Billary's One-Two Punch Has Changed the Game
The latest one-two punch from Billary has done it: I hereby call for a third campaign, one that can endure through the general election.
Relax, but just a bit: I don’t mean a resurrected John Edwards or a third-party bid like Ralph Nader’s or, in fact, any campaign with an actual candidate. I mean a campaign called “The Real Firestorm,” a tight, flying wedge of citizen volunteers who, like the best early civil-rights demonstrators, will physically face Bill or Hillary -- or any wayward Obama surrogate or Republican swift-boater or journalist who’s helping to gin up the latest “firestorm” or “uproar” – and chant at them, at a photo-op moment, “There you go again! There you go again!”
Ronald Reagan immortalized the charge in a 1980 jab at Jimmy Carter. Here, it would mean, “There you go again, subverting the civic-republican truths and trust we need, not as Democrats but as Americans.”
This campaign will need funding and a few charismatic leaders, “conservative” as well as “liberal.” But most of all, it’ll need strategy and troops capable of waking up enough other people to shame Bill and other swift-boaters into silence. Here’s why, and a bit about how.
The one-two punch that brought me to this was, first, Hillary’s pronouncement that we can’t choose our relatives but we can choose our pastors – another slick truism, typically (that is, badly) calculated to be just behind the Jeremiah Wright curve she hoped to ride; second, there came Bill’s comment that he and Hillary aren’t “quitters.”
I hear you, Bill, but here’s the thing, old Buddy: Every time you’ve opened your mouth this year, you’ve made me want to quit you and Hill, with a tear in my eye, as I never expected I'd have to do.
See, Bill, you just keep on reminding us that your way of not being a quitter has a certain shameless, Jack-in-the-Box quality to it that the commentator Jack Beatty calls your “tumescent narcissism.” It just keeps bouncing back at us, again and again, with a silly grin on its face, just like the Wall Street Journal’s gelatinous sleuth-pundit John Fund.
It’s gotten so bad, Bill, that you've made me revive my own passing thought of January 30 here at TPM that there ought to be a “There you go again!” campaign against Republican swift-boaters and their neo-con covers such as David Brooks, who, for all his seemingly post-partisan prevarications, is just positioning himself to reel readers in for McCain, when he’ll come in for the kill on the Democratic nominee.
You know all about these types, Bill, but now you yourself remind me of them. You make me remember what I told the Washington Post on January 15, when your camp started shuffling the race-card: "Every time these people open their mouths and engage race,” I said, “they are greasing the skids for the Republican Swift-boaters and reminding voters of the Democrats' indulgence of racial squabbling."
It got so bad that I had to caution your camp’s other shameless Jack-in-the-Box, the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz, Hillary’s Arthur Schlesinger Jr.-in-waiting, for his breathakingly underhanded assault on Obama’s people as race-baiters. And now you’ve even got Hillary -- who we all hoped could control you -- into the act herself, trying to keep the Rev. Wright round-robin going.
That does it, Bill. Herewith, an open letter to George Soros and to… Well, I might have said Bill Buckley, were he still with us, but surely some other worthy conservative will step forward.
Please fund a campaign, called something like "The Real Firestorm," that stages photo-op protests that even our perverse and fickle news media can’t ignore. Nothing as bad as what the Republicans staged at the Miami Board of Elections in November, 2000, mind you. But almost.Recruit and train thousands of ordinary citizens to show up, physically, and chant "There you go again!" at progenitors of swift-boating and its media enablers.
No matter whether those progenitors are Billary or the new Karl Roves of either party, or the Limbaughs or Drudges, or –and this is important – the supposedly more moderate reporters and columnists, like TIME's Joe Klein or NEWSWEEK'S Evan Thomas and their more plodding emulators in city rooms and bureaus who fan "firestorms" and "uproars" based on little more than press releases or leaks that involve mainly just the players and the journalists.
George Soros himself proposed the “There you go again!” slogan, on a panel I caught on C-Span, very much as I’d proposed it two weeks before him here at TPM.
The purpose of such a civic campaign, as its charismatic public leaders would have to say again and again, would be to make very clear that millions of Americans are gagging on having their politics degraded with these tactics, that we’re sick and tired of being stampeded by operators who goose the fears and hatreds latent in most of us.
True enough, it works. I know it rather well. Most Americans, stressed and distracted, can easily be induced to behave as Walter Lippmann said they do in "Manufactured Consent" back in the 1920s: They’re easily bum-rushed into “uproars” of one kind or another. At best, Lippmann complained, they’re like playgoers who enter a theater during the second act, decide who’s the villain and who’s the hero, and leave before the final curtain, set in their conclusions.
But Lippmann's insight is exactly the reason we should have this campaign. The country can just as well have a counter-"manufacturing" of consensus about who the villains truly are as it can the stuff we're getting now. With enough backing and strategy, Americans can remind one another, in an effective, well-grounded way, that we’re better than those whom “The Real Firestorm” campaign would target and burn, the people who, as consultants, campaign operatives, horse-race political reporters, and power-columnists, are targeting the public for personal interest and/or profit more than for anything else.
When Americans are reminded how much better they want to be, they sometimes do become better. Examples in living memory begin with the early civil-rights movement, which also reminded us that even the best "grass roots" movements require leadership and planning by people with enough resources, savvy, and discipline to revive and mobilize other people’s wounded faith.
Too much money and planning is going into the worst alternatives. Yes, Obama's campaign means to be just what I'm calling for. But it can't be. Its preeminent end-game has to be winning institutional power, in a zero-sum game. Obama’s deeper end-game -- a better politics for all -- is real, too, but captive to the first goal, inevitably so.
That’s where others come in. In a republic, making public life go well has to be some people’s primary goal, even beyond winning itself. The counterintuitive truth here is that Americans find and fulfill themselves best -- as members of the early civil-rights did -- by upholding certain values that aren’t rewarded in zero-sum games and that, in fact, are degraded and ground under foot there.
The civil-rights demonstrators looked almost foolish at first, or at best, hopeless, in standing by those values against the powerful and sophisticated. So might this campaign: There have been "campaign-fairness” commissions before; New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg may have been calling for that, sincerely even if only secondarily, in his pursuit of other agendas. Not much comes of them.
What all such efforts have lacked is troops and a strategy at least as good as that of the nation’s founders, So, let’s appeal to Soros or whoever is ready to play Samuel Adams or Gouverneur Morris or Alexander Hamilton: Set up the damned website, already; assemble the strategists, sign up the volunteers, and start taking names of the campaign’s targets -- the political operators and journalists who fan the false firestorms in order to keep us from clicking the remote or, indeed, from straying too far from their conglomerate masters’ agendas.
Find them. Confront them, as peaceful civil-rights demonstrators confronted Bull Connor and subtler, more charming purveyors of oppression. Insist on crediting them with more decency than they’ve shown, and ask them why they can’t show it.
Surround Hillary on the stump, or Sean Wilentz crossing the Princeton campus, or the neo-con New York Sun publisher Seth Lipsky at his hangout at the Harvard Club of New York, or any number of reporters and columnists who are stoking this perversity. And chant, “There you go again!” Help them and everyone who’s watching to understand what’s at stake in your doing this. Film it. Make these failed Americans the targets of the only “firestorm” or “uproar” we need more of right now.
I can't believe what I'm reading.
It reminds be of Hitler's stormtroopers or Putin killers who silenced journalists before "elections" Let's silence anybody who would dare to criticize the dear leader Führer.
let's stop this madness. Let's defeat the totalitarian Obama movement.
"A republic if you can keep it"
It's our moment of Truth. Can we keep the republic?
March 26, 2008 10:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
See my response to "anatol" below...
March 27, 2008 12:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
tnathan,
so, this column reminds you of Hitler's storm troopers, heh?
I have the feeling that if you ever came face to face with one of those storm troopers you would poop your pants.
March 27, 2008 10:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure I would poop my pants.
This is why I want to prevent them from taking over my country.
March 27, 2008 12:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
tnathan,
they aren't around anymore, read your history book.
March 27, 2008 3:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
Peaceful protest against divisive and degrading political tactics poses no threat to the Republic. Quite the opposite. Protests like these can silence other voices only by shaming them -- and shame on you for smearing protesters as stormtroopers.
March 27, 2008 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
"I can't believe what I'm reading.
It reminds be of Hitler's stormtroopers or Putin killers who silenced journalists before "elections" ... "
I can believe what I'm reading. You sound like a perfectly typical and common fool. The Hitler reference and general hysteria was a tip off.
March 27, 2008 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just want to hold up a sign at a Hillary event - something to the effect of
WHICH IS IT HILLARY?
VOTERS VOICES HEARD?
OR
DELEGATES VOTE WHO EVER THEY WANT?
March 26, 2008 11:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
*sigh* It's all right if you're opposed to the Clintons, but could you at least cut out the childish name calling? "Billary"?
March 26, 2008 11:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh spare us the pollyanna routine. It just comes off as whiny.
March 27, 2008 5:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
tnathan,
You better believe. Obama's movement has always had the totalitarian and messianic tendencies, and now they really need the muscle of their flock to end the campaign quickly, because its unraveling. (Remember Bush's riots which stopped recounts in Florida? Now they're stopping the re-vote in Michigan and Florida again) Mr. Sleeper indeed has vividly shown that Obama movement is now closely related to such illustrious predecessors as e.g. Mao's Red Guards, and Putin's "Nashi"- Ours.
Come to think of this, ready supply of shock troops must have been one of the reasons for Obama to join Wright's church.
I wouldn't be so worried about the republic - Obama's chance of becoming president has been reduced to zero now. He does have a chance to drag the Democratic party down with him, which is why his campaign is busy orchestrating the riots for Clinton to quit. Let's be vigilant, and supportive of the choice of majority of Democrats - Senator Hillary Clinton. She's the only candidate who can win for the Dems in November.
March 26, 2008 11:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
You Clintonistas are so full of chutzpah, it's astounding. Before this election, I would have never believed that the current Democratic party could sink so low.
*Obama is ahead in the pledged delegate vote
*Obama is ahead in the popular vote
*Obama has won more states
*Obama has picked up over sixty super delegates in the last three months; Clinton has picked up less than ten
*Obama's national approval rating is at 49%; Clinton's is down to 37%
And when his supporters point to these facts, they are considered totalitarian.
Let me break it down for you: your candidate is not entitled to be President. At this point, she cannot win without infuriating the majority of the party, for, unless she wins all of the remaining states by over sixty five percent (a feat of which she has an infinitesimal chance of accomplishing), she will not have won the popular vote of the Democratic Party, let alone the pledged delegate vote. The fact that you would risk a full fledged intra-party war over this election, in the face of an unavoidable and quantifiable political defeat, effectively demonstrates that the malignant cult of personality resides on your side of the aisle.
Your candidate is not entitled to be President.
Deal with it.
March 27, 2008 12:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Anatol,
You underestimate the danger of fanatics.
Have you read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood or The Plot Against America by Phil Roth.
Jim Sleeper is not some kind of neo-Nazi hiding the Idaho he is a lecturer in political science at Yale and a writer on American civic culture and politics. I ‘m wondering if parents of Yale students know that this guy teaches their children civic culture for 50K per year.
March 27, 2008 1:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Tnathan,
I see where you're coming from, There is a lot of excellent discourse about that, see for example posts by David Seaton, e.g. http://seaton-newslinks.blogspot.com/2008/03/sorry-folks.html
A quote:"a feeling of foreboding about this man. Something is there that gives me the creeps.
I am also very worried by the intense partisanship someone who objectively has done nothing of any note inspires in such numbers of people only by mouthing platitudes.
This readiness to worship and follow pure hot air among such masses of citizens of the most highly armed nation in the history of the world simply frightens me."
I'm quite sensitive to that due to my personal history (an immigrant from the former USSR). The dumbing down of political discourse in this country is truly frightening. We REelected Bush. Just stop for a moment, and think about that: reelected Bush. And now we're ready to march in lock step to where ever another charismatic leader will take us...
But I'm cheered up by the fact that this is still a free country, and that even the USSR fell under the weight of its own idiocy. Lets hope we'll still be able to step away from the brink - and let's work towards that aim. No marching in lock step in any direction, no cheering for the storm troopers in any uniform, under any banner.
March 27, 2008 2:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
lol, you're quite the troll aren't you.
If it bothers you so much, why don't you go protest Jim Sleeper's office? Oh yeah, because you'd just be some twit making an idiot of yourself. At most you'd just inspire greater solidarity in the large numbers of Americans who would agree with Sleeper.
March 27, 2008 10:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You'd better hope Hillary DOESN'T get the nomination, because the Republicans will have her reduced to a laughingstock within a week. Every phony claim she's made during this nominating season in an attempt to beat Obama will come back to haunt her during the general. Not to mention all the old stuff. You think the Republicans will be shy about calling her stark raving crazy for believing that she'd actually dodged sniper fire in Bosnia? And if she dares to tell them that she didn't really believe it when she said it, then she's a liar. See how it works? She's screwed either way. There's a whole new generation of independent voters who don't know much about Vince Foster and Travelgate and the "vast right-wing conspiracy" yet, but they will. Oh, will they ever. There's a whole new voter demographic just waiting for reasons to hate her. Her approval ratings are already in the tank--the lowest since she entered the political arena. You think they're going to go up any time soon? You're dreaming.
The race for the Democratic nomination was over long ago. Hillary lost. Deal with it, because you're either going to be living with president McCain or president Obama for the next four years. And if you dare tell me you'd prefer McCain, I'll tell you that you've always been a closet Republican. Just like Hillary. That's why you love her.
Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran indeed.
March 28, 2008 8:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like a good idea to me. It would be nice to hear logical and sensible arguments from all sides rather than the ridiculous charges and counter-charges distracting us from the real issues that affect our lives. It would also be good to know that there are still real thinkers in this land -- no matter what their political affiliation may be. I would welcome a kind of "Consumer Reports" for political races -- something to keep candidates focused on the enormous job ahead of them.
March 26, 2008 11:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Now, now, tnathan and anatol. I admit that I gave my proposed campaign "The Real Firestorm," an incendiary name, but look at my model for it: the early civil rights movement, which confronted its opponents by telling them they were better than they'd been behaving.
Some of those opponents, of course, saw only totalitarian subversion in everything Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, and the other early activists did. And there was plenty to criticize in the civil-rights movement, even before it degenerated. But the real rioting and crime in America these days is coming from the top, indeed from almost everywhere you look at the top, including from a lot of the news media in its desperate, empty drive to survive (print) and/or to maximize profit and market share.
You may not agree with me that the Clintons and some of their surrogates have become part of the problem, but all I can add here is that I've reached that conclusion reluctantly. Readers of TPM will know that I've never been a swooner for Barack Obama(See columns like "If I Vote For Obama, It'll Be Because...," "Obama's Biggest Weakness" and "Obama, Crowds, and Power.") I've always felt that Hillary Clinton deserved a fighting chance, even given the Faustian bargains she'd made in the past. But no longer. She has forfeited that chance, so much so that if she wins, she'll lose.
March 27, 2008 12:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think there's anything incendiary about it. I think it's a great idea and have long said so.
There's nothing wrong with legal protest and free speech. If someone doesn't like the smear attacks, they're perfectly free to say so. Too many politicians and other elites spend their days lying, spinning, distorting, and generally crapping in the public square.
They spread misery in the world and feel no consequences.
Humanity isn't evolved to operate that way. A healthy sense of morality requires feedback. Someone who gets all their esteem feedback from wealth and power, and is isolated from the human consequences of their actions, can become a real monster.
Of course, people should always be on their best behavior and represent themselves and thier cause honorably. For that matter, if someone is behaving like an idiot in a protest, others should feel free to disown and discourage them. All of the tactics of orderly and lawful protest were employed powerfully by the women's suffrage movement, minority civil rights, and so on.
March 27, 2008 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know, she may have deserved the chance initially, but she wore out her welcome long ago. The ONLY reason she's still in this race is because she's the wife of a former president. Without Bill (and Bill's resume and Bill's connections) she would have been gone by now. Forced to stand on her own two feet and on her own resume, she's nothing but a presumptuous dilettante who's being allowed to do incredible damage to the Democratic Party. And ONLY because she's Bill's wife.
March 28, 2008 8:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
“George Soros himself proposed the “There you go again!” slogan, on a panel I caught on C-Span, very much as I’d proposed it two weeks before him here at TPM.”
Do I sense a little tumescent narcissism rearing its ugly head? As you know, Reagan owns that phrase anyway. Maybe, they can shout, “Don’t go there!” and snap their thousands of fingers in a unison of purity. May I suggest that, for their first assignment, this legion of message Gestapo first surround your word processor and end your Swiftboating of “Billary”?
March 27, 2008 12:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sleeper sure didn't like it when it was happening on his campus.
March 27, 2008 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've proposed it several times too. It's a great line to dismiss some people's tendancy to chronically lie, exxagerate, play games, etc.
What else can one politely say when dealing with a compulsive liar? Just dismiss their foolishness, make note it's habitual, and move on. Succinctly outline the problem, characterize it, and then refer to it with a shorthand when the person does it habitually.
Having said that, I think he needs to use his own words. Calling Hillary on "silly season" was good, but a little too name-cally.
He should apply the same tactic for McCain as well. McCain is sure to tell some doosies.
March 27, 2008 10:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
"...some people's tendency to chronically lie, exaggerate, play game..."
Lie, exaggerate and play games- in other words, politics! I can only conclude that the biggest difference I have with, putting it nicely, the more ardent Obama supporters is that I don't see him or his campaign as any different.
March 27, 2008 10:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
it's led me to the conclusion that politics is--at least in part-- the art of mesmerizing even intelligent people such as professors in such a way that they (the mesmerized) see the opponent's every minute flaw (She fibbed about a Bosnia landing) while at the same time remain absolutely blind to their man’s/woman’s major flaws (such as Obama's 20 year relationship with Reverend Wright). The evidence is in. Obama is a case in point.
I know I know your mesmerization was gradual and you hesitated, but eventually you caved in.
March 27, 2008 11:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Andrew, I almost used the term "Obamatized" in a discussion the other day, but thought better of it. But I do think everyone is susceptible to spin at any given time. After all, we have to get our info somewhere, and it always seems to come with some kind of agenda attached. It's really not easy to maintain guard against the constant bombardment of pitches hurled at us, and I don't think the appeals are always unconscious. Obama appeals very much to ideas and ideals for example. But I think there is usually an emotional attachment that precedes the blind-faith true-believer type following of entertainers and politicians. Like you say, that blind faith results in a skewed perspective.
March 27, 2008 11:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don Key, anatol and tnathan:
There is a reason why why none of you can write a post without namedropping Nazis or communists: there is no substance to your respective arguments (that is, if the three of you are not, in all actuality, simply different handles for the same troll), only vitriol.
Your candidate is not entitled to be President.
You can troll all you want, but you can't change the fact that Obama is winning in all categories of this contest (save for the superdelegate vote, but, as I've pointed out, he has gained over sixty in the last three months, while she has picked up less than ten).
You can rant and rave all you want, but you can't change reality.
March 27, 2008 1:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
GeorgeMason,
Sure. Nobody is.
March 27, 2008 2:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
"This is how Führer Obama wants us to conduct dialog about race, by physically threatening academics and journalists who would dare to disagree with the Führer." - tnathan
No, no, no.
That is Grade A bullsh*t. An academic unaffiliated with the Obama campaign suggested this strategy on a blog. More importantly, up to this point, only one other poster has endorsed it, and yet you believe that it is a logical response to hyperbolically condemn the entire campaign--of which, I must repeat, the poster in question is not a member of--as an exercise in fascism.
And the funny thing is that it is this very hyperbole, be it rooted in allusions to Obama's purported lack of patriotism or allusions to Obama's personal racial and religious background, which irritated the poster in question in the first place.
Clinton and Obama stand for the same values, and support very similar policies. These values and polices are not fascist.
If you want to condemn the strategy, that's fantastic, but don't pretend for a moment that it is rational to assume that, because one academic blogger advocated an aggressive campaign strategy on, of all things, a TPM user blog, there is a "totalitarian Obama movement." That is an inference which is simply not represented by the facts. The overwhelming majority of Obama's supporters are like those of Clinton: Democrats who support a system in which the nomination will go to the candidate who maintains a majority in the popular and pledged delegate vote at the end of the primary season.
That's the campaign strategy which is being pursued by the Obama campaign.
It's a clean campaign, and it's winning.
Deal with it.
March 27, 2008 3:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
George Mason
Harumph! Substance?? substance???? I take it you want logic too.
March 27, 2008 12:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
George Mason, It should go without saying, but I speak only for myself. Rejecting comments out of hand by lumping arguments together and reducing them to a caricature is a deceptive way of avoiding addressing them individually and a little autocratic. The incessant shout of "troll" at anyone arguing the wrong side here is a bit authoritarian, too. I offer apologies for use of the word Gestapo if that has offended anyone (has it really?), and believe it or not, I hardly noticed the previous posts, so the use of “message Gestapo” (“speech police” had no punch) was my own, as un-PC and historically misguided as may be. While my reply to Sleeper’s battle cry for a civil rights March against Billary! was necessarily short, I wouldn’t say it was without substance altogether. Anyway, I’ll reply below, if you really do want to defend this post.
March 27, 2008 9:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have long agreed with the notion of pre-emptive innoculation against predictable right-wing assaults on liberal Americans. I grew up in the late 1950s and early 1960s, so I well remember Republican Nixon-McCarthyism and how little the Democratic Party has traditionally understood (at least in the post-FDR period) about how to effectively combat the frenzied fear-flogging. In her masterful treatise, The March of Folly, Barbara Tuchman nailed the essential problem. "The American government," she said, "reacts not to [historic events abroad] but to intimidation by the rabid right at home, and to the public dread of [XXXX-ism] that this plays on and reflects." For the generic "XXXX-ism," substitute "Communism," "Terrorism," "Abstract Angst," "Reactionary Panic," "Mystic Dread," or just plain old "Fear Itself."
Senator Barack Obama seems to understand this truth, and I think we need to clearly recognize his early and persistent use of the phrase: "old politics of division" as the equivalent of "there you go again." This refrain has proven completely effective as a prophylactic against Politically Transmitted Diseases of the reactionary sort. The frustration level of his political adversaries -- in both the Democratic and Republican parties -- testifies to this effectiveness.
As well, I think it advisable to notice that Senator Obama's campaign organization has early and eagerly seized upon Internet communications technology to, in effect, create the large mobile "truth squad" that Jim Sleeper desires to see following the usual suspects around "keeping them honest," as CNN's Anderson Cooper likes to think that he does. I live here in Southern Taiwan and even I saw repeated several times on CNN International that video replay of You-Know-Her getting safely and calmly off a plane in Bosnia while her own breathless narrative of dodging sniper fire played over the pictures that made lies of her words. As well, we've all witnessed her repeated attempts to dredge up for tiresome repetition comments made by an African American preacher that everyone knows Barack Obama does not share or endorse. You-Know-Her's recent drop in favorability ratings to 37% reflect this widespread -- if not world-wide -- understanding of her candidacy's dire straits.
The same "Factual Furies" have pursued John McBomb (with Holy Joe Lieberman's face stapled to one of McBomb's ears everywhere a camera focuses). While the Geriatric Old Poop McBomb makes bizarre claims about "success" and "security" in Iraq, Iraqi reporters follow in the next program segment, describing agonizing days spent negotiating complex check-point agreements with innumerable, armed factions just so they can take a 4 hour trip around former neighborhood streets where they grew up safely as kids. Virtually an entire on-line world has become a "truth squad," so to speak. About time, too.
So, I think, based on all evidence that I have seen to date, that Senator Obama knows his game and has assembled just the team to implement his game-winning strategy. No one can forsee with absolute accuracy every bump in the road ahead, of course, but Senator Obama has taken some pretty rough treatment while turning attacks upon him into opportunities to demonstrate his resilience. He has established ownership of the controlling campaign meme of "change." This has served as his "there you go again" innoculation against attacks from the status-quo candidates trying to sell an outworn and discredited "experience" that Americans know they do not need, cannot afford, and therefore do not want.
So, I wouldn't worry about Senator Obama contracting that "same old" Politically Transmitted Disease of "intimidation by the rabid right at home" carried by You-Know-Her and John McBomb. As the old wisdom tells us: "Let truth and falsehood grapple in the open. Truth will win." Or, as Harry Truman used to say: "You don't have to give the Republicans Hell. Just tell the truth about them and they'll think it's Hell." Just tell the truth, everyone. We'll all do just fine if we do.
March 27, 2008 2:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I know and love Truman's comment, and thanks for reminding us of it. I hope, as you do, that Obama's phrase, "the old politics of division," will continue to resonaate when -- assuming he gets the nomination -- the real Republican swift-boating begins. But my faith is weak that "the truth will out" in the media circus we have. Just remember 2000 and 2004. Even giving full credit to how well Obama has prepared himself for this, there are tactics agasint which the campaign itself cannot be the most effective respondent, and I think that the process is going to need more than a little help, from outside the campaign.
March 27, 2008 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Jim
We would not want to be too tough on Obama now would we?
Sure he will face a whole host of what you call swift-boating" in the general, if he gets there.
Like his Chicago past.
He might--perhaps--actually turn out to be a great president, but given what I know now, I have no reason to believe that, unlike you and so many other academics who have gone gaga over the man.
You might not be aware of it yourself, but really there is no rational evidence to show that the man is an exceptional politician with exceptionally high moral values.
Yet you see something in him that we skeptics don't.
I will vote for the Democratic nominee. McCain is NOT an option and I urge all my Democratic friends who have fought the good fight for Hillary to do the same, if it comes to that.
However even you have a grim view of Obama's prospects in the general.
The question is: why does not the pragmatist in you (if you have any pragmatism in you)--embrace Hillary as the most likely to beat McCain in the General? It is a mystery to me how you can both be gaga over Obama and at the same time fatalistic as to his chances of winning. Can you explain?
March 27, 2008 11:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
The voters were heard when they elected most of the Superdelegates to office.
Besides, those are the RULES and rules are much more important than democratic(small d) principles. Ask Michigan and Florida.
March 27, 2008 8:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
I stopped reading after "Billary". Professor? Really? Are you eight?
Folks, the Nazi analogies are foolish and beneath the community. Rather, I think of the professor as just another effete, pompous ass who obviously doesn't take his readers seriously.
Billary? Really?
March 27, 2008 8:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can you believe this? Jim Sleeper supported the war in 2003, maybe a group should gather around him wherever he goes and scream, "baby killer!"
March 27, 2008 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bev! I've missed you during my brief but necessary respite. Is everyone treating you with the civility that we are told is part and parcel of Senator Obama's campaign, i.e. that whole new politics thingie?
Bruce
March 27, 2008 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Bruce - it's the same ole, same ole - no lessons learned from 2000 and 2004 (or any other election for that matter) as Bob Somerby so aptly put it, "it's shirts against skins" with nary a thought for the big picture.
March 27, 2008 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, Bruce, where ya been?
I think the Press is the Dem's enemy, not the Obama or Hillary camps. The 24/7 cable shows and the Wolf Blitzers of the world, Russert, Howard Kurtz, Matthews, Brian Williams, John King, Joe Klein, the gang at ABC etc.
John King did a video report from IRAQ where he was covering McCain's latest visit. The report sounded like McCain wrote it.
How many times do you see negative stories and videos of either Obama or Hillary being played over and over?
Russert goes after Obama during the last debate, questioning him on Wright and Farrakhan. Two days later the story of McCain/Hagee breaks and the following Sunday on MTP Russert ignores it.
Wolf Blitzer announces: 'Obama answers questions on Rev Wright......but is it enough? We'll ask Bill Bennett, stay tuned.'
CNN reporter reports on Chelsea being asked about Monica at recent college appearance; Reporter and anchor discuss the question, reporter claims the questioner may have went over the line.
So the questioner went over the line but CNN reporting it, showing video and discussing it didn't?
Obama and Hillary will bloody one another, one will get the nomination, he/she will be damaged goods by then, and the press will be there waiting.
As to those commenting here, what else do you think you can say about Hillary or Obama? Aren't you just repeating yourselves ad nauseum?
As to Mister Sleeper's suggestion of a sort of citizen reaction team, I think its a good idea, but the targets should be the right wing zanies like the Swift Boat gang or dirty tricksters like David Bossie, etc.
There's precedent of a sort; Glenn Greenwald at Salon jumped on Joe Klein when Klein acted as a stenographer for Repug. Peter Hoeksrta and wrote a column claiming the Dem FISA Bill would require warrants for "every foreign-terrorist target's calls." Klein had to admit his crappy "reporting and make a correction in a subsequent column.
So allow me to be the first to volunteer as a citizen reaction team member. OOPS, Bob Somerby at Daily Howler already joined.
March 27, 2008 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
I see, it’s OK to use force to silence journalists, but only against journalists who are wrong. Democracy in action.
March 27, 2008 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
tnathan,
Define "force".
March 27, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
JohnW1141,
"Surround Sean Wilentz crossing the Princeton campus"
March 27, 2008 12:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
tnathan:
"Surround Sean Wilentz crossing the Princeton campus"
And?
March 27, 2008 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
tnathan,
did Glenn Greenwald use force to get Joe Klein to correct his outlandishly wrong column on the Dem FISA bill?
March 27, 2008 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey John:
I took a little break, which I knew was indicated once I realized I was getting pissed off at Josh of all people!
Great post by you and well said. The media are having a field day with this Democratic battle and it is pretty obscene that Senator McCain is getting such a break in the interim. But conflict sells.
Hope all is well with you and that you are enjoying your time in the catbird seat as a member of the Keystone State's voting delegation on April 22. Bet your mailbox is full with all kinds of reasons to vote for the respective candidates.
All the best friend.
Bruce
March 27, 2008 7:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jim Sleeper, the east coast's David Horowitz. Yes, let's encourage the mob to gather pitchforks and torches and storm the ivory castles of academia, but rest assured, your dear leader, Jim Sleeper will be hiding in his office, writing letters to various editors decrying the violence of the mob, while wiping away fingerprints and rehearsing his 911 call. Pretty much the same thing he's always done - write about the uppity blacks and the stupid liberals who support affirmative action and sending letters to his university newspaper in support for the war while decrying those protestors who were vociferous in their anti-war message. How terrible the shouting and screaming of epithets was when Mr. Sleeper thought he might be on the receiving end.
The only lesson Jim Sleeper seems to have learned throughout his career is to project his failings and misjudgments on others and then rain down oppobrium and invective upon them. Of course being a chickenshit, he calls on others to organize and fund his mob campaign, far be it for Jim Sleeper to put his money and reputation on the line - an indication of just how much he believes in it - no, Mr. Sleeper prefers the role of Iago, the goader and whisperer of all things malignant. "Who then can call me the villain?" asks Iago.
March 27, 2008 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bev, You have to face reality. Jim Sleeper is a typical representative of left wing progressive elite. You’ve finally notice this despicable face bit only you found yourself on another side. I’m not claiming that Rush Limbaugh is any better but he is not any worse than
left wing progressive fanatic elite.
March 27, 2008 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
As a Yale graduate, I sometimes find myself fawning over candidates after only a precursory glance at their resumes. Such was the case with Eliot Spitzer and his perfect SATs and LSATs, Harvard and Princeton degrees, Skadden pedigree and rise through law enforcement. Such was also the case for Clinton until she and her husband began to to stoke the embers of their scorched-earth campaign in South Carolina. We know now that she is on autopilot for a meltdown and not turning back.
But the Spitzer debacle begs a larger and most confounding question, one that I am certain will become increasingly applicable to Clinton in the weeks ahead as she and her surrogates grow more venomous each day: What makes "smart" people who have gone to the "right" schools (and once, the "right" schools were overtly extolled as leadership academies for up-and-comers who, steeped in talent and virtue, would contribute actively to the social capital of the American republic.) make such immoral, ethical and, yes, DUMB, decisions that are having nothing but a deleterious effect on the welfare of our political discourse? Granted, the Emperor's Club and a Spitzer-led Troopergate are not at issue here, but the conduct of the former governor and the United States Senator are widening that chasm between eminence and character to its widest point yet. Voters beware.
March 27, 2008 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see, you are a good student of Jim Sleeper.
BTW, reasonable open minded people might enjoy:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=2ae1b82c-0420-4e47-adba-4af115719d47
I guess they don't teach you science at Yale.
March 27, 2008 1:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Raymond Angelo's question is not a frivolous or rhetorical one, however tempted some may be to toss off Harvard and Yale as elitist, therefore decadent and anti-democratic. The truth is little more complicated and probably worth knowing about, even if one hasn't had a thing to do with such places.
I've explored it in a few pieces collected in www.jimsleeper.com (Go to section, "Liberal Education and Leadership Training").
And here's one of them, on the decline of civic-republican leadership training at one of these institutions, in a short review of former Harvard College Dean Harry Lewis's "Excellence Without a Soul":
http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2006/05/28/examining_the_crimsons_civic_slide/
March 27, 2008 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess there are still too many graduates of Harvard and Yale have better things to do than surround Sean Wilentz crossing the Princeton campus. But If Obama gets power, all students across this great nation will get the Soul training.
Then we will not have an issue of lacking the troops to surround Sean Wilentz crossing the Princeton campus.
March 27, 2008 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let’s be clear about what the professor is really suggesting. A reasonable reading of this essay would conclude that the ultimate target of these Reagan-quoting troops is not so much the beltway press like Joe Klein or the RW noise machine like Fox News but opponents of Obama, specifically Hillary Clinton. Despite the obligatory sneers at the press, Sleeper is not just calling for censor of rancorous political debate; he is effecting suppression of one party in a race. And this screed is one of those very uproars used to manufacture consent dressed in the guise of “campaign-fairness” reform. But please, let’s not pretend that this is some open-minded civil rights movement, okay? Obama is not MLK, and Sleeper’s appeal has nothing to do with refocusing the election on policy or substantive positions or seeking some justice.
For whatever reason, I believe Prof. Sleeper sees Obama, and perhaps himself, as being apart from and above the elite that Hillary and the ruling class belong to. And “Obama” is above it all. That is, the persona of Barack Obama described in two autobiographies, the first written at age 33, and his carefully crafted public image is decidedly non-elitist. But it is racial. And it is the racial aspect that encompasses Reverend Wright and BLT. To be blind to Obama playing race politics is to be truly bamboozled and hoodwinked. Sleeper specifically calls out Professor Wilentz. Why? Mr. Sleeper inoculates Obama from the charges of using Clinton’s RW tactics by reviving his WWF smack-down of Wilentz’ article as without substance, evidence or merit when, in fact, the article has all three. Wilentz may be guilty of overreach but is right-on in detailing Axelrod’s playing of the race card against the Clintons (a storyline pushed hard by TPM and others early on).
Political campaigns create cardboard cutout images. Sometimes they get exposed behind the curtain (a la sniper fire or Wright). Do we really know the true character of the candidates? I somehow doubt that HRC is a lying, racist, egomaniacal conniving bitch or the Village mother. I doubt BHO is a black supremacist crooked Chicago operative or everybody’s Buddha. Very simply, they are both smart moderate-liberal politicians playing the game, but the media has tagged Clinton with the low-down and dirty label and they will turn on Obama when the time comes. The media sidelined Edwards early on and is trying to end the Dem race before it has run its course. The narrative was created that the Clintons would do ANYTHING to win, and so, they are accused on a daily basis of dirty politics through creative writing and dog whistles.
The truth is not what Mr. Sleeper’s call to action is about. If he was concerned about the usual horse-race/scandal frame (as old as the American press) using salacious smears and innuendos that distract from policy debates then he would not dismiss the incessant defaming of Clinton. I’m not opposed to a call for civility and discussions of substantive issues and have been making those calls myself, at least since the turn in political coverage during the Ailes/Reagan era but that is not what this is. Regardless of the behavior of either side, his petition is categorically undemocratic. Re-read this post or TPM “reporting” or the daily wave of hate blogs that get rave recommendations here with an open mind and decide if smear politics is not the rule.
It may or may not be over for the Clinton campaign. I'm not that interested in who getts anointed by our Pundit Elite. I have not had faith in our sensationalized electoral process for a long time. But I refuse to be manipulated any more than I can help and calling for one side to derail the process, such as it is, and shout down the politicking of the other is just more of the victim-playing partisanship. The politics of destruction is alive and well right here no need to go out in search of it.
March 27, 2008 10:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice work Don.
March 27, 2008 11:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi, Bruce. Your avatar looks different- more rested? That was my rant for the day; sometimes it feels good just to get it out :)
March 28, 2008 12:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent Don, as usual.
March 28, 2008 9:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
I was giving Sleeper the benefit of the doubt, assuming he is "wrapped up" in Obama mania and thus blind to his selective "outrages", but in truth, I agree with your analysis 100%.
From a meta point of view (and you admit that smear tactics have been used in American politics since the advent of journalism) it seems that the Obama camp has outfoxed the Hillary camp.
"She will do anything to get elected" is a slogan that goes back to the Ken Starr days of Clinton witch hunting, where Bill and her were said to have engaged in some pretty nefarious deeds (The murder of Vice Foster...etc).
The Obama camp simply cut and pasted that meme (hate to use this cliché word) onto their anti Hillary campaign, driving up her negatives immediately. A nice job of “manufacturing consent” as you put it.
That's what I find so morally repulsive about the Obama campaign. The use of Right Wing Republican Talking Points to take down Hillary.
It is true that Obama has said that he comes from Chicago and he plays hard in politics. I guess that also means he plays dirty.
Now this observation is way over the heads of most people. So many here at the TPM really don't know why they feel Hillary "would do anything" to get elected or where that idea comes from. Some of us at least know better.
March 27, 2008 11:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Axelrod said from the beginning that Obama couldn't take her in a straight up conventional policy race. I see headlines like this: "Obama Implies Clinton Thinks It's Her 'Turn' to Be President" everyday and wonder at the acquiescence in the slanted coverage. When the table really gets turned on Obama if/when he takes the nomination, some will be shocked, shocked I tell you, that politics are being played.
March 28, 2008 12:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Stop talking about Hillary. She's already lost. Game over!!!!!!!
March 28, 2008 2:37 PM | Reply | Permalink