at Moscow today, saying the Kremlin was reneging on a 2007 agreement to send Iran truck-mounted S-300 missiles, which can shoot down aircraft and cruise missiles from a range of 150 kilometers. With Israel capable of striking at any moment, Iran very much wants those missiles as soon as possible. But Russia, at the urging of Jerusalem and Washington--or, as the Iranian general put it, "under the pressure of the Zionist lobby and America"--has now missed its scheduled delivery date by six months, with no sign of completing the deal soon. (It's not likely that Russia, which hasn't publicly explained the delay, wants to make an Israeli air strike any easier--Moscow doesn't welcome the strategic and economic instability such an attack would bring; more likely, the Kremlin understands that shipping the missiles would be a destabilizing move that could prompt a quick Israeli strike before Tehran has time to put the batteries into position.)

The second friction point is a nasty surprise Russia presented to Iran on November 16, when it announced that a nuclear power plant Moscow had been building near the city of Bushehr won't be operational at the end of this year as originally planned. (The Bushehr project was begun by a German company in the 1970s, then abandoned after the 1979 Islamic revolution; Russia signed a 1995 contract to complete it.) Russia is supplying the enriched uranium to fuel the reactor--which, although it will in theory be shipped back after use, can also be turned into bomb material if Iran chooses to renege. Russia claims the delay is technical ("just a few crossed wires, you see; nothing a soldering iron can't fix!)--but hard-liners in the Iranian parliament are accusing Moscow of dishonesty. One told an Iranian news agency that Russia might not complete the plant if given 200 years.

It's also worth nothing the timing of the Bushehr announcement: just one day after Russian president Dmitri Medvedev complained about Iranian dithering in international negotiations over its nuclear program. ("We are running out of time," for diplomacy, Medvedev warned--one of several recent statements from Russian officials indicating growing support for international sanctions.) Specifically, Iran has recently made clear that it will apparently reject a deal brokered in Vienna last month under which Tehran would ship 70 percent of its domestically-enriched uranium to Russia for conversion into fuel that would then be sent to a Tehran plant that makes medical isotopes. The deal was brokered by multiple parties, including the U.S. But some analysts think rejection of such an important diplomatic role for Moscow may prick Russia's national pride.

But don't pour those vodka shots just yet: There's still plenty of reason for skepticism about Russia's ultimate intentions. It's never easy to divine Moscow's true intentions, after all, and some people reasonably suspect Russia of playing both sides in this game--opportunistically positioning itself to line up with whomever seems to be winning the U.S.-Iranian struggle. Vladimir Putin is said to consider international sanctions blunt and ineffective. "I think they are fed up with the Iranians, but don't see sanctions as a useful tool," says James Goldgeier, a Russia expert at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs.

But others think Iran's halfhearted response to Obama's open hand may truly be changing Russian minds. Moscow may not relish cracking down on its Persian trading partner, but it almost surely doesn't want to see an Israeli attack, either. "The evolving view in Moscow is that additional U.N. sanctions are the worst possible policy--except for any other," Kupchan says.

Early in his presidency, Barack Obama proclaimed that he would seek to "reset" the a strained relationship between Washington and Moscow. He followed through with his surprise decision to scrap a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, which seemed motivated in part to win greater Russian cooperation on Iran. Conservatives called this an American surrender to Russia. But if Russia keeps up its current disdain for Tehran's behavior, Obama will finally have a tremendous diplomatic achievement to crow about.