Throwin

Tomorrow is Earth Day — and it’s also the day that the angst and strum of the last several weeks will hit a crescendo in Pennsylvania. If you listen to the talking heads, Obama lost that last debate, and a point in the PA polls — t’would seem his star is quickly fading … which doesn’t explain why 35,000 people gathered to hear him in Philadelphia [see an emotional slide-show here.]

Neither Clinton nor McCain have this kind of potent pixie-dust. People want inspiration — they want it like they want air. The ‘audacity of hope’ requires your willingness, your energy, and your ability to see behind the curtain. Tink LIVES … otherwise, why bother? Just pack yer stuff and expatriate while you still can.

The politico’s, the media, the Hill — they’re either not GETTING this hunger for a return to civility and respectability and diplomacy and common sense [you know, all those things we were headed for in a new century before Dub showed up as a blip on our radar] or they’re doing their best to twist everything into a pretzel we can ALL choke on in November.

I hear over and over on CNN that Hil is still leading in PA by several points; but the web reports raise questions. I hear from pundits how Obama wasn’t quick enough, tough enough in that last debate, pelted with tabloid questions [and from Righty types who … seriously! … think that’s all this election is actually about] yet his numbers keep steady, and those who thought themselves too cynical to hope again find … like the grinch … a stirring in their hearts. We don’t know how PA will shake out … if news is correct, likely for Hil by a slim margin … but the very reason we DON’T know, the thousands and thousands of new registered voters, could hand us a surprise tomorrow.

I hear about John McCain getting his mojo on, like Uncle Fester leading the zombie parade into another four years of Conservative bliss, but I’m also seeing dynamite articles enumerating his lobbying misadventures all the way into Abramoff’s camp; his temper tantrums that rival George’s with a similar kind of childhood rage orientation; and gaffe after gaffe in the international realm, making you wonder if he’s doing it on purpose, Bush-lite, or really just the old coot you suspect he is. We need this to be over so we can bury this guy … he is, as has been said by many, scary.

And the Dubby, Uncle Dick, the minions? They’re all just pleased as punch with how this is going, how Clinton’s people have stepped up for Karl Rove, how the Dems mighty victory in ‘08 is wobbling in the ether’s. The Dub, relaxed as ever, has played happy parishioner, sharing his bubble with the Pope and even entertaining at the White House as an unaccustomed honor; I’m just grateful he didn’t give an “Ich bin ein Katholik,” speech, even though the nation has been treated by cable news to three masses in the last few days — though he did tell Ratz his first address was [truly, he did] “awesome.” Oy!

As for Mrs. Clinton, it’s become painful to cover her misadventures — I wince when I read the ledelines. Today for instance, she’s squealing over this comment by Obama:

Either Democrat would be better than John McCain. And all three of us would be better than George Bush.

Her response?

We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain, and I will be that nominee,” she said.

Here’s an earlier statement:

“I have a lifetime of experience I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain [the presumptive Republican nominee] has a lifetime of experience he will bring to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he made in 2002.”

[Sigh.]

Back in Hillary’s day as First Lady, when her husband was being attacked with “everything but the kitchen sink,” and the “right wing conspiracy” was yelping for impeachment, a young group of webbies came together and proposed a constituency of activists to do damage control and urge for less vitriol and more common sense; they called themselves “Censure and Move On.” You know who they are today — you’re probably a member of MoveOn.org. In the last two months, Hil has blamed much of her problems raising money and turning delegates on MoveOn’s activism — I’d suppose that makes us a vast “left wing conspiracy.”

I read an article over the weekend about the candidates respective books — the commentator said that in reading Hil’s, he had a wave a remembrance about the obfuscations, the explanations, the turn-arounds and triangulations… in short, the battle plan. He said of the three autobiographies, Hillary’s made him tired … and made him think about what another 4 or 8 years of that would look like. The battle stance that Hillary pledges to use in our support defines who she is on her life path … and sadly, so does her ‘use and discard’ tendency. I don’t have a problem with someone who knows how to do battle — but if that’s how they define themselves, I’ll cross the street, thanks! And, after 8 years with Mr. Right, I’d like to see the next person stepping up know how to apologize, to say … yeah, my bad, that was me. Haven’t seen that with Hil, although I’ve heard Obama do a mea culpa several times. When she uses her pat quip [It takes a Clinton to clean up after a Bush] I groan with symptomatic Clinton fatigue — this is nothing “new” in the White House, this is a Blue version of the last 8 years; if we really want something new, we will have to risk big. Hillary called this ‘a roll of the dice’ today [sounds like yer mother, don’t she?]

The REAL hope with Obama isn’t what he’s proposed to do as leader of this nation — the REAL hope is that bit by bit he will step out of his establishment conditioning, actualizing the weight of the American vision and that he will grow into the role; I think everything is in place for such an experiment, and he’s got all the components to make that shift. If he does not, the Universe will displace him to allow another to step up … because the time is NOW. This is going to happen, one way or another; it’s in the stars, the cards … our hearts.

There are reads below about surprising endorsements including Mike Moore’s, the superiority of Obama’s web-works, and … MUST READS by Norm Solomon and death row inmates, Harvey Earvin and Howard Guidry — the MoveOn issue, last.

Here’s some bonus bits: Colbert had Hil, Barack and John Edwards on his final broadcast from PA the other night; it was bittersweet to see John … we gave away a good one, kids. Really.

Colbert Report: Finally, the Voices of America’s Long-Suffering White Males Will Be Heard [VIDEO]
And they don’t come much whiter than John Edwards …

And if you’ve been tempted to burn yer flag pin, go to this Youtube to watch the ABC/Disney picketers in Burbank on Friday — excellent bit, nicely done.

Jude
Liberal Minion and member of the Great Left-Wing Conspiracy

Battle for PA: Bitter Voters, Republican Converts and Huge Turnouts for Both Campaigns
For a state that hasn’t had a competitive presidential primary in decades, there is enormous voter interest in the Dem candidates.
Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

Obama Out of Touch With Pennsylvanians? Most Top Papers There Disagree
Editor and Publisher
April 19, 2008

NEW YORK While Beltway pundits and others in the national press have alleged that Sen. Barack Obama is clearly out of touch with most Pennsylvanians, leading newspapers in the state seem to disagree. In recent days he has picked up the endorsements of the vast majority of these papers in Pennsylvania.

Papers endorsing Obama include: The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia Daily News, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Allentown Morning Call, The Patriot News of Harrisburg, the Scranton Times-Tribune and Bucks County Courier. Hillary Clinton’s endorsements have been far fewer, such as the Daily Pennsylvanian — the University of Pennsylvania paper — though more may appear on Sunday. The daily in Wilkes-Barre said it is not endorsing at all.

Michael Moore Endorses Obama, Calls Clinton Tactics “Disgusting”
Huffington Post
April 21, 2008

Michael Moore endorses Obama in a commentary on his site:

[O]ver the past two months, the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I’ve watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name “Farrakhan” out of nowhere, well that’s when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the “F” word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama’s pastor does — AND the “church bulletin” once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

Yes, Senator Clinton, that’s how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can’t win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry “Uncle (Tom)” and give it all to you.

But that can’t happen. You cast your die when you voted to start this bloody war. When you did that you were like Moses who lost it for a moment and, because of that, was prohibited from entering the Promised Land.

How sad for a country that wanted to see the first woman elected to the White House. That day will come — but it won’t be you. We’ll have to wait for the current Democratic governor of Kansas to run in 2016 (you read it here first!).

There are those who say Obama isn’t ready, or he’s voted wrong on this or that. But that’s looking at the trees and not the forest. What we are witnessing is not just a candidate but a profound, massive public movement for change. My endorsement is more for Obama The Movement than it is for Obama the candidate.

That is not to take anything away from this exceptional man. But what’s going on is bigger than him at this point, and that’s a good thing for the country. Because, when he wins in November, that Obama Movement is going to have to stay alert and active. Corporate America is not going to give up their hold on our government just because we say so. President Obama is going to need a nation of millions to stand behind him.

Obama for President
Friday, April 18, 2008

Robert Reich is the nation’s 22nd Secretary of Labor and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. This is his personal journal.

The formal act of endorsing a candidate is generally (and properly)limited to editorial pages and elected officials whose constituents might be influenced by their choice. The rest of us shouldn’t assume anyone cares. My avoidance of offering a formal endorsement until now has also been affected by the pull of old friendships and my reluctance as a teacher and commentator to be openly partisan. But my conscience won’t let me be silent any longer. I believe that Barack Obama should be elected President of the United States. Although Hillary Clinton has offered solid and sensible policy proposals, Obama’s strike me as even more so. His plans for reforming Social Security and health care have a better chance of succeeding. His approaches to the housing crisis and the failures of our financial markets are sounder than hers. His ideas for improving our public schools and confronting the problems of poverty and inequality are more coherent and compelling. He has put forward the more enlightened foreign policy and the more thoughtful plan for controlling global warming.

He also presents the best chance of creating a new politics in which citizens become active participants rather than cynical spectators. He has energized many who had given up on politics. He has engaged young people to an extent not seen in decades. He has spoken about the most difficult problems our society faces, such as race, without spinning or simplifying. He has rightly identified the armies of lawyers and lobbyists that have commandeered our democracy, and pointed the way toward taking it back.

Finally, he offers the best hope of transcending the boundaries of class, race, and nationality that have divided us. His life history exemplifies this, as do his writings and his record of public service. For these same reasons, he offers the best possibility of restoring America’s moral authority in the world.

Nunn, Boren back Obama
Foon Rhee, Boston Globe
April 18, 2008

Two former Democratic senators endorsed Barack Obama today, adding their foreign policy and national security gravitas to his candidacy.

Sam Nunn of Georgia and David Boren of Oklahoma, both from the Democratic Party’s conservative wing, will serve as advisers on Obama’s National Security Foreign Policy Team, his campaign announced.

“Our next president — working across party and economic lines — must restore and strengthen our national purpose, our credibility, our competence and our spirit,” Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 1987 through 1995, said in a statement provided the Obama campaign. “We need a president who has the temperament of a leader — a sharp, incisive, strategic mind, a rare capacity for self criticism, and a willingness to hear contrary points of view.”

Boren, who was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, added, “Senator Obama is also a person of sound and good judgment. He had the good judgment more than five years ago to warn against our involvement in this tragic and costly war. He also understands the need to repair our partnerships with other nations and to more effectively use diplomacy to serve our national interests.”

Party Like It’s 1932: The Obama Option
Norman Solomon
April 21, 2008

Seventy-six years ago, to many ears on the left, Franklin D. Roosevelt sounded way too much like a centrist. True, he was eloquent, and he’d generated enthusiasm in a Democratic base eager to evict Republicans from the White House. But his campaign was moderate — with policy proposals that didn’t indicate he would try to take the country in bold new directions if he won the presidency.

Yet FDR’s triumph in 1932 opened the door for progressives. After several years of hitting the Hoover administration’s immovable walls, the organizing capacities of labor and other downtrodden constituencies could have major impacts on policy decisions in Washington.

Today, segments of the corporate media have teamed up with the Clinton campaign to attack Barack Obama. Many of the rhetorical weapons used against him in recent weeks — from invocations of religious faith and guns to flag-pin lapels — may as well have been ripped from a Karl Rove playbook. The key subtexts have included racial stereotyping and hostility to a populist upsurge.

Do we have a major stake in this fight? Does it really matter whether Hillary Clinton or Obama wins the Democratic nomination? Is it very important to prevent John McCain from moving into the White House?

The answers that make sense to me are yes, yes and yes.
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In 1932, there were scant signs that Franklin Delano Roosevelt might become a progressive president. By the summer of that election year, when he accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, his “only left-wing statements had been exceedingly vague,” according to FDR biographer Frank Freidel.

Just weeks before the 1932 general election, Roosevelt laid out a plan for mandated state unemployment insurance nationwide along with social welfare. Even then, he insisted on remaining what we now call a fiscal conservative. “Obviously he had not faced up to the magnitude of expenditure that his program would involve,” Freidel recounts. “Obviously too, he had not in the slightest accepted the views of those who felt that the way out of the Depression was large-scale public spending and deficit financing.”

Six days later, on October 19, FDR delivered a speech in Pittsburgh that blasted the federal budget for its “reckless and extravagant” spending. He pledged “to reduce the cost of current federal government operations by 25 percent.” And he proclaimed: “I regard reduction in federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign.” If he’d stuck to such positions, the New Deal would never have happened.

As the fall campaign came to a close, the Nation magazine lamented that “neither of the two great parties, in the midst of the worst depression in our history, has had the intelligence or courage to propose a single fundamental measure that might conceivably put us on the road to recovery.”

Looking back on the 1932 campaign, Freidel was to comment: “Indeed, in many respects, for all the clash and clamor, Roosevelt and President Hoover had not differed greatly from each other.”

The Socialist Party’s Norman Thomas, running for president again that year, had a strong basis for his critique of both major-party candidates in 1932. But in later elections, when Thomas ran yet again, many former supporters found enough to admire in FDR’s presidency to switch over and support the incumbent for re-election.

“The Roosevelt reforms went far beyond previous legislation,” historian Howard Zinn has written. Those reforms were not only a response to a crisis in the system. They also met a need “to head off the alarming growth of spontaneous rebellion in the early years of the Roosevelt administration — organization of tenants and the unemployed, movements of self-help, general strikes in several cities.”

Major progressive successes under the New Deal happened in sync with stellar achievements in grassroots organizing. So, in Zinn’s words, “Where organized labor was strong, Roosevelt moved to make some concessions to working people.” The New Deal was not all it could have been, no doubt, but to a large extent it was a stupendous result of historic synergies — made possible by massive pressure from the grassroots and a president often willing to respond in the affirmative.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Support of a candidate does not — or at least should not — mean silence about disagreement. There shouldn’t be any abatement of advocacy for progressive positions, whether opposition to nuclear power plants, insistence on complete withdrawal of the U.S. military and mercenaries from Iraq, or activism for a universal single-payer healthcare system.

For good reasons, Obama doesn’t say “I am the one we’ve been waiting for.” He says in speech after speech: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Whether that ends up being largely rhetoric or profoundly real depends not on him nearly so much as on us.

A crucial task between now and November is to get Obama elected as president while shifting the congressional mix toward a progressive majority. Next year will bring the imperative of organizing to exert powerful pressure from the base for progressive change.

At a recent caucus in California’s 6th congressional district, I was elected as an Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. It’s clear to me that Obama is now the best choice among those with a chance to become the next president.

Barack Obama has the potential to become as great a president as Franklin Roosevelt — while social and political movements in the United States have the potential to become as great as those that made the New Deal possible. I seriously doubt that Hillary Clinton has such potential. And John McCain offers only more of the kind of horrific presidency that the world has endured for the last 87 months.

Barack Obama: Substantive hope or pipe dream?
Harvey Earvin and Howard Guidry, Workers World
Apr 17, 2008

Running on a message of change, presidential candidate Barack Obama has inspired hope never before witnessed in this century or perhaps even the preceding one. New voters, mostly young, filled with new hope and a renewed belief that America could one day live up to her creed, are flocking to the polls in support of him.

Hope. Unity. Change. Obama certainly has the right message. Perhaps he’s even the right man. But is the Democratic Party the right party? And is the capitalist system the right system?

Every step of the way in this contentious campaign the Clintons and key party members loyal to them have sought to marginalize Obama and reduce him to just another Black man by repeatedly injecting race into the campaign. They have even tried to trivialize Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the process. Even worse, at one point they outright excused and encouraged the fear and mistaken notions that many whites have of Blacks by saying, with an air of understanding and tolerance, that “some whites are just not ready to vote for a Black man to be president.”

Without question, the Democratic Party, Barack Obama’s party, is infused with racism, blatant and glaring. Yet it dims when juxtaposed against the incendiary racism of the capitalist media, as we saw with the gross caricaturing of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Obama, to be sure, is no revolutionary; far from it. But he knows well the politics of capitalism, an economic system deeply rooted in the ruthless philosophy of “grab what you can get and keep what you can hold.” Competition and divisiveness are as intrinsic to capitalism as stink in a cow pie. Yet Obama’s message is a contradictory message to his party: a message of change and unity.

For us to have unity in the United States, we must have change. Not reformative, but absolute!

Whether Obama is offering us substantive hope or another pipe dream remains to be seen. But he effectively put the U.S.’s problems in context in his speech on race. He reminded us, the people, that we have the power to make choices: “For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the O.J. trial; or in the wake of tragedy as we did in the aftermath of Katrina; or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Rev. Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day, and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

“We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.”

“I truly believe that the country is ready to move beyond politics as usual and into a time where policy comes before spectacle. That is one option. Or, at the moment, in this election we can come together and say, ‘Not this time!’”

“No, not this time” is a bold, confrontational statement the magnitude of which cannot be fully appreciated without some history of the Democratic and Republican parties.

The Republican Party was formed in 1854. The Democratic Party was organized in 1792. Neither party represents our interests. What we must all come to accept, once and for all, is that they will never represent our interests. They were not created to. John Adams, one of the founding fathers of this country, said that he was against universal suffrage only because the poor would vote to take the fortunes away from the rich and establish equality. We know, too, that the U.S. Constitution was written to limit democracy, to exclude the poor, women and people of color. The inequality and injustice that disfigure and define this country result from deliberate design, not some unfortunate accident of history.

For more than 200 years, working people have supported the Democrats and the Republicans with our loyalty, believing that one day we would be led to a Promised Land of sorts—a land of prosperity where peace, justice and equality abound for all regardless of sex, race, creed or color.

From Shay’s Rebellion to Black rebellions

After 200 years, the great masses of the people find themselves far from that Promised Land, in a valley of hopelessness and despair; the same hopelessness and despair that led to the uprising in 1786 known as Shay’s Rebellion. This popular rebellion involved thousands of impoverished farmers who were sick and tired of losing their land and their cattle to creditors. They were sick and tired of high taxes and high interest rates, of poor leadership and insensitivity on the part of the government. This forced them to unite and rebel.

Pick up any paper today and look in the business section. Farmers in 2008 are facing the same problems, with Black farmers losing their land at a disproportionate rate. Homes are being foreclosed on and across the board, workers are taking a beating. They’re taking a beating at the gas pumps while oil companies are raking in record profits. They’re taking a beating at the supermarkets with inflation in a time of recession, when times are hardest. They’re taking a beating every time the government, Democrats and Republicans, bail out faltering corporations but do nothing for the average worker facing a financial crisis.

What then has been the government’s response when the common folk have come together as one, be it in the form of unions, mass protest, or party organizing, to just say “No, not this time!”

To the farmers of Shay’s Rebellion, the government responded with the militia. Some were shot and killed. Hundreds were arrested and the government quickly passed a so-called Riot Act Law that suspended Habeas Corpus so that the farmers couldn’t get out of jail. While most were given prison sentences or assessed fines, the leaders of the rebellion were sentenced to death and hanged.

It was this hopelessness and despair that led to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement with demonstrations in every major city in this country. How did the government respond? That’s right; with the police and the National Guard! Many of the protesters were injured and killed. Thousands across this country were arrested and jailed. In Birmingham, Ala., in 1963, Commissioner of Public Safety “Bull” Connor sent out cops in riot gear, armed with nightsticks, scatter guns, dogs and high-powered water hoses to attack peaceful demonstrators, many of whom were young school children.

It was this same kind of hopelessness and despair that led to the 1992 Los Angeles uprising after a jury acquitted four cops accused in the videotaped brutal beating of Black motorist Rodney King. How did the government respond? With the police, the National Guard, the Army and the Marines! Between 50 and 60 people were killed and 2,000 were injured. Thousands of jobless youth were arrested and jailed. The president allocated over $600 million for rebuilding South Central L.A. but only $18 million was earmarked for food, jobs, job skills and housing. More was spent on beefing up the police force and creating more jails and prison spaces.

History talks to us. History tells us that this capitalist government, the Democrats and Republicans, is not a friend of the common worker. History reminds us that this government never has been our friend and never will be. It tells us that this government is, always has been, and always will be allied with big banks and large corporations.

History also alerts us to just how easily working people are arrested, jailed and even put to death. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, imprisoning 10 times more people per capita than Japan or any nation of Western Europe. As of February 2008, there were 3,263 people on death rows across the country. Most of them are Black and Brown. There are over 3.3 million locked up in jails and prisons, with African American men in their twenties who are locked up exceeding the number of African American men of any age who are attending colleges and universities.

Obama again hits home with the truth by saying, “Politicians routinely exploit fear of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.”

It is true that what these politicians and conservative commentators say about crime and justice is totally refuted by history.

History contradicts the notion that prisoners are somehow radically different from other people, that they don’t share the dreams and aspirations of others, that they freely and preferably choose a criminal lifestyle. In truth, most prisoners are products of inequality, social injustice, racial injustice, subpar education and a shortage of legitimate economic opportunities. By far, most crimes are driven by economic necessity. A large number are fueled by mental illnesses that result from living under this capitalist system.

Recognizing this calls for different remedies. True solutions run counter to the sprawling prison-industrial complex that we have today as well as the systemic execution of those living at the margins of society.

To say that Obama is here to the rescue is pure fantasy. But, as a Black man, he is more knowledgeable of and sensitive to the pain and suffering of the poor. I cannot imagine him, for the sake of winning the presidency, running a Willie Horton campaign ad of a Black man getting out of prison to prey on society, as did the late Ronald Reagan in 1981; or an ad depicting prison as nothing but a revolving door where one day you’re in and the next day you’re out, as did George Bush Sr. in 1989; or abandoning the campaign trail to return to his home state on the day of an execution to demonstrate his support for state-sanctioned killing, as did Bill Clinton in 1993.

I cannot imagine Obama not responding to the victims of Katrina and using the excuse of not knowing, as did the current president. Or him going along with the mainstream media in portraying the Black Katrina survivors who scavenged the stores for food and water as criminals and hoodlums and the whites as just desperate families trying to survive.

Whether Obama wins or not, he has already defied the odds. He has come this far not because he is Black, as former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro would have us believe. But his message of hope, change and unity resonates with the people. His is a revolutionary message. But it will require work.

Let us think of the future not as something that unfolds naturally—like a rose—but as a great sculpture that we can shape.

We can shape tomorrow by uniting together and making history today, by drawing together and feeling, knowing, and recognizing that the power is in us to shape from stones of despondency a sculpture of hope; from boulders of chaos and uncertainty, a sculpture of harmony and stability. From the hardest fear and ugliness, we can and we will form a valiant, beautiful revolutionary movement for real change. In the words of Obama, “Yes we can!”

Earvin and Guidry are long-time leaders of PURE—Panthers United for Revolutionary Education—and are political prisoners on Texas death row. Go to www.workers.org to read more on Guidry’s case. Articles copyright 1995-2008 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

Why Democrats Rule the Web
Michael Scherer, Jay Newton-Small, TIME Mag
Thursday, Apr. 17, 2008

You know the drill. As election day approaches, glossy pamphlets clog your mailbox. Annoying prerecorded calls jam your answering machine. Nasty attack ads disturb your prime-time TV viewing. You are bombarded at every turn, and you take it all in, with only one responsibility in mind: remember to vote.

That’s the way it used to be for Tom and Mary Bashore, a retired printer and an accounting assistant from Ephrata, Pa. But at some point in January, they stopped watching and started participating. Mary went on their home computer and found Barack Obama’s website, where the couple created a personal Web page to connect with other Obama supporters in the area. A group of about 100 began meeting offline in Lancaster, assigning themselves tasks throughout the county with guidance from the campaign website.

“People were just getting together on their own,” remembers Tom, 60, a brown-eyed man with a cropped mustache. “I guess you could call it grass roots.” Like thousands of others, Tom downloaded phone lists so he could cold-call potential supporters in the area. Mary spent hours typing names and addresses into Obama’s national database. The first paid operatives finally arrived in the area weeks later, only to find a virtually organized Obama machine already up and running. When the campaign held its first statewide training sessions in March, some 2,000 people turned up.

It has gone on like this all year for Obama as his campaign deftly exploits the biggest technological shift in national politics since the rise of television. For millions of Americans, the Internet has turned presidential politics into a fully interactive event, a chance to give money with mouse clicks and to volunteer virtually from miles away. And the Democrats have used these tools to produce historic results. In February alone Hillary Clinton was able to attract 200,000 new donors, most of them online, rescuing her campaign from the brink of bankruptcy. Obama has amassed an army of 750,000 supporters who have signed on to his website and participated in 30,000 offline events. Obama’s online fund-raising eclipsed the $100 million mark in the first three months of the year, and his YouTube videos have been viewed 37 million times, a figure that would make any television executive weep. “It is a seismic change,” says Michael Malbin, the executive direc tor of the Campaign Finance Institute. “This year’s donors are not just givers. They are doers.”

And that could spell trouble for John McCain come November. Though both Democrats have shown the ability to raise bigmoney online, McCain has been struggling to catch Internet fever. While his rivals rake in bundles of cash in small-dollar checks, McCain makes the rounds of hotel ballrooms, charming wealthy donors with traditional chicken dinners and fruit-platter mixers. In March he attended 26 fund raisers in 24 cities, raising about $15 million, with roughly one-third of it coming from the Web. Obama attended just six events in the same period, yet his campaign raised three times as much, 2 mostly online.

While McCain apparently intends to accept about $84 million in public financing after he is nominated, Obama has been moving in the opposite direction. After once vowing to take public money, he now calls his online fund-raising machine a “parallel public-financing system,” which is convenient because it has no upper limit “He’s got an incredible small-dollar operation,” observes Charlie Black, a senior adviser to the McCain campaign. “That’s a huge advantage for them.”

Republicans, who once were far ahead of Democrats in whizbang TV technology, let their party fall behind the nerd curve as Howard Dean and later John Kerry revolutionized and then exploited online fund-raising in 2004. Four years later, the Democrats have widened that gap, using the Internet not only to raise cash but also to organize canvassers and plot get-out-the-vote efforts. Republicans say the Democrats’ Web advantage is due to not just greater enthusiasm but also smarter strategies. “Everything Obama does is fundamentally about a people-powered democracy and apeople-powered campaign,” says Mindy Finn, a Republican consultant who ran Mitt Romney’s Internet operation. “McCain’s message is different.”

The irony is that McCain was once an Internet darling. Back in 2000, the insurgent McCain primary campaign raised more than $6 million online, shocking the conventional thinking at the time. When his current campaign began to take shape, McCain’s political advisers hoped to reclaim the magic, hiring four different consulting firms with plans that called for a campaign as interactive as Obama’s.

But it never got off the ground. “Based on where the campaign was financially, you knew at a certain point that it wasn’t going to be the kind of online campaign that had been planned,” said a former adviser to the McCain campaign.

By last fall, the bulk of McCain’s online staff had been let go; his bare-bones website was the technological equivalent of a soapbox-derby car on a busy freeway. The McCain blog has been infrequently updated, many organizational tools were absent, and the social-networking feature, called McCainSpace, was left unfinished, with a note for supporters to “stay tuned.” Even today, if you go to McCain’s website, you are more likely than not to find a page that just asks for money and broadcasts the campaign’s message, with issue papers, press releases and videos.

By contrast, Obama’s website is engineered for engagement: prompts invite people to volunteer, make phone calls and find nearby events. “Don’t just fill out this volunteer form and wait,” it reads. “Get started on your own.” The blog is maintained by a former journalist; the social-networking function is managed by a founder of Facebook.

As recently as last November, Clinton’s senior advisers were dismissive of their rival’s online army, saying Obama’s supporters “look like Facebook.” They don’t feel that way anymore. Since February, when Clinton began pushing the website more as a fund-raising vehicle, Hillayland has increasingly emphasized the opportunities for supporters to get involved in the campaign.

McCain is trying to make up ground too. He plans to relaunch his website within the next two months, adding many of the interactive features it lacks, including ones that will allow supporters to arrange house parties or write letters to the editor. The campaign is also banking on the historically superior volunteer efforts of the Republican National Committee to narrow the disparity in ground support. In 2004 the committee helped organize an estimated 1.4 million volunteers, many of whom responded to an online get-out-fhe-vote operation.

But those networks are four years old, and McCain has yet to excite the same level of grass-roots activity that Democrats are exhibiting. Catching up won’t be easy. Tom and Mary Bashore, for instance, estimate that they spend as many as 25 hours a week volunteering for Obama. “It’s amazing to be part of it,” Tom says of the coming primary in Pennsylvania. “We’re setting aside all of next Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday for the campaign. They’ve got a lot planned for us.”

Clinton Slams Democratic Activists At Private Fundraiser
Celeste Fremon, HuffPo
April 18, 2008

At a small closed-door fundraiser after Super Tuesday, Sen. Hillary Clinton blamed what she called the “activist base” of the Democratic Party — and MoveOn.org in particular — for many of her electoral defeats, saying activists had “flooded” state caucuses and “intimidated” her supporters, according to an audio recording of the event obtained by The Huffington Post.

“Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] — which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down,” Clinton said to a meeting of donors. “We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.”

Listen to the audio below [open link]:

Clinton’s remarks depart radically from the traditional position of presidential candidates, who in the past have celebrated high levels of turnout by party activists and partisans as a harbinger for their own party’s success — regardless of who is the eventual nominee — in the general election showdown.

The comments also contradict Clinton’s previous statements praising this year’s elevated Democratic turnout in primaries and caucuses, and appear to blame her caucus defeats on newly energized grassroots voter groups that she has lauded in the past as “lively participants” in American democracy.

“You’ve been asking the tough questions,” Clinton said in April of last year at a MoveOn-sponsored town hall event. “You’ve been refusing to back down when any of us who are in political leadership are not living up to the standards that we should set for ourselves… I think you have helped to change the face of American politics for the better… both online, and in the corridors of power.”

Clinton’s criticism followed MoveOn’s endorsement of Obama in early February. The group was initially established in 1999 to oppose the Republican-led effort to impeach President Bill Clinton, and now claims 3.2 million members.

In a statement to The Huffington Post, MoveOn’s Executive Director Eli Pariser reacted strongly to Clinton’s remarks: “Senator Clinton has her facts wrong again. MoveOn never opposed the war in Afghanistan, and we set the record straight years ago when Karl Rove made the same claim. Senator Clinton’s attack on our members is divisive at a time when Democrats will soon need to unify to beat Senator McCain. MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points.”

Howard Wolfson, communications director for the Clinton campaign, verified the authenticity of the audio, and elaborated on Clinton’s charge that these same party activists were engaged in acts of intimidation against her supporters: “There have been well documented instances of intimidation in the Nevada and the Texas caucuses, and it is a fact that while we have won 4 of the 5 largest primaries, where participation is greatest, Senator Obama has done better in caucuses than we have.” About Clinton’s remarks suggesting dismay over high Democratic activist turnout, Wolfson said, “I’ll let my statement stand as is.”

In fact, the Nevada caucuses occurred prior to MoveOn’s endorsement of Obama, and when Clinton made her remarks, the Texas caucuses had yet to take place.

The disclosure of Clinton’s statement disparaging the prominence of party activists in the caucus process comes after she repeatedly suggested that Obama’s electability had been compromised because he had allegedly offended other key Democratic constituencies.

This story was developed in cooperation with OffTheBus to which reporter Celeste Fremon is a regular contributor.

“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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