Economics Daily Digest: The pain means it's not working

By Tim Price, originally published on Next New Deal

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Government is hurting the economy'by spending too little (WaPo)

In light of the report that the economy contracted in the last quarter of 2012 due partly to cutbacks, Ezra Klein notes that one man's big government socialism is another man's premature and destructive fiscal retrenchment. But the first man is utterly delusional.

The Economy Just Shrank, But This Is the Best Negative GDP Report You Will Ever Read (The Atlantic)

Derek Thompson argues that the silver lining for this cloud is that important indicators like personal consumption and investment are still growing at a healthy clip despite the drag from fiscal policy. Imagine what we could do if the policymakers were on our side.

2013 Sequestration Likely to Happen Despite Ominous GDP Report (HuffPo)

Sam Stein, Arthur Delaney, and Sabrina Siddiqui ask whether the negative growth report has shocked Congress out of complacency, but there's still no sign they can cooperate long enough to stop the sequester they created to punish themselves for not cooperating.

Fed Holds Steady on Strategy; Cites 'Pause' in Growth (NYT)

Binyamin Appelbaum writes that the FOMC has announced that the Fed plans to continue the open-ended stimulus program it first introduced in December, particularly since the economic recovery seems to have settled in for a long winter's nap over the holidays.

Paul Krugman vs. Joseph Stiglitz (TNR)

Surveying the recent dispute between the progressive Nobel laureates about whether inequality has hurt the recovery, John Judis agrees with Stiglitz that it's holding back consumer spending. On to the next round of judging for the talent show portion of the competition.

The Hidden Prosperity of the Poor (NYT)

Thomas Edsall reviews the conservative case that America's poor are secretly doing just fine because the basics and even the luxuries are getting cheaper. So don't worry about those 42.6 million people living in poverty; they'll upgrade to Blu-ray one day.

Immigration, yes. Indentured serfdom, no. (Salon)

Michael Lind argues that while most components of the bipartisan immigration reform proposal are reasonable, the last thing we need is a guest worker program that comes as close as it legally can to slavery. America needs to learn how to treat its guests first.

5 Key Tasks for the New Secretary of Labor (In These Times)

Labor expert Kate Bronfenbrenner tells Roger Bybee that an effective replacement for Hilda Solis will have to be outspoken, creative, and ready for a fight. And that's just what it will take for the new Labor Secretary to get some attention within the Obama administration.

Obama's Jobs Council Fail (MoJo)

Erika Eichelberger notes that President Obama's jobs council, led by GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, is set to dissolve this week, though it sort of dissolved itself by meeting all of four times in total and not at all in the last year. Way to stay on top of that, everyone.

Post-Lehman, the push for global financial protection stalls (WaPo)

Howard Schneider and Danielle Douglas write that five years after the last great meltdown, efforts to reform the financial sector have reached an impasse because a) regulating is hard and b) policymakers are distracted by other problems they're not solving.

Tim Price is Deputy Editor of Next New Deal. Follow him on Twitter @txprice.

Fox expert pundit panel gets everything wrong on the economy

Good news, folks! On Thursday morning, Fox News assembled a panel of expert pundits to explain why the nation's GDP shrunk by 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, and boy oh boy did they ever deliver some insightful analysis. For example, Charles Payne of their business channel revealed this stunning conclusion: "The economy has been slowed in part because there has been a war on success and constant threatening and demonization of business."

Well that's a bold explanation. The only problem with it is that despite declining in the fourth quarter, GDP grew faster over the course of the full year of 2012 than it did in 2011. And that means that if President Obama is waging a war on success, he's doing a pretty shitty job of it, because on a full-year basis, growth accelerated.

Fortunately, Fox is a Fair & Balanced network, so Payne's attempt to pin all the blame on President Obama didn't go unchallenged. Instead, former Clinton pollster Doug Schoen said both sides were to blame. Why? Because, he said, "we haven't done full-scale tax reform, entitlement reform, spending cuts, we haven't looked intelligently at defense, we haven't dealt with the issues of the debt and the deficit."

Uh, sorry Doug, but that's feel-good puffery with no basis in reality. GDP dropped during the fourth quarter because government spending dropped. It had nothing to do with the failure to achieve a grand bargain or make even bigger cuts. It had everything to do with a 22% decline in defense spending.

Towards the end of the segment, Payne took another shot at explaining the economic slow down. "Today we got numbers out on income and spending," he said, noting that income skyrocketed. "What scared me about the report, though, was spending was really below estimates. Again, it feels like maybe the American people are beginning to hunker down."

Actually, spending growth was in line with estimates'and it grew, just as it did in the fourth quarter. In fact, consumer spending growth in the fourth quarter is a big part of the reason the quarter didn't turn into a complete disaster. Not only that, consumer spending accelerated in the fourth quarter from the previous one.

Facts notwithstanding, the image of consumers hunkering down is fairly easy to visualize, so it's no surprise that Schoen decided to agree, but with a twist. "Given that have no long-term agreement [to cut spending], consumers are doing exactly what you're saying, they're hunkering down, because they're scared."

Well, they aren't hunkering down, at least not in the fourth quarter. But if they had been, it certainly wouldn't have been because there's no long-term spending cut deal because there is a long-term spending cut deal. It takes effect on March 1. And as we learned with yesterday's GDP report, the GOP's insistence on proceeding with it'or cuts that are equivalent with it'the single biggest threat facing the economy.

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Old Reagan home to be demolished in secret Obama plot, probably

The plot thickens ... This is one of those things that seems a little too artsy, on the part of the universe, to really be believed: A Chicago apartment building that Ronald Reagan once lived in, as a very young tot, is slated for demolition. It's going to become a parking lot for the University of Chicago Medical Center, which is ironic because Reagan was pretty into paving things over, himself, and probably would be just fine with it.

Okay, so here's where the artsy part comes in. According to the latest righty theories, this probably has something to do with Obama, and with the university hating Ronald Reagan, and almost certainly something to do with Rahm Emanuel. I mean, how could it not?

While the university is planning to kill Reagan's home, University of Chicago is also aggressively lobbying to be the site of President Barack Obama's presidential library. [']

First Lady Michelle Obama and the president's close advisor Valerie Jarrett are former top executives of the University of Chicago Medical Center. President Obama was a lecturer at the law school for twelve years. And let's not forget, Obama's Hyde Park home is here too.

This is still Chicago. Barack Obama's Chicago. Rahm Emanuel's Chicago.

It is safe to say that Democrats don't want any reminders of a Republican president named Reagan and his glory days a stone's throw from a future Obama Presidential Library.

Better to raze the building now, than later. But do they have the right to erase Ronald Reagan from Chicago history?

Wow. Okay, I really have no particular opinion on whether this particular building should or should not be a shrine to Saint Ronald Reagan, the plucky lil' president whose every policy has now been discarded by his own admirers because, c'mon, the guy was so liberal he was practically a communist. Imagining that Rahm Emanuel, Michelle Obama and Valerie Jarrett are all in a plot to bulldoze the building in order to erase the memory of toddler Reagan, however'now that's old-school, 1990s conspiracy stuff.

I give Darrell Issa two, three weeks tops before he schedules a committee hearing on this one.

Rick Scott not willing to share his sweet health insurance deal

Gov. Rick Scott, skinflint It's good to be king governor in Florida. Check out the very good deal Gov. Rick Scott is getting from the taxpayers in his state.

Scott is paying less than $400 a year for family coverage. That's the same amount that 107 out of 120 members in the Florida House are paying.

Florida's 40 senators are also covered by the state but this month they started paying the same as rank-and-file state employees. Career service workers pay $50 a month for individual coverage and $180 a month for family coverage.

Well, isn't that nice for him. Scott, you may remember, has been playing fast and loose with Medicaid numbers in order to justify his opposition to expanding the program under Obamacare, denying as many 900,000 uninsured Floridians access to the program. He's joined in that opposition by House Speaker Will Weatherford, another Republican and presumably another beneficiary of heavily subsidized health insurance. State leaders are in the process now of deciding whether to expand Medicaid.

Sign our petition to Gov. Scott, urging him to accept the Medicaid expansion.

'Let's abolish federal taxes,' say 69 House Republicans

A bill co-sponsored by 69 House Republicans would abolish federal taxes other than Social Security and Medicare. Which pretty much means abolishing the federal government, since if the Tax Code Termination Act became law, there would be no funding for basically anything. Introduced by House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte, of Virginia, and predictably co-sponsored by Michele Bachmann and Steve King, among other luminaries:

In addition to cutting off about 60 percent of federal revenues, the bill includes an unconstitutional provision providing that the end of the tax code cannot be delayed except by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. The Constitution does not permit a past Congress to tie the hands of a future Congress, so this provision making it functionally impossible for future congresses to delay the end of most federal revenue is unconstitutional.

Goodlatte believes that Medicare and Social Security are unconstitutional, so it is both unsurprising that the House Judiciary Chair is too unfamiliar with the Constitution to draft a constitutional tax bill and ironic that his bill actually permits taxes for the two programs he thinks are unconstitutional.

The idea seems to be that Congress should start from scratch and develop a new tax code before this bill could go into effect. Which ... have Rep. Goodlatte and his co-sponsors seen how Congress works, or rather doesn't work? As little chance as there is that a bill abolishing the federal tax code would get through the House and the Senate and be signed by President Obama, there's much less chance Congress could put together a new tax system from scratch in most of our lifetimes.

A bill to abolish taxes has to be taken on its own terms, not the vague suggestion that maybe some other taxes would replace the ones we have now and continue to fund the government. Think about it: no military, no wars, no congressional paychecks, no custodians and maintenance people to keep the Capitol from falling into ruin, no FAA, no funding for roads or bridges. And while the kind of House Republican that sponsors a law abolishing federal taxes might not care about the Capitol falling into ruin, and we already know they're okay with bridges going unrepaired, they generally don't want to see the U.S. military abolished, as widespread Republican howling about the sequester's defense spending cuts demonstrates.

That's not actually the stupidest thing about dozens of elected representatives of the government signing on to a proposal to scrap the majority of the government's revenue. But it's maybe something someone stupid enough to sign onto this bill to begin with might understand.

UCONN Courant poll: 'The Newtown shootings have swayed their opinions'

Graphic from Mother Jones

In a new poll released by the Hartford Courant Thursday, there's more evidence that 12/14 has changed opinion:

A majority of state residents support a broad array of gun control measures and say the Newtown shootings have swayed their opinions, according to a new University of Connecticut/Hartford Courant poll.

The rest of Connecticut residents are more likely to call for gun restrictions than those polled nationwide among men and women, as well as all age groups, political affiliations, and education levels, the poll showed.

By wide margins, state residents favored banning military-style assault weapons and ammunition magazines with more than 10 bullets, preventing people with mental illness from buying guns, and creating a federal database to track gun sales, among other measures.

Connecticut feels our pain:

57 percent said the shooting deaths of 20 children and six educators Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School made them more likely to support gun control, while 35 percent said it made no difference. Nationally, 44 percent said the shooting made them more likely to support gun control.

There's a significant gender gap in that stricter gun control is supported by:

' 73 percent of women
' 55 percent of men

Keep that in mind when you hear Wayne LaPierre contend that we need high capacity magazine so moms can protect their kids.

More data below the fold ...

Republican senators want to stop work at two agencies over recess appointments

John Cornyn sees his chance to attack both Barack Obama and the government's ability to function, and he's taking it. Three Republican senators are seizing on the recent appeals court ruling invalidating President Barack Obama's recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, pushing a bill that would stop work at the NLRB and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until the Senate confirms NLRB members and a director for the CFPB. Which the Senate is unlikely to do as long as it's Obama doing the nominating, so really this is about preventing two agencies that Republicans don't much like from doing their work.

The NLRB requires a quorum to function, and with Republicans filibustering Obama's nominations to the board, he made recess appointments in January, 2012. He also recess appointed Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; without a director the CFPB can fulfill some of its functions but not others, and of course, not wanting the bureau to exist at all, Republicans don't want to confirm someone, let alone someone committed to strong oversight.

There's an added bonus for Republican Sens. Mike Johanns, John Cornyn, and Lamar Alexander in introducing this bill'it's not just about hampering or stopping the work of agencies overseeing workers' rights and consumer protection, it's about attacking Obama's legitimacy as president:

"American democracy was born out of a rejection of the monarchies of Western Europe, anchored by limited government and separation of powers," said Cornyn. "We refuse to stand by as this President arrogantly casts aside our Constitution and defies the will of the American people under the guise of defending them."

Obama made some recess appointments'specifically, Obama has made 32 recess appointments as compared with George W. Bush's 171'therefore he is arrogant, like colonial monarchs, and defying the will of the American people as interpreted by John Cornyn. Apparently the American people feel that unless no extremist Republican senator puts a secret hold on a nominee, and unless a supermajority of 60 senators vote to confirm a nominee, then federal agencies should be unable to function, per Cornyn.

Cornyn, self-styled defender of the separation of powers that he currently is, continued thinking Dick Cheney was just grand in spite of Cheney's insistence that he belonged to a fourth branch of government and as such wasn't subject to the law.

John McCain to Chuck Hagel: Please tell me I was right about Iraq

When John McCain spends six minutes trying to get you to admit that your position on the war in Iraq was wrong and his was right'and acts like a complete dick doing it'you know you're doing something right:

Chuck Hagel is no saint. He voted for the initial authorization to use military force in Iraq. But he realized his mistake and owned up to it. John McCain, meanwhile, is still crusading against history, trying to convince anyone who will listen'and even peole who won't'that he was right all along. But the fact still remains he was wrong from start to finish, and of all the people in that committee room today, it's McCain's judgment that should be questioned. Not Hagel's.

GOP's health care agenda: Crippling Obamacare and Medicare vouchers

Rep. Kevin Brady, nihilist Here's just what we needed, another wingnut elevated to a position of power in the House of Representatives. The new chair of the influential Health Subcommittee for the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX, of course), is guaranteeing that the fights for Medicare vouchers and killing Obamacare will continue.

[...] Brady says he'll return to some ideas Democrats have outright rejected ' including the premium support model Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has famously advocated for. [...]

Earnestly leaning forward over a table in his Capitol Hill office, Brady ticked through his to-do list for the coming year.

First, he wants to ditch parts of the health care law. A handful of Democrats have already signed on to some of his suggestions, such as repealing the Independent Payment Advisory Board and the medical device tax. [...]

He also plans to spend time highlighting the law's new regulations and how they'll affect health providers, patients and employers.

And while he acknowledges the law won't be repealed anytime soon, it's clear he hasn't let go of that hope for sometime down the road.

A truly earnest representative in his position might be focused on how to make the new law work as effectively as possible since it is, you know, the law of the land. The Supreme Court said so. But Brady, a former Chamber of Commerce executive, isn't likely to pursue an agenda that actually makes our health care system function better and more affordably for the consumer.

No, that would be socialism. Brady and his colleagues instead will insist on pursuing the agendas rejected by the nation in the 2012 election. Why? Because they can.

Stephen Lynch enters Democratic primary in Massachusetts Senate special election

Stephen Lynch's introductory video Well, blargh. After hemming and hawing and even contradicting published reports saying he'd run for Senate, conservative Democratic Rep. Stephen Lynch finally launched his campaign in the special election to succeed John Kerry. And Lynch's preferred campaign message is exactly as chip-on-the-shoulder as you'd expect. Indeed, seeing as he begins the race way behind in the polls against fellow Rep. Ed Markey, Lynch's only hope is to go negative. He's off to a fast start:

"It will be an uphill fight for me, but the fight is worth fighting. Shame on us to allow someone to clear the field, box out all the other candidates, and buy the election," said Lynch, in an apparent reference to Markey....

Lynch says Markey is an "insulated person" after 38 years in Congress.
' @mlevenson via Twitter for iPhone "People don't like the Democratic establishment... And I think that helps me," lynch says.
' @mlevenson via Twitter for iPhone Lynch says Markey backed by "the Washington crowd" and won't "shake things up."
' @mlevenson via Twitter for iPhone In addition to attacking Markey, Lynch undoubtedly will try to run to his right. Here's the first taste:
Lynch says Brown "appealed to a certain group that I might appeal to as well."
' @mlevenson via Twitter for iPhone Never mind that Elizabeth Warren handily beat Scott Brown without trying to clone his most cloying attributes, as Lynch would prefer to do. In any event, the person Lynch is appealing to most right now is Brown himself, since the Republican former senator has to be licking his chops at the prospect of a nasty primary between the two Democrats. Brown still hasn't announced a decision, but surely this development can only make his entry more likely.

So what should Markey do now? Fortunately, he has two advantages: He's got a lot more money than Lynch, and he's got a terrific progressive profile. (For the progressive case against Lynch, see BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski.) I don't think Markey has to go negative. Rather, he can and should tout his credentials loudly in order to lock down the liberal vote, which still constitutes the majority of the primary electorate, despite what Lynch may believe. Lynch of course will have his union allies, but in a statewide primary like this, there are lots of votes out there for Markey to unearth.

Oh, and put up your freakin' website already. That would help.

NRA's opposition to universal background check shows just how unreasonable it plans to be

The federal government estimates that as much as 40 percent of gun sales nationwide are between private parties. These require no federal background check. Just released from prison after finishing a sentence for second-degree murder? Or for a rape at gun point? Or for assault and battery? No problem. Just show up at a gun show with the cash and walk away with a wheelbarrow full of ammo and firearms.

But the National Rifle Association says we don't need no stinking background checks. All right, that wasn't quite the way Wayne LaPierre explained it in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. But close enough. The million-dollar-a-year executive vice president of the NRA told the senators: 'My problem with background checks is you're never going to get criminals to go through universal background checks.'

Malarkey. And LaPierre knows it's malarkey. But that never stopped him from repeating ludicrous claims when the NRA was riding high.

In fact, according to the FBI, its National Instant Criminal Background Check System has kept 700,000 ineligible Americans from buying firearms from licensed dealers over the past decade. Some felons obviously do try to buy guns from licensed dealers. The number of denials would no doubt have been higher had some states, egged on by the NRA, not withheld gun-related criminal and mental illness data from the feds.

In California, which has the strictest state-level gun-control laws in the nation, 600,000 guns were sold in 2011. About one percent of people who tried to buy guns from a licensed dealer were rejected when background checks were run on them. That means some 6,000 people who tried to buy guns were barred because of felony convictions or mental health adjudications. And you can be certain many others did not even try to buy a gun over the counter.

How many lives did this save? How many other violent crimes did it prevent? Unknown. But it would take a lot of dishonest juggling to claim that the number was zero.

(Continue reading below the fold.)

The conservative bubble and the immigration debate

I know this has made the rounds quite a bit, but I still laugh every time I read it:

Scarborough recalled just how wrong Republicans, and many mainstream pundits, had been about the outcome of the election. He, too, he said, fell for the conventional wisdom in the final weeks, that Mitt Romney was riding a wave of momentum, with his big campaign crowds as ultimate proof. His source for this judgment? '[Uber-pundit] Mark Halperin called me and said, 'I've never seen anything like it!''

If we ever needed more evidence that Halperin is a moron, this removes all doubt. I mean, at the time reporters covering the campaign were reporting things like this: Enthusiastic crowd, but hard not to notice the rows of empty seats at the back of this Romney rally in Virginia Beach. #2012
' @sppeoples via web Steady stream of people leaving Romney rally in the middle of his speech. Maybe it's the cold, but energy level low in Ohio. #2012
' @sppeoples via web

Throw in Romney's consistent deficits in battleground polling, and it's hard to see how Halperin could've been so gushing. Halperin had really never seen anything like this? Didn't he pay attention to the McCain campaign in 2008?

But this is the right-wing movement we're talking about, so Halperin's fact-bereft deceits didn't stay with him. He shared them with Joe Scarborough, supposed smart conservative. And did Scarborough ask for empirical data to support Halperin's enthusiastic delusions? Of course not! They're conservatives! Facts are too liberal.

So instead, Scarborough parroted Halperin's predictions that Romney would win based on Halperin's shitty and selective memory of what he'd seen. And it wasn't just him, but the entire conservative movement. And remember, they weren't echoing a guy with a track record of being right, but one who has consistently proven to be full of shit. I mean, remember when he argued that McCain's "I don't know how many houses I own" gaffe was a bad thing for Obama campaign?

You'd think conservatives would learn their lesson and be less willing to disregard data that contradicts their worldview, but that won't happen anytime soon. Look at the debates over global climate change, or guns, or'as we'll see below the fold'even their future prospects if they continue standing in the way of immigration reform.

Another Creature of Washington

(Click for larger image)

Daily Kos's candidate endorsement questionnaire, 2013-14

Daily Kos's 2012 fundraising totals Whenever Daily Kos considers a candidate endorsement for our fundraising efforts, we ask the campaign to fill out our short questionnaire. It's not intended to be a comprehensive dossier'if we insisted on asking 50 questions, we wouldn't get many responses. Rather, our aim is to focus on a handful of issues of key importance to the Daily Kos community, to help give us a feel for the people we're thinking about endorsing.

Consequently, there are plenty of important issues that don't appear on our questionnaire. That doesn't mean they aren't important to us. To be absolutely clear: We evaluate all candidates holistically and make choices based on all the public information available to us, not just our questionnaire. For instance, if a given candidate answered our questions with flying colors but has a bad record on, say, environmental issues or reproductive freedom, that is something we would most definitely take into consideration.

For the most part, our questionnaire focuses on questions other groups aren't asking'or at least, aren't asking publicly. It can be difficult, for instance, to find out a first-time candidate's views on the Employee Free Choice Act, but it's a vital piece of legislation. Similarly, we aren't aware of any other organizations that ask about the Blue Dog Coalition or the filibuster, so we feel it's particularly crucial that we highlight the importance of these issues. And we try to make our questions as specific as possible, often by tying them to specific pieces of legislation, in order to minimize the possibility of vague or unsatisfying answers.

We also change our questions slightly from cycle to cycle, as events warrant. For instance, last cycle, we included a question about allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to expire. Thanks to the fiscal cliff deal, that question was mostly resolved in progressives' favor, so we consider that a success and have removed the question. We aren't making many other changes: We've decided to focus on Medicare buy-in in our health care question (rather than the public option), and we're also now asking about same-sex marriage, to send a statement about our values. If we make further alterations, we will of course let the community (and prospective candidates) know.

Calgary Cruz smears Chuck Hagel

Thank God Hagel didn't accuse Canada of committing war crimes or Cruz would've been really mad. According to Sen. Ted "Calgary" Cruz (R-TX), defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel isn't just a raging anti-Semite, he's a raging anti-Semite who accused Israel of committing war crimes. Even worse, says Cruz: Hagel did it on Al Jazeera of all places. Yikes.

Cruz leveled his allegation on Thursday afternoon during Hagel's confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Cruz set up his attack by asking permission to play a video clip of Hagel on Al Jazeera in 2009. The topic of the interview from which Cruz pulled the clip was nuclear disarmament, a fact which Cruz conveniently neglected to mention. And the clip itself consisted almost entirely of a question from a viewer who had called in. Of the 78 seconds Cruz played, just 14 were of Hagel.

The clip began with a caller from London delivering a rambling dissertation about how he liked the idea of a world without nuclear weapons, but believed it couldn't happen without leadership. "I believe the current leadership around the world, there is a moral failure going on," said the caller. "For example, if you look at Palestine, there is a war crime, and they are not dealing with it. But in Sudan, there is a war crime, and they are dealing with it."

When the caller turned his attention to genocide in Sri Lanka, the anchor interrupted, hoping to avoid a full-fledged filibuster. "What is your question, then, with regards to the issue we're talking about, the reduction of nuclear weapons?" At that point, faced with getting booted from the air or wrapping up his monologue, the caller asked the most innocuous question ever: "Yes, my question is that there's a total moral failure, and unless you bring these leaders to a moral standard, nothing can be done, that's my question. What do you think about this?"

Continue reading below the fold to find out what Hagel said that led Cruz to accuse him of having trashed Israel.

Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Patrick taps Cowan, and PPP finds a tossup in Massachusetts

Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here. Leading Off:

' MA-Sen: With John Kerry now confirmed as Secretary of State, Dem Gov. Deval Patrick has selected his former chief of staff, Mo Cowan, to serve as Massachusetts' interim senator until a replacement is chosen in a special election in June. Cowan is a well-connected attorney who worked for Patrick for many years before returning to the private sector last November. He will become the second African American member of the Senate, along with Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina, who was appointed to fill a vacancy earlier this month. (This is the first time in American history that two black senators have served simultaneously.)

Many progressives had hoped Patrick might select ex-Rep. Barney Frank, who had openly lobbied for the job. But while Frank's personal advocacy may have displeased Patrick, I suspect he was more interested in appointing someone he had a personal relationship of trust with. What's more, Patrick had the opportunity to appoint someone young and who was, frankly, not another white guy career politician, and so he understandably seized it. In any event, Cowan said he would not run in the special (even though he is allowed to by law), saying that he is not a "candidate today or any time in the future." However, he's only 43 years old, so that's the kind of thing that could always change.

Meanwhile, PPP is out with their first poll of the election to succeed Kerry. In short, it contradicts all the Tom Menino-style anti-progressive "conventional wisdom" that seems to have congealed about this race. Not only is Ed Markey a stronger candidate against Scott Brown than Stephen Lynch, he also crushes Lynch in a hypothetical Democratic primary. Here are the numbers:

Brown: 48
Markey: 45

Brown: 48
Lynch: 39

Markey: 52
Lynch: 19

(continue reading below the fold)