Wow. I hate CNN. Some white old male political analyst was praising Obama by saying, "He never brings race into it (he meant this as a positive). You don't have to act like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. He does this with dignity."
I think we all know what words like "dignity" are code for. Yayy Obama, he's not like those uppity blacks like Sharpton and Jackson. Woo hoo. This is almost as bad as Biden's "clean" speech. Praising Obama doesn't excuse you, you asshole. Benevolent racism is still racism.
Democrats, Primaries etc - Since I'm not sure where to put this one
-
Sonic Youth
- Tenured Laureate
- Posts: 8005
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
- Location: USA
-
Sonic Youth
- Tenured Laureate
- Posts: 8005
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
- Location: USA
-
FilmFan720
- Emeritus
- Posts: 3650
- Joined: Thu Jan 02, 2003 3:57 pm
- Location: Illinois
I got to observe an Iowa City caucus on 2004, and it was one of the most interesting political experiences I have had. You really get to see where the patterns of thought are, and at least for me, it was eye-opening of where things were headed in that entire campaign.
Anyways, my guess:
DEMOCRATS
1. Edwards
2. Obama
3. Clinton
REPUBLICANS
1. Huckabee
2. Romney
3. McCain
4. Thompson
Anyways, my guess:
DEMOCRATS
1. Edwards
2. Obama
3. Clinton
REPUBLICANS
1. Huckabee
2. Romney
3. McCain
4. Thompson
"Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good."
- Minor Myers, Jr.
- Minor Myers, Jr.
-
Sonic Youth
- Tenured Laureate
- Posts: 8005
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
- Location: USA
Based on nothing but guesses, here's my predictions for tonight. If I'm wrong, then I'm no better than the professional pundits who also know jack shit as far as I'm concerned.
1. Huckabee - 29%
2. Romney - 27%
3. Thompson - 15%
4. McCain - 13%
5. Paul - 10%
6. Giuliani - 5%
7. Hunter - 2%
8. Keyes - 1%
1. Obama- 30%
2. Edwards - 28%
3. Clinton - 27%
4. Biden - 5%
5. Richardson - 4%
6. Dodd - 3%
7. Kucinich - 2%
8. Gravell - 1%
I know everyone is saying Romney will win, but what's life without taking a risk?
Although I should make clear that caucus's (at least as they're run on the Democrat side) are the stupidest, most worthless, most archaic, most undemocratic method of choosing a candidate in a so-called democracy that I've ever seen. They should be abolished.
And I won't even touch the issue of the excessively early primary dates, which are a total mockery. When I was in India, I was told there is a law saying candidates are not allowed to campaign until three months before Election Day.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1199376526
1. Huckabee - 29%
2. Romney - 27%
3. Thompson - 15%
4. McCain - 13%
5. Paul - 10%
6. Giuliani - 5%
7. Hunter - 2%
8. Keyes - 1%
1. Obama- 30%
2. Edwards - 28%
3. Clinton - 27%
4. Biden - 5%
5. Richardson - 4%
6. Dodd - 3%
7. Kucinich - 2%
8. Gravell - 1%
I know everyone is saying Romney will win, but what's life without taking a risk?
Although I should make clear that caucus's (at least as they're run on the Democrat side) are the stupidest, most worthless, most archaic, most undemocratic method of choosing a candidate in a so-called democracy that I've ever seen. They should be abolished.
And I won't even touch the issue of the excessively early primary dates, which are a total mockery. When I was in India, I was told there is a law saying candidates are not allowed to campaign until three months before Election Day.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1199376526
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
THE NATION
OBAMA WINS THE SPENDING RACE IN A LANDSLIDE...
Posted by John Nichols at 01/02/2008 @ 03:50am
Depending on which poll you read, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton holds a narrow lead going into Thursday's Iowa Democratic caucuses.
The Des Moines Register survey has Obama ahead.
CNN has Clinton in front.
But every poll, and every honest assessment of the race by observers on the ground, has John Edwards is very much in the running. Indeed, there is a strong sense that could yet prevail.
That, in itself, is remarkable, as Edwards was for much of the fall written out of the running by most pundits.
The fact of Edwards' competitiveness is all the more remarkable considering the extent to which the most aggressively anti-corporate candidate among the major contenders has been outspent by his rivals.
"Outspent" is actually an understatement.
According to details of campaign spending developed for CNN by TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, Obama has spent money at an unprecedented rate on television advertising in Iowa.
The figures:
Obama: $9 million and climbing, for more than 11,000 television spots.
Clinton, $7.2 million, for 8,000 spots.
Edwards, $3.2 million, for 3,700.
Independent advertising by labor unions and labor-tied groups has benefited Clinton (around $700,000 in ads put up by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) and Edwards (around $600,000 from a Service Employees International Union political action committee and a Carpenters union PAC).
Those AFSCME ads bring Clinton to within $1 million of Obama in Iowa.
But even with the boost from his union supporters, the Edwards campaign's television presence will be far less than half that of Obama's and only about half that of Clinton's.
None of this will add up to anything more than an excuse if Edwards gets whipped in Iowa. The unfortunate reality of contemporary politics is that few concessions are made by the broadcast and print punditocracy to the reality that free-spending contenders can and do buy victories in an era of weak campaign finance laws, big donors and media-defined campaigns.
Indeed, candidates who get outraised and outspent are frequently dismissed as less viable because aren't winning the "money primary."
However, if the populist campaign that Edwards has run finishes ahead of the more cautious campaigns of Obama or Clinton in Iowa, it will be a genuine -- and all too rare -- triumph of message over money.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=264629
OBAMA WINS THE SPENDING RACE IN A LANDSLIDE...
Posted by John Nichols at 01/02/2008 @ 03:50am
Depending on which poll you read, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton holds a narrow lead going into Thursday's Iowa Democratic caucuses.
The Des Moines Register survey has Obama ahead.
CNN has Clinton in front.
But every poll, and every honest assessment of the race by observers on the ground, has John Edwards is very much in the running. Indeed, there is a strong sense that could yet prevail.
That, in itself, is remarkable, as Edwards was for much of the fall written out of the running by most pundits.
The fact of Edwards' competitiveness is all the more remarkable considering the extent to which the most aggressively anti-corporate candidate among the major contenders has been outspent by his rivals.
"Outspent" is actually an understatement.
According to details of campaign spending developed for CNN by TNS Media Intelligence/CMAG, Obama has spent money at an unprecedented rate on television advertising in Iowa.
The figures:
Obama: $9 million and climbing, for more than 11,000 television spots.
Clinton, $7.2 million, for 8,000 spots.
Edwards, $3.2 million, for 3,700.
Independent advertising by labor unions and labor-tied groups has benefited Clinton (around $700,000 in ads put up by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) and Edwards (around $600,000 from a Service Employees International Union political action committee and a Carpenters union PAC).
Those AFSCME ads bring Clinton to within $1 million of Obama in Iowa.
But even with the boost from his union supporters, the Edwards campaign's television presence will be far less than half that of Obama's and only about half that of Clinton's.
None of this will add up to anything more than an excuse if Edwards gets whipped in Iowa. The unfortunate reality of contemporary politics is that few concessions are made by the broadcast and print punditocracy to the reality that free-spending contenders can and do buy victories in an era of weak campaign finance laws, big donors and media-defined campaigns.
Indeed, candidates who get outraised and outspent are frequently dismissed as less viable because aren't winning the "money primary."
However, if the populist campaign that Edwards has run finishes ahead of the more cautious campaigns of Obama or Clinton in Iowa, it will be a genuine -- and all too rare -- triumph of message over money.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=264629
The Nation
Election '08
[from the January 7, 2008 issue]
It has been more than a year since the first group of Democratic hopefuls announced their candidacy for President of the United States. Seventeen debates or forums have been staged, and more than $150 million has been spent on advertising, polling and other campaign expenses. Pundits have pronounced their conventional wisdom, so easily reversed, on who is most "electable," "presidential" or "inevitable." Celebrities and surrogates have rung their appeals, and the deforming machinery of electoral money and math has whirled into place. And yet despite all this, something remarkable, almost magical in its resilience, will take place on January 3. Thousands of neighbors will gather in schools, churches and public libraries across Iowa to caucus. It's an imperfect, curious system--one that privileges the indirect democracy of delegates and the momentary passions of a state that is, demographically speaking, unrepresentative of America. Nonetheless, during the evening hours, when candidates and campaign staff are relegated to the sidelines, the circus of democracy will be suspended and something approaching actual democratic deliberation will unfold. But who should the voters of Iowa--and then New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and the states that follow in this crowded primary season--select as the Democratic Party's standard-bearer?
This is not an easy question to address. To put this election in context, it is the first time since 1928 that a sitting President or Vice President has been absent from the field. The calamitous Administration of George W. Bush has slashed and burned its way through Iraq, our Constitution and the remnants of the social safety net. It has pursued imperial aggression, lethal incompetence and crony capitalism as if they constitute official policy, leaving the next President with a multitude of crises, from Iraq to New Orleans to Guantánamo Bay.
But to take a page from the free-market gospel: where there is crisis, there is opportunity. Indeed, throughout this uncommonly long election cycle, beyond-
the-Beltway progressives have driven their issues to the forefront of the Democratic agenda. The leading candidates share positions that were considered political suicide as recently as 2004, and topics once shunted aside, like global warming, are of central importance. Withdrawal from Iraq, which John Kerry couldn't bring himself to call for, is embraced by all the current candidates, albeit on varying timetables. Unfettered free trade, a hallmark of the Clinton Administration, is now viewed by most Democrats as an untenable position. Healthcare for all, an idea that many thought would doom Hillary Clinton's candidacy, is a mainstream proposition. And it is not just these issues that have taken center stage but the core progressive values they represent: diplomacy over militarism, workers' rights, the responsibility of government to see that social needs are met. Meanwhile, the Republican campaign has seemingly taken place in an alternate reality, with GOP candidates competing to win the title of Most Likely to Nuke Iran and Most Xenophobic.
With Democrats running left and Republicans slouching right, we believe this election presents a historic opportunity to precipitate a progressive realignment. There is ferment in the air, a yearning for change and for a resuscitation of America's most inspired dreams of justice and equality. The kindling is in place, but the right spark has not yet been struck. There is a danger that many of this campaign's most contentious issues could find resolution in policies even more malign than the status quo. The question of immigration reform combined with the rhetoric of economic populism could lead to a jingoistic backlash against the most vulnerable workers in America. The war in Iraq could slide into a Democratic-led occupation with no end in sight; worse, it could spill over into Iran. And then there are the issues, already neglected, that could fade from view: a progressive tax policy that would eliminate breaks for corporations and the mega-rich; public investment in schools and urban infrastructure; an end to the "war on drugs" and a reorientation of our criminal justice system; a plan to address media consolidation; and a robust agenda for urban renewal.
What is needed most now is not a candidate but a movement to surround that candidate, to brace his or her resolve, to press for the best platform and to hold him or her accountable for implementing it if elected. For this reason, we choose not to endorse a candidate for President at this time but rather to call for the rise of a broadly based small-d democratic movement, as only such a movement can create the space necessary to realize this moment's full potential. Nonetheless, we see differences among the candidates that reflect their relative willingness and ability to foster this movement and advance its agenda.
In his stands on the issues, Dennis Kucinich comes closest to embodying the ideals of this magazine. He has been a forceful critic of the Bush Administration, opposing the Patriot Act and spearheading the motion to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. He is the only candidate to have voted against the Iraq War in 2003 and has voted against funding it ever since. Of all the serious candidates, only he and Governor Bill Richardson propose a full and immediate withdrawal from Iraq. And only Kucinich's plan sets aside funds for reparations. Moreover, Kucinich has used his presidential campaigns to champion issues like cutting the military budget and abolishing nuclear weapons; universal, single-payer healthcare; campaign finance reform; same-sex marriage and an end to the death penalty and the war on drugs. A vote for him would be a principled one.
But for reasons that have to do with the corrupting influence of money and media on national elections as well as with his campaign's shortcomings--such as its failure to organize a grassroots base of donors and web activists--a democratic mass movement has not coalesced around Kucinich's run for President. The progressive vision is there, but the strategy necessary to win and then govern is lacking. In most cases, the rules of the Iowa caucus require that a candidate reach 15 percent of the vote to achieve "viability"; supporters of candidates who fail to do so can choose another candidate. Simply put, many Iowans will soon face a question that the rest of us may have to answer later: if not Dennis, then who?
The leading Democratic contenders--Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama--have been covered from various points of view in these pages. There are aspects of each candidate and campaign to be admired, and also those that cause concern. Hillary Clinton has proven herself a dedicated centrist, and when the center moves left, she has shown, she can move too. When it comes to trade and globalization, she has shifted from being an ardent supporter of NAFTA to calling for a "timeout" on all such deals (although she recently signaled her support for the Peru Free Trade Agreement). Clinton may not have apologized for her vote for the Iraq War, but she has called for its end. Her plan, however, would begin slowly and would involve retaining a "reduced residual force," perhaps as many as 60,000 soldiers, to combat terrorism and train Iraqi military forces. As she indicated by voting for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment--which classified the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization--her shift on Iraq did not reflect a fundamental political reorientation. Indeed, a Hillary Clinton administration could see a revival of her husband's advisers and their procorporate neoliberal policies. Certainly the presence of familiar and high-priced pollsters and lobbyists in the upper echelons of her campaign, as advisers and donors, is a worrisome sign. (Both Obama and Edwards have declined lobbyist donations.) The experience Clinton touts is likely to frustrate the change she promises. To be sure, her election would represent a historic breakthrough for women, and a Clinton presidency even modestly responsive to an ascendant left would be far better than a Clinton presidency triangulating in the wake of the Reagan revolution. But there's little reason to believe it would make ample space for a progressive agenda.
In contrast, Barack Obama and John Edwards are reaching for new ground. Each also presents the risks--and promises--of unknown potential.
On the campaign trail Edwards has displayed a smart, necessary partisanship--denouncing corporate power and its crippling influence on government. He has argued with conviction that government does best when it does more for its citizens. His campaign has met some roadblocks. He has not managed to consolidate the traditional Democratic base, and while he has loyal supporters among organized labor, he has not sewn up union support across the board, nor has he excited a cohort of previously disenfranchised voters. Perhaps some have been turned off by the media's relentless fixation on the "three H's"--haircuts, hedge funds and houses--symbols of the gap between his populist rhetoric and his lifestyle. Nonetheless, he has been at his best when taking on spiraling economic inequality. In a series of bold initiatives, he has called for an end to poverty in thirty years, universal healthcare, a hike in the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2012 and an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050--accomplished in part by the creation of a green-collar jobs corps. His policy proposals are not always perfect, but they are uncommonly detailed and crafted in conjunction with progressive organizations. Most important, his programs were announced first, and they clearly pushed Clinton and Obama in a progressive direction. His healthcare plan stops short of a single-payer program, but it unapologetically includes employer mandates and tax increases. Likewise, although he voted for the Iraq War and his plan to end it doesn't commit to full and immediate withdrawal, he has repudiated that vote and proposes a faster pullout than his two main rivals. And Edwards is the only leading candidate to connect the war and the home front, bravely arguing that an ambitious domestic agenda would require cuts to the military budget. His is the campaign that has most effectively responded to the spirit of progressive populism that lifted Congressional Democrats to victory in 2006.
Many observers have attributed a talismanic power to the personage of Barack Obama--his mixed race heritage; the circumstances of his birth and childhood; his middle name, Hussein, often discussed as if it were in and of itself a foreign policy. But beneath the surface of symbols is a politician who was not only born different but who made different choices from other Beltway-bound Ivy Leaguers--especially in his early career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. Of all the leading contenders, Obama shows the most potential to energize disaffected voters. He has campaigned for himself and others in states long written off by the Democratic establishment, and when he appears on the trail it is often alongside grassroots organizers and ordinary citizens. His team of advisers includes familiar former Clinton staffers but also experts plucked from academe and activism whose presence in Washington would represent genuine and welcome change.
An Obama presidency would contain fresh faces--but would it have fresh ideas? We would like to answer with a resounding yes, but Obama has lagged behind Edwards in offering innovative policies and politicizing neglected issues. His healthcare plan is virtually identical to Hillary Clinton's--except it does not include mandates, a conservative feature he has curiously decided to emphasize. Likewise, his plan to exit Iraq exhibits the "strategic drift" toward leaving behind a significant residual force, as if fewer troops could accomplish what more have failed to do. Like Clinton, once in the Senate he has continued to vote for funding the war. These last two matters are especially unfortunate because they undermine what ought to be one of his greatest assets: Barack Obama was opposed to the Iraq War from the very beginning. When so many Democrats backed Bush's military adventure, Obama exercised fine judgment--a quality his campaign has stressed. Since then that judgment has seen some praiseworthy reprises--as when he bucked conventional wisdom by insisting on face-to-face negotiations with Iran, Cuba and Syria--but it has often tilted toward caution and centrism. Obama has skillfully cultivated the image of a postpartisan leader, one with enormous appeal to broad swaths of voters alienated from politics as usual. But if he governs that way, how will progressives who want to take on entrenched interests fare in his administration?
In the following weeks, The Nation will continue to cover the campaign, and the candidates, with the hope that a progressive insurgency will make its influence even more deeply felt. The front-loaded primary schedule--with individual states elbowing one another into the first days of 2008--could dampen that hope. There is a possibility that the election will be over in the blink of an eye, before progressives have had a chance to gather momentum. But American electoral politics is a strange and unruly beast--defying expectation as often as fulfilling it. No matter which candidate is chosen, progressives will have to build the public support vital not simply for winning the election but for capturing the opportunity to transform the country. It is that task to which we lend our support and our endorsement.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080107/editors
Election '08
[from the January 7, 2008 issue]
It has been more than a year since the first group of Democratic hopefuls announced their candidacy for President of the United States. Seventeen debates or forums have been staged, and more than $150 million has been spent on advertising, polling and other campaign expenses. Pundits have pronounced their conventional wisdom, so easily reversed, on who is most "electable," "presidential" or "inevitable." Celebrities and surrogates have rung their appeals, and the deforming machinery of electoral money and math has whirled into place. And yet despite all this, something remarkable, almost magical in its resilience, will take place on January 3. Thousands of neighbors will gather in schools, churches and public libraries across Iowa to caucus. It's an imperfect, curious system--one that privileges the indirect democracy of delegates and the momentary passions of a state that is, demographically speaking, unrepresentative of America. Nonetheless, during the evening hours, when candidates and campaign staff are relegated to the sidelines, the circus of democracy will be suspended and something approaching actual democratic deliberation will unfold. But who should the voters of Iowa--and then New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and the states that follow in this crowded primary season--select as the Democratic Party's standard-bearer?
This is not an easy question to address. To put this election in context, it is the first time since 1928 that a sitting President or Vice President has been absent from the field. The calamitous Administration of George W. Bush has slashed and burned its way through Iraq, our Constitution and the remnants of the social safety net. It has pursued imperial aggression, lethal incompetence and crony capitalism as if they constitute official policy, leaving the next President with a multitude of crises, from Iraq to New Orleans to Guantánamo Bay.
But to take a page from the free-market gospel: where there is crisis, there is opportunity. Indeed, throughout this uncommonly long election cycle, beyond-
the-Beltway progressives have driven their issues to the forefront of the Democratic agenda. The leading candidates share positions that were considered political suicide as recently as 2004, and topics once shunted aside, like global warming, are of central importance. Withdrawal from Iraq, which John Kerry couldn't bring himself to call for, is embraced by all the current candidates, albeit on varying timetables. Unfettered free trade, a hallmark of the Clinton Administration, is now viewed by most Democrats as an untenable position. Healthcare for all, an idea that many thought would doom Hillary Clinton's candidacy, is a mainstream proposition. And it is not just these issues that have taken center stage but the core progressive values they represent: diplomacy over militarism, workers' rights, the responsibility of government to see that social needs are met. Meanwhile, the Republican campaign has seemingly taken place in an alternate reality, with GOP candidates competing to win the title of Most Likely to Nuke Iran and Most Xenophobic.
With Democrats running left and Republicans slouching right, we believe this election presents a historic opportunity to precipitate a progressive realignment. There is ferment in the air, a yearning for change and for a resuscitation of America's most inspired dreams of justice and equality. The kindling is in place, but the right spark has not yet been struck. There is a danger that many of this campaign's most contentious issues could find resolution in policies even more malign than the status quo. The question of immigration reform combined with the rhetoric of economic populism could lead to a jingoistic backlash against the most vulnerable workers in America. The war in Iraq could slide into a Democratic-led occupation with no end in sight; worse, it could spill over into Iran. And then there are the issues, already neglected, that could fade from view: a progressive tax policy that would eliminate breaks for corporations and the mega-rich; public investment in schools and urban infrastructure; an end to the "war on drugs" and a reorientation of our criminal justice system; a plan to address media consolidation; and a robust agenda for urban renewal.
What is needed most now is not a candidate but a movement to surround that candidate, to brace his or her resolve, to press for the best platform and to hold him or her accountable for implementing it if elected. For this reason, we choose not to endorse a candidate for President at this time but rather to call for the rise of a broadly based small-d democratic movement, as only such a movement can create the space necessary to realize this moment's full potential. Nonetheless, we see differences among the candidates that reflect their relative willingness and ability to foster this movement and advance its agenda.
In his stands on the issues, Dennis Kucinich comes closest to embodying the ideals of this magazine. He has been a forceful critic of the Bush Administration, opposing the Patriot Act and spearheading the motion to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. He is the only candidate to have voted against the Iraq War in 2003 and has voted against funding it ever since. Of all the serious candidates, only he and Governor Bill Richardson propose a full and immediate withdrawal from Iraq. And only Kucinich's plan sets aside funds for reparations. Moreover, Kucinich has used his presidential campaigns to champion issues like cutting the military budget and abolishing nuclear weapons; universal, single-payer healthcare; campaign finance reform; same-sex marriage and an end to the death penalty and the war on drugs. A vote for him would be a principled one.
But for reasons that have to do with the corrupting influence of money and media on national elections as well as with his campaign's shortcomings--such as its failure to organize a grassroots base of donors and web activists--a democratic mass movement has not coalesced around Kucinich's run for President. The progressive vision is there, but the strategy necessary to win and then govern is lacking. In most cases, the rules of the Iowa caucus require that a candidate reach 15 percent of the vote to achieve "viability"; supporters of candidates who fail to do so can choose another candidate. Simply put, many Iowans will soon face a question that the rest of us may have to answer later: if not Dennis, then who?
The leading Democratic contenders--Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama--have been covered from various points of view in these pages. There are aspects of each candidate and campaign to be admired, and also those that cause concern. Hillary Clinton has proven herself a dedicated centrist, and when the center moves left, she has shown, she can move too. When it comes to trade and globalization, she has shifted from being an ardent supporter of NAFTA to calling for a "timeout" on all such deals (although she recently signaled her support for the Peru Free Trade Agreement). Clinton may not have apologized for her vote for the Iraq War, but she has called for its end. Her plan, however, would begin slowly and would involve retaining a "reduced residual force," perhaps as many as 60,000 soldiers, to combat terrorism and train Iraqi military forces. As she indicated by voting for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment--which classified the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization--her shift on Iraq did not reflect a fundamental political reorientation. Indeed, a Hillary Clinton administration could see a revival of her husband's advisers and their procorporate neoliberal policies. Certainly the presence of familiar and high-priced pollsters and lobbyists in the upper echelons of her campaign, as advisers and donors, is a worrisome sign. (Both Obama and Edwards have declined lobbyist donations.) The experience Clinton touts is likely to frustrate the change she promises. To be sure, her election would represent a historic breakthrough for women, and a Clinton presidency even modestly responsive to an ascendant left would be far better than a Clinton presidency triangulating in the wake of the Reagan revolution. But there's little reason to believe it would make ample space for a progressive agenda.
In contrast, Barack Obama and John Edwards are reaching for new ground. Each also presents the risks--and promises--of unknown potential.
On the campaign trail Edwards has displayed a smart, necessary partisanship--denouncing corporate power and its crippling influence on government. He has argued with conviction that government does best when it does more for its citizens. His campaign has met some roadblocks. He has not managed to consolidate the traditional Democratic base, and while he has loyal supporters among organized labor, he has not sewn up union support across the board, nor has he excited a cohort of previously disenfranchised voters. Perhaps some have been turned off by the media's relentless fixation on the "three H's"--haircuts, hedge funds and houses--symbols of the gap between his populist rhetoric and his lifestyle. Nonetheless, he has been at his best when taking on spiraling economic inequality. In a series of bold initiatives, he has called for an end to poverty in thirty years, universal healthcare, a hike in the minimum wage to $9.50 by 2012 and an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050--accomplished in part by the creation of a green-collar jobs corps. His policy proposals are not always perfect, but they are uncommonly detailed and crafted in conjunction with progressive organizations. Most important, his programs were announced first, and they clearly pushed Clinton and Obama in a progressive direction. His healthcare plan stops short of a single-payer program, but it unapologetically includes employer mandates and tax increases. Likewise, although he voted for the Iraq War and his plan to end it doesn't commit to full and immediate withdrawal, he has repudiated that vote and proposes a faster pullout than his two main rivals. And Edwards is the only leading candidate to connect the war and the home front, bravely arguing that an ambitious domestic agenda would require cuts to the military budget. His is the campaign that has most effectively responded to the spirit of progressive populism that lifted Congressional Democrats to victory in 2006.
Many observers have attributed a talismanic power to the personage of Barack Obama--his mixed race heritage; the circumstances of his birth and childhood; his middle name, Hussein, often discussed as if it were in and of itself a foreign policy. But beneath the surface of symbols is a politician who was not only born different but who made different choices from other Beltway-bound Ivy Leaguers--especially in his early career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. Of all the leading contenders, Obama shows the most potential to energize disaffected voters. He has campaigned for himself and others in states long written off by the Democratic establishment, and when he appears on the trail it is often alongside grassroots organizers and ordinary citizens. His team of advisers includes familiar former Clinton staffers but also experts plucked from academe and activism whose presence in Washington would represent genuine and welcome change.
An Obama presidency would contain fresh faces--but would it have fresh ideas? We would like to answer with a resounding yes, but Obama has lagged behind Edwards in offering innovative policies and politicizing neglected issues. His healthcare plan is virtually identical to Hillary Clinton's--except it does not include mandates, a conservative feature he has curiously decided to emphasize. Likewise, his plan to exit Iraq exhibits the "strategic drift" toward leaving behind a significant residual force, as if fewer troops could accomplish what more have failed to do. Like Clinton, once in the Senate he has continued to vote for funding the war. These last two matters are especially unfortunate because they undermine what ought to be one of his greatest assets: Barack Obama was opposed to the Iraq War from the very beginning. When so many Democrats backed Bush's military adventure, Obama exercised fine judgment--a quality his campaign has stressed. Since then that judgment has seen some praiseworthy reprises--as when he bucked conventional wisdom by insisting on face-to-face negotiations with Iran, Cuba and Syria--but it has often tilted toward caution and centrism. Obama has skillfully cultivated the image of a postpartisan leader, one with enormous appeal to broad swaths of voters alienated from politics as usual. But if he governs that way, how will progressives who want to take on entrenched interests fare in his administration?
In the following weeks, The Nation will continue to cover the campaign, and the candidates, with the hope that a progressive insurgency will make its influence even more deeply felt. The front-loaded primary schedule--with individual states elbowing one another into the first days of 2008--could dampen that hope. There is a possibility that the election will be over in the blink of an eye, before progressives have had a chance to gather momentum. But American electoral politics is a strange and unruly beast--defying expectation as often as fulfilling it. No matter which candidate is chosen, progressives will have to build the public support vital not simply for winning the election but for capturing the opportunity to transform the country. It is that task to which we lend our support and our endorsement.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080107/editors
Kucinich's younger brother died at 51.
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/4206
http://www.clevelandleader.com/node/4206
Published on Tuesday, December 18, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Hillary as Hawk
by Paul W. Lovinger
When Senator Hillary Clinton voted on October 11, 2002, to turn over to President George W. Bush the power that the Constitution vested in her and congressional colleagues to decide whether or not to wage war - or, quoting House Joint Resolution 114, whether an attack on Iraq was “necessary and appropriate” - she appeared to have a conflict of interest:
Her husband, Bill, was of course the former chief of the executive branch. And during her eight years as first lady, Mrs. Clinton never objected to Bill’s eight wars, attacks, or interventions: in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Yugoslavia. He bombed Iraq in 1993 soon after taking office, again in 1996, and from 1998 till he left office. For a time, he was dropping bombs on Iraqis and Yugoslavs simultaneously in 1999.
None of those acts of war were authorized by Congress. The House of Representatives even voted its opposition to the undeclared bombing war on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, i.e. Serbia and Montenegro (4-28-99). Bill paid no attention and carried on his one-sided warfare for eleven weeks.
Mrs. Clinton had been instrumental in persuading Bill to attack Yugoslavia, according to multiple writers. Biographer Gail Sheehy wrote in “Hillary’s Choice” (p. 345): “On March 21, 1999, Hillary expressed her views by phone to the president. ‘I urged him to bomb [Yugoslavia].’ ” Bill was indecisive. She invoked the Holocaust, alluding to claims of mass killings by Milosovic and his men, and asked, “What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?” (Originally it was to defend western Europe against a possible Soviet attack.) Days later the president gave the go-ahead for war, thereby usurping the constitutional prerogative of Congress.
The Milosovic-massacre tale (which Senator Clinton repeated in her 2002 Senate speech) was subsequently debunked by several European pathological teams. The Clinton-NATO air raids, however, killed a couple of thousand civilians. A year later Amnesty International charged that international law was violated by indiscriminate bombings.
Calls aggression defense
Speaking in behalf of the Iraq war resolution Senator Clinton praised her husband’s bombing of Iraq and argued that “undisputed” facts linked Saddam Hussein to weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons program, and to ties to Al-Qaeda. But such a contention was indeed disputed by facts presented by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, buried stories in the leading papers, and many Internet sites. She denied that the resolution amounted to a rush to war, though it came from the White House, which had already decided to wage war on Iraq.
When Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, Senator Clinton called it defense. Even after the supposed facts about WMD and terrorist ties were exposed as monstrous lies, the senator defended her vote for war, never renouncing it. She claimed it was just to support negotiation, but the resolution said nothing about negotiation. And she claimed she had been given incorrect intelligence, but cited no details. She opposed any timetable for withdrawal and advocated more troops and permanent U.S. bases in Iraq.
As of last September, that supposed defensive war was estimated, by the British polling agency Opinion Research Business, to have taken 1.2 million Iraqi lives.
Even if the lies she fell for had been proven true, the senator’s lack of concern for international law would still stand revealed. The Charter of the United Nations, which as a U.S. treaty has the force of law, says (in Article 2): “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state….”
The North Atlantic Treaty - the basis for the organization that Bill Clinton, with his wife’s encouragement, perverted from a defensive to an aggressive force - echoes that principle (in Article 1): “The Parties undertake … to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”
Furthermore, before there was a UN or a NATO, there was the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. It was used to convict Nazis of crimes against peace, and it remains in effect as a U.S. treaty.
Threatens Iran and others
Just as Senator Clinton accepted Bush and Cheney’s fiction about danger from Iraq and supported the 2003 aggression against that country, she tends to accept their drive for an encore against Iran. At Princeton University in January 2006, she said, “A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel, its neighbors and beyond. The regime’s pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only underscores the urgency of the threat it poses.”
In her own, anti-Iranian rhetoric, she threatened a nation that had not attacked anyone for centuries and that - U.S. intelligence now states - had given up its atomic bomb program three years earlier: “We cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran — that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.” Three months later, Bush used nearly the same expression when asked if he planned a nuclear attack on that country: “All options are on the table” (AP, 4-8-06).
Last September 26, Senator Clinton voted for a Senate resolution urging Bush to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a major branch of the Iranian armed forces, as a foreign terrorist organization. She has echoed the proofless Bush charges of support for Iraqi insurgents (mostly Sunni) by Iran (Shiite).
She has refused to rule out presidential use of nuclear weapons, notwithstanding the 1996 World Court ruling that use of the weapons violates international humanitarian law because they blindly strike civilians and military targets alike. And she voted to end restrictions on countries violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Senator Clinton has called for more toughness on Syria and leftist regimes in Latin America, supported arms and training for various repressive dictatorships, opposed bans on land mines and cluster-bomb exports, and advocated even more military spending than Bush requested. More contributions from war contractors have reached Hillary for President than any competing campaign.
The senator boasts of her experience. She is indeed experienced in jumping to bellicose conclusions on the basis of meager facts and false information. If she wins, I expect her to follow the pattern of husband Bill in shooting from the hip in actions abroad, to ignore both the Constitution and international law, and to try to prove that a woman president can be just as warlike as any man.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/10/5887/
Hillary as Hawk
by Paul W. Lovinger
When Senator Hillary Clinton voted on October 11, 2002, to turn over to President George W. Bush the power that the Constitution vested in her and congressional colleagues to decide whether or not to wage war - or, quoting House Joint Resolution 114, whether an attack on Iraq was “necessary and appropriate” - she appeared to have a conflict of interest:
Her husband, Bill, was of course the former chief of the executive branch. And during her eight years as first lady, Mrs. Clinton never objected to Bill’s eight wars, attacks, or interventions: in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Yugoslavia. He bombed Iraq in 1993 soon after taking office, again in 1996, and from 1998 till he left office. For a time, he was dropping bombs on Iraqis and Yugoslavs simultaneously in 1999.
None of those acts of war were authorized by Congress. The House of Representatives even voted its opposition to the undeclared bombing war on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, i.e. Serbia and Montenegro (4-28-99). Bill paid no attention and carried on his one-sided warfare for eleven weeks.
Mrs. Clinton had been instrumental in persuading Bill to attack Yugoslavia, according to multiple writers. Biographer Gail Sheehy wrote in “Hillary’s Choice” (p. 345): “On March 21, 1999, Hillary expressed her views by phone to the president. ‘I urged him to bomb [Yugoslavia].’ ” Bill was indecisive. She invoked the Holocaust, alluding to claims of mass killings by Milosovic and his men, and asked, “What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life?” (Originally it was to defend western Europe against a possible Soviet attack.) Days later the president gave the go-ahead for war, thereby usurping the constitutional prerogative of Congress.
The Milosovic-massacre tale (which Senator Clinton repeated in her 2002 Senate speech) was subsequently debunked by several European pathological teams. The Clinton-NATO air raids, however, killed a couple of thousand civilians. A year later Amnesty International charged that international law was violated by indiscriminate bombings.
Calls aggression defense
Speaking in behalf of the Iraq war resolution Senator Clinton praised her husband’s bombing of Iraq and argued that “undisputed” facts linked Saddam Hussein to weapons of mass destruction, including a nuclear weapons program, and to ties to Al-Qaeda. But such a contention was indeed disputed by facts presented by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, buried stories in the leading papers, and many Internet sites. She denied that the resolution amounted to a rush to war, though it came from the White House, which had already decided to wage war on Iraq.
When Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, Senator Clinton called it defense. Even after the supposed facts about WMD and terrorist ties were exposed as monstrous lies, the senator defended her vote for war, never renouncing it. She claimed it was just to support negotiation, but the resolution said nothing about negotiation. And she claimed she had been given incorrect intelligence, but cited no details. She opposed any timetable for withdrawal and advocated more troops and permanent U.S. bases in Iraq.
As of last September, that supposed defensive war was estimated, by the British polling agency Opinion Research Business, to have taken 1.2 million Iraqi lives.
Even if the lies she fell for had been proven true, the senator’s lack of concern for international law would still stand revealed. The Charter of the United Nations, which as a U.S. treaty has the force of law, says (in Article 2): “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state….”
The North Atlantic Treaty - the basis for the organization that Bill Clinton, with his wife’s encouragement, perverted from a defensive to an aggressive force - echoes that principle (in Article 1): “The Parties undertake … to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”
Furthermore, before there was a UN or a NATO, there was the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact of 1928, renouncing war as an instrument of national policy. It was used to convict Nazis of crimes against peace, and it remains in effect as a U.S. treaty.
Threatens Iran and others
Just as Senator Clinton accepted Bush and Cheney’s fiction about danger from Iraq and supported the 2003 aggression against that country, she tends to accept their drive for an encore against Iran. At Princeton University in January 2006, she said, “A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel, its neighbors and beyond. The regime’s pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only underscores the urgency of the threat it poses.”
In her own, anti-Iranian rhetoric, she threatened a nation that had not attacked anyone for centuries and that - U.S. intelligence now states - had given up its atomic bomb program three years earlier: “We cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran — that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.” Three months later, Bush used nearly the same expression when asked if he planned a nuclear attack on that country: “All options are on the table” (AP, 4-8-06).
Last September 26, Senator Clinton voted for a Senate resolution urging Bush to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a major branch of the Iranian armed forces, as a foreign terrorist organization. She has echoed the proofless Bush charges of support for Iraqi insurgents (mostly Sunni) by Iran (Shiite).
She has refused to rule out presidential use of nuclear weapons, notwithstanding the 1996 World Court ruling that use of the weapons violates international humanitarian law because they blindly strike civilians and military targets alike. And she voted to end restrictions on countries violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Senator Clinton has called for more toughness on Syria and leftist regimes in Latin America, supported arms and training for various repressive dictatorships, opposed bans on land mines and cluster-bomb exports, and advocated even more military spending than Bush requested. More contributions from war contractors have reached Hillary for President than any competing campaign.
The senator boasts of her experience. She is indeed experienced in jumping to bellicose conclusions on the basis of meager facts and false information. If she wins, I expect her to follow the pattern of husband Bill in shooting from the hip in actions abroad, to ignore both the Constitution and international law, and to try to prove that a woman president can be just as warlike as any man.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/10/5887/
I'm not sure I'd want David Brooks on my side, but he's supporting Obama. I'm pretty sure Bob Herbert has already made his support for Obama clear, and since I can't see any scenario where Maureen Dowd will eat enough crow to support Hillary -- and since she isn't liberal enough to go with Kucinich, or recalcitrant enough to go with Edwards -- that means at least three Times columnist will be unofficially supporting Obama.
And how sad is it that Brooks thinks Obama has never bucked liberal orthodoxy? Really? Obama is considered a shinning example of leftist politics?? For what, being slightly left of the Far FAR Right?
December 18, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Obama-Clinton Issue
By DAVID BROOKS
Hillary Clinton has been a much better senator than Barack Obama. She has been a serious, substantive lawmaker who has worked effectively across party lines. Obama has some accomplishments under his belt, but many of his colleagues believe that he has not bothered to master the intricacies of legislation or the maze of Senate rules. He talks about independence, but he has never quite bucked liberal orthodoxy or party discipline.
If Clinton were running against Obama for Senate, it would be easy to choose between them.
But they are running for president, and the presidency requires a different set of qualities. Presidents are buffeted by sycophancy, criticism and betrayal. They must improvise amid a thousand fluid crises. They’re isolated and also exposed, puffed up on the outside and hollowed out within. With the presidency, character and self-knowledge matter more than even experience. There are reasons to think that, among Democrats, Obama is better prepared for this madness.
Many of the best presidents in U.S. history had their character forged before they entered politics and carried to it a degree of self-possession and tranquillity that was impervious to the Sturm und Drang of White House life.
Obama is an inner-directed man in a profession filled with insecure outer-directed ones. He was forged by the process of discovering his own identity from the scattered facts of his childhood, a process that is described in finely observed detail in “Dreams From My Father.” Once he completed that process, he has been astonishingly constant.
Like most of the rival campaigns, I’ve been poring over press clippings from Obama’s past, looking for inconsistencies and flip-flops. There are virtually none. The unity speech he gives on the stump today is essentially the same speech that he gave at the Democratic convention in 2004, and it’s the same sort of speech he gave to Illinois legislators and Harvard Law students in the decades before that. He has a core, and was able to maintain his equipoise, for example, even as his campaign stagnated through the summer and fall.
Moreover, he has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. Though Tom DeLay couldn’t deliver much for Republicans and Nancy Pelosi, so far, hasn’t been able to deliver much for Democrats, these warriors believe that what’s needed is more partisanship, more toughness and eventual conquest for their side.
But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.
Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage, but as questions for investigation, conversation and synthesis. He approaches politics the same way. In her outstanding New Yorker profile, Larissa MacFarquhar notes that Obama does not perceive politics as a series of battles but as a series of systemic problems to be addressed. He pursues liberal ends in gradualist, temperamentally conservative ways.
Obama also has powers of observation that may mitigate his own inexperience and the isolating pressures of the White House. In his famous essay, “Political Judgment,” Isaiah Berlin writes that wise leaders don’t think abstractly. They use powers of close observation to integrate the vast shifting amalgam of data that constitute their own particular situation — their own and no other.
Obama demonstrated those powers in “Dreams From My Father” and still reveals glimpses of the ability to step outside his own ego and look at reality in uninhibited and honest ways. He still retains the capacity, also rare in presidents, of being able to sympathize with and grasp the motivations of his rivals. Even in his political memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” he astutely observes that candidates are driven less by the desire for victory than by the raw fear of loss and humiliation.
What Bill Clinton said on “The Charlie Rose Show” is right: picking Obama is a roll of the dice. Sometimes he seems more concerned with process than results. But for Democrats, there’s a roll of the dice either way. The presidency is a bacterium. It finds the open wounds in the people who hold it. It infects them, and the resulting scandals infect the presidency and the country. The person with the fewest wounds usually does best in the White House, and is best for the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
Edited By Akash on 1197968475
And how sad is it that Brooks thinks Obama has never bucked liberal orthodoxy? Really? Obama is considered a shinning example of leftist politics?? For what, being slightly left of the Far FAR Right?
December 18, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Obama-Clinton Issue
By DAVID BROOKS
Hillary Clinton has been a much better senator than Barack Obama. She has been a serious, substantive lawmaker who has worked effectively across party lines. Obama has some accomplishments under his belt, but many of his colleagues believe that he has not bothered to master the intricacies of legislation or the maze of Senate rules. He talks about independence, but he has never quite bucked liberal orthodoxy or party discipline.
If Clinton were running against Obama for Senate, it would be easy to choose between them.
But they are running for president, and the presidency requires a different set of qualities. Presidents are buffeted by sycophancy, criticism and betrayal. They must improvise amid a thousand fluid crises. They’re isolated and also exposed, puffed up on the outside and hollowed out within. With the presidency, character and self-knowledge matter more than even experience. There are reasons to think that, among Democrats, Obama is better prepared for this madness.
Many of the best presidents in U.S. history had their character forged before they entered politics and carried to it a degree of self-possession and tranquillity that was impervious to the Sturm und Drang of White House life.
Obama is an inner-directed man in a profession filled with insecure outer-directed ones. He was forged by the process of discovering his own identity from the scattered facts of his childhood, a process that is described in finely observed detail in “Dreams From My Father.” Once he completed that process, he has been astonishingly constant.
Like most of the rival campaigns, I’ve been poring over press clippings from Obama’s past, looking for inconsistencies and flip-flops. There are virtually none. The unity speech he gives on the stump today is essentially the same speech that he gave at the Democratic convention in 2004, and it’s the same sort of speech he gave to Illinois legislators and Harvard Law students in the decades before that. He has a core, and was able to maintain his equipoise, for example, even as his campaign stagnated through the summer and fall.
Moreover, he has a worldview that precedes political positions. Some Americans (Republican or Democrat) believe that the country’s future can only be shaped through a remorseless civil war between the children of light and the children of darkness. Though Tom DeLay couldn’t deliver much for Republicans and Nancy Pelosi, so far, hasn’t been able to deliver much for Democrats, these warriors believe that what’s needed is more partisanship, more toughness and eventual conquest for their side.
But Obama does not ratchet up hostilities; he restrains them. He does not lash out at perceived enemies, but is aloof from them. In the course of this struggle to discover who he is, Obama clearly learned from the strain of pessimistic optimism that stretches back from Martin Luther King Jr. to Abraham Lincoln. This is a worldview that detests anger as a motivating force, that distrusts easy dichotomies between the parties of good and evil, believing instead that the crucial dichotomy runs between the good and bad within each individual.
Obama did not respond to his fatherlessness or his racial predicament with anger and rage, but as questions for investigation, conversation and synthesis. He approaches politics the same way. In her outstanding New Yorker profile, Larissa MacFarquhar notes that Obama does not perceive politics as a series of battles but as a series of systemic problems to be addressed. He pursues liberal ends in gradualist, temperamentally conservative ways.
Obama also has powers of observation that may mitigate his own inexperience and the isolating pressures of the White House. In his famous essay, “Political Judgment,” Isaiah Berlin writes that wise leaders don’t think abstractly. They use powers of close observation to integrate the vast shifting amalgam of data that constitute their own particular situation — their own and no other.
Obama demonstrated those powers in “Dreams From My Father” and still reveals glimpses of the ability to step outside his own ego and look at reality in uninhibited and honest ways. He still retains the capacity, also rare in presidents, of being able to sympathize with and grasp the motivations of his rivals. Even in his political memoir, “The Audacity of Hope,” he astutely observes that candidates are driven less by the desire for victory than by the raw fear of loss and humiliation.
What Bill Clinton said on “The Charlie Rose Show” is right: picking Obama is a roll of the dice. Sometimes he seems more concerned with process than results. But for Democrats, there’s a roll of the dice either way. The presidency is a bacterium. It finds the open wounds in the people who hold it. It infects them, and the resulting scandals infect the presidency and the country. The person with the fewest wounds usually does best in the White House, and is best for the country.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007....=slogin
Edited By Akash on 1197968475
The new CNN poll has Clinton and Obama in a statistical tie in New Hampshire.
http://www.cnn.com/2007....oryview
http://www.cnn.com/2007....oryview