Egads, my comment was meant to go way up-thread. I will read the TPM users manual, I promise!

Posted at April 20, 2008 8:55 PM in response to Reading the political blogs (and comments) saddens me

Allsburg, Mr. Flair,

This seems like a reasonable explanation. The narrative has devolved into an equivalent of the dreadful hack-a-shaq strategy. (If perhaps we foul Obama every time he touches the ball perhaps he’ll miss 25 consecutive free throws and HRC can overcome that deficit in the final minute). That Obama has won already is evident. When he won it is difficult to pinpoint. My guess is that the oft-stated concern expressed here and elsewhere that the media would never walk away from the “dramatic,” “unpredictable” nomination season has proven true. Honestly, the ABC This Week round table discussion was like watching the Washington media establishment maintaining a vacuous parallel universe where it’s possible that the nation will turn its back on “radical” Obama, starting now.

I would submit that the only thing important Clinton’s attempts to insist that Obama’s invention of a new constituency of Democratic voters is anomalous, and fragile and untrustworthy is as a case study of how ideological control over national political parties changes. But this is a dispassionate interest (for me) given that nomination has essentially been won by change in the constituency.

Posted at April 20, 2008 8:52 PM in response to Reading the political blogs (and comments) saddens me

FOTW - Thanks for responding. It's true that I was not being entirely fair in laying special blame at the feet of WJC. I disagree however that HRC (if I read you correctly) has no special burden in running against the status quo on economic policy. If I were an intrepid reporter I would ask her to comment on the contradiction, and perhaps put the myopia of 1999 into sharper historical context than she has (to my knowledge) as yet.

Posted at March 17, 2008 2:55 PM in response to It's the Economy, Stupid

Lunch hour and the Fly. It’s a good thing.
I agree that we should all make the case that what is needed is tilt against the deregulation of the banking and financial industries. But, the will to remove legislative barriers between banking, securities, et al., was shared by centrist Dem AND Bush(es) alike. For HRC to have any credibility on criticizing the shift to the ideology of the unrestrained market (Selling credit risk! What a great idea!) she would need to confront WJC’s legacy directly and refute it. I mean to say that Clinton would have to wipe her memory before she could surmise it was “a failure of regulation” that created the “housing bubble” (more accurately the collapse is across residential and commercial mortgages). It was after all Bill Clinton who repealed Glass-Steagall by signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that opened the door (I’d go farther and say kicked out the jams) to these unregulated structured investment vehicles. So -- HRC would need to essentially fault the Clinton white house for coddling Goldman Sachs (Robert Rubin, former chair and WJC’s Secretary of the Treasury) and Alan Greenspan. Can she run against the failings of the former Clinton?

Posted at March 17, 2008 2:24 PM in response to It's the Economy, Stupid

MNS: "Imploring that an individual had better be in the appropriate camp based on gender, skin color or religion is one way of belittling the individual and the candidate in question."

I’m not disagreeing with that statement, but I would push it further: I submit that political necessity requires that individuals subsume parts of the individual identity in order to make collective strides for an identity held by many people, such as race, and such as gender. The hard part of this discussion is in describing how we define gender, or race. As has been noted above, BHO presents a more “female” management style and policy approach to some of the issues (build consensus, talk to enemies, etc.). It happens that I would be voting for this quality as the better match to the political moment. I certainly hope that women can see that too.

Posted at March 12, 2008 4:55 PM in response to The Angry White Female comes of age

In Re: "female political presence" -

paDem, I submit that the divide is not merely generational, but also thematic. For some in this discussion, (AJM?, bornagaindem) We see a discussion here of gender that is essentializing "male" and "female" along the lines of genital trait. Yet female Obama supporters are likely to view his leadership style as more “female” than Clinton's at least on the basis of the available policy positions/campaign narratives. There’s an interesting Ellen Goodman Op-ed piece on this in the Boston Globe called “Obama Uses Female Style to Win” from February 21.

AJM: Your reposting and recommendation of the Anglachel document would indicate you endorse the view. I'd like to know more about how you would define "female political presence." What part of Clinton’s gender will manifest as the better stewardship of the progressive cause?

p.s.: I do not doubt the historic fact of male domination, nor that this domination is overt and covert today. A view that would demand the "evidence" of trauma in order to justify the distress caused by the claim of sexism, I would argue, is inherently violent to the grounds of critical gender theory, and critical thinking.

Posted at March 12, 2008 2:54 PM in response to The Angry White Female comes of age

In Re: "female political presence" -

paDem, I submit that the divide is not merely generational, but also thematic. For some in this discussion, (AJM?, bornagaindem) We gender is essentializing "male" and "female" along the lines of genital trait. Yet female Obama supporters are likely to view his leadership style as more “female” than Clinton's at least on the basis of the available policy positions/campaign narratives. There’s an interesting Ellen Goodman Op-ed piece on this in the Boston Globe called “Obama Uses Female Style to Win” from February 21.

AJM: Your reposting and recommendation of the Anglachel document would indicate you endorse the view. I'd like to know more about how you would define "female political presence." What part of Clinton’s gender will manifest as the better stewardship of the progressive cause?

Posted at March 12, 2008 2:47 PM in response to The Angry White Female comes of age

Michael S.: "Feminism isn't about women voting for a female candidate, it's about women voting for whomever the hell they want." -- Please, thank you for starting this blog page and thread, but it sounds like we're buying lunch here, in your formulation. Activism requires collective action. The individual empowers the collective by locating the areas where net gain to the cause is possible. Sometimes that means voting for a candidate you would otherwise not vote for. Does this really need to be defended, as a principle? Might we better argue with the positions, not the principle of activist causes?

Posted at March 12, 2008 2:42 PM in response to The Angry White Female comes of age