The Chromosome Chronicles

OK — I’m going to take a stab at posting on the Blue race for prez, and that’s like playing jacks in a field of land mines … if the ball bounces too far, I’ll likely be blown the hell up. We are passionately for the one we’ve selected, just as passionately opposed to the one we haven’t. As you know, I’m dispassionate on this topic; I don’t have a dog in this hunt, although Obama is sounding more populist these days, and Hil is amping up her game with plans to help ‘the great unwashed,’ who gave her an early lead. If the conversation started by Kucinich and Edwards finds purchase in their campaign promises, so much the better for the US of A [although it's best to remember that a nomination race plays to the base and a presidential race plays to the middle; count on these promises to get watered down.] Whoever comes out on top will get my vote — we have MadDog McCain to beat with his dreams of a hundred year war[s] and his same-old Old White Guy agenda for the Supreme Court and the ruling class.

We are not at the “gather together” point on this, and the weekend was alive with the sound of grenades being tossed about how the Dems could wrench themselves apart in this selection. The Super Delegate issue continues to rankle … it appears that Gore, Biden, Dodd, Richardson and Edwards are holding back from endorsement in order to act as eventual arbitrators. [By the way, we can thank Dodd for the FISA pushback by helping him pay down his campaign debt; if you can send him a little something, please do. He's our real Constitutional hero, in this fight.]

Despite the fact that I’ve pulled back from posting on this topic, I’ve heard from some that I’m picking on Hillary and from others that I’m not giving Barack his due. We’re all hypersensitive … and it’s going to get worse. Race and gender have found their way into the pundit play, and riled just about everyone; it can hardly be mentioned without warping the emotions of those who support one of the two.

I’ve read on this topic endlessly in the last days — seems like everybody’s writing on it. I’ve been tallying, mostly, the tone of the writers that reflect this inside war. I can make my own mind up about the candidates, I’m not going to be tilted one way or another by the writers emotions, who did or said what to whom, who backs this one or that one, what the “common wisdom” seems to be — but they reflect what the Blue party is up to, and it’s distressing. I have some thoughts on this … they’re my own, and I’m sharing them with you. Don’t blow me up if you don’t like my sentiments — they’re changing daily, as are yours. Bigger sites than this one have lost readers in this process — how absurd is that? Why is THIS such a critical issue that we’re tearing ourselves apart over it? We might have used that energy to take down Bush, but NO … we’ll fight each other? Stop and take a breath, people!

Both candidates are talking inevitability, both are talking change — and the only thing you can accuse me of is embracing the inevitability of change. I don’t know … nor do you … what change either would bring us. So, me? I’m trying to find the logical threads that indicate what this country will look like under either of these two candidates — we already know what it will look like under the Old Guy [the third shoe to drop in this years political coloration: race, gender, and now age.]

A woman’s sensibilities are different than a mans, which we’ve talked about … and celebrated, I might add … for generations; we pretend that isn’t part of this conversation, its rarely mentioned, except as a statistic or in negative context like the tear or two that Hil’s shed. We say Hil’s the “first woman” in this category but it’s underplayed by even the candidate, because she’s trying to soften that shock by appearing tougher and more able than her running mate. She catches hell from the ‘fashion police’ for her pantsuits, but I guess a dress would make her look girly, wouldn’t it. During her years as First Lady the world wanted her baking cookies — a skirt might seem too close to an apron for the men who want her batted back into ‘her place.’ For those who think Hil’s been treated shoddily [she has, for decades] this feels like a time for her [and women's] redemption. This has earned her the sympathy of many undecided women and the Feminist vote for sure.

She is also weighed down by the Clintonian machine, which plays a kind of hardball politics we’re tired of … and no matter how often she recreates her ‘voice’ she eventually falls back into the dog-fight pattern that won Bill his tenure, and which is evident in every article that starts … ‘don’t count Clinton out!’ Hillary appears to be suffering some of that Kerry-disease … relying too heavily on the machine to define her. If she’s got a woman’s sensibilities, then I want to hear them, loud and clear … I don’t want to see her elected because of a Bilary quotient that doesn’t allow her to step ahead BECAUSE of those sensibilities. It seems to me that Hil is playing THEIR game, which is counter-intuitive to the women who admire her.

Bottom line? For those who want change, this is looking very same old, same old — for those who want experience, Hil knows her stuff and seems supremely competant. She is positioned to ‘out-tough’ McCain in the public mind, even though she is part of the actual bi-partisan moderate circle that keeps current politics spinning. That’s who she is … live with it; to a lesser degree, that is also Obama. The case against her by the Right has been formalized, copied and sent out already — they’re prepared. We’d better be.

A person of color has a different set of sensitivities and an understanding of the flaws in the American Dream, and that sets a tone as well — Baracks ‘bottom up’ philosophy comes from his own experience of having to rally the neighborhood in some sort of unity before anything substantial could be achieved. He is more ‘liberal’ in his voting record than Hillary, and after years of non-cooperation from Bush, his message of unity is welcome [let's remember it was also Bush's message ... this 'division' problem has been around for decades, and plays well for campaign promises.] He’s also young and vital, a change from the Clinton/Bush dynasty we’ve had a gut full of … and until now, he’s kept much of his rhetoric on the High Road. He’s also gotten more specific on policy, rising to charges that he’s been ‘vague,’ moving toward populism more and more, courting the little guy. I don’t know how he thinks he will achieve something bi-partisan, having watched the Congressional flame-out in the last two years, but he does. It will only happen if he gets a Bluer Congress than we have today.

Bottom line? He has potential to begin to change the system, if he will … he has the mandate from the people to do so. He will be hit from the Right with his inexperience, and he faces a barrage of racism … but that is a fine point; if you’re racist, it will spark you … if you’re not, it won’t. Like the people who hate all things Clinton, if ‘white’ is your issue, there’s no wiggle room in your consciousness. He brings the newer generations with him — and that’s hard to fight; it will be their world, won’t it.

Both candidates are getting their hands dirty now, with accusations and campaign tit/tat ads in Wisconsin — and the GOP is laying traps for each. This is a race for the nomination … child’s play compared to what either candidate will face from the desperate PUB machine. And there will be blood. Hil’s most obvious baggage is Bill, here and here — did you ever think you’d hear a presidential nominee swear that her husband wouldn’t be screwing around on her when she was in the Oval Office? The GOP wants her to be the candidate in the worst way — they’ve collected ammunition for years, anticipating this run. One more time … do NOT count out how unifying her candidacy would be for the Republicans. GOP insiders pray to their vengeful God every day for a Clinton/McCain match up to bring their depressed and dispirited base out to play.

And if you think the KKK, the Old Boy coalition and the unconscious racism of this nation isn’t going to raise its ugly head, think again — Obama has been branded a bit ‘thin skinned’ by the Clinton racial innuendo, but I’ve seen some skinhead stuff on line that is frighteningly brutal. Either candidate will have to grow a skin so thick it would take an industrial file to dent it.

I heard Glen Beck [Limbaugh makes more sense] say that the Dem’s have misjudged that their liberalism is ‘where the country is.’ He says the nation is more like him, and if so, God/dess lift me now! That would mean that it thinks itself patently self-important and flaunts its wackadoodlisms as wisdom. But the American mindset is idiosyncratic, isn’t it … we used to think that everybody was just like us, but the world has proved the Glen Becks wrong, so listening to him drone on is a waste of time. And the nation may be more tired of ’same old’ than Beck thinks. I agree with Bill Maher and others who consider the majority much more liberal than it’s given credit for; Barack’s kid vote says it all, with twice the amount of Dems turning out than Republicans. This era is a direct reflection of the decline that became evident in the Nixon years, now gone to extremes — we want a full scale change in how business is done, and judging by the crossover votes, we don’t care who does it as long as they do.

So woman or man? White or black? X or Y? How about Z … a close look at resumes and promises, leavened by scrutiny of where they pull back, where they hesitate, where they pitch too hard? This is about heart and head … heart drives the nomination, head drives the presidential campaign. In ways that should appear obvious, the Democrats are counting on a very liberal nation this year — one that would get past ancient bias to elect either a woman or a black man. It’s a fabulous possibility, but we can count ourselves extremely fortunate that it comes at a time when the Republicans have very little to work with in nominees. Both candidates face the old, tired truisms of dying Conservatism, and that should be a winning ticket right there — if they trounce one another too hard, they only make their uncommon strengths look common. I’ve probably read a hundred essays on Hil v. Barack in the last few days — I’m posting a cross-section here. Please note how very few of them can maintain their one-sided’ness … this need for change colors everything. We’re all moving Left … but we’re slashing at each other along the way.

My concern from the git-go in this race has been our reliance on finding a hero/ine. The higher we spin up, the father we can fall — human nature at its worst. I never thought of Edwards as a hero … for me, he was like Plame prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, a guy who had a mandate to find and fix what was keeping the playing field from being level for the average American, a candidate who kept on message with a tenacity smacking of crusade. It was a different energy completely from the signals sent by Barack and Hillary — one we weren’t allowed to hear, and so I assume, we weren’t ready for.

If we are to get on with the business of getting this nation back to some semblance of order, we can’t let ourselves spin into oblivion over this process of selection. BuzzFlash, MoveOn, other large political entities have fallen into that trap; Buzz without meaning to — the X, Y’s got ‘em. Bloggers as respected and beloved as Digby over at Hullabaloo have taken to editing their reply response, since the name calling has escalated to the point where Dig, herself, was branded with the “C” word [the one poor Jane Fonda found herself in the cross hairs over.] We’re self-sabotaging — and showing our youthful immaturity.

We disdain dog-fight politics — but we have no system in place to prevent them, while they often succeed in swaying the vote … and feel justified if our own candidate embraces them; we need to understand the difference between a political pitch and a “swiftboat” event. We disdain genderism and racism — but it plays, even within the ‘above the fray’ Democratic party; we’re in the process of enlightenment, not ‘there yet.’ We demand change — and we can’t even say for sure what changes will, or won’t, come to us by our vote.

This is all a matter of faith — and the reason I can follow the often rabid and mostly depressing topic of politics without scarring myself permanently is my own faith in the vibration of America, much as defined in Ken Carey’s books, The Starseed Transmissions and Return of the Bird Tribes. I believe we have a unique destiny in furthering this notion of ‘freedom’ for the planet, and that no matter who steps into the Oval Office, they have come with a gift that will ultimately awaken and inform us.

The only thing on my mind is how to make it easier, and faster.

For instance, George Bush stepped into our national consciousness and hastened the collapse of what had long been broken. Good, it won’t take us another couple of generations to figure out what’s wrong.

Next? X, Y or Z? Both of the Democratic candidates are, I think, a sum larger than their parts — they are reaching, with no small thanks to Edwards and Kucinich, farther than they had probably originally planned. They continue to shift Left, and if we’re smart, whoever gets the nod should have their feet held to the fire on this. But first we have to get there — and we can’t do that by playing “us v. them” with EACH OTHER.

There’s something in here for everybody. As for me, for the moment I lean toward the last article in this collection, but like Scarlett said — tomorrow is another day.

Jude

The Grand Old White Party Confronts Obama
Frank Rich, The New York Times
February 17, 2008

THE curse continues. Regardless of party, it’s hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama.

Senator Obama’s televised victory oration celebrating his Chesapeake primary trifecta on Tuesday night was a mechanical rehash. No matter. When the networks cut from the 17,000-plus Obama fans cheering at a Wisconsin arena to John McCain’s victory tableau before a few hundred spectators in the Old Town district of Alexandria, Va., it was a rerun of what happened to Hillary Clinton the night she lost Iowa. Senator McCain, backed by a collection of sallow-faced old Beltway pols, played the past to Mr. Obama’s here and now. Mr. McCain looked like a loser even though he, unlike Senator Clinton, had actually won.

But he has it even worse than Mrs. Clinton. What distinguished his posse from Mr. Obama’s throng was not just its age but its demographic monotony: all white and nearly all male. Such has been the inescapable Republican brand throughout this campaign, ever since David Letterman memorably pegged its lineup of presidential contenders last spring as “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club.”

For Mr. McCain, this albatross may be harder to shake than George W. Bush and Iraq, particularly in a faceoff with Mr. Obama. When Mr. McCain jokingly invoked the Obama slogan “I am fired up and ready to go” in his speech Tuesday night, it was as cringe-inducing as the white covers of R & B songs in the 1950s — or Mitt Romney’s stab at communing with his inner hip-hop on Martin Luther King’s birthday. Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America. A cultural sea change has passed it by.

The 2008 primary campaign has been so fast and furious that we haven’t paused to register just how spectacular that change is. All the fretful debate about whether voters would turn out for a candidate who is a black or a woman seems a century ago. Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama vanquished the Democratic field, including a presidential-looking Southern white man with an enthusiastic following, John Edwards. What was only months ago an exotic political experiment is now almost ho-hum.

Given that the American story has been so inextricable from the struggle over race, the Obama triumph has been the bigger surprise to many. Perhaps because I came of age in the racially divided Washington public schools of the 1960s and had one of my first newspaper jobs in Richmond in the early 1970s, I almost had to pinch myself when Mr. Obama took 52 percent of Virginia’s white vote last week. The Old Dominion continues to astonish those who remember it when.

Here’s one of my memories. In 1970, Linwood Holton, the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction and a Richard Nixon supporter, responded to court-ordered busing by voluntarily placing his own children in largely black Richmond public schools. For this symbolic gesture, he was marginalized by his own party, which was hellbent on pursuing the emergent Strom Thurmond-patented Southern strategy of exploiting white racism for political gain. After Mr. Holton, Virginia restored to office the previous governor, Mills Godwin, a champion of the state’s “massive resistance” to desegregation.

Today Anne Holton, the young daughter sent by her father to a black school in Richmond, is the first lady of Virginia, the wife of the Democratic governor, Tim Kaine. Mr. Kaine’s early endorsement of Mr. Obama was a potent factor in his remarkable 28-point landslide on Tuesday.

For all the changes in Virginia and elsewhere, vestiges of the Southern strategy persist in some Republican quarters. Mr. McCain, however, has been a victim, rather than a practitioner, of the old racial gamesmanship. In his brutal 2000 South Carolina primary battle against Mr. Bush and Karl Rove, Mr. McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter was the target of a smear campaign. He was also pilloried for accurately describing the Confederate flag as a “symbol of racism and slavery.” (Sadly, he started to bend this straight talk the very next day.) He is still paying for correctly describing Jerry Falwell, once an ardent segregationist, and Pat Robertson, a longtime defender of South African apartheid, as “agents of intolerance.” And of course Mr. McCain remains public enemy No. 1 to some in his party for resisting nativist overkill on illegal immigration.

Though Mr. Bush ran for president on “compassionate conservatism,” he diversified only his party’s window dressing: a 2000 Republican National Convention that had more African-Americans onstage than on the floor and the incessant photo-ops with black schoolchildren to sell No Child Left Behind. There are no black Republicans in the House or the Senate to stand with the party’s 2008 nominee. Exit polls tell us that African-Americans voting in this year’s G.O.P. primaries account for at most 2 to 4 percent of its electorate even in states with large black populations.

Mr. Obama’s ascension hardly means that racism is kaput in America, or that the country is “postracial” or “transcending race.” But it’s impossible to deny that another barrier has been surmounted. Bill Clinton’s attempt to minimize Mr. Obama as a niche candidate in South Carolina by comparing him to Jesse Jackson looks more ludicrous by the day. Even when winning five Southern states (Virginia included) on Super Tuesday in 1988, Mr. Jackson received only 7 to 10 percent of white votes, depending on the exit poll.

Whatever the potency of his political skills and message, Mr. Obama is also riding a demographic wave. The authors of the new book “Millennial Makeover,” Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais, point out that the so-called millennial generation (dating from 1982) is the largest in American history, boomers included, and that roughly 40 percent of it is African-American, Latino, Asian or racially mixed. One in five millennials has an immigrant parent. It’s this generation that is fueling the excitement and some of the record turnout of the Democratic primary campaign, and not just for Mr. Obama.

Even by the low standards of his party, Mr. McCain has underperformed at reaching millennials in the thriving culture where they live. His campaign’s effort to create a MySpace-like Web site flopped. His most-viewed appearances on YouTube are not viral videos extolling him or replaying his best speeches but are instead sendups of his most reckless foreign-policy improvisations — his threat to stay in Iraq for 100 years and his jokey warning (sung to the tune of the Beach Boys’ version of “Barbara Ann”) that he will bomb Iran. In the vast arena of the Internet he has been shrunk to Grumpy Old White Guy, the G.O.P. brand incarnate.

The theory of the McCain candidacy is that his “maverick” image will bring independents (approaching a third of all voters) to the rescue. But a New York Times-CBS News poll last month found that independents have even a lower opinion of Mr. Bush, the war, the surge and the economy than the total electorate and skew slightly younger. Though the independents in this survey went 44 percent to 32 percent for Mr. Bush over John Kerry in 2004, they now prefer a Democratic presidential candidate over a Republican by 44 percent to 27 percent.

Mr. McCain could get lucky, especially if Mrs. Clinton gets the Democratic nomination and unites the G.O.P., and definitely if she tosses her party into civil war by grabbing ghost delegates from Michigan and Florida. But those odds are dwindling. More likely, the Republican Party will face Mr. Obama with a candidate who reeks even more of the past and less of change than Mrs. Clinton does. I was startled to hear last week from a friend in California, a staunch anti-Clinton Republican businessman, that he was wavering. Though he regards Mr. McCain as a hero, he wrote me: “I am tired of fighting the Vietnam war. I have drifted toward Obama.”

Similarly, Mark McKinnon, the Bush media maven who has played a comparable role for Mr. McCain in this campaign, reaffirmed to Evan Smith of Texas Monthly weeks ago that he would not work for his own candidate in a race with Mr. Obama. Elaborating to NPR last week, Mr. McKinnon said that while he is “100 percent” for Mr. McCain and disagrees with Mr. Obama “on very fundamental issues,” he likes Mr. Obama and what he’s doing for the country enough to stay on the sidelines rather than fire off attack ads.

As some Republicans drift away in a McCain-Obama race, who fills the vacuum? Among the white guys flanking Mr. McCain at his victory celebration on Tuesday, revealingly enough, was the once-golden George Allen, the Virginia Republican who lost his Senate seat and presidential hopes in 2006 after being caught on YouTube calling a young Indian-American Democratic campaign worker “macaca.”

In that incident, Mr. Allen added insult to injury by also telling the young man, “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia.” As election results confirmed both in 2006 and last week, it is Mr. Allen who is the foreigner in 21st century America, Mr. Allen who is in the minority in the real world of Virginia. A national rout in 2008 just may be that Republican Party’s last stand.

A Woman in the White House
Jennifer Baumgardner, HuffPo
February 15, 2008

I grew up in the kind of Midwestern small-town household in which my mother stayed at home with us kids, dealing with meals, laundry, cleaning, and volunteer work, while my father worked as a doctor and was the more authoritative disciplinarian. We were three daughters, though, and while our family was superficially traditional, we were fed a steady diet of “You can be whatever you want.” That meant, to be honest, “you can do what boys do” more than it was an invitation to also become a full-time homemaker.

At age seven or so, I remember musing that I might become “a fashion designer or a nurse” when I grew up, and my mother responding a bit too intensely, “Or a doctor. You don’t have to be a nurse. Women can be doctors!” Her adamance came not from any contempt for nurses — her mother had sent three kids to college and helped countless people in Grand Forks, North Dakota, as an RN. No, the intensity with which she begged me to consider the more publicly valued work came from her own biography. Growing up, she got the impression there were two jobs for women: nurse or teacher. Once she got a glimpse, during the ’70s, of the vastness of the world women might have access to, she felt a bit rooked. She got her Master’s Degree and also invested many of her hopes into her daughters. She knew that until women occupied the spaces men had always called solely theirs, it would be hard to argue we were “just choosing” to become homemakers or nurses or other helping professions.

I have thought about my mother’s dream that her daughters — and thus women — would continue to demonstrate that they were as good as men a lot lately, while observing the candidacy of Senator Hillary Clinton. She’s not the first woman to run — from Belva Lockwood (1884 and 1888) to Shirley Chisholm (1972) to Carole Moseley Braun (2004), we’ve had a handful of women gutsy enough to go for the top job — but she is by far the most serious contender, as demonstrated by the infrastructure and money she has been able to attract. Like Oprah and Madonna, she has 100 percent name recognition, but unlike them, she has co-written and sponsored important legislation, is a very successful two-term Senator from a huge state, spoke of women’s rights as human rights at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, and blocked the confirmation of the FDA commissioner to protest the long delay in approving Plan B for over-the-counter use. Of most direct benefit to me, she has created by far the most detailed and only truly universal health care proposal now before the voters.

The reasons people give for not supporting her range from her war authorization vote to fear that her husband will dominate the rest of the election cycle or the White House, but what I hear more is the fact that she’s just not “electable” because, as some say, wrinkling their noses, “she not likeable.” Creating this self-fulfilling prophecy, the media have piled on, chalking up 62 major incidents of egregious misogyny in the last six months, according to a tally of anti-Hillary sexist episodes in the primary campaign compiled by Melissa McEwan. As Stan Fish wrote on his New York Times blog, to mention her name is to prompt an archive more of vitriol, most of it reflecting a frightening level of woman-hating.

At my Brooklyn polling place on Super Tuesday, I unambivalently — proudly! — voted for Hillary Clinton. As I left the building, I started to cry. I’m often moved by voting, but it was a big deal to me, at age 37, to pull the lever for a woman who so clearly has what it takes. More than that, Senator Clinton has endured the attacks and derision we all know happens when women step out of line. She is becoming a sort of martyr-feminist, putting herself out there at great personal cost to put some reality behind our “free to be…you and me” rhetoric. I spoke with other friends who reported being utterly choked up. “I have devoted 40 years — practically my entire adult life — to bringing about this possibility, this fulfillment of what seemed an unattainable dream,” an older friend wrote me in an email. “It’s hard for me to understand those feminists who are voting for an unknown quantity instead of her, when they have this chance of a lifetime. Especially since the rivals’ positions are so similar.” Other women reported voting for Obama, then feeling surprised at how happy they were that Hillary did well on Super Tuesday. “I felt it would be selfish to vote for her,” another friend told me.

Hillary Clinton is my mother’s age. What might it mean for a woman of her generation to achieve what we all assumed would go to her daughter’s generation? Sometimes I wonder if the pain of those missed opportunities, of wondering what could have been accomplished if one had simply been selfish or lived in a different time, is behind some of the commitment to making sure we don’t have a woman in the White House except as First Lady.

A bitter reality is beginning to sink in for me, a daughter of the Second Wave. Here we are: several generations raised with the mantra that a “woman” could be president, and learning that we don’t mean any woman who actually exists.

Ann Coulter Starts Early with Racist Slurs Against Obama
Joseph A. Palermo
February 15, 2008

Watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann yesterday on MSNBC (the only hour of basic cable where one might hear something relevant) I learned that Ann Coulter has already begun implementing the far Right’s strategy of smearing Barack Obama. Coulter’s job is to inject into the Republican echo chamber racist words that would be unacceptable anywhere else. We are drearily familiar with her lies, false accusations, exaggerations, innuendo, and racist attacks while pretending to be “funny.” Her bimbo routine for some reason lets her get away with it. Fox News puts her on and then people react to her outlandishness and then repeat it until it seeps into the mainstream (where the Far Right wants it).

With Coulter it is best to look NOT at what she says — but who she is.

Coulter has given away the far Right’s anti-Obama strategy:

1). “You’re electing a black guy and he only cares about African Americans”; and

2). “He has a middle name that sounds like a ‘terrorist’ therefore he’s ’soft’ on terror and national defense.” (John McCain will love this one because it dovetails perfectly with his strategy). It’s coming into focus. The far Right wants the Obama campaign to waste a lot of time and energy answering meaningless slurs aimed at driving home these two racist lies.

Well, that might have worked in 2002 or 2003 or 2004 or 2005, but it’s not going to work in 2008. We must meet every racist slur and smear thrown Obama’s way head on, in real time, so his campaign can focus on more important things and before it can infect the mainstream corporate media.

NBC television anchor, Brian Williams, already injected into one of the debates an insane spam email that was circulating and threw all of the false charges in Obama’s face on national television. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show was the only one in the entire TV media that called Williams on this terrible tactic pointing out that citing “something we saw on the Internet” is about as valid as citing something one reads scrawled on the bathroom wall of a gas station. Everyone knows that except apparently Brian Williams.

We will force John McCain to openly denounce on TV each one of Ann Coulter and Company’s racist slurs directed at Obama over and over again. We’ll reflect right back in their eyes the glare of the klieg lights and expose them as the racists they are. This time we’re not going to let them get away with it.

The Road to Denver — A Firewall for Hillary, A Firetrap for Obama
Carl Jeffers
February 16, 2008

In the quick fire succession of recent primaries from Maine to Washington State and back to the Potomac, the voters have spoken. Republicans, although with indigestion and heartburn, have said “McCain’s the one.” With almost double the number of voters, most Democrats have said “yes we can” for Obama, almost half have said “ready on day one” for Hillary, and ALL have said “who the hell are these super delegates.”

Republicans, who like to reward the most successful by giving them everything, have set up a “winner take all” primary system that appears certain to coronate John McCain very shortly and give him the time he needs to heal wounds and soothe fears about him within the Party, and thus enable him to focus his attention on honing his argument against the Democrats for the fall campaign.

Democrats, being more true to the Jeffersonian principles of Democracy and representation of all the people, have created a primary structure that, this year, seems certain to maintain tension and passionate competitive battling within the Party that likely will alienate at least one or more major Democratic Party constituencies regardless of who wins the nomination.

And when it’s over, the battlers may have to give way to the established insiders and party elites (super delegates) to make the decision in a political blood bath on the floor of the convention. Jefferson would have been proud.

Ironically, all the current condemnation of super delegates is too little too late — they were created exactly for the kind of situation we are shaping up to have with Hillary Clinton vs Barack Obama. And when that system was set up, no one complained, not vested core constituencies, not liberal commentators and radio talk show hosts, not elected democratic officials, not Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, not Paul Begala and James Carville, and not Michael Moore and Katrina VanDen Heuvel. And not the New York Times or Washington Post, not Al Gore and Bill Clinton, and not Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich. And for that matter, not Walter Cronkite. NO ONE.

And now, all of the most serious criticism of the system comes from those who support Barack Obama (with the notable exception of Donna Brazille — an honest broker who philosophically opposes the super delegate structure). And their reason is simple. They fear that the vote will be too close to call by the delegate count and that somehow, Hillary Clinton and Bill would then broker and negotiate their way to the majority of the super delegates — that’s why they are calling for pledges that all super delegates vote the way the voters vote in the primaries.

And if Hillary were leading right now in the delegate count and total vote (Obama is by slight margins in both), then it would be the Clinton supporters who would be screaming about the inequities and unfairness of the superdelegate system.

But be careful what you wish for. First of all, I am not convinced that the ultimate battle among super delegates would go Hillary’s way. I think an equally persuasive argument could be made that Obama would ultimately sway more of the super delegates his way.

Second, the argument of most of the Obama supporters who want the super delegate structure strapped or at least some sort of “binding” pledge that they will support who the voters support is based on the assumption that Barack Obama will wind up with the most votes and delegates going in to Denver, even if he is short of the total needed for a first ballot victory. Not so fast.

Barack Obama won a most impressive string of victories from Maine to Nebraska to Louisiana to Washington State, all within a short period of just a few days. And he continues to pocket endorsements from well respected elected Democratic officials, from Senator Leahy in Vermont to Tom Daschle in South Dakota to Gov Christine Gregoire in Washington State. And he continues to stun the political world with the prowess and success of his fund raising. And I believe he will win the upcoming Wisconsin primary, another important component of his “I’ve won the most states with the most diverse electorate” argument. And I do believe that argument will in fact sway a lot of super delegates.

But Hillary was just announced as the winner in New Mexico, and her winning there is less important to her than the fact that she did not LOSE there. Winning there nets her 2 delegates more than Obama. But if she had lost, it would have cemented the Obama run with no interruptions, AND, it would have cast major doubt on the viability of the Hillary-Latino alliance as an argument for her candidacy for the general election in the fall. And a loss there would likely stall her closing of the gap with Obama in Wisconsin. As things stand now, Hillary is 4-5 points behind Obama in Wisconsin and could close the gap further although I expect Obama to win the state.

But here’s where it gets interesting. All the pundits say Hillary not only has to win Ohio and Texas and then Pennsylvania, but she has to win big. And right now, I see Hillary winning all three of those states and winning them by 8 to 12 point margins. In those states, that’s big. More significantly, it would likely put her back on top of the total vote count and with the delegate count as well.

And if nothing changes after that significantly (we all wait for Puerto Rico), it would then be the Obama supporters who would then argue that the super delegates should vote for who they think is the best candidate and can win in November etc, and that they should not be bound just by who won the most votes — the argument they are making now.

And there’s one other potential surprise that could have a major impact on this race. I believe it is likely that John Edwards may endorse Hillary Clinton for the nomination over Barack Obama. And if Edwards does so, I believe it would be for three reasons.

First, I think Edwards may conclude that Clinton is the tougher candidate to both fight in the fall campaign and to fight back against the insurance and oil companies once she were in the White House. Second, I think Edwards may conclude that Hillary’s healthcare plan will come closer to accomplishing his goal of true universal health care that he feels so committed to and passionately about. And third (and this one will not be so openly discussed), Edwards was born in South Carolina and represented North Carolina. I believe he may conclude that there is a hidden issue of race in this campaign and a planned “southern and mid-states strategy” that Republicans and Swift Boat type groups will utilize in the fall campaign that will make it tougher for Obama to actually win versus Hillary’s chances to actually win.

Finally, I believe that if Edwards is going to do this it will be soon as he knows he has, outside of Iowa, his strongest populist-middle class support in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to a lesser degree. Consequently, he will want to have his endorsement really make a difference — and with those primaries looming, if he does make this endorsement it would likely be sooner rather than later.

With the points I made earlier that suggest that not only is Hillary not out of this, but in fact, she may wind up ahead by June in both vote count and delegates, and then you combine that with the possible impact of a John Edwards endorsement were it to occur, then both sides will be switching their positions on how terrible the super delegate structure is. And if in a competitive battle both sides hate it, there may very well be a strong argument for leaving things just the way they are!

Carl Jeffers is a Seattle-and Los Angeles based columnist, political analyst, radio talk show host and lecturer.

A realist called Obama
Roger Cohen, International Herald Tribune
Sunday, February 17, 2008

NEW YORK: Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic wrote a simple sentence recently that cut to the quick of this U.S. election: “What you think of a presidential candidate is in large measure determined by what you think of the world.”

In an eloquent column, he argued that “We are heading into an era of conflict.” From Waziristan to Gaza City the world of the next U.S. president will be one of foreboding. The threats, he suggested, were of a nature a neophyte senator called Barack Obama, who’s long on hope and short on hardness, is ill-prepared to confront.

I share the concern that the feel-good conciliation propelling the Obama bandwagon is light on fierceness. Change is great but constancy can be greater, especially when the threat is mortal. Readiness to talk to everyone, enemy dictators included, does not a foreign policy make.

When Obama says that in a globalized world the security of Americans is tied to the security of all people, he sounds pleasing. But this won’t help when U.S. security imperatives prove distinct, even inimical, to those of others, as one day they will.

I also find Obama’s commitment to a 16-month timetable for withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq rash: A free and stable Iraq is now inextricable from long-term U.S. security interests. How that can be squared with flicking the switch at Camp Victory in 2010 is a mystery to me and to most U.S. generals.

And yet, I disagree with Wieseltier. I disagree about the nature of the world the next president will face. Because of this, I believe Obama is the candidate best placed to grasp and exploit a transformative moment in global affairs.

Far from Wieseltier’s looming era of conflict, I see an era of tremendous global potential for advancement in which the jihadists - force-multiplying Internet invective notwithstanding - are marginalized.

George W. Bush has shown a talent for burying progress, and squandering opportunity (not least with Iran), in a torrent of vituperation. But even he can’t hide the fact we’re hardly in the Dark Ages.

As Bush’s war on terror has unfolded, one third of humanity in Asia has been busy joining and bolstering the world economy. Hundreds of millions of people, from the Mekong Delta to central China, have emerged from poverty. Huge problems remain, but the emergence of India and China puts the caves of Waziristan in perspective.

China holds a lot of U.S. debt, counters U.S. talk of freedom with its own talk of no-strings-attached “harmony,” and cares nothing for a nation’s politics if it can grab that nation’s raw materials (Burma, Sudan, Zimbabwe).

But China is also tied at the hip to the United States, whose market it needs, and hell-bent on stability for the next half-century. Its cooperation with Washington on North Korea is more significant than its ideological confrontation.

In Africa, strong growth, spreading democracy, and growing regional cooperation have naturally ceded the headlines to disasters from Darfur to Harare. But the progress is no less real for that.

Throughout the world, the access technology provides is connecting people in ways that make governments less relevant. Terrorists benefit from such networks. But the great linking of humanity in flux is of deeper historical significance. An era of conciliation is more persuasive to me than an era of conflict.

The fight between Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination is increasingly portrayed as one between romantics and realists.

But a realistic view of Obama would be that he is best placed to seize and shape a new world of such possibilities. He has the youth, the global background, the ability to move people, and the demonstrated talent for reaching across lines of division, even those colored black and white.

He would, as Andrew Sullivan has written, “rebrand” America. Wieseltier dismisses such rebranding. But even the papacy was rebranded in our times, by a Pole, and Poles then precipitated the fall of the Soviet empire.

A romantic view of Clinton might be that she has the guts and savvy to free herself of her husband’s coterie of the world’s rich and famous, with its dubious deal-making from Kazakhstan to Colombia, and ensure that a White House with a president and ex-president in it projects U.S. renewal rather than the tawdrier sides of Clintonism.

I’m just not enough of a romantic to believe it.

Obama coincides with a hybrid world whose promise outweighs its menace. He needs to recall what he once said: “No president should ever hesitate to use force - unilaterally if necessary - to protect ourselves and our vital interests when we are attacked or imminently threatened.”

If he does, and a tough foreign policy team would help, hope and hardness will in time find a fecund balance confounding even to Iran’s mullahs.

Let’s All Take a Deep Breath
Andrew Foster, HuffPo
February 18, 2008

Although there are fifteen state primaries to go, the air is thick with what feels a lot like an Obama victory. The string of consecutive contests he’s won and the sometimes shocking margins (64-35% in Virginia? 68-31% in Washington??) by which he’s defeated Hillary Clinton smell a lot like a tipping point. So it’s worth stopping for a moment to consider what we’re doing - who we want our nominee to be, who we want our next President to be, and what we want him, or her, to accomplish.

In 2004, on the eve of an expected Howard Dean landslide, John Kerry started to make the “electability” argument, viz. that he could defeat President Bush and Dean could not. Dean was too confrontational, he said, too angry. Never mind that this was exactly the line the Republicans had been cynically proffering - Dean’s anger as disqualification to lead - Kerry went on to victory on the heels of a charm offensive. He was a nice guy. He had great teeth. He had friends on both sides of the aisle. (He even asked his “friend” John McCain to be his running mate!) Democratic primary voters bought it, and nominated a smile in a Brooks Brothers suit to run against the Republican meat grinder. I won’t bore you with the rest of the recap.

My question is obvious: Are we about to do the same thing again?

This is not a pro-Hillary column. I spent much of 2007 bemoaning the seeming inevitability of Hillary’s nomination. It didn’t have much to do with her politics, or with so-called “Clinton Fatigue” (I can think of a hell of a lot of things I’m more tired of than the Clintons…), but with my fear that a Clinton nomination would subject us to another year, perhaps more, of vicious, slanderous, sexist, foaming-at-the-mouth Republican smear campaigns; and also with a sneaking suspicion that many people would blame the victim (as many people have done in Bill’s case) for the poisonous, vicious, filthy, rabid, etc., political atmosphere; and that the combination of attacks and blaming the victim and general reluctance to elect a woman president made it unlikely she could win.

In other words, my fear of Hillary was actually fear of the Republicans. The good liberal in me hoped for a more rational, less bloodthirsty political environment and hoped a less polarizing nominee might appease the party of Rove, O’Reilly, and Coulter. My attitude had everything to do with a Clinton campaign, and nothing to do with a Clinton presidency. And that, I fear, is the dynamic driving the surge which has brought Obama within a hair’s breadth of the nomination.

Obama has branded himself as the candidate of Hope and Inspiration, the candidate who can bring people to the table - whether Mitch McConnell or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - and calmly work out compromises, the candidate who can usher in a New Age of Cooperation in American Politics. What a great story! What a thing to, um, hope for! It’s no wonder he has captured voters’ imaginations - we are all, it’s true, exhausted and dispirited. We are all tired of the streetfight, of getting kicked around and rolled over and generally screwed. And we’re tired of losing. Many columnists have also adopted Obama’s inspirational rhetoric. Robert Creamer’s recent editorial serves as a good example: “Obama would be the best president to pass a progressive program of structural change… We won’t pass this agenda if we rely on the insider game in Washington. Success will require a massive, ongoing mobilization of people across America. That will require inspiration.” Terrific!

But here’s my next question: Who do Obama, Creamer, et. al. think we’re dealing with?

The Republican Party doesn’t do compromise. They don’t do friendly negotiations or charm offensives and they don’t give a flying fuck about massive mobilizations of people across America. (Anyone remember the massive mobilizations against the Iraq invasion?) The Republican Party does winning. They do Swiftboating. They do recalls and threats and arm-twisting and rule changing and Nuclear Options. They aren’t concerned with keeping their hands clean or making friends - when they want something they get down in the dirt and break as many kneecaps as necessary to get it, and I am sick and tired of the Democrats being the party of “Let’s All Just Get Along” that walks into a streetfight with an outstretched hand only to get kicked in the balls and spat on and lose.

It would take a dozen columns to review all the ways in which the Republicans have refused to compromise, or have reneged on compromises, in the last seven years. Remember the Gang of 14, which preserved the filibuster from the so-called Nuclear Option - only to see Republicans threaten the Nuclear Option the instant Democrats objected to the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court? Remember the bipartisan torture ban - which President Bush promptly annulled with a signing statement? Look no further than the current struggle over the Protect America Act - the bill to modernize surveillance laws: The Democrats have essentially dropped all opposition to the Republicans’ desire to make it easier to spy on Americans - and yet Republicans refuse to pass the law, and President Bush has threatened to veto it, unless it also includes retroactive immunity for corporations that spied on their customers.

This has been the pattern with everything from No Child Left Behind, to the Medicare Drug plan, to the Patriot Act, to countless bills funding the war in Iraq: Democrats cave to 98% of Republican demands, only to be called traitors and obstructionists and cowards and to get beaten with pillowcases full of soap until they give the other 2%.

I don’t see Hope getting in the way.

What I see is the need to return this country to the principles on which it was founded. I see a need to restore the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments, which have been shredded by Bush and his Republican subordinates. I see a need to restore Habeas Corpus. I see a need for our country to stop torturing people, stop sending them to other countries to be tortured and killed, stop imprisoning them without charge, without counsel, without trial. I see a need to close down the obscenity that is Guantanamo. I see a need to finally do something about climate change. I see a need to address the drastic widening of wealth disparity in this country. I see a desperate need to reform the health insurance system, which is not only leaving 40 million people without health care but destroying American businesses.

Do you want these things, too? Well, I know for a fact that the Republicans don’t agree with you on any of them. So who is it we’re going to win over with the Power of Hope? When Senator Obama talks about compromise, what, exactly, does he mean? Are we willing to forget about, say, the 4th and 5th Amendments, if we can get some movement on the 1st and 8th? Are we willing to allow waterboarding on even-numbered days only? Won’t we all feel better when there are only 20 million people in this preposterously wealthy country who can’t afford to see a doctor?

The Republicans lost big in the 2006 elections - and yet there are more soldiers in Iraq now than there were 18 months ago. How’s that for compromise?

I’m not interested in a president who wants to sit down over coffee and talk compromise with people who are not going to compromise. I’m interested in someone who is going to fight like hell to move the country back in the right direction.

So let’s all take a deep breath and think about what we’re being offered by the candidates. Let’s think about the political reality the next president will have to face, and what’s coming from the Republicans once we have a nominee. As admirable and dignified as Barack Obama is, what we’ve seen so far when the going gets rough is thin-skinned whining: calling the Clintons racist (are you kidding?) because Hillary said LBJ was instrumental in passing the Civil Rights Act; crying foul when an aide referred to the drug use that Obama wrote about in his memoirs. Read Hendrik Hertzberg’s piece in The New Yorker slamming Hillary for her “egregious… coldly premeditated” objection to Obama calling the Republicans the “party of ideas.” Hertzberg, usually the smartest pundit in print, resorts to the equivalent of a sixth-grader’s defense: That’s not what he meant!

I’ve got news for you: If you think this is dirty, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

This kind of huffiness is just blood in the water for the Republicans, and “compromise” to them is a synonym for “sucker.” The sooner we all get over the fantasy of the group hug, the sooner we can nominate someone who will step into the ring ready to fight the crucial battles that need to be fought. So let’s stop and reconsider what we want out of the next four years: a friendlier atmosphere, or a better country. Because we’re not going to get both.

Forget the Kool-Aid: Obama’s Support is Real
Steve Kornacki, Observer
February 18, 2008

With Barack Obama’s bandwagon picking up speed, Hillary Clinton’s sympathizers have been pushing a new caricature of their opponent: the cultish figure who seduces the weak-kneed masses with vague and meaningless but oh-so-warm-feeling generalities.

“There was something just a wee bit creepy,” Time’s Joe Klein, a Bill and Hillary stalwart, recently wrote, “about the mass messianism…of (Obama’s) Super Tuesday speech and the recent turn of the Obama campaign.”

Alex Joseph, a student at Georgetown University who supports Clinton, boasted in a Slate column of his unique-for-his-generation ability to resist the siren Obama’s call.

“At Georgetown,” he informed us, “the Obama supporters—devotees? cultists?—are everywhere.”

In their telling, the choice for Democrats is one between the brain and the heart. Obama is for hopeless romantics who are unschooled in and ignorant of the details of public policy and the realities of politics, while Clinton is for the more intellectually mature among us—sober-minded policy purists who have mastered the art of thinking with their heads.

To be fair, the devotion of some Obama supporters has helped advance this caricature, and prompted some members of the media to buy into it.

When Obama appeared at a Democratic dinner in New Hampshire last month, his exuberant supporters rushed the stage in a scene that evoked the Gospel of Luke, forcing to public-address announcer to plead with them to back off. Over the weekend, the Drudge Report linked to a video compilation of people fainting at Obama rallies. And the mere mention of his name in an online political forum has often been enough to unleash an onslaught of rabidly pro-Obama, anti-Clinton comments, effectively shutting down rational discussion of the Democratic race. (For an excellent example of this, check out the blog of New York Times opinion columnist Paul Krugman, who seems to have been pushed perilously close to a Heart-of-Darkness state of near-madness by his running battles with the Obama commenters.)

But this hardly typifies Obama’s support. Just consider the difference between Obama’s present coalition and the one assembled by Howard Dean four years ago, which featured similarly over-the-top displays of enthusiasm. As with Obama’s loyalists, Deaniacs turned out by the thousands to hear their man, expressed their devotion in deeply personal terms, filled his coffers with tens of millions of dollars in small donations, and flooded the email inboxes of journalists who didn’t seem to “get it.”

In Dean’s case, the real-world support never caught up with the intensity of the true believers. He faded badly in Iowa and finished in a distant third place there, then left the race a month later. His core supporters made plenty of noise, but in the end, there just weren’t that many of them.

Obama, meanwhile, seems to be appealing to what might be called the new “silent majority.” Sure, he’s got his share of stage-rushers and Kool-Aid drinkers, but he’s also appealed to millions of casual voters—the ones who don’t go to his rallies, don’t donate to his campaign, but do show up on primary day and check his name off on the ballot. That’s the kind of mass casual support that other idol-candidates – Dean four years ago, or, say, Ron Paul this year— never came close to attracting.

That support may be rooted in something far more substantive than Obama’s critics contend. While it’s certainly true that his speeches represent sweeping statements of vision—and not, until recently, laundry lists of policy proposals—he has also presented original and specific ideas about what he would do as President.

It could be argued, for instance, that Obama’s pledge to sit down face-to-face with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the most substantively meaningful plank in any candidate’s platform in 2008, a wholesale departure from the past 28 years of U.S. policy toward the Islamic Republic—and from the cautiously conventional approach articulated by Hillary Clinton, who memorably branded Obama’s posture “naïve.”

And when he talks about “ending the mind-set that got us into war,” Obama raises the possibility of an administration whose global vision would not be shaped by the stale, nonpartisan national security establishment that has infected the thinking of both political parties for decades—and that helped convince an overwhelming bipartisan Congressional majority (Clinton included) to choose war in 2002.

But the real problem with sneering at the fervor that Obama has stirred is that it ignores how elections are won and how governing coalitions are built. The truth is that even voters who aren’t moved by Obama’s substantive appeal are still, by and large, favorably impressed by him and willing to at least consider voting for him.

In this sense, he can be likened to Ronald Reagan, who flunked all of the traditional tests of electability in 1980—he was one of the most ideologically extreme candidates ever nominated, he was ignorant of some basic policy details, and he was nearly 70 years old—but whose style, presence and wit connected with the masses and overrode all of those concerns. The term “Reagan Democrat” was born and he won in such an intimidating landslide that his political foes essentially let him enact whatever reforms he wanted for his first few months in office.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, calls to mind Walter Mondale, who in 1984 combated Reagan’s sunny vision with what Newsweek described as “a gigantic To-Do List, a leaden compendium of programs heaped one on another…as if he intended to crush his audiences in specifics.”

Democrats have enjoyed simultaneous control of the White House and both houses of Congress for a grand total of two years since Jimmy Carter was voted out. Now, presented with a candidate who is inspiring record turnout and demonstrating broad appeal in some of the most Republican parts of the country, you’d think the excesses of a relatively small percentage his supporters would be the least of their concerns.

Must Hillary Be Perfect?
Caryl Rivers, HuffPo
February 18, 2008

How perfect will the first woman president have to be?

Too perfect to be human, I suspect. And in Hillary Clinton’s case, the demand often comes from women.

Take Maureen Dowd’s recent New York Times column that summed up many women’s grievances about Hillary.

“As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you can’t take Bill out of the equation. Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies.”

That’s the nub of the problem many of my friends have with Hillary. She didn’t do it on her own. She’s attached at the hip to Bill, and riding his coattails in her quest for the presidency.

These women, and thousands more like them, became lawyers, doctors, journalists, and managers mainly on grit, guts and ability in a very tough world. They didn’t have mentors. They didn’t have the older guy-rabbis like many of their male contemporaries Many of them knew they wouldn’t have an easy ride and learned early on that they’d have to use their talent like a battering ram to smash through doors that were closed to them.

I am woman, hear me roar was the anthem of the feminist movement, and when many of us roared, we figured we’d do it with little male help. We disdained the women who climbed the ladder by sleeping their way up, or who attached themselves to powerful men who could advance their career. Sure, maybe in her day Clare Booth Luce had to marry Henry to get her dazzling career, we figured, but not us. We’d do it the hard way, on our own. And often, we did.

Which makes Hillary a conundrum. She’s not the independent pioneer who did it all her way.

On the other hand, she’s hardly an appendage to Bill. She has a list of accomplishments in her own right, from Yale law to Watergate staffer to legal eagle, to new-style First Lady who really was a policy advisor to her husband. She ran a Senate campaign that was not, as Chris Matthews suggested, built on sympathy for a wronged wife. It was an energetic campaign in which she convinced even crusty upstate New York voters that she’d be an effective senator. Which she has been.

Of course Bill Clinton has been an important part of her story. And yes, there’s been what Dowd calls the “ick” factor of the drama of their marriage. But there does seem to be a double standard for women — and especially this woman — as far as family help is concerned.

Let’s look at some of the men who ran for president. Without George H. W. Bush, does anyone think that George W. Bush would be anything more than a mid-level executive someplace? The whole story of W. is that of a man buoyed by his family.

As Robert Trigaux wrote in the St. Petersburg Times,

“Once upon a time, a rich and powerful father gathered his four young sons and urged them to become rich and powerful, too. Take risks. Push yourselves. Influence others, he ordered in a bold voice.

“Then he whispered, ‘And if you muck things up, a fairy godfather will always appear to make things better.’

“Those may not have been the precise words spoken, but this is no tall tale. It’s the business model adopted long ago by George and Barbara Bush to propel sons George W., Jeb, Marvin and Neil into the high ranks of industry and, at least for two boys, politics.”

The formula, Trigaux noted, went like this:

“STEP 1: Leverage the Bush family name and a small personal investment into really big money, always provided by others.

“STEP 2: If any deal goes sour, exit early with personal fortune intact. Or rely on a bailout from one of Dad’s fairy godfathers: some of the thousands of wealthy Republican fundraisers and longtime supporters of former President Bush.

“Of course, playing off the privileged and famous Bush name is inevitable. To a point. But to the Bush boys, dubbed the “Shrubs” by detractors, it’s become a chronic dependency. A habit of striking consistency.”

W.’s whole career followed that pattern. Old Yale pals of his dad helped finance his venture with the Texas Rangers, and when W. sold his share of the team, he came out a rich man, with $15 million to finance his political career.

Then there’s Jack Kennedy, whose multi-millionaire father once said “We’re going to sell Jack like soap flakes,” and old Joe called in plenty of political chits and spent hundred’s of thousands of dollars in his son’s campaign. At a Gridiron dinner, Jack Kennedy held up what was supposed to be a telegram from his dad and joked that it said, “Jack, don’t spend one dime more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide.”

When Ted Kennedy first ran for the senate, his credentials were so thin that his opponent, Edward McCormack, nephew of house speaker John McCormack, said, “If your name was simply Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy, your candidacy would be a joke.”

Coattails and family dynasties are as American as apple pie. There were two Adamses as president (John and John Quincy) and two Roosevelts (Teddy and FDR). President William Howard Taft begat presidential contender senator Robert Taft; the president’s grandson, another Robert Taft, served in the senate in the 70s and his great-grandson, Bob Taft, served as governor of Ohio. There’s the Rockefellers (New York governor and presidential candidate Nelson and West Virginia Senator Jay) and the Gores, senators Albert and son Al, the Nobel Prize winner. Add the Romney’s, Mitt and dad George, who was Michigan governor and a presidential candidate in his own time, the father-and-son senator Dodds of Connecticut, Pat and Jerry Brown, governors of California, the Bayhs of Indiana (dad senator, Birch, and son senator and governor Evan, and so on.

Male presidential candidates (from the Admass on down) have long had famous families, or very rich friends and benefactors to help them along the way. The only difference with Hillary is that she’s a woman and that her famous family member was a husband, not a parent or grandparent.

If we apply the standard of perfection that we seem to apply to Hillary to all female candidates, will we ever have a woman president? How about Nancy Pelosi? Did she do it all on her own? Well, she comes a very old and well-connected Democratic family, the D’Alesandros. Both her father and brother were mayors of Baltimore. She didn’t exactly come from nowhere to be speaker of the house.

All women who aspire to national leadership run into damaging stereotypes. A recent study by the business think tank Catalyst titled “Damned If You Do, Doomed If You Don’t” found that when women use assertive leadership styles, they are seen as competent but not likable; if they use more stereotypically feminine styles, they are seen as likable but weak.

Add to these stereotypes the once-again-popular ideas that women’s brains and hormones suit them more to domesticity and relationships than to leadership, and you really put a ball-and-chain on women candidates.

With all that baggage, it could be many generations before any woman gets elected to the presidency, especially if we insist she has to be some kind of feminine equivalent of the Lone Ranger. That’s not to say that all women must vote in lockstep for Hillary in some kind of feminist solidarity, but give her a break.

Coattails are standard issue for presidents. Live with it.

Boston University journalism professor Caryl Rivers is the author of “Selling Anxiety: How the News media Scare Women.”

Unstoppable Obama
Barbara Ehrenreich, HuffPo
February 14, 2008

When did you begin to think that Obama might be unstoppable? Was it when your grown feminist daughter started weeping inconsolably over his defeat in New Hampshire? Or was it when he triumphed in Virginia, a state still littered with Confederate monuments and memorabilia? For me, it was on Tuesday night when two Republican Virginians in a row called C-SPAN radio to report that they’d just voted for Ron Paul, but, in the general election, would vote for… Obama.

In the dominant campaign narrative, his appeal is mysterious and irrational: He’s a “rock star,” all flash and no substance, tending dangerously, according to the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, to a “cult of personality.” At best, he’s seen as another vague Reagan-esque avatar of Hallmarkian sentiments like optimism and hope. While Clinton, the designated valedictorian, reaches out for the ego and super-ego, he supposedly goes for the id. She might as well be promoting choral singing in the face of Beatlemania.

The Clinton coterie is wringing its hands. Should she transform herself into an economic populist, as Paul Begala pleaded on Tuesday night? This would be a stretch, given her technocratic and elitist approach to health reform in 1993, her embarrassing vote for a credit card company-supported bankruptcy bill in 2001, among numerous other lapses. Besides, Obama already just leaped out in front of her with a resoundingly populist economic program on Wednesday.

Or should she reconfigure herself, untangle her triangulations, and attempt to appeal to the American people in some deep human way, with or without a tear or two? This, too, would take heavy lifting. Someone needs to tell her that there are better ways to signal conviction than by raising one’s voice and drawing out the vowels, as in “I KNOW …” and “I BELIEVE …” The frozen smile has to go too, along with the metronymic nodding, which sometimes goes on long enough to suggest a placement within the autism spectrum.

But I don’t think any tweakings of the candidate or her message will work, and not because Obama-mania is an occult force or a kind of mass hysteria. Let’s take seriously what he offers, which is “change.” The promise of “change” is what drives the Obama juggernaut, and “change” means wanting out of wherever you are now. It can even mean wanting out so badly that you don’t much care, as in the case of the Ron Paul voters cited above, exactly what that change will be. In reality, there’s no mystery about the direction in which Obama might take us: He’s written a breathtakingly honest autobiography; he has a long legislative history, and now, a meaty economic program. But no one checks the weather before leaping out of a burning building.

Consider our present situation. Thanks to Iraq and water-boarding, Abu Ghraib and the “rendering” of terror suspects, we’ve achieved the moral status of a pariah nation. The seas are rising. The dollar is sinking. A growing proportion of Americans have no access to health care; an estimated 18,000 die every year for lack of health insurance. Now, as the economy staggers into recession, the financial analysts are wondering only whether the rest of the world is sufficiently “de-coupled” from the US economy to survive our demise.

Clinton can put forth all the policy proposals she likes - and many of them are admirable ones - but anyone can see that she’s of the same generation and even one of the same families that got us into this checkmate situation in the first place. True, some people miss Bill, although the nostalgia was severely undercut by his anti-Obama rhetoric in South Carolina, or maybe they just miss the internet bubble he happened to preside over. But even more people find dynastic successions distasteful, especially when it’s a dynasty that produced so little by way of concrete improvements in our lives. Whatever she does, the semiotics of her campaign boils down to two words - “same old.”

Obama is different, really different, and that in itself represents “change.” A Kenyan-Kansan with roots in Indonesia and multiracial Hawaii, he seems to be the perfect answer to the bumper sticker that says, “I love you America, but isn’t it time to start seeing other people?” As conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan has written, Obama’s election could mean the re-branding of America. An anti-war black president with an Arab-sounding name: See, we’re not so bad after all, world!

So yes, there’s a powerful emotional component to Obama-mania, and not just because he’s a far more inspiring speaker than his rival. We, perhaps white people especially, look to him for atonement and redemption. All of us, of whatever race, want a fresh start. That’s what “change” means right now: Get us out of here!

Why Hillary Clinton Still Matters
Stephen Schlesinger, HuffPo
February 16, 2008

In the remaining Democratic presidential primaries, voters are blessed with two candidates who are smart, energetic and forward-looking. Nonetheless the residents of states like Wisconsin, Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania still have to decide between the two of them who will be the most qualified starting on the first day in the Oval Office. My choice is Hillary Clinton.

I have had the good fortune to observe Hillary Clinton’s career while living in New York. Up-close, she is an unusually tough, savvy as well as charming political figure. While not as visible as Mayor Giuliani on 9/11, she showed great mastery in the difficult days after the attacks in helping to bring about the physical and emotional recovery of New York City and gaining Federal assistance for Ground Zero workers exposed to toxic air. As importantly, in her eight years in the Senate, she has compiled a strong liberal voting record in the tradition of the FDR-JFK wing of the Democratic Party. While she has known defeats (e.g., health care in 1994), she has turned her reversals into legislative prowess on the Hill.

Her work on the Armed Services Committee and her fact-finding visits overseas belie the notion that she has limited foreign policy experience. Her vote for the congressional resolution on Iraq in 2002 was a vote for continued weapons inspection and diplomacy and in opposition to preemptive war, as she clearly stated in her Senate floor speech. She has said on many occasions she would have voted differently had she known that President Bush would misuse his authority and dispatch US troops to Iraq without allowing UN inspectors to complete their job. Today she vows to end the war and is currently trying to prevent the establishment of permanent US bases in Iraq by requiring prior Congressional approval for any such outposts.

Of extraordinary importance, she has taken the lead on the most important economic crisis to face our country in decades. She was among the first of the first Democratic contenders to propose a bold economic recovery program designed to rescue the nation from recession. Over a month ago, Senator Clinton advocated a $70 billion emergency spending and a back-up of a $40 billion tax rebate should economic conditions worsen. Hers is a direct attempt to help the most threatened people in America - namely, lower-income families facing foreclosures of their mortgages, those in need of home heating aid, the unemployed who require extended jobless benefits and funding for alternative energy and environmental programs. Her opponent, Senator Obama belatedly came out with his own plan a few days ago which seemingly lifts most of his ideas straight out of Senator Clinton’s proposal.

On a more specific level, Senator Clinton’s recommendations on helping Americans caught in the sub-prime mortgage mess are far-reaching. She has called for a moratorium on foreclosures, a freezing of interest rates, the use of federal subsidies to help homeowners keep up with payments and restructure loans, and augmented regulation of the financial industry. Senator Obama has come up with an alternative plan, which, by contrast, does none of these things but tinkers around the edges. He backs a bill against mortgage fraud, supports an average $500 tax credit for homeowners and endorses additional funding for a limited class of homeowners. This is a tepid response to an enormous tragedy.

In many ways, Senator Clinton is to the left of Senator Obama. Hillary Clinton has outlined a program of universal health insurance — meaning that every person in America would be covered. By contrast, Senator Obama’s plan is more restrictive and would leave 15 million people uncovered. Lastly, Hillary Clinton is a fighter for change. Senator Obama, on the other hand, is a self-described conciliator. What Democrats want today, however, is a battler, not a motivational speaker. They have suffered enough from the vicious blows of President Bush and the Republicans. What the party needs is a nominee who will take the contest directly to the opposition. Come the Fall showdown, a candidacy of “friendly persuasion” is going to be swiftboated into oblivion.

Obama and Progressive Change
Dave Lindorff, OpEdNews
February 11, 2008

I don’t want to overstate the case for Barack Obama, who has been fairly circumspect about his intentions if elected. While saying he is against the Iraq War, he has not acted very forcefully to help bring it to an end. And he certainly has not called for any downsizing of America’s bloated military budget or any end to its imperialist foreign policy—absolutely essential if there is to be any progressive change of consequence in the US.

That said, those who believe that the Democratic Party is firmly in the hands of a malignant and self-serving corporate and political elite have to explain why “their” candidate, Hillary Clinton, seems to be sinking.

Meanwhile, it must be acknowledged that the Obama phenomenon is a real thing. That is to say, whatever his personal politics, his candidacy is genuinely igniting a wave of passionate support across the nation among people—particularly the young, and more recently African Americans—who had for years been ignored by, and consequently disinterested in the political process.

It might be that this is all the result of the magic of charisma, a winning smile and a good turn of phrase. But even so, it would be a mistake for the jaded left, myself included, to dismiss this phenomenon as meaningless, and to ignore it or its potential.

Indeed, I want to suggest here that Obama may at this point have the proverbial tiger by the tail, in that his clarion calls for “hope” and for “change” may be stirring up hopes and expectations for those very things in a way that will not easily be denied should he succeed. (In this he does resemble Jack Kennedy, whose own politics tended to be conservative and Establishment, but whose rhetoric helped stir a generation to political idealism, and may have contributed to the era of ’60s activism.)

I would also suggest that while Sen. Obama may well be part of the party Establishment—with a record as a safe backer of the status quo—if he succeeds in winning the nomination, and especially if he goes on and wins the White House, it will be because he has aroused a huge pool of voters in this country who had until now been cynically staying away from politics. It will be because he has transcended the racial divide that has stymied real political change for so long.

And the forces that are propelling him toward the nomination, and toward the White House, are forces that will not easily be denied if they succeed.

That is to say, a President Barack Obama, whatever his own political beliefs (and we don’t really know much about the man), could well find himself, thanks to the movement that puts him in power, freed from the shackles of the Democratic Leadership Council and the army of advisors of stasis and corporatism that cling to most Democratic political figures like barnacles to a rotting pier.

For this to happen, Obama will first have to reach out beyond his current base of support, to rank-and-rile workers—both unionized and non-union–to Latinos and other minority groups, and to older Americans. He’ll have to reach out, that is, to the groups that have thus far still been backing Hillary Clinton and the party Establishment. He need not win all those groups over to his side—in fact it would be better if he didn’t. He needs only to win over the disaffected within those groups—the people who recognize that they have been betrayed by the two parties and by the System.

Should this happen—and it probably will have to happen for this first serious black candidate for the presidency to successfully beat back the Clintonians and the DLC, who will try to kill off his candidacy before the convention—Obama will have been, perhaps in spite of himself, or perhaps because there is in him still some spark of insurgency, transformed into a real agent of progressive change.

None of this means that a President Obama would be a new Franklin Roosevelt. The pressures on any president to “cool it” and play the game of supporting the big moneyed interests that have been undermining and hollowing out America for decades are enormous. But certainly an alternative reality is also possible—namely that an aroused and newly empowered bloc of voters, in bringing a black politician to the pinnacle of power in America, could tip the balance and free that new president from outside of the White Establishment to follow his better instincts. (Franklin Roosevelt himself, remember, was no Franklin Roosevelt when he ran for office; the movement that installed him in office made him into the transformative New Deal figure he became.)

Progressives cannot be naive about this. Even if I’m right, for a Barack Obama administration to become the dawn of a genuine progressive era, it would demand tremendous organizing and continuous political campaigning after Election Day. There will surely be a serious effort by the political Establishment—both on Wall Street and inside the Beltway—to rein in both a new president and the forces that put him there. And Obama himself—clearly no visceral radical–will need to be convinced that the path to a second term lies through heeding his populist base, not through reaching accommodation with the sclerotic old guard.

That is a call-to-arms, though, not a reason to ignore this possibility.

What I’m suggesting here is that Barack Obama’s campaign, by its very rhetoric of change, may be creating something bigger than Barack Obama, and that Barack Obama may never have intended: a powerful constituency for real change.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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