Last Tuesday was a great day for all Americans. I personally have never been so proud to be an American for so many reasons. After years of holding my nose while voting or writing in a candidate (I rather snottily voted for Dr. Benjamin Spock in the 1972 Nixon/McGovern campaign, emphatically for Carter in 1976 and less so in 1980, very reluctantly for Mondale in 1984, even more reluctantly for Dukakis in 1988 and both Clinton campaigns--he is a DLC member after all--as well as Gore and Kerry) I actually had a candidate in whom I held a great deal of admiration.
So it was indeed a special night for Obama supporters and others who have been stunned by the arrogance, incompetence and ignorance of the Bush years.
We as a nation needed to make a transformational change--a guy who understands technology (e.g. the internet) as opposed to a guy who can't use a computer. For me this was more important than the race thing, though I will be the first to admit that I never expected to see a black man win the Presidency in my lifetime. I'm so happy to be so wrong.
This election reminds me how wonderful this country can be, when we challenge ourselves and follow the right path, Americans can and will do the right thing. Often many will resist but change for the good can happen. And it did last week.
I know President-elect Obama would never have happened if President-inept Bush didn't happen. Two steps backward, three steps forward (or sadly sometimes the opposite). Obama represents the courage to move forward which is a rare commodity but a vital quality for those who seek to transform a world that yields most painfully and most reluctantly to change.
I wish my father and mother could be here to witness this election. They were very much a part of the civil rights movement in the 1960s (my dad went to all major peace and civil rights demonstrations in Washington DC including MLK's "I have a dream" speech) and they would be overjoyed.
And the post mortem? Would I like to see some response to eight years of neo con stupidity? Yes but we don;t have time for this. I don't think there should be or will be much post election gloating. Our problems are far too massive to play the partisan schtick and expect stuff to get done.
Still the pendulum has shifted so far to the right that we progressives need to act. If we stay where we are as a baseline, the conservatives have won by effectively shifting the playing field. So personally I would like to see some "undoing" of the neo conservative agenda, regarding both foreign and economic policies (like getting rid of tax cuts for the wealthy or what I call welfare for the well healed). I do believe if there is any such thing as a silver lining to this economic meltdown it is simply this: the politics of deregulation and trickle down have been exposed for their sheer failure. So when Reagan famously said "government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem", he could not have been more wrong. Hopefully more people will figure that out and the naive notion that Reagan was a good president will come to an end.
Another factor is that the President-inept (I give Bush no slack whatsoever) is leaving all sorts of land mines for Obama's people to find. Here's how the NYT described it in an editorial the Sunday before the election: "President Bush’s aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others — few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush’s case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage..."
Finally there has to be some reckoning for the complete politicalization of the justice department (these investigations into Gonzales should continue). And those responsible for committing torture in Guatanamo or Abu Graib need to be held accountable.
And on a deeply personal level I hope Joe Lieberman is ostracized for being the disgusting human being he has revealed himself to be. I've blogged about him as part of my "Axis of Assholes" and it was simply too much fodder--I had to divide it into two posts.
I think of him as a collaborator and from where he stands, that is not a very good thing.
I hope he is sufficiently punished without being tossed out of the Democratic caucus. Perhaps the Democrats should demote him to a lesser committee and then send him to Atlanta to campaign for Jim Martin against the utterly despicable Saxby Chambliss.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Short Bits...
Before anything else...
Paul Newman: A Great Man, A Great Humanitarian and a Great Actor
What a really wonderful human being! I was fortunate enough to work with him four times. He was a unbelievably kind, intellectually engaged and completely free of the Hollywood/star craziness. We shared another common interest: motor racing. I was with him and remember well his poignant reaction when he learned of Formula One driver Gilles Villeneuve's death at Zolder in 1982. He also did me some personal kindnesses for which I shall always be grateful. But most importantly he left a legacy of stellar work both in front of and behind the camera. And his generosity should be the standard, not the exception. I've had the good fortune to work with a lot of celebrities and he was by far the kindest.
The McCain Campaign...
I've been meaning to write on the Obama/McCain presidential race. I keep waiting for the McCain campaign to hits its nadir but, like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps going on and descending ever further into the abyss than even I could possibly imagine or hope for. I shall and probably soon but in the meantime...
Maverick? Hardly!
Someone needs to tell John McCain that if you call yourself a maverick, you are indeed NOT a maverick.
And their Lies...
You don't win friends and gain influence by lying about your opponent. Well at least not this year! McCain's disingenuous attacks are not playing well (or well enough) in the heartland. The dubious William Ayers connection reached no one but the overly caffeinated right-wing nut jobs.
McCain/Palin are suggesting Obama is a socialist...
Just because he wants to undo some of the income redistribution as exemplified by Shrub's tax cuts for the fabulously wealthy. There has been a monumental shift in wealth in this country where we are becoming more and more like Brazil every day (where four percent of the population controls 96 per cent of the GNP).
Here's Paul Krugman, the Nobel winning Economist who teaches at Princeton, writing in the NY Times in August 2006 (yes this is long but well worth it and yes he understood this WAY before most of us):
"I’ve been studying the long-term history of inequality in the United States. And it’s hard to avoid the sense that it matters a lot which political party, or more accurately, which political ideology rules Washington.
Since the 1920’s there have been four eras of American inequality:
• The Great Compression, 1929-1947: The birth of middle-class America. The real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans actually fell 17 percent.
• The Postwar Boom, 1947-1973: An era of widely shared growth. Real wages rose 81 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent rose 38 percent.
• Stagflation, 1973-1980: Everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent fell 4 percent.
• The New Gilded Age, 1980-?: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent — people with incomes of more than $277,000 in 2004 — rose 135 percent.
What’s noticeable is that except during stagflation, when virtually all Americans were hurt by a tenfold increase in oil prices, what happened in each era was what the dominant political tendency of that era wanted to happen.
Franklin Roosevelt favored the interests of workers while declaring of plutocrats who considered him a class traitor, “I welcome their hatred.” Sure enough, under the New Deal wages surged while the rich lost ground.
What followed was an era of bipartisanship and political moderation; Dwight Eisenhower said of those who wanted to roll back the New Deal, “Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.” Sure enough, it was also an era of equable growth.
Finally, since 1980 the U.S. political scene has been dominated by a conservative movement firmly committed to the view that what’s good for the rich is good for America. Sure enough, the rich have seen their incomes soar, while working Americans have seen few if any gains.
By the way: Yes, Bill Clinton was president for eight years. But for six of those years Congress was controlled by hard-line right-wingers. Moreover, in practice Mr. Clinton governed well to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon.
...But it seems likely that government policies have played a big role in America’s growing economic polarization — not just easily measured policies like tax rates for the rich and the level of the minimum wage, but things like the shift in Labor Department policy from protection of worker rights to tacit support for union-busting.
And if that’s true, it matters a lot which party is in power — and more important, which ideology. For the last few decades, even Democrats have been afraid to make an issue out of inequality, fearing that they would be accused of practicing class warfare and lose the support of wealthy campaign contributors."
Back to me: A few other ancillary considerations for the academically challenged GOP ticket to consider:
These are the people who thought social security (or virtually anything from the New Deal), medicare and medicaid are the first steps the US is making in its march towards socialism.
Some inconvenient facts: the first US President to support a progressive tax? That would be the Republican Teddy Roosevelt.
And let's not forget the "earned income tax credit"? The one that gave federal money to the poor?
That would be the handiwork of Republican wunderkind, Ronald Reagan.
On the small but real silver lining of this economic crisis...
The current economic crisis is about greed and deregulation of the banking industry that started with the Actor-in-Chief Ronald Reagan ("Government IS the problem") and much to their discredit both Clinton and Bush Senior continued it. President Clinton and a Republican congress exacerbated the crisis when they repealed Glass Steagall in 1999. The bankers and financial markets have been running virtually unregulated ever since. Shrub turned a blind eye completely allowing the greed and malfeasance on Wall Street and in corporate America to run rampant. The Republicans got caught. They can pretend and point the finger.
The only good news in this mess is the complete debunking of the Ronald Reagan myth. Bush borrowed another page from Reagan's playbook: mortgage the future. The Iraq war funding will burden the next generation since none of it is being paid for at the moment. The Republicans can win elections but they sure can't govern.
Now McCain's problem is how to overcome 27 years of being on the wrong side of this issue. He has been a champion of deregulation since he arrived in Congress. He got caught up in the Keating 5 scandal and though he feigned humility, the fact is he has repeatedly sided with corporate interests. His recent conversion to regulation is as genuine as every other issue he has changed his position on: offshore drilling, torture, immigration and so forth. The straight talk express is a highway full of lies and self interest. Country first? My ass!
On "even-handed" journalism in this campaign...
As an ex-journalist, I don't want the MSM to be either pro-McCain or pro-Obama. I want them to tell the truth. The problem is that they are so easily played, mostly by Republicans who seem better attuned to the game. So when McCain unfairly criticizes Obama by making something up or twisting his words, the main stream media (MSM) feels compelled to say Obama does it too (and he does but just not to the degree or as often as McCain does it). So the "balance" achieved is exactly NOT balanced. The over-the-top cartoonish version of this is playing out on Fox where they have a the sufficiently neutered Allen Colmes representing the left side of the political spectrum while defending his ignorant co-horts.
Tom Brokaw is lobbying for substantial changes at MSNBC?:
I'm not surprised--only disappointed--that Brokaw sees a need to interfere with MSNBC. First of all, let's start with the most obvious: there's virtually no such thing as broadcast journalism. Brokaw comes from a long line of news readers masquerading as serious journalists. So how would he know? I'm just chagrined that he feels qualified to comment on anything. None of that news anchor generation (Brokaw, Rather or Jennings--who had only a high school education) was a serious journalist. Hell, even Murrow, the avowed god and dean of broadcast journalism, earned his credibility broadcasting RADIO from London and less so working for Paley and CBS. Secondly it is cable for gods sakes, not the network. MSNBC had built a line up of reasonably bright people who are wonderfully snarky and will not roll over for those in power. My guess is the Republicans are targets because they have effectively hijacked the government, run the country into the ground and now want to avoid responsibility. When the Democrats presumably take over, they will become the new targets. And let's be clear: what Olberman, Maddow and others do is no where as bad as what the Fox hacks do.
The Maverick is running a campaign full of lies...
Why don't we call it for what it is, a lie. The Republican lies of omission and commission are ubiquitous. From watching the convention, one would think everything is going well. They distorted Obama's record while lying about Palins. The Bridge to Nowhere? The plane that she sold for a loss AND not on Ebay. That she cultivated earmarks but now pretends to be against them? Progressives are not afraid of Sarah Palin. She is just another arrogant, ill-informed ugly American who thinks she knows more than she actually does. What we are afraid of is once again the media NOT doing its job. Put the information out there and let voters decide. Instead the media is following the "McCain suck up strategy" and letting them set the agenda. Why was McCain NOT called out on his VP selection when he preferred another? Or his posturing on alternative energy when he refuses to show up in the Senate to promote these ideas. He is purposefully--not accidentally--AWOL on these votes because he is so beholden to big energy/oil. Or his William Ayers fascination when he himself has real terrorist connections, not to mention those of running mate Sarah Palin's flirtations with the Alaska secessionist movement. Or the McCain campaign's Peter Feldman pushing of the faux campaign worker attack in Pennsylvania. If Rick Davis wants to make this an election on personality, then let's include character. As McCain's first wife found out before the rest of us, McCain has none.
Tucker Bounds and the McCain campaign...
Tucker Bounds saying "If he (Obama) was honest..." is just a bit too rich for me. The McCain campaign is anything but honest--lying about Obama's record, misrepresenting his own record on regulation, on veterans affairs (veterans do not know that McCain is there for them), on the war and so forth. And where is Governor Mooselini? McCain is cynically "protecting" her from the media. I'm wondering what those PUMAs are thinking now. Yeah they got their double X candidate but one wonders how far Caribou barbie will set the women's movement back? There is so much intellectual dishonesty on the Republican side that one really does start to wonder if Nov 4 will be more of an IQ test than anything else. Are you really that stupid to fall victim to these lies? McCain, Palin and the PUMAs are banking you are.
And MSNBC's Contessa Brewer Wins Latest Round Of "Stump Tucker Bounds"
Unfortunately Ms. Brewer did not call him on one of the McCain campaign's big lies: that he has never requested earmarks. Per Think Progress: in 2006, McCain and colleague Jon Kyl (R) teamed up to funnel $10 million toward the University of Arizona for an academic center named after the late Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. Even the National Taxpayers Union, a traditional McCain ally, questioned why the senator was making federal taxpayers foot the bill for the center. In 2003, McCain also slipped $14.3 million into a defense appropriations bill to create a buffer zone around Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), a notorious porker, was overjoyed that McCain had joined his side. “One man’s pork is another man’s alternate white meat,” said Stevens. “If he asked for it, we put it in.” McCain says he puts country first but we all now know that is as big a lie as anything else he says. Do we really want to elect an intellectually and morally bankrupt 72 year old with serious health issues?
PUMAs
Are these people still around and is there anyone else out there like me who thinks this is a Republican/Rove invention to sow the seeds of discontent in the fairly united Democratic Party?
But if not, here goes: Nothing like a bunch of narcissistic losers who think the world revolves around them and their so-called feminism curiously none of you seems too angry that Hillary's campaign was run by MEN). She lost. She ran a despicable campaign. Get over it already. If you are naive enough to think that electing McCain will further your agenda, then you deserve what you get. The rest of us who see the forest for the trees are frightened by that possibility, especially since there will be possibly two vacancies on an already right-wing Supreme Court.
Paul Newman: A Great Man, A Great Humanitarian and a Great Actor
What a really wonderful human being! I was fortunate enough to work with him four times. He was a unbelievably kind, intellectually engaged and completely free of the Hollywood/star craziness. We shared another common interest: motor racing. I was with him and remember well his poignant reaction when he learned of Formula One driver Gilles Villeneuve's death at Zolder in 1982. He also did me some personal kindnesses for which I shall always be grateful. But most importantly he left a legacy of stellar work both in front of and behind the camera. And his generosity should be the standard, not the exception. I've had the good fortune to work with a lot of celebrities and he was by far the kindest.
The McCain Campaign...
I've been meaning to write on the Obama/McCain presidential race. I keep waiting for the McCain campaign to hits its nadir but, like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps going on and descending ever further into the abyss than even I could possibly imagine or hope for. I shall and probably soon but in the meantime...
Maverick? Hardly!
Someone needs to tell John McCain that if you call yourself a maverick, you are indeed NOT a maverick.
And their Lies...
You don't win friends and gain influence by lying about your opponent. Well at least not this year! McCain's disingenuous attacks are not playing well (or well enough) in the heartland. The dubious William Ayers connection reached no one but the overly caffeinated right-wing nut jobs.
McCain/Palin are suggesting Obama is a socialist...
Just because he wants to undo some of the income redistribution as exemplified by Shrub's tax cuts for the fabulously wealthy. There has been a monumental shift in wealth in this country where we are becoming more and more like Brazil every day (where four percent of the population controls 96 per cent of the GNP).
Here's Paul Krugman, the Nobel winning Economist who teaches at Princeton, writing in the NY Times in August 2006 (yes this is long but well worth it and yes he understood this WAY before most of us):
"I’ve been studying the long-term history of inequality in the United States. And it’s hard to avoid the sense that it matters a lot which political party, or more accurately, which political ideology rules Washington.
Since the 1920’s there have been four eras of American inequality:
• The Great Compression, 1929-1947: The birth of middle-class America. The real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans actually fell 17 percent.
• The Postwar Boom, 1947-1973: An era of widely shared growth. Real wages rose 81 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent rose 38 percent.
• Stagflation, 1973-1980: Everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent fell 4 percent.
• The New Gilded Age, 1980-?: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent — people with incomes of more than $277,000 in 2004 — rose 135 percent.
What’s noticeable is that except during stagflation, when virtually all Americans were hurt by a tenfold increase in oil prices, what happened in each era was what the dominant political tendency of that era wanted to happen.
Franklin Roosevelt favored the interests of workers while declaring of plutocrats who considered him a class traitor, “I welcome their hatred.” Sure enough, under the New Deal wages surged while the rich lost ground.
What followed was an era of bipartisanship and political moderation; Dwight Eisenhower said of those who wanted to roll back the New Deal, “Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.” Sure enough, it was also an era of equable growth.
Finally, since 1980 the U.S. political scene has been dominated by a conservative movement firmly committed to the view that what’s good for the rich is good for America. Sure enough, the rich have seen their incomes soar, while working Americans have seen few if any gains.
By the way: Yes, Bill Clinton was president for eight years. But for six of those years Congress was controlled by hard-line right-wingers. Moreover, in practice Mr. Clinton governed well to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon.
...But it seems likely that government policies have played a big role in America’s growing economic polarization — not just easily measured policies like tax rates for the rich and the level of the minimum wage, but things like the shift in Labor Department policy from protection of worker rights to tacit support for union-busting.
And if that’s true, it matters a lot which party is in power — and more important, which ideology. For the last few decades, even Democrats have been afraid to make an issue out of inequality, fearing that they would be accused of practicing class warfare and lose the support of wealthy campaign contributors."
Back to me: A few other ancillary considerations for the academically challenged GOP ticket to consider:
These are the people who thought social security (or virtually anything from the New Deal), medicare and medicaid are the first steps the US is making in its march towards socialism.
Some inconvenient facts: the first US President to support a progressive tax? That would be the Republican Teddy Roosevelt.
And let's not forget the "earned income tax credit"? The one that gave federal money to the poor?
That would be the handiwork of Republican wunderkind, Ronald Reagan.
On the small but real silver lining of this economic crisis...
The current economic crisis is about greed and deregulation of the banking industry that started with the Actor-in-Chief Ronald Reagan ("Government IS the problem") and much to their discredit both Clinton and Bush Senior continued it. President Clinton and a Republican congress exacerbated the crisis when they repealed Glass Steagall in 1999. The bankers and financial markets have been running virtually unregulated ever since. Shrub turned a blind eye completely allowing the greed and malfeasance on Wall Street and in corporate America to run rampant. The Republicans got caught. They can pretend and point the finger.
The only good news in this mess is the complete debunking of the Ronald Reagan myth. Bush borrowed another page from Reagan's playbook: mortgage the future. The Iraq war funding will burden the next generation since none of it is being paid for at the moment. The Republicans can win elections but they sure can't govern.
Now McCain's problem is how to overcome 27 years of being on the wrong side of this issue. He has been a champion of deregulation since he arrived in Congress. He got caught up in the Keating 5 scandal and though he feigned humility, the fact is he has repeatedly sided with corporate interests. His recent conversion to regulation is as genuine as every other issue he has changed his position on: offshore drilling, torture, immigration and so forth. The straight talk express is a highway full of lies and self interest. Country first? My ass!
On "even-handed" journalism in this campaign...
As an ex-journalist, I don't want the MSM to be either pro-McCain or pro-Obama. I want them to tell the truth. The problem is that they are so easily played, mostly by Republicans who seem better attuned to the game. So when McCain unfairly criticizes Obama by making something up or twisting his words, the main stream media (MSM) feels compelled to say Obama does it too (and he does but just not to the degree or as often as McCain does it). So the "balance" achieved is exactly NOT balanced. The over-the-top cartoonish version of this is playing out on Fox where they have a the sufficiently neutered Allen Colmes representing the left side of the political spectrum while defending his ignorant co-horts.
Tom Brokaw is lobbying for substantial changes at MSNBC?:
I'm not surprised--only disappointed--that Brokaw sees a need to interfere with MSNBC. First of all, let's start with the most obvious: there's virtually no such thing as broadcast journalism. Brokaw comes from a long line of news readers masquerading as serious journalists. So how would he know? I'm just chagrined that he feels qualified to comment on anything. None of that news anchor generation (Brokaw, Rather or Jennings--who had only a high school education) was a serious journalist. Hell, even Murrow, the avowed god and dean of broadcast journalism, earned his credibility broadcasting RADIO from London and less so working for Paley and CBS. Secondly it is cable for gods sakes, not the network. MSNBC had built a line up of reasonably bright people who are wonderfully snarky and will not roll over for those in power. My guess is the Republicans are targets because they have effectively hijacked the government, run the country into the ground and now want to avoid responsibility. When the Democrats presumably take over, they will become the new targets. And let's be clear: what Olberman, Maddow and others do is no where as bad as what the Fox hacks do.
The Maverick is running a campaign full of lies...
Why don't we call it for what it is, a lie. The Republican lies of omission and commission are ubiquitous. From watching the convention, one would think everything is going well. They distorted Obama's record while lying about Palins. The Bridge to Nowhere? The plane that she sold for a loss AND not on Ebay. That she cultivated earmarks but now pretends to be against them? Progressives are not afraid of Sarah Palin. She is just another arrogant, ill-informed ugly American who thinks she knows more than she actually does. What we are afraid of is once again the media NOT doing its job. Put the information out there and let voters decide. Instead the media is following the "McCain suck up strategy" and letting them set the agenda. Why was McCain NOT called out on his VP selection when he preferred another? Or his posturing on alternative energy when he refuses to show up in the Senate to promote these ideas. He is purposefully--not accidentally--AWOL on these votes because he is so beholden to big energy/oil. Or his William Ayers fascination when he himself has real terrorist connections, not to mention those of running mate Sarah Palin's flirtations with the Alaska secessionist movement. Or the McCain campaign's Peter Feldman pushing of the faux campaign worker attack in Pennsylvania. If Rick Davis wants to make this an election on personality, then let's include character. As McCain's first wife found out before the rest of us, McCain has none.
Tucker Bounds and the McCain campaign...
Tucker Bounds saying "If he (Obama) was honest..." is just a bit too rich for me. The McCain campaign is anything but honest--lying about Obama's record, misrepresenting his own record on regulation, on veterans affairs (veterans do not know that McCain is there for them), on the war and so forth. And where is Governor Mooselini? McCain is cynically "protecting" her from the media. I'm wondering what those PUMAs are thinking now. Yeah they got their double X candidate but one wonders how far Caribou barbie will set the women's movement back? There is so much intellectual dishonesty on the Republican side that one really does start to wonder if Nov 4 will be more of an IQ test than anything else. Are you really that stupid to fall victim to these lies? McCain, Palin and the PUMAs are banking you are.
And MSNBC's Contessa Brewer Wins Latest Round Of "Stump Tucker Bounds"
Unfortunately Ms. Brewer did not call him on one of the McCain campaign's big lies: that he has never requested earmarks. Per Think Progress: in 2006, McCain and colleague Jon Kyl (R) teamed up to funnel $10 million toward the University of Arizona for an academic center named after the late Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. Even the National Taxpayers Union, a traditional McCain ally, questioned why the senator was making federal taxpayers foot the bill for the center. In 2003, McCain also slipped $14.3 million into a defense appropriations bill to create a buffer zone around Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), a notorious porker, was overjoyed that McCain had joined his side. “One man’s pork is another man’s alternate white meat,” said Stevens. “If he asked for it, we put it in.” McCain says he puts country first but we all now know that is as big a lie as anything else he says. Do we really want to elect an intellectually and morally bankrupt 72 year old with serious health issues?
PUMAs
Are these people still around and is there anyone else out there like me who thinks this is a Republican/Rove invention to sow the seeds of discontent in the fairly united Democratic Party?
But if not, here goes: Nothing like a bunch of narcissistic losers who think the world revolves around them and their so-called feminism curiously none of you seems too angry that Hillary's campaign was run by MEN). She lost. She ran a despicable campaign. Get over it already. If you are naive enough to think that electing McCain will further your agenda, then you deserve what you get. The rest of us who see the forest for the trees are frightened by that possibility, especially since there will be possibly two vacancies on an already right-wing Supreme Court.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Obama and Public Financing of Elections
Let's get this right. Obama NEVER said he would take public funding. He suggested support for the concept while expressing his concern over the integrity of the system itself. Obama said he would explore it based on conversations with and actions by his Republican opponent. "My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election." In short, no 527s.
So, in looking out at the campaign finance landscape, what does Obama see? John McCain took public financing during the primary campaign because he had no money. Then he opted OUT public financing because he wanted to run a general election strategy without financial impediments AND, more importantly, he wanted to see how much money he could raise. Well, as of yesterday he opts BACK into the public financing. So, like off shore drilling, torture and Bush's tax cuts, McCain has CHANGED his position. Many times. I see no editorials or public outcry about that. And McCain for all his straight shooter mythology actually waited for Obama to commit to a course before making his own very clear. How pathetic is that? There were supposedly conversations between the two campaigns and no accord was reached. Is that Obama's fault? I don't think so. Apparently McCain and his lawyers never bothered to return the Obama camp phone calls.
Senator Obama looks at his opponent and sees a hypocrite who is gaming the system, a guy who talks about running a civilized campaign but says little or nothing when 527s start running attacks ads against Michelle and Barack Obama in Tennessee and South Carolina, a guy who knows that these attack groups will do his dirty work for him. That's what these neo con/swift boating groups do. McCain is trying to coopt the high road knowing full well his backside is covered by the highly partisan groups supporting his candidacy.
Obama has created a different, alternative public financing campaign which takes no money from lobbyists, special interests or PACs. In fact Obama has achieved the intended results of the law. Ordinary Americans are funding the Obama campaign with over 300,000,000 donations.
McCain supporters and embittered Clintonistas may complain and accuse but I heard or read nothing from them all those years when Republicans or the Clintons dominated the election fundraising.
Obama did the right thing. His proactive approach assures him of the best chance of winning in the fall. And it demonstrates to all of us that he is not the confused candidate who headed the ticket in 2004.
And more importantly he understands that he may have to destroy the system of public finance in order to rebuild it from the ground up, so that it serves ALL Americans, not just those who can afford access.
So, in looking out at the campaign finance landscape, what does Obama see? John McCain took public financing during the primary campaign because he had no money. Then he opted OUT public financing because he wanted to run a general election strategy without financial impediments AND, more importantly, he wanted to see how much money he could raise. Well, as of yesterday he opts BACK into the public financing. So, like off shore drilling, torture and Bush's tax cuts, McCain has CHANGED his position. Many times. I see no editorials or public outcry about that. And McCain for all his straight shooter mythology actually waited for Obama to commit to a course before making his own very clear. How pathetic is that? There were supposedly conversations between the two campaigns and no accord was reached. Is that Obama's fault? I don't think so. Apparently McCain and his lawyers never bothered to return the Obama camp phone calls.
Senator Obama looks at his opponent and sees a hypocrite who is gaming the system, a guy who talks about running a civilized campaign but says little or nothing when 527s start running attacks ads against Michelle and Barack Obama in Tennessee and South Carolina, a guy who knows that these attack groups will do his dirty work for him. That's what these neo con/swift boating groups do. McCain is trying to coopt the high road knowing full well his backside is covered by the highly partisan groups supporting his candidacy.
Obama has created a different, alternative public financing campaign which takes no money from lobbyists, special interests or PACs. In fact Obama has achieved the intended results of the law. Ordinary Americans are funding the Obama campaign with over 300,000,000 donations.
McCain supporters and embittered Clintonistas may complain and accuse but I heard or read nothing from them all those years when Republicans or the Clintons dominated the election fundraising.
Obama did the right thing. His proactive approach assures him of the best chance of winning in the fall. And it demonstrates to all of us that he is not the confused candidate who headed the ticket in 2004.
And more importantly he understands that he may have to destroy the system of public finance in order to rebuild it from the ground up, so that it serves ALL Americans, not just those who can afford access.
Friday, May 23, 2008
HRC evokes the "A" word...
Wow, where to begin on this one? In a newspaper editorial board interview in South Dakota, Hillary Clinton evoked the assassination of Robert Kennedy in June 1968. As the NY Times put it, "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton defended staying in the Democratic nominating contest on Friday by pointing out that her husband had not wrapped up the nomination until June 1992, adding, 'We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.'” What the NYT did not say but was implicit in her comments was that she plans to hang around because "we never know what is going to happen".
The inappropriateness of this comment is mind numbing--that she could think it is one thing; that she could actually say it is another. The Kennedy family is once again going through yet another very public family tragedy with Senator Kennedy's illness. The Obama camp and the Black community were also offended and outraged. We can not forget that community has lost many of its political leaders including Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and Malcolm X to assassination. And HRC is indeed running against a black man who was started to receive death threats on the very day he announced his candidacy.
This is not the first time that HRC had referred to the 1968 assassination. She did so before in March 6th of this year to Time while basically trying to make the same point--that she should stay in the race. And she was on stage in New Hampshire when a campaign supporter referred to the Obama/JFK comparison and then reminded the audience that JFK had been assassinated. So her pathetic sort of apology and excuse--that she was thinking about Senator Kennedy fighting his brain tumor--was more than a little disingenuous.
Apart from the shit storm these comments have unleashed, the fact is Hillary Clinton is simply wrong on both of her references. Bill Clinton had essentially wrapped up his nomination in April of 1992 when his last major opponent Paul Tsongas suspended his campaign. The first primary in the 1968 campaign was New Hampshire in March, not January as it was in this election cycle so it was four months, not the interminable six months of this campaign. And there were no political candidate debates in the summer of 1967 as a prelude to the actual campaign as there were this time.
But her error of fact is far outweighed by the subtext of her remarks. Her comments have to be viewed in the context of her campaign which went negative over a variety of topics from allegations of drug use to plagiarism to sexism to racism to experience to patriotism to McCarthy-like guilt by association to commercials featuring Osama Bin Laden and more--all brought up and played out by the Clinton team. Pundits called it the "kitchen sink" strategy and it was not pretty. In my view it was despicable. So I am loathe to give her a pass regardless of how fatigued she claimed to be or whatever feeble excuse she seems to offer. She is a lawyer and she knows, despite her campaign protestations to the contrary, that words matter. And the fact that she has gone to this well several times (more on this in a moment) suggests her real intent.
The problem here isn't just the insensitivity, the utter stupidity and the callousness of her remarks. But what she said--as stupid as it is-- reveals a disturbing pattern: her depraved indifference to the truth and her very willingness to go to the dark side.
Keith Olberman offered a time line where the Clinton campaign used this many times in different incarnations: sometimes with the word "assassination"; other times without. This allusion was and is very much a part of the Clinton campaign.
We know she told the Bosnia story at least three different times (all recorded on video)and then lied again when she claimed it was fatigue. One time is understandable; three times suggests something else.
The same holds true for willful misrepresentations of her participation in SCHIP, the Northern Ireland Peace Treaty, NAFTA and so forth.
Then there's her revisionist history on Michigan and Florida where she pretends to want to see every vote counted although her only path to the nomination is to have the super delegates strip ALL voters of their choice and be anointed.
HRC agreed to the punishment handed out by the DNC to each state for moving their primaries up. She has once again gone back on her word which suggests it means nothing. And quite frankly, she did indeed campaign in Florida, holding four different fundraisers/events in the state after promising NOT to campaign there. Then, after a series of losses to Barack Obama, she traveled to Florida on the evening of its discredited primary and proceeded to claim victory even though no one else campaigned there and even though the results were essentially a name recognition contest for those Democrats who chose to vote--many did not.
And now she claims to be leading in popular vote--a statement which no media has challenged her on even though it is NOT TRUE. By ignoring the caucus states, HRC is essentially disenfranchising them but that is somehow ok for her and obsessed fanatical supporters.
As it was ok for her to run a truly insidious, negative, racist campaign, all the while complaining that she is the victim of sexism. When asked to specifically reference any incidents of sexism on the part of the Obama campaign, Clinton and her supporters have come up empty.
Once again Hillary Clinton can not bring herself to apologize for a mistake. She has never really come to grips with her Iraq war resolution vote. And once again she offered a tepid apology to those "who may have been offended". Well any thinking person should be offended.
Hillary Clinton is a victim of her own arrogance, her singular obsession with winning at any cost and a really pathetic political campaign--the responsibility of which falls squarely on her shoulders. She has been given much more opportunity than other candidates. If her name was not Clinton, she would not be a candidate for President much less a US Senator. If it were not for her name, she would have been driven from the campaign much earlier. Can you imagine if Obama had lost 12 primaries and caucuses in a row? The Clintonistas would be screaming.
Her supporters might decry the sexism that exists in this country but 1. it is not the reason for her failure and 2. it does not somehow trump the racism that Barack Obama has to contend with not only from small minded Americans in Appalachia but from HRC supporters who justify their own bad behavior by finger pointing at others.
Over at the Clinton supporter Taylor Marsh blog, some of these same supporters are openly calling for HRC to be the Vice Presidential nominee so when Obama is assassinated, she can take her rightful place as POTUS. These people are crazy bit only a little more so than their preferred candidate.
Time for the super delegates to step up and put us all out of our misery. Hillary Rodham Clinton is simply not fit to be President. She lacks the one attribute required of a real leader: a moral compass. We have seen over the past seven plus years the consequences of so called leadership from an administration that does not possess such a thing.
This is Memorial Day weekend so let’s not forget the brave Americans who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. And let's also remember the more than 4000 American servicemen and women that have died, in part due to the vote of HRC-- a vote she still has not properly apologized or been held accountable for.
HRC supported the only filly in the Kentucky Derby and that horse not only finished second but had to be put down.
I am suggesting nothing other than this is the perfect metaphor for her campaign.
The inappropriateness of this comment is mind numbing--that she could think it is one thing; that she could actually say it is another. The Kennedy family is once again going through yet another very public family tragedy with Senator Kennedy's illness. The Obama camp and the Black community were also offended and outraged. We can not forget that community has lost many of its political leaders including Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers and Malcolm X to assassination. And HRC is indeed running against a black man who was started to receive death threats on the very day he announced his candidacy.
This is not the first time that HRC had referred to the 1968 assassination. She did so before in March 6th of this year to Time while basically trying to make the same point--that she should stay in the race. And she was on stage in New Hampshire when a campaign supporter referred to the Obama/JFK comparison and then reminded the audience that JFK had been assassinated. So her pathetic sort of apology and excuse--that she was thinking about Senator Kennedy fighting his brain tumor--was more than a little disingenuous.
Apart from the shit storm these comments have unleashed, the fact is Hillary Clinton is simply wrong on both of her references. Bill Clinton had essentially wrapped up his nomination in April of 1992 when his last major opponent Paul Tsongas suspended his campaign. The first primary in the 1968 campaign was New Hampshire in March, not January as it was in this election cycle so it was four months, not the interminable six months of this campaign. And there were no political candidate debates in the summer of 1967 as a prelude to the actual campaign as there were this time.
But her error of fact is far outweighed by the subtext of her remarks. Her comments have to be viewed in the context of her campaign which went negative over a variety of topics from allegations of drug use to plagiarism to sexism to racism to experience to patriotism to McCarthy-like guilt by association to commercials featuring Osama Bin Laden and more--all brought up and played out by the Clinton team. Pundits called it the "kitchen sink" strategy and it was not pretty. In my view it was despicable. So I am loathe to give her a pass regardless of how fatigued she claimed to be or whatever feeble excuse she seems to offer. She is a lawyer and she knows, despite her campaign protestations to the contrary, that words matter. And the fact that she has gone to this well several times (more on this in a moment) suggests her real intent.
The problem here isn't just the insensitivity, the utter stupidity and the callousness of her remarks. But what she said--as stupid as it is-- reveals a disturbing pattern: her depraved indifference to the truth and her very willingness to go to the dark side.
Keith Olberman offered a time line where the Clinton campaign used this many times in different incarnations: sometimes with the word "assassination"; other times without. This allusion was and is very much a part of the Clinton campaign.
We know she told the Bosnia story at least three different times (all recorded on video)and then lied again when she claimed it was fatigue. One time is understandable; three times suggests something else.
The same holds true for willful misrepresentations of her participation in SCHIP, the Northern Ireland Peace Treaty, NAFTA and so forth.
Then there's her revisionist history on Michigan and Florida where she pretends to want to see every vote counted although her only path to the nomination is to have the super delegates strip ALL voters of their choice and be anointed.
HRC agreed to the punishment handed out by the DNC to each state for moving their primaries up. She has once again gone back on her word which suggests it means nothing. And quite frankly, she did indeed campaign in Florida, holding four different fundraisers/events in the state after promising NOT to campaign there. Then, after a series of losses to Barack Obama, she traveled to Florida on the evening of its discredited primary and proceeded to claim victory even though no one else campaigned there and even though the results were essentially a name recognition contest for those Democrats who chose to vote--many did not.
And now she claims to be leading in popular vote--a statement which no media has challenged her on even though it is NOT TRUE. By ignoring the caucus states, HRC is essentially disenfranchising them but that is somehow ok for her and obsessed fanatical supporters.
As it was ok for her to run a truly insidious, negative, racist campaign, all the while complaining that she is the victim of sexism. When asked to specifically reference any incidents of sexism on the part of the Obama campaign, Clinton and her supporters have come up empty.
Once again Hillary Clinton can not bring herself to apologize for a mistake. She has never really come to grips with her Iraq war resolution vote. And once again she offered a tepid apology to those "who may have been offended". Well any thinking person should be offended.
Hillary Clinton is a victim of her own arrogance, her singular obsession with winning at any cost and a really pathetic political campaign--the responsibility of which falls squarely on her shoulders. She has been given much more opportunity than other candidates. If her name was not Clinton, she would not be a candidate for President much less a US Senator. If it were not for her name, she would have been driven from the campaign much earlier. Can you imagine if Obama had lost 12 primaries and caucuses in a row? The Clintonistas would be screaming.
Her supporters might decry the sexism that exists in this country but 1. it is not the reason for her failure and 2. it does not somehow trump the racism that Barack Obama has to contend with not only from small minded Americans in Appalachia but from HRC supporters who justify their own bad behavior by finger pointing at others.
Over at the Clinton supporter Taylor Marsh blog, some of these same supporters are openly calling for HRC to be the Vice Presidential nominee so when Obama is assassinated, she can take her rightful place as POTUS. These people are crazy bit only a little more so than their preferred candidate.
Time for the super delegates to step up and put us all out of our misery. Hillary Rodham Clinton is simply not fit to be President. She lacks the one attribute required of a real leader: a moral compass. We have seen over the past seven plus years the consequences of so called leadership from an administration that does not possess such a thing.
This is Memorial Day weekend so let’s not forget the brave Americans who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for our country. And let's also remember the more than 4000 American servicemen and women that have died, in part due to the vote of HRC-- a vote she still has not properly apologized or been held accountable for.
HRC supported the only filly in the Kentucky Derby and that horse not only finished second but had to be put down.
I am suggesting nothing other than this is the perfect metaphor for her campaign.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Hypocrisy of Clinton Supporters
I'm quite sure there is sexism in this campaign directed at HRC just like there is some degree of racism directed at Obama. Any rational person should find both disgusting and repugnant.
What I find more interesting is the disconnect between the ideals and the actions of the Clinton supporters.
I'm quite certain that many Clinton supporters reviled the political tactics of Lee Atwater or Karl Rove as they were used against Democratic candidates like Gore and Kerry. Yet in their desire to see a woman nominee, her supporters turned a blind eye to the type of campaign she ran. The media euphemistically calls it the kitchen sink but we all know to what they are referring.
Clinton invoked a variety of unflattering and negative techniques from race baiting to questioning his competence and patriotism to guilt by association to accusations of drug use to gender issues to plagiarism as well as purposefully and willfully misrepresenting his positions (and later, as we all found out after Ohio, hers as well). She also took the extraordinary position of criticizing Obama while asserting that she and the Republican nominee were well qualified to run the country. The state of her campaign suggests otherwise.
Now I understand that many Clinton supporters will NOT even acknowledge she has run this type of campaign. But she did. And this is why an ex-Edwards supporter (me) became an Obama supporter.
Some obscenely obsessed Clinton supporters even argue that Obama has played the race card, that he has been sexist and that he started the negative campaigning. What world do these people live in? This is so disturbingly disingenuous that it is almost tragic in its simplicity and stupidity.
Obama started with nothing against the vaunted Clinton political machine. HRC was to be coronated on Super Tuesday. But along the way something happened and the Clintons were beaten fairly and squarely by a candidate who played by the rules.
In my view Obama had the greater burden, apart from the obvious disadvantage against going up again the Clinton machine. As this campaign proved, this country still struggles with the racial divide. The idea of a black man attacking a white woman in any form--even in a political context--is still unfathomable. Yet the Clinton supporters as evidenced by the clueless Geraldine Ferraro actually tried to make the case that Obama somehow had it easier because he is a black man in America. Well we all know how priviledged black men are in American culture...
The ridiculousness of that argument is apparent to all but not to Clinton supporters.
What gives? What allows one to check his or her own sense of integrity and ethics at the door in order to "win" a political campaign? Clinton supporters rationalize it by arguing that this is just politics, just part of the political process and if you can not take it, get out. It feeds this mythology of her toughness which I think they are confusing with her sense of entitlement.
For me this is just an excuse to behave badly. These are the kinds of tactics that most of us despise and want to change, hence Obama's public appeal. How these otherwise forward thinking people can allow themselves to be part of such distasteful practices is beyond me.
I'm sure Clinton was victimized by sexism. But when the full post mortem on her campaign is over, it will show that the candidate herself is mostly responsible for its failure. To plagiarize Ring Lardner, I'm not sure she and her supporters will like themselves in the morning.
What I find more interesting is the disconnect between the ideals and the actions of the Clinton supporters.
I'm quite certain that many Clinton supporters reviled the political tactics of Lee Atwater or Karl Rove as they were used against Democratic candidates like Gore and Kerry. Yet in their desire to see a woman nominee, her supporters turned a blind eye to the type of campaign she ran. The media euphemistically calls it the kitchen sink but we all know to what they are referring.
Clinton invoked a variety of unflattering and negative techniques from race baiting to questioning his competence and patriotism to guilt by association to accusations of drug use to gender issues to plagiarism as well as purposefully and willfully misrepresenting his positions (and later, as we all found out after Ohio, hers as well). She also took the extraordinary position of criticizing Obama while asserting that she and the Republican nominee were well qualified to run the country. The state of her campaign suggests otherwise.
Now I understand that many Clinton supporters will NOT even acknowledge she has run this type of campaign. But she did. And this is why an ex-Edwards supporter (me) became an Obama supporter.
Some obscenely obsessed Clinton supporters even argue that Obama has played the race card, that he has been sexist and that he started the negative campaigning. What world do these people live in? This is so disturbingly disingenuous that it is almost tragic in its simplicity and stupidity.
Obama started with nothing against the vaunted Clinton political machine. HRC was to be coronated on Super Tuesday. But along the way something happened and the Clintons were beaten fairly and squarely by a candidate who played by the rules.
In my view Obama had the greater burden, apart from the obvious disadvantage against going up again the Clinton machine. As this campaign proved, this country still struggles with the racial divide. The idea of a black man attacking a white woman in any form--even in a political context--is still unfathomable. Yet the Clinton supporters as evidenced by the clueless Geraldine Ferraro actually tried to make the case that Obama somehow had it easier because he is a black man in America. Well we all know how priviledged black men are in American culture...
The ridiculousness of that argument is apparent to all but not to Clinton supporters.
What gives? What allows one to check his or her own sense of integrity and ethics at the door in order to "win" a political campaign? Clinton supporters rationalize it by arguing that this is just politics, just part of the political process and if you can not take it, get out. It feeds this mythology of her toughness which I think they are confusing with her sense of entitlement.
For me this is just an excuse to behave badly. These are the kinds of tactics that most of us despise and want to change, hence Obama's public appeal. How these otherwise forward thinking people can allow themselves to be part of such distasteful practices is beyond me.
I'm sure Clinton was victimized by sexism. But when the full post mortem on her campaign is over, it will show that the candidate herself is mostly responsible for its failure. To plagiarize Ring Lardner, I'm not sure she and her supporters will like themselves in the morning.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
HRC takes a page from Karl Rove...
Yes Hillary Rodham Clinton won in Pennsylvania but even with the constantly shifting goal posts, she still is not making up any substantial ground against Barack Obama. Six weeks ago she needed to win by 15 to 20 points to catch up in the all important delegate count; she won by less than 10. Still the major media outlets like CNN are calling this a "big" win for Clinton, partly because they are clueless but mostly because they have a vested interest in dragging this sordid affair out.
How did she do it? By going positively Rovian with the Osama Bin Laden scorched earth attack ad. For the Clinton machine, politics is a blood sport. So she gains how many more delegates than Obama? Nine? Twelve? The fact is Obama still leads and ultimately that is what matters.
With this win, Clinton claims to have momentum. Of course she said the same thing after Texas and Obama actually won that state if the real prize was the number of delegates, rather than popular votes. Now she claims to be leading in the popular vote. In her own bizarre triangulation of the Michigan and Florida primaries, Clinton is the winner although she agreed NOT to campaign (though she did make four fund raising trips after she started losing) and to abide by the rules laid out by the DNC. In fact all the Democratic candidates agreed as well. Per his word, Obama did not campaign in Florida and in fact wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan. So despite the fact there was no real contest and after losing 11 or 12 primaries in a row, HRC claimed a victory. That alone suggests the futility and desperation of her campaign.
What does it tell you about someone when they want to change the rules in the middle of the game? When Team Clinton went south and she started losing, HRC turned her back on her commitment that she, Obama and others made--the very first indication in this campaign that winning is the only thing that matters, regardless of how sleazy you are doing it. The stunning truth is her supporters seem to agree, jumping on the bandwagon arguing the voters are being disenfranchised. The real irony of this of course is that the only path to the nomination for HRC is to disenfranchise all the voters and leave it to the super delegates to somehow anoint her as the nominee. The utter hypocrisy of it aside, I guess principles don't really matter when they get in the way of self interest.
To recap, she has run a grossly incompetent and in my view despicable campaign and is behind in the delegate race, popular vote and states won. Yet her supporters somehow think she is a capable manager. There is not much to know from her senatorial career, despite her suggestions to the contrary. Though she has been in the senate longer, her record is comparable to his in terms of introducing legislation. And we certainly can't look at her health care initiative in 1994 because it never amounted to anything but a complete disaster marked by arrogance and hubris.
Despite her vociferous supporters' protests to the contrary, there is no question that the overall tone of the Clinton campaign is unduly negative. Even the NY Times--a HRC supporter--finally acknowledged this in an editorial on April 23: "Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."
And "On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11."
Hillary Clinton began this campaign thinking it was a coronation. But in December Clinton's team noticed Obama closing in the Iowa polls. So they send her surrogates out to trash him, starting with Bill Shaheen who suggested that we did not know all about Obama's drug use. And then Iowa happened.
So Clinton and her handlers went even more negative, using other surrogates to attack Obama intimating drug use, inexperience, plagiarism, fluffing his resume (over calling himself a professor), the Rev. Wright issue, the Tony Rezko and William Ayers connections, the Geraldine Ferraro salvo, the "bitterness" tape, the flag pin affair and now the Rovian commercial featuring Osama Bin Laden.
Then add the whining (”I always get the first question”), crying moments (New Hampshire) and the moments of self righteous indignation (”How dare you Barack Obama?” when he was accurately pointing out that she was misrepresenting her work for NAFTA) and you begin to recognize a person who is completely unfit to be POTUS.
Yet some of Clinton's more delusional supporters claim it is Obama who is running a nasty campaign against her. What planet are these people living on? And to borrow from Ring Lardner, how can they possibly like themselves in the morning?
Her campaign imploded in part because it was mismanaged but also because HRC, like her husband, has a depraved indifference to the truth. The HRC credibility continued to crumble with misrepresentations of her NAFTA support, Northern Ireland, SCHIP and most famously, Bosnia. Though she repeated the embellished account THREE times at three different times and venues and on video, we are supposed to accept that she “misspoke” due to fatigue. Once is misspeaking. Three times is lying.
Maybe she really did dodge sniper fire? Maybe she did help bring peace to Northern Ireland? Maybe she really was against NAFTA all the time despite working for its passage? Maybe she really did bring those 100,000 jobs to upstate New York? Maybe Norman Hsu, Johnny Chung and Peter Paul never crossed her path?
Her supporters blame Obama for negativity, accuse him of corruption with Rezko (despite the fact that the Chicago Tribune completely vetted him and gave him high marks for full disclosure and despite the fact that the Clintons have enough associations with dubious folks to fill a small telephone book), accuse him of being inexperienced or accuse him of being weak and incapable to respond to attacks. What is it about these otherwise intelligent people who put their blinders on and see no wrong doing on her part? Apparently the ethical bar is so low for Clinton supporters that it is now ok to lie openly, play the race card and in general distort or trash your opponent if the end result is your candidate gets elected President.
In the course of this campaign, we have learned that the racial divide in this country is still broad, so much so that it will still not allow for a black man to aggressively attack a white woman even in a political campaign, thereby putting a huge burden on Obama. But for the most part he has behaved like a gentlemen for the entire campaign, excepting perhaps a few moments in Pennsylvania. And when he was challenged by the highly partisan but intellectually dishonest Rev. Wright critics (how many of them actually read or saw his sermons?), he responded with one of the most remarkable speeches in our life time, proving Clinton to be wrong again: words do matter.
The 2008 campaign is as much about character as anything. Obama has it; Hillary and Bill Clinton have none.
To really understand the difference between the two candidates, one only has to look at several moments in the campaign. For example, in one of the last debates, Russert and Williams challenged HRC for mocking Obama in Rhode Island and then turned to Obama to pile on, He refused and took the high road. He laughed and said he found it funny.
Similarly when Stephanopolous and Gibson went after Obama for his very tenuous connection to William Ayers (a Weather Underground member whose colleagues were in fact pardoned by Bill Clinton), she took full advantage to jump on. In doing so, she revealed herself to be the opportunist and cheap shot artist that she is.
Hillary talks about her experience and being tested but Obama is the one who has been challenged in this campaign. When the Rev. Wright affair first surfaced, Obama made the seminal speech in Philadelphia. When has Senator Clinton ever been so tested? And when has she responded so eloquently?
And perhaps most importantly, when has Obama used her gender against Hillary Clinton the way she has used race to batter him? Pennsylvania was the apotheosis of a campaign gone wrong with Clinton appealing to the worst instincts of those one the wrong side of the racial divide.
HRC can't win the argument of ideas. She has failed there miserably. So she gone completely and utterly scorched earth with the idea that maybe she can get Obama to implode. Congratulations, what a strategy. HRC has assembled a coalition of racists, bigots, feminists, the uneducated working class, gun owners, the fearful and career politicians of the ruling class. Her supporters must be really proud but that is not a group of which I want to be part.
This campaign is also about new politics versus old politics. Obama represents the new; Clinton represents the old. One only had to watch her campaign and her supporter's righteous indignation on being called out on behaving badly. For them, it is politics, get used to it. Or, as HRC likes to say, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." The problem with this of course is it does not serve the public welfare, that is presupposes the playing field is level and the contest is over the battle of ideas. It isn't. HRC is following the Karl Rove playbook. And her supporters who more than likely blanched at the hateful campaigns of George Bush among others are now embracing this cynical, manipulative strategy. Or, at the very least, turning a blind eye while her opponent is unfairly vilified. Hypocrisy? Yes I think so but for them the ends justifies the means, confirming that politics is an American blood sport, mostly played by cheap shot artists.
One more thing: feminists supporters claim it is her time, as if she is somehow entitled. Why? Because her name is Clinton?
If her name was anything other than Clinton, she would not be where she is. Her experience and her achievements are almost laughable. If the message here is that you have to depend on your husband's name and career to break through the glass ceiling, well then that is a pyrrhic victory indeed.
Do understand, I was an Edwards supporter who looked at both Obama and Clinton before deciding on the former. My reasons were over her Iraq vote and the fact that I do not want to relive the 1990s with the neo cons out in full force. I also recognized that she will have no coattails and that any Democratic candidate in a contestable seat will NOT be helped by her.
After watching her ignominious campaign over the last few months, I know I made the right decision. The Bin Laden advertisement that drew the ire of even the New York Times was the final straw.
I'm not surprised that the Republicans have joined the Clintons and the media to prolong this nomination process. They fear an Obama candidacy and are taking preemptive measures to help HRC become the nominee. If nothing else confirms Obama's strength, it is the strange bedfellows who have banded together to line up against him.
My father insisted on voting for third parties in the last few elections of his life. I never understood that until now. If she secures the nomination I will vote for every Democrat on the ballot save her. I see no reason to reward someone for behaving so atrociously.
How did she do it? By going positively Rovian with the Osama Bin Laden scorched earth attack ad. For the Clinton machine, politics is a blood sport. So she gains how many more delegates than Obama? Nine? Twelve? The fact is Obama still leads and ultimately that is what matters.
With this win, Clinton claims to have momentum. Of course she said the same thing after Texas and Obama actually won that state if the real prize was the number of delegates, rather than popular votes. Now she claims to be leading in the popular vote. In her own bizarre triangulation of the Michigan and Florida primaries, Clinton is the winner although she agreed NOT to campaign (though she did make four fund raising trips after she started losing) and to abide by the rules laid out by the DNC. In fact all the Democratic candidates agreed as well. Per his word, Obama did not campaign in Florida and in fact wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan. So despite the fact there was no real contest and after losing 11 or 12 primaries in a row, HRC claimed a victory. That alone suggests the futility and desperation of her campaign.
What does it tell you about someone when they want to change the rules in the middle of the game? When Team Clinton went south and she started losing, HRC turned her back on her commitment that she, Obama and others made--the very first indication in this campaign that winning is the only thing that matters, regardless of how sleazy you are doing it. The stunning truth is her supporters seem to agree, jumping on the bandwagon arguing the voters are being disenfranchised. The real irony of this of course is that the only path to the nomination for HRC is to disenfranchise all the voters and leave it to the super delegates to somehow anoint her as the nominee. The utter hypocrisy of it aside, I guess principles don't really matter when they get in the way of self interest.
To recap, she has run a grossly incompetent and in my view despicable campaign and is behind in the delegate race, popular vote and states won. Yet her supporters somehow think she is a capable manager. There is not much to know from her senatorial career, despite her suggestions to the contrary. Though she has been in the senate longer, her record is comparable to his in terms of introducing legislation. And we certainly can't look at her health care initiative in 1994 because it never amounted to anything but a complete disaster marked by arrogance and hubris.
Despite her vociferous supporters' protests to the contrary, there is no question that the overall tone of the Clinton campaign is unduly negative. Even the NY Times--a HRC supporter--finally acknowledged this in an editorial on April 23: "Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election."
And "On the eve of this crucial primary, Mrs. Clinton became the first Democratic candidate to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11."
Hillary Clinton began this campaign thinking it was a coronation. But in December Clinton's team noticed Obama closing in the Iowa polls. So they send her surrogates out to trash him, starting with Bill Shaheen who suggested that we did not know all about Obama's drug use. And then Iowa happened.
So Clinton and her handlers went even more negative, using other surrogates to attack Obama intimating drug use, inexperience, plagiarism, fluffing his resume (over calling himself a professor), the Rev. Wright issue, the Tony Rezko and William Ayers connections, the Geraldine Ferraro salvo, the "bitterness" tape, the flag pin affair and now the Rovian commercial featuring Osama Bin Laden.
Then add the whining (”I always get the first question”), crying moments (New Hampshire) and the moments of self righteous indignation (”How dare you Barack Obama?” when he was accurately pointing out that she was misrepresenting her work for NAFTA) and you begin to recognize a person who is completely unfit to be POTUS.
Yet some of Clinton's more delusional supporters claim it is Obama who is running a nasty campaign against her. What planet are these people living on? And to borrow from Ring Lardner, how can they possibly like themselves in the morning?
Her campaign imploded in part because it was mismanaged but also because HRC, like her husband, has a depraved indifference to the truth. The HRC credibility continued to crumble with misrepresentations of her NAFTA support, Northern Ireland, SCHIP and most famously, Bosnia. Though she repeated the embellished account THREE times at three different times and venues and on video, we are supposed to accept that she “misspoke” due to fatigue. Once is misspeaking. Three times is lying.
Maybe she really did dodge sniper fire? Maybe she did help bring peace to Northern Ireland? Maybe she really was against NAFTA all the time despite working for its passage? Maybe she really did bring those 100,000 jobs to upstate New York? Maybe Norman Hsu, Johnny Chung and Peter Paul never crossed her path?
Her supporters blame Obama for negativity, accuse him of corruption with Rezko (despite the fact that the Chicago Tribune completely vetted him and gave him high marks for full disclosure and despite the fact that the Clintons have enough associations with dubious folks to fill a small telephone book), accuse him of being inexperienced or accuse him of being weak and incapable to respond to attacks. What is it about these otherwise intelligent people who put their blinders on and see no wrong doing on her part? Apparently the ethical bar is so low for Clinton supporters that it is now ok to lie openly, play the race card and in general distort or trash your opponent if the end result is your candidate gets elected President.
In the course of this campaign, we have learned that the racial divide in this country is still broad, so much so that it will still not allow for a black man to aggressively attack a white woman even in a political campaign, thereby putting a huge burden on Obama. But for the most part he has behaved like a gentlemen for the entire campaign, excepting perhaps a few moments in Pennsylvania. And when he was challenged by the highly partisan but intellectually dishonest Rev. Wright critics (how many of them actually read or saw his sermons?), he responded with one of the most remarkable speeches in our life time, proving Clinton to be wrong again: words do matter.
The 2008 campaign is as much about character as anything. Obama has it; Hillary and Bill Clinton have none.
To really understand the difference between the two candidates, one only has to look at several moments in the campaign. For example, in one of the last debates, Russert and Williams challenged HRC for mocking Obama in Rhode Island and then turned to Obama to pile on, He refused and took the high road. He laughed and said he found it funny.
Similarly when Stephanopolous and Gibson went after Obama for his very tenuous connection to William Ayers (a Weather Underground member whose colleagues were in fact pardoned by Bill Clinton), she took full advantage to jump on. In doing so, she revealed herself to be the opportunist and cheap shot artist that she is.
Hillary talks about her experience and being tested but Obama is the one who has been challenged in this campaign. When the Rev. Wright affair first surfaced, Obama made the seminal speech in Philadelphia. When has Senator Clinton ever been so tested? And when has she responded so eloquently?
And perhaps most importantly, when has Obama used her gender against Hillary Clinton the way she has used race to batter him? Pennsylvania was the apotheosis of a campaign gone wrong with Clinton appealing to the worst instincts of those one the wrong side of the racial divide.
HRC can't win the argument of ideas. She has failed there miserably. So she gone completely and utterly scorched earth with the idea that maybe she can get Obama to implode. Congratulations, what a strategy. HRC has assembled a coalition of racists, bigots, feminists, the uneducated working class, gun owners, the fearful and career politicians of the ruling class. Her supporters must be really proud but that is not a group of which I want to be part.
This campaign is also about new politics versus old politics. Obama represents the new; Clinton represents the old. One only had to watch her campaign and her supporter's righteous indignation on being called out on behaving badly. For them, it is politics, get used to it. Or, as HRC likes to say, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen." The problem with this of course is it does not serve the public welfare, that is presupposes the playing field is level and the contest is over the battle of ideas. It isn't. HRC is following the Karl Rove playbook. And her supporters who more than likely blanched at the hateful campaigns of George Bush among others are now embracing this cynical, manipulative strategy. Or, at the very least, turning a blind eye while her opponent is unfairly vilified. Hypocrisy? Yes I think so but for them the ends justifies the means, confirming that politics is an American blood sport, mostly played by cheap shot artists.
One more thing: feminists supporters claim it is her time, as if she is somehow entitled. Why? Because her name is Clinton?
If her name was anything other than Clinton, she would not be where she is. Her experience and her achievements are almost laughable. If the message here is that you have to depend on your husband's name and career to break through the glass ceiling, well then that is a pyrrhic victory indeed.
Do understand, I was an Edwards supporter who looked at both Obama and Clinton before deciding on the former. My reasons were over her Iraq vote and the fact that I do not want to relive the 1990s with the neo cons out in full force. I also recognized that she will have no coattails and that any Democratic candidate in a contestable seat will NOT be helped by her.
After watching her ignominious campaign over the last few months, I know I made the right decision. The Bin Laden advertisement that drew the ire of even the New York Times was the final straw.
I'm not surprised that the Republicans have joined the Clintons and the media to prolong this nomination process. They fear an Obama candidacy and are taking preemptive measures to help HRC become the nominee. If nothing else confirms Obama's strength, it is the strange bedfellows who have banded together to line up against him.
My father insisted on voting for third parties in the last few elections of his life. I never understood that until now. If she secures the nomination I will vote for every Democrat on the ballot save her. I see no reason to reward someone for behaving so atrociously.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Case Against Hillary Clinton
Or more specifically why Barack is the better candidate in the general election
I think it important to disclose a few things: I want a Democrat to win the White House in 2008, that my preferred candidate is no longer in the race, that I gave money to two candidates--neither of whom was named Clinton and most significantly that I don't care much for either of the Clintons, though that would not preclude me from voting for her as a lessor of two evils.
Let's start with the last declaration. I don't have a real issue with Hillary or Bill. I just think they are on the conservative side of the Democratic spectrum and I think her legislative record in the Senate does not tell us much. In a larger context, I'm not comfortable with everything Bill Clinton did as President including his gifts to the banking industry, his so-called welfare reform, NAFTA and of course not keeping his zipper zipped. In a way I hold him partially responsible for the past eight years. Fair? Perhaps not. Still I think he bears some responsibility. And more importantly, I think his recent behavior on the campaign trail has really forced people to re-evaluate him and not for the good.
I also think it fair to say if her last name was not Clinton, she would not be in this race. Think about it: a center right women who supported the disaster in Iraq running for President at this point in time. If her name was Smith, I don't think she would be here. As much as some women may understandably look to her, the fact is she would not be there without Bill. She is trading on the Clinton name and if that is the way women want to secure the White House, so be it. But I find that a pyrrhic victory at best.
Still I voted for him twice as the proverbial lessor of two evils. And I was sympathetic to them both during the Lewinsky contretemps because for me it was more of a personal matter between the two of them than a public or professional one. Unlike neo-conservatives I think lying about oral sex is a lot less problematic than, let's say, lying for war as did Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and the other trolls.
After eight disastrous years under the frat-boy-in-chief and his minions, there's a lot to be done for the US to reclaim any moral and political authority in the world. The best political party to do that is the Democrats who have a slightly more sophisticated view of the world and our place in it.
Personally I think John Edwards is the best candidate that the Democrats could muster. He was the first (with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich) candidate to speak truth to power. He was THE first to come out with a health care proposal and he spoke forcefully and passionately for the poor when virtually no once else--except Kucinich again--did.
But Edwards is unfortunately out of the race, leaving only two candidates.
The Clinton and Obama campaigns have each been making arguments about which candidate would be better in the general election campaign against John McCain. She argues her experience matters, that she is ready to get to work on day one and that she is the solutions candidate. Obama counters that she is yesterday's news, that the country wants real change and that another President named Clinton does not offer anything new.
Since I so desperately want a Democrat to win, choosing Obama over Clinton ended up being a no brainer. Obama is by far the better candidate against any Republican but especially against a hypocrite like John McCain.
For me, the case for Barack and against Hillary starts and stops with two significants votes she made in the US Senate.
The Iraq Resolution:
On the resolution to go to war with Iraq, the junior senator from New York just flat got it wrong. Barack Obama, who was not in the Senate at the time, was on record vociferously opposing the war.
In 2003, Hillary Clinton along with most other members of the House and Senate, mindlessly green lighted the resolution allowing Bush to go to war with Iraq. Many thoughtful Senators have backtracked from that vote, arguing that they were misled by a disingenuous Bush Administration and its minions who cherry picked intelligence to suit their political purposes.
Hillary Clinton is not among them. Her vote on Iraq was wrong. But she still stubbornly insists that she was right and that she would vote that way again, all the while slagging the Bush Administration for its handling of the Iraq war, not for the very idea of it in the first place. So she erred, then compounded that mistake by erring again. In effect she is wrong twice and in my view that immediately eliminates her from any serious consideration. Being stupid or stubborn (or both) should immediately disqualify anyone for the Presidency. If we have learned nothing from the moron Bush, we should have learned that.
I'm not certain why Hillary persists in arguing the indefensible. I can only think that she and her advisors made the cold, calculated decision to support the military action so she would appear not to be weak in her upcoming Presidential bid. Rather than act out of real principle, she embraced the dark side and supported the neo con hawks. Five years later she has refused to admit a mistake though others like John Edwards and John Kerry have both retreated from their positions. Her refusal to acknowledge this blunder or back down from that untenable position suggests to me that her fear of appearing weak transcends her interest in doing what is right. So in my view, Clinton has some of the blood of almost 4000 American dead, tens of thousands of US wounded and perhaps a million Iraqis dead or wounded on her hands while she shows us what a tough leader she could be. That's pathetic and tragic.
It is one thing to get it wrong. It is another to keep insisting that you got it right in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. Her position is inexplicable, untenable and unforgivable.
The Kyl-Lieberman amendment:
She compounded that mistake when Senators Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., filed an amendment to the 2008 Defense Reauthorization bill proclaims "that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
The Senate, therefore, should "support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described ... with respect to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
It is non-binding, but it is a "sense of the Senate" amendment basically saying the Senate views Iran as a danger to our war in Iraq, and that it is permissible for the president to use everything at his fingertips to oppose Iran, including military options, which means bombing and war.
Sound familiar? It is the Iraq war resolution all over again. And she voted for it. Why? I have no idea except that it suggests the she possesses the cajones to go to war. Unfortunately I'd prefer her to use her brain instead.
So for me there's no need for any further consideration. When confronted with perhaps the two most important votes of her Senate career, Hillary Clinton got them both wrong. So much for experience and so much for solutions.
Iraq as a campaign issue:
The truth is the Clinton machine does not want to talk much about Iraq and when it does, she usually lambasts President Bush for getting it wrong.
Bush is without a doubt one of the worst president this country has ever seen (he's neck and neck with Warren Harding) and a moron to boot. So are the neo-cons who stand behind him, nudging him towards the abyss. But Hillary Clinton is the enabler. So she and her campaign advisors are trying to nuance her message, hoping to find one that will resonate. On Iraq, they will not find one. Polls show approximately 70 per cent of Americans are unhappy with the Iraq War. It and the economy stand to be the two great issues of the 2008 campaign, unless of course you have bought into the whole immigration misdirect which I think is an attempt by the Bushies and neo cons to focus attention away from the national disaster that we know as Iraq.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of a Clinton candidacy is that Iraq will be virtually off the table. The politics of McCain and Clinton are a lot closer on Iraq than McCain and Obama. With Clinton, McCain will be able to triangulate and obfuscate on Iraq, arguing that she too voted for the resolution and that the only blunders were with the way the war was run which has now been corrected. With Obama, McCain has no chance of waging such a ridiculous argument.
The Experience Argument:
For most of the campaign, the Clinton campaign has touted her experience--ready to lead from day one--while directly or indirectly questioning Obama's resume.
The problem for Hillary is that she glosses over her own resume. Absent from it is her corporate legal work for Wal-mart which is telling while her eight years spent in the White House as first lady are featured.
Personally I'm not sure the White House years are a strong selling point because it reminds voters of the marital problems between the two Clintons which led to Bill's infidelities and impeachment and also the debacle of her handling of the health care initiative. And if being first lady qualifies as job experience then perhaps Laura Bush should be running for President, not John McCain.
To be fair Hillary has four more years of Senate experience than Obama but since the Senate is rarely a path to the White House, the significance of those years is hard to quantify. Clearly if elected she would return much of the Clinton team to Washington.
Unfortunately for her, change seems to be the keyword of this campaign. His lack of Washington experience may actually be an asset to his campaign. Obama worked as a union organizer, was elected to the Illinois Senate and then was elected to the US Senate in 2004. What he may lack in experience will be more than made up for by his intellect and his ability to draw the best and the brightest to Washington.
Furthermore, if Clinton is right and experience is indeed the key, how can one explain how Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell et al. got it so wrong. They all have years of government service in the Reagan and first Bush presidencies. Yet for all of that experience, they completely bungled American foreign policy, specifically Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. There's no point in debating the neo con strategy here. It is an utter and complete failure. Experience or the lack there of had no impact on the arrogance and hubris of the neo cons who naively thought they would bring western principles of democracy to the Middle East. Bush had his axis of evil; we have our own axis of assholes who promoted a war they did not understand in a place they have never visited.
So, to answer Hillary, being ready to lead on day one means nothing if you get it wrong.
One more point on experience: the Clintons are political animals. We have heard much about the vaunted Clinton machine, which has been through two Presidential and two Senate campaigns, delivering votes and states to Hillary. They seemed to have had a strategy that included a coronation on February 4. Oops! Something happened on the way to Super Tuesday. The Clintons were out maneuvered, out planned, out worked and simply outclassed. And now they are scrambling to survive and nothing is out of bounds.
This very experienced political team led by some seriously connected political operatives has paled in comparison to Obama's campaign. The much less experienced Obama has run a magnificent campaign, out organizing Hillary Clinton on the state level and more recently out fundraising her especially among smaller donors. That is no small feat and speaks volumes for the brain trust behind the Obama campaign and its message which is clearly resonating with voters, particularly young ones. Oh yes, the message...
The Message:
Clinton argues she is the stronger candidate, offering inevitability, then experience and now solutions.
Obama offers change. And hope.
She offers numbers, is a policy wonk and is fully briefed.
He offers inspiration. And substance.
After all the pundits and columnists weighed in and the voters actually started caucusing or actually voting, Obama had it right. The voters are looking for a change. They are tired of the scorched earth partisan politics of the recent past. They want more things done and less bickering. Obama and John Edwards were the only ones offering that message.
Edwards is gone but Obama remains. And his comment decrying the bickering of red states versus blue states resonated with audiences who are looking for some sense of hope, some sense of bipartisan collaboration to end some of the very real problems we now face.
I'm still not certain what her argument is here. Experience? Expertise? An ability to govern? Obama is a relative unknown which concerns some people. After eight years of Bush that is indeed understandable.
But what we don't know may be an asset. There is less of a record to go after which means the Republicans will have to go after his ideas. Call me crazy but I think the Republicans are responsible for the current political climate. They can not win a battle of ideas because theirs are wrong and obviously not working. But with Hillary, they will simply make her the issue. And it could work.
Recently Hillary and her surrogates have gone after Obama and his message. Clinton supporters tell us while he offers words, she offers solutions. When Obama supporters reminded the Clintons that "I have a dream" were just words, the flame throwers changed targets. So now her campaign manager is trying to make an issue of Obama's innocent use of a few Deval Patrick phrases. Unfortunately for her campaign there was blowback. Many people simply don't care, recognizing the innocuousness of the event. But the charge has boomeranged right back at her, with pundits noting that her much publicized book "It Takes A Village" had an uncredited ghost writer. And that Bill lifted some comments in his first inaugural address without crediting the author.
The Numbers Game:
What we do know is that the Democrats and Republicans roughly split 80 per cent of the voting public with the remaining 20 percent of independents and others who generally decide the national elections.
We know Hillary Clinton is pretty much despised by about 40 per cent or more of the voters. We also know she is not popular with many independents. And lastly we know that her candidacy will energize the rabid right wing, the neo cons and the evangelicals to come out and vote against her, despite what the wing nut talk show loonies have to say about it.
We know the lunatic fringe dominating the airwaves is upset that they are wielding no power or little influence in this election cycle, hence the anger. While they are threatening to boycott the election or "work for Hillary", the truth is it will be a cold day in hell before they pass up on the opportunity to bring down a Clinton.
This scenario, along with Clinton fatigue, spells big problems for Hillary in a general election. Obama on the other hand does not energize the evangelical or lunatic base. In fact I suspect his style of speaking with its heavy religious intonations offers them some comfort. More importantly he draws voters from the liberal to moderate wing of the Republican party. And he attracts independents who are voting for him in record numbers. In short, the numbers favor him over Hillary quite handily.
Collateral Damage:
Another potential problem of a Clinton candidacy is the coat tail effect. She won't have one. If she is fortunate to prevail in the general election, she will not bring fellow Democratic candidates in the House and Senate with her, thus throwing into question Democratic control of both houses of Congress.
Any Democratic President is going to need control of both houses to push through his or her agenda. With Hillary that will simply not happen. With Obama it could.
In a Clinton candidacy, my guess is Republicans will control one or both houses, thus thwarting virtually anything she wants to do. We only have to remember back to 1994 when the Republicans took control of both houses and then started the national six year nightmare starring Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr and others. Bill Clinton when he waxes poetic about the good times of the 1990s and how Obama wasn't part of it must have forgotten.
Hillary could spend her entire four year term revisiting or re-fighting old wars from the 1990s. It could be complete chaos.
Then there's Bill:
Bill Clinton left office a very popular president, despite the right wing witch hunt. An since he left office he has conducted himself reasonably well, promoting solutions to health related issues in Africa among others.
But in the last few months we have started to see a different side of Bill and Hillary. It started in December with some disquieting details from Bill Shaheen, a campaign staffer who is married to the former New Hampshire governor, suggesting there was more to Obama's admitted drug experimentation as a teenager. The Clinton campaign quickly denied responsibility and then fired him but only after the story had carried for three or four news cycles. Shortly thereafter came some discreet rumblings about Obama's experience from some of the Clinton surrogates. Then the nefarious drug charges resurfaced via BET Chairman Robert Johnson. These were followed by reports of Obamas's association with the indicted political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko which was later followed by the none-to-discreet race baiting in South Carolina which was followed by some extremely patronizing remarks comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign.
On top of this the Clintons have moved forward with a plan to try to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations. The DNC refused to sanction either primary after both states moved up their primary dates to try to influence the process. Last year all candidates agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama was not even on the ballot in Michigan. Still all of this did not stop Clinton from going to Florida and proclaiming victory which was really sad. Even worse, she is fully prepared to go back on her word because it may be the only path to victory.
None of these events were accidents. The Clintons have obviously learned a thing or two from the Karl Rove playbook. These attacks were planned and executed by the Clintons and their surrogates. They are playing hardball. One wonders if the tactics will come back to bite them both in the ass. This is an electorate which wants change--change from this very kind of heavy handed politics.
The Rezko kerfuffle only reminds us that Clinton and McCain have their own axes to bear, some more than others.
Hillary was closely associated with fundraiser Norman Hsu--the recently convicted Norman Hsu. Hillary and Bill also had some form of a relationship with Rezko as well, however innocent. And who can forget John McCain, the so-called maverick and straight shooter who rolled over on torture in the Senate, was a charter member of the Keating Five.
Bill and Hillary obviously want to win and if they need to rely on Rovian electoral methods including throwing over some loyal staffers, then so be it.
The only good news about all of this sordid stealth campaigning is that it has brought the issue of Bill Clinton presence to the fore. Clearly he will not be a co-president. No longer are we hearing, "With Hill, you get Bill". He has had his eight years and, as recent behavior shows, it is time for him to move on to another chapter in his life. With a little luck he will return to Chappaqua, never to be seen again in a political race.
Crazed Feminists:
Some women have been circulating a Robin Morgan piece which elaborates on some of our collective shortcomings when it comes women. As I understand it Morgan's point is that since she is a woman, she will vote for one. So do these feminists actually look at the political positions of their chosen candidate? Does that mean Robin Morgan would vote for Ann Coulter?
Equally bizarre, on Jan 28, the New York chapter responded to Senator Edward Kennedy's endorsement of Obama with this press release:
Senator Kennedy Betrays Women by Not Standing
For Hillary Clinton for President
Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard...
And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one).
So what matters here is gender, not the measure of the person, their political point of view or their character?
Could cooler heads not prevail? How absurd is this? This kind of knee jerk thinking is what I expect from the evangelicals, not progressive women. And we can now expect more Fem Nazi comments from the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
If you ask me, that position puts women's rights even further back.
I think it important to disclose a few things: I want a Democrat to win the White House in 2008, that my preferred candidate is no longer in the race, that I gave money to two candidates--neither of whom was named Clinton and most significantly that I don't care much for either of the Clintons, though that would not preclude me from voting for her as a lessor of two evils.
Let's start with the last declaration. I don't have a real issue with Hillary or Bill. I just think they are on the conservative side of the Democratic spectrum and I think her legislative record in the Senate does not tell us much. In a larger context, I'm not comfortable with everything Bill Clinton did as President including his gifts to the banking industry, his so-called welfare reform, NAFTA and of course not keeping his zipper zipped. In a way I hold him partially responsible for the past eight years. Fair? Perhaps not. Still I think he bears some responsibility. And more importantly, I think his recent behavior on the campaign trail has really forced people to re-evaluate him and not for the good.
I also think it fair to say if her last name was not Clinton, she would not be in this race. Think about it: a center right women who supported the disaster in Iraq running for President at this point in time. If her name was Smith, I don't think she would be here. As much as some women may understandably look to her, the fact is she would not be there without Bill. She is trading on the Clinton name and if that is the way women want to secure the White House, so be it. But I find that a pyrrhic victory at best.
Still I voted for him twice as the proverbial lessor of two evils. And I was sympathetic to them both during the Lewinsky contretemps because for me it was more of a personal matter between the two of them than a public or professional one. Unlike neo-conservatives I think lying about oral sex is a lot less problematic than, let's say, lying for war as did Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and the other trolls.
After eight disastrous years under the frat-boy-in-chief and his minions, there's a lot to be done for the US to reclaim any moral and political authority in the world. The best political party to do that is the Democrats who have a slightly more sophisticated view of the world and our place in it.
Personally I think John Edwards is the best candidate that the Democrats could muster. He was the first (with the possible exception of Dennis Kucinich) candidate to speak truth to power. He was THE first to come out with a health care proposal and he spoke forcefully and passionately for the poor when virtually no once else--except Kucinich again--did.
But Edwards is unfortunately out of the race, leaving only two candidates.
The Clinton and Obama campaigns have each been making arguments about which candidate would be better in the general election campaign against John McCain. She argues her experience matters, that she is ready to get to work on day one and that she is the solutions candidate. Obama counters that she is yesterday's news, that the country wants real change and that another President named Clinton does not offer anything new.
Since I so desperately want a Democrat to win, choosing Obama over Clinton ended up being a no brainer. Obama is by far the better candidate against any Republican but especially against a hypocrite like John McCain.
For me, the case for Barack and against Hillary starts and stops with two significants votes she made in the US Senate.
The Iraq Resolution:
On the resolution to go to war with Iraq, the junior senator from New York just flat got it wrong. Barack Obama, who was not in the Senate at the time, was on record vociferously opposing the war.
In 2003, Hillary Clinton along with most other members of the House and Senate, mindlessly green lighted the resolution allowing Bush to go to war with Iraq. Many thoughtful Senators have backtracked from that vote, arguing that they were misled by a disingenuous Bush Administration and its minions who cherry picked intelligence to suit their political purposes.
Hillary Clinton is not among them. Her vote on Iraq was wrong. But she still stubbornly insists that she was right and that she would vote that way again, all the while slagging the Bush Administration for its handling of the Iraq war, not for the very idea of it in the first place. So she erred, then compounded that mistake by erring again. In effect she is wrong twice and in my view that immediately eliminates her from any serious consideration. Being stupid or stubborn (or both) should immediately disqualify anyone for the Presidency. If we have learned nothing from the moron Bush, we should have learned that.
I'm not certain why Hillary persists in arguing the indefensible. I can only think that she and her advisors made the cold, calculated decision to support the military action so she would appear not to be weak in her upcoming Presidential bid. Rather than act out of real principle, she embraced the dark side and supported the neo con hawks. Five years later she has refused to admit a mistake though others like John Edwards and John Kerry have both retreated from their positions. Her refusal to acknowledge this blunder or back down from that untenable position suggests to me that her fear of appearing weak transcends her interest in doing what is right. So in my view, Clinton has some of the blood of almost 4000 American dead, tens of thousands of US wounded and perhaps a million Iraqis dead or wounded on her hands while she shows us what a tough leader she could be. That's pathetic and tragic.
It is one thing to get it wrong. It is another to keep insisting that you got it right in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary. Her position is inexplicable, untenable and unforgivable.
The Kyl-Lieberman amendment:
She compounded that mistake when Senators Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., filed an amendment to the 2008 Defense Reauthorization bill proclaims "that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
The Senate, therefore, should "support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described ... with respect to the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
It is non-binding, but it is a "sense of the Senate" amendment basically saying the Senate views Iran as a danger to our war in Iraq, and that it is permissible for the president to use everything at his fingertips to oppose Iran, including military options, which means bombing and war.
Sound familiar? It is the Iraq war resolution all over again. And she voted for it. Why? I have no idea except that it suggests the she possesses the cajones to go to war. Unfortunately I'd prefer her to use her brain instead.
So for me there's no need for any further consideration. When confronted with perhaps the two most important votes of her Senate career, Hillary Clinton got them both wrong. So much for experience and so much for solutions.
Iraq as a campaign issue:
The truth is the Clinton machine does not want to talk much about Iraq and when it does, she usually lambasts President Bush for getting it wrong.
Bush is without a doubt one of the worst president this country has ever seen (he's neck and neck with Warren Harding) and a moron to boot. So are the neo-cons who stand behind him, nudging him towards the abyss. But Hillary Clinton is the enabler. So she and her campaign advisors are trying to nuance her message, hoping to find one that will resonate. On Iraq, they will not find one. Polls show approximately 70 per cent of Americans are unhappy with the Iraq War. It and the economy stand to be the two great issues of the 2008 campaign, unless of course you have bought into the whole immigration misdirect which I think is an attempt by the Bushies and neo cons to focus attention away from the national disaster that we know as Iraq.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of a Clinton candidacy is that Iraq will be virtually off the table. The politics of McCain and Clinton are a lot closer on Iraq than McCain and Obama. With Clinton, McCain will be able to triangulate and obfuscate on Iraq, arguing that she too voted for the resolution and that the only blunders were with the way the war was run which has now been corrected. With Obama, McCain has no chance of waging such a ridiculous argument.
The Experience Argument:
For most of the campaign, the Clinton campaign has touted her experience--ready to lead from day one--while directly or indirectly questioning Obama's resume.
The problem for Hillary is that she glosses over her own resume. Absent from it is her corporate legal work for Wal-mart which is telling while her eight years spent in the White House as first lady are featured.
Personally I'm not sure the White House years are a strong selling point because it reminds voters of the marital problems between the two Clintons which led to Bill's infidelities and impeachment and also the debacle of her handling of the health care initiative. And if being first lady qualifies as job experience then perhaps Laura Bush should be running for President, not John McCain.
To be fair Hillary has four more years of Senate experience than Obama but since the Senate is rarely a path to the White House, the significance of those years is hard to quantify. Clearly if elected she would return much of the Clinton team to Washington.
Unfortunately for her, change seems to be the keyword of this campaign. His lack of Washington experience may actually be an asset to his campaign. Obama worked as a union organizer, was elected to the Illinois Senate and then was elected to the US Senate in 2004. What he may lack in experience will be more than made up for by his intellect and his ability to draw the best and the brightest to Washington.
Furthermore, if Clinton is right and experience is indeed the key, how can one explain how Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell et al. got it so wrong. They all have years of government service in the Reagan and first Bush presidencies. Yet for all of that experience, they completely bungled American foreign policy, specifically Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. There's no point in debating the neo con strategy here. It is an utter and complete failure. Experience or the lack there of had no impact on the arrogance and hubris of the neo cons who naively thought they would bring western principles of democracy to the Middle East. Bush had his axis of evil; we have our own axis of assholes who promoted a war they did not understand in a place they have never visited.
So, to answer Hillary, being ready to lead on day one means nothing if you get it wrong.
One more point on experience: the Clintons are political animals. We have heard much about the vaunted Clinton machine, which has been through two Presidential and two Senate campaigns, delivering votes and states to Hillary. They seemed to have had a strategy that included a coronation on February 4. Oops! Something happened on the way to Super Tuesday. The Clintons were out maneuvered, out planned, out worked and simply outclassed. And now they are scrambling to survive and nothing is out of bounds.
This very experienced political team led by some seriously connected political operatives has paled in comparison to Obama's campaign. The much less experienced Obama has run a magnificent campaign, out organizing Hillary Clinton on the state level and more recently out fundraising her especially among smaller donors. That is no small feat and speaks volumes for the brain trust behind the Obama campaign and its message which is clearly resonating with voters, particularly young ones. Oh yes, the message...
The Message:
Clinton argues she is the stronger candidate, offering inevitability, then experience and now solutions.
Obama offers change. And hope.
She offers numbers, is a policy wonk and is fully briefed.
He offers inspiration. And substance.
After all the pundits and columnists weighed in and the voters actually started caucusing or actually voting, Obama had it right. The voters are looking for a change. They are tired of the scorched earth partisan politics of the recent past. They want more things done and less bickering. Obama and John Edwards were the only ones offering that message.
Edwards is gone but Obama remains. And his comment decrying the bickering of red states versus blue states resonated with audiences who are looking for some sense of hope, some sense of bipartisan collaboration to end some of the very real problems we now face.
I'm still not certain what her argument is here. Experience? Expertise? An ability to govern? Obama is a relative unknown which concerns some people. After eight years of Bush that is indeed understandable.
But what we don't know may be an asset. There is less of a record to go after which means the Republicans will have to go after his ideas. Call me crazy but I think the Republicans are responsible for the current political climate. They can not win a battle of ideas because theirs are wrong and obviously not working. But with Hillary, they will simply make her the issue. And it could work.
Recently Hillary and her surrogates have gone after Obama and his message. Clinton supporters tell us while he offers words, she offers solutions. When Obama supporters reminded the Clintons that "I have a dream" were just words, the flame throwers changed targets. So now her campaign manager is trying to make an issue of Obama's innocent use of a few Deval Patrick phrases. Unfortunately for her campaign there was blowback. Many people simply don't care, recognizing the innocuousness of the event. But the charge has boomeranged right back at her, with pundits noting that her much publicized book "It Takes A Village" had an uncredited ghost writer. And that Bill lifted some comments in his first inaugural address without crediting the author.
The Numbers Game:
What we do know is that the Democrats and Republicans roughly split 80 per cent of the voting public with the remaining 20 percent of independents and others who generally decide the national elections.
We know Hillary Clinton is pretty much despised by about 40 per cent or more of the voters. We also know she is not popular with many independents. And lastly we know that her candidacy will energize the rabid right wing, the neo cons and the evangelicals to come out and vote against her, despite what the wing nut talk show loonies have to say about it.
We know the lunatic fringe dominating the airwaves is upset that they are wielding no power or little influence in this election cycle, hence the anger. While they are threatening to boycott the election or "work for Hillary", the truth is it will be a cold day in hell before they pass up on the opportunity to bring down a Clinton.
This scenario, along with Clinton fatigue, spells big problems for Hillary in a general election. Obama on the other hand does not energize the evangelical or lunatic base. In fact I suspect his style of speaking with its heavy religious intonations offers them some comfort. More importantly he draws voters from the liberal to moderate wing of the Republican party. And he attracts independents who are voting for him in record numbers. In short, the numbers favor him over Hillary quite handily.
Collateral Damage:
Another potential problem of a Clinton candidacy is the coat tail effect. She won't have one. If she is fortunate to prevail in the general election, she will not bring fellow Democratic candidates in the House and Senate with her, thus throwing into question Democratic control of both houses of Congress.
Any Democratic President is going to need control of both houses to push through his or her agenda. With Hillary that will simply not happen. With Obama it could.
In a Clinton candidacy, my guess is Republicans will control one or both houses, thus thwarting virtually anything she wants to do. We only have to remember back to 1994 when the Republicans took control of both houses and then started the national six year nightmare starring Monica Lewinsky, Kenneth Starr and others. Bill Clinton when he waxes poetic about the good times of the 1990s and how Obama wasn't part of it must have forgotten.
Hillary could spend her entire four year term revisiting or re-fighting old wars from the 1990s. It could be complete chaos.
Then there's Bill:
Bill Clinton left office a very popular president, despite the right wing witch hunt. An since he left office he has conducted himself reasonably well, promoting solutions to health related issues in Africa among others.
But in the last few months we have started to see a different side of Bill and Hillary. It started in December with some disquieting details from Bill Shaheen, a campaign staffer who is married to the former New Hampshire governor, suggesting there was more to Obama's admitted drug experimentation as a teenager. The Clinton campaign quickly denied responsibility and then fired him but only after the story had carried for three or four news cycles. Shortly thereafter came some discreet rumblings about Obama's experience from some of the Clinton surrogates. Then the nefarious drug charges resurfaced via BET Chairman Robert Johnson. These were followed by reports of Obamas's association with the indicted political fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko which was later followed by the none-to-discreet race baiting in South Carolina which was followed by some extremely patronizing remarks comparing Obama to Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign.
On top of this the Clintons have moved forward with a plan to try to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations. The DNC refused to sanction either primary after both states moved up their primary dates to try to influence the process. Last year all candidates agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama was not even on the ballot in Michigan. Still all of this did not stop Clinton from going to Florida and proclaiming victory which was really sad. Even worse, she is fully prepared to go back on her word because it may be the only path to victory.
None of these events were accidents. The Clintons have obviously learned a thing or two from the Karl Rove playbook. These attacks were planned and executed by the Clintons and their surrogates. They are playing hardball. One wonders if the tactics will come back to bite them both in the ass. This is an electorate which wants change--change from this very kind of heavy handed politics.
The Rezko kerfuffle only reminds us that Clinton and McCain have their own axes to bear, some more than others.
Hillary was closely associated with fundraiser Norman Hsu--the recently convicted Norman Hsu. Hillary and Bill also had some form of a relationship with Rezko as well, however innocent. And who can forget John McCain, the so-called maverick and straight shooter who rolled over on torture in the Senate, was a charter member of the Keating Five.
Bill and Hillary obviously want to win and if they need to rely on Rovian electoral methods including throwing over some loyal staffers, then so be it.
The only good news about all of this sordid stealth campaigning is that it has brought the issue of Bill Clinton presence to the fore. Clearly he will not be a co-president. No longer are we hearing, "With Hill, you get Bill". He has had his eight years and, as recent behavior shows, it is time for him to move on to another chapter in his life. With a little luck he will return to Chappaqua, never to be seen again in a political race.
Crazed Feminists:
Some women have been circulating a Robin Morgan piece which elaborates on some of our collective shortcomings when it comes women. As I understand it Morgan's point is that since she is a woman, she will vote for one. So do these feminists actually look at the political positions of their chosen candidate? Does that mean Robin Morgan would vote for Ann Coulter?
Equally bizarre, on Jan 28, the New York chapter responded to Senator Edward Kennedy's endorsement of Obama with this press release:
Senator Kennedy Betrays Women by Not Standing
For Hillary Clinton for President
Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard...
And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one).
So what matters here is gender, not the measure of the person, their political point of view or their character?
Could cooler heads not prevail? How absurd is this? This kind of knee jerk thinking is what I expect from the evangelicals, not progressive women. And we can now expect more Fem Nazi comments from the likes of Rush Limbaugh.
If you ask me, that position puts women's rights even further back.
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