Scotsman: It's Obama, stupid: Carter and Gore to end Clinton bid
So far this is the only source I've seen carrying the story and it seems pretty thin. More as this develops, or fails to as the case may be...
I work in an industy selling and servicing industrial manufacturing machinery. Been doing it for 15 years. In the early, mid 90s, boom times, we put a lot of machines in American plants. In late 90s, following passage of NAFLA (the North American Free Labor Agreement) we saw many of these companies move these machines just over the Mexican border. The US managers down there live in the US, make US wages, commute daily over the border. The workers in Mexico make pennies on the dollar to what the now unemployed US worker made. Now, the machines are moving to China because the Mexicans cost too much.
How does the politician in rural PA or any other Rust Belt dying town rally votes? Guns, God, and gays. That's what Obama is saying. Washington has abandoned the middle-class, the blue collar worker. All that Washington offers economically to the middle class is the occasional drip from the trickle down tax cuts that make the fantastically weathly another 20 percent more fantastically weathly. Politicians drum up votes by concentrating on these sideline, phony "issues" and unfortunately many Workin' Joes buy into these arguments and cast their votes on this basis, even against their own economic self interests. I know guys like this. Apparently, Obama recognizes this behavior.
Obama's statements aren't a slam against the working poor but an expressed realization about the f*$*ing Washington is giving to the working poor and the middle class. Why mention to the proletariat that the world's richest man, Warren Buffet, has a lower tax rate than his secretary or that the Columbian "Free Trade" Agreement will reward a country that has seen 2500 union activists assasinated during the last 10 years when we can instead argue about whether two loving, consenting adults of the same sex can be married?
Obama takes the conversation to a depth the two other candidates won't dare to dive to (Hillary) or don't have the intellect (McCain) to discern. This level of thinking and expression is what we need for the next eight years.
One more thought on the Bitterness Imbroglio. A rich white lady who went to Wellesley and Yale and a rich white Republican guy, both long term fixtures of the Beltway power structure, are accusing a black guy raised by a single parent and his struggling to stay middle class grandparents of being an elitist, and no one's laughing. Many are nodding their heads in agreement, some are worrying themselves into a tizzy over whether it will stick, but no one is saying "damn, did I just walk into an episode of 'Green Acres,' or has the world always been this surreal and I just didn't notice?"
I mean, I guess, in a weird way, its a kind of progress . . .
When Hillary pounces on Obama to call him elitist in a political move to change the way things are going in her campaign, I am just pissed off. I'm not pissed off THAT she’ doing it. It’s so obviously a political strategy. But she does it with such adroitness. And she’s playing it to the hilt.
Look, he chose his words poorly. He was trying to make a point, a larger point that was not done very well, I might add.
But why don't we give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was tired.
Perhaps he came under sniper fire on the way to the event.
Perhaps he stayed up all night practicing his bowling or spent an all-nighter learning the lyrics to Bomb, Bomb Iran for an upcoming appearance on American Idol.
Or maybe he really is a big fake, a bamboozler and we’ve all be scammed! And this slip up has totally exposed him to all of us who think he is a man of character.
Will Americans be incapable of sifting through this kind of political hog wash.
Who knows? I only know it makes want to smack something. I’m going to take a Lorazepam and take a bath.
Good night!
When Hillary pounces on Obama to call him elitist in a political move to change the way things are going in her campaign, I am just pissed off. I'm not pissed off THAT she’ doing it. It’s so obviously a political strategy. But she does it with such adroitness. And she’s playing it to the hilt.
Look, he chose his words poorly. He was trying to make a point, a larger point that was not done very well, I might add.
But why don't we give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he was tired.
Perhaps he came under sniper fire on the way to the event.
Perhaps he stayed up all night practicing his bowling or spent an all-nighter learning the lyrics to Bomb, Bomb Iran for an upcoming appearance on American Idol.
Or maybe he really is a big fake, a bamboozler and we’ve all be scammed! And this slip up has totally exposed him to all of us who think he is a man of character.
Will Americans be incapable of sifting through this kind of political hog wash.
Who knows? I only know it makes want to smack something. I’m going to take a Lorazepam and take a bath.
Good night!
Because, while speaking to California donors about how some people vote in PA after 25 years of dissilusionment, Sen. Obama said "cling to guns and religion", instead of "cling to issues like guns and religion", which was obvious given the context that he was talking about voting patterns, Sen. Clinton and Sen. McCain are trying to paint him into a corner based on a mis-speak.
Set aside the comparison with the Tuzla mis-speak.
His record and oppinions are clear. He was clearly not being condescending. Yet his words snuck out of a private fundraiser get clipped and truncated and twisted into a ridiculous attack.
See the 2004 interview here, he talks about votting on hot-button issues starting at minute 11:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJut4-dHuV8
His book, "The Audacity of Hope", has a whole chapter on Values.
I'm sure Sen. Clinton is aware of all of that, yet she's bent on the personal destruction of Sen. Obama as a way to get the nomination. Any
other fellow democrat, in any other primary, would have defended his competitor against the acusation of the opposing party. But Sen.
Clinton is instead circulating right-wing talking points.
Of course, hopefully we won't hear anything from former Pres. Clinton on this, because he pretty much said the same thing as Sen. Obama, arguably in a more artful way.
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/04/december-2007-b.html
And painting Sen. Obama as the 'less american candidate' is not helping either.
http://www.jedreport.com/2008/04/hillary-clint-5.html
If Sen. Clinton is trying to win the Dem nomination as the candidate of the gun-toting church-going hot-button-issue voters, she might have another thing coming. She might need another drink.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/04/clinton-takes-a.html
Senator Obama, do you cling to your religion because you're bitter?
As fantasy football politicos, let's take a crack at it. If you were his chief strategist, how would you advise Obama to answer that question?
Here's your chance to really show your stuff, and maybe help the Obama campaign!
If you enjoy this game, please recommend this post.
If Obama's comment is not offensive to those people in small town, I don't know what is going to offend them. It is my believe that most white people are supporting Obama, because they don't want to be labeled that they are racist. Secondly, they don't consider Obama as a real Black man from this country. Most blacks are supporting him because they don't have a candidate who will be acceptable to the white people.
No one really knows much about this guy except he is a good speaker and has received good education. Waht major initiatives has he taken while he is in the Senate? He avoided or voted with his party in most if not on all votes. He is no different than any other politician.
Why he fails to pay proper respect to the Flag. Is this some sort of protest?
Please don't select him at this time. Let him prove himself before select him for the highest office in the world. Don't be fooled by his fancy talk.
My father was employed at a small airplane manufacturing facility. It went under and left behind a questionable environmental legacy. It is now a prison boot camp. ( good jobs!) My father then went on to work an average of 80 hour weeks for the next 30+ years to provide for me and my brother. My mother has always had to maintain 2 jobs. Due to there being no future for me other than alcoholism and prison, I left for SF and now make more than both of my parents. Do you detect any bitterness here?
A startlingly large number of people I knew are now dead due to DUI's and overdoses. The county jail in my home town, is usually populated with DUI offenders and those who defaulted on their child support. I know people who have to hunt to provide for their families. Throughout most of central PA there is a Heroin/Oxycontin epidemic. My best friend, at 30 is exhibiting signs of liver cirrhosis and pancreatitis, I have seen him hallucinate from DT's, and he works hard and doesn't have access to healthcare. Do you detect any bitterness here?
My family is culturally conservative, and religious, all members own guns, including me. That is all that the powers that be have let us keep, and we vote for who has and will at least protect that.
We elected a Democratic governor (after having to put up with banana alert, shit your pants scary Tom Ridge), and he immediately attacked the already weak worker protections in the state. We get left behind and lied to by every single politician since the 70's. People do rally around what little we have left, and for good reason. It is a desperate, dying culture and what Obama said was correct, plain and simple. If you want to speculate that it will hurt him fair enough, time will tell. But please,please,please refrain from the insane parsing of words, the faux outrage.
When I first read Obama's remarks from the San Francisco fundraiser I thought he'd just shoved his foot halfway down his throat. Lumping religion with guns and anti-immigrant feelings; saying people "cling" to religion as if it's something they would shed if they knew better. I knew what he meant to say and knew it was true, but I also knew why Christian (and gun-owning) voters would feel profoundly insulted.
As a San Franciscan I understand completely how that wording would come out of his mouth. He's talking to a roomful of rich, educated left-wingers who pride themselves on being cosmopolitan, anti-gun and too enlightened to identify with a single religion, people who are predisposed to hate a deer-hunting churchgoer who wants illegal immigrants deported. A genuine, humane effort to articulate blue-collar frustrations to that crowd could so easily come out like that: of course they cling to religion and guns in their well-deserved bitterness.
Unfortunately he seemed to be thinking entirely about the audience he was facing, not how it would play in Uniontown, PA.
But then he responded, and once again his response has not only dealt effectively with the problem but even raised his message to a new level and opened a national conversation that will probably help his campaign—and the country as a whole—far more than it will hurt.
Tactically it was brilliant. He substituted "turn to their faith" for "cling to religion" as if it was what he'd said in the first place; if he just keeps saying that, the clumsy first version will be subsumed. And he made it sound as if Clinton and McCain's objection was to the very idea that Americans are bitter and frustrated; which isn't quite true, at least in Clinton's case, but it puts them on the defensive and forces them to prove that they get it.
But beyond the tactics it's true. And that continues to be what thrills me most about Obama and his candidacy. He leads us to take about the truth while his opponents just keep rolling out the same old cheerleader chants.
This could also be calculated by Obama to elicit the division his comment made. He's been losing in small towns. He'll be glad to capture a few to add to his overwhelming advantage in heavily African-American areas. Remember, he tried to lasso some gun right advocates by telling them his belief in the 2nd Amendment but without revealing his voting records to them.
Obama was successful in using race to not only solidify his support among blacks but also to interject a subtext, which African-Amaerican WashingtonPost columnist Robinson advocated as well. The subtext is that you're racist if you don't vote for Obama.
And whatever happened to our democracy and freedom to choose our candidate regardless of race, religion, gender, etc.?
In this macaca moment, Obama's subtext is you're bitter, religious fanatic and gun-toting loser if you don't vote for him. Who wants to be thought of that way?
This time Obama miscalculated and slipped into a macaca moment.
If you're looking for anything original, please skip the rest of this post...
Whatever in deity's name possessed Josh and company to inflict this terrible website software on the TPM readers and especially contributors? Not only is it not very good, it is in many ways much worse than the old software. If it was at least bad enough to get rid of the trolls, that would be something, but noooo...
The lack of both preview and edit functionality was specifically designed to make posters' lives difficult, and this was neatly combined with the lengthy trip through purgatory that all posts need to endure before appearing for all to see. The effects are devastating, but I must admit that seeing posts with only the first three words getting on top of the recommended list is absolute comic gold.
It is also considerably harder (or, to be more accurate, pretty damn near impossible) to have a meaningful discussion now because there is no way to see which posts in a thread are new. No notification of replies to one's own posts is a predictable consequence of this, but just a trifling niggle in comparison. On the upside, once a thread gets 100+ comments I just give up on it, thus saving valuable time, with the resulting inevitable increase in productivity which might just save the ailing economy. If that's not EXCELLENT NEWS!! FOR HILLARY!!!, I don't know what is.
Then there is the "now you're logged in, now you're not" game. Until I started playing it, I considered myself to be a fairly sophisticated and experienced computer user... but this one always keeps me guessing. The AI is very good! It has been artfully tuned to frustrate users at every turn, but not enough to force them to leave. A true masterstroke.
I really hope major improvements to the site software are in the works. Please? Pretty please with sugar on top?
The Scotsman ([in]famous for printing Samantha Power's "monster" comment) has just reported that
DEMOCRAT grandees Jimmy
Carter and Al Gore are being lined-up to deliver the coup de grâce to
Hillary Clinton and end her campaign to become president.Falling
poll numbers and a string of high-profile blunders have convinced party
elders that she must now bow out of the primary race.
Former
president Carter and former vice-president Gore have already held
high-level discussions about delivering the message that she must stand
down for the good of the Democrats.
"They're in discussions," a
source close to Carter told Scotland on Sunday. "Carter has been
talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence."
Bitter?
Mrs. clinton thinks the voters are "optimistic"! John McCain thinks Americans would be happy to stay in Iraq for 100 years.
The pundits think we all live in Bushville and dine at Morton's
81% of Americans think Clinton/Bush governance has the country on the wrong track.
"Optimistic" Mrs. Clinton?
Tell that to Donna Shore and tell that audience on Tuesday night.
Consumer Confidence Sinks to 26 Year Low
If the Democrats lose this upcoming election to the virtually unelectable John McCain, it's hard for me to imagine that Hillary Clinton wouldn't receive the blame for it. I believe the anger, hatred even, that Ralph Nader received in the wake of the 2000 election (which he continues to receive) would pale in comparison to what would be directed at Hillary Clinton.
It was bound to happen, given the time, Obama was going to show his true color. Thus far, the media has given him a pass every time he had a gaffe. Little is known about him and being new on the block, the media or the GOP hasn't quite branded him and the media is at a lost of a story line his gaffes will fit in.
If only the media would take a closer look, there's enough data out there on Obama that make a pattern, and thus, a story line obviously presents itself. For example, he has many times lied about his bio, lied about having heard Wright anti-american rants, claimed legislative credit that belonged to others, initially covered up his meeting with the Canadians on NAFTA by lying it took place, blamed his staff for his own misguided actions, etc. It's a definite pattern of lies and obfuscation. So media, what are you waiting for?
Another pattern is his beliefs and values he shares with his wife about how mean and bad this country is. Up to now, the media hasn't pressed Obama that part of Wright's speech he disagree with, thereby, which ones he agree with.
Obama can only be a party liability in the general election and Democrats need to think this through. There's more we don't know about Obama that could hurt the party in November.
http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Misunderstood-Presidency-Bill-Clinton/dp/0767914120/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208041234&sr=1-3
I would like to slip quickly in between the spate of Obama
apologia to recommend this book by Joe Klein. It is an excellent short examination of the Clinton presidency, 200 pages double-spaced, an easy 1-day read from the well-placed author of "Primary Colors".
I have noticed in reading various posts and comments in here recently that there is a tendency to talk a lot about Bill Clinton and his presidency, without much depth of understanding as to what that event was actually about.
By "about", I mean not only the cartoons and soap-operas familiar to all, but the actual serious policy warfare that made its determined way forward against entrenched opposition on every side.
By "about", I mean the state of the nation for better or worse that the Clinton Administration found in 1992 and left in 2000, and what has become of that state since then.
I bring this up, because it is impossible in my opinion to have a truly realistic perspective on the 2008 election (and the implications of a choice between Sen. Obama and Sen. Clinton) without a canny, balanced appraisal of the former Clinton Administration firmly fixed in your mind. You can get that in this book
I'm in no way interested in changing hearts or minds, but if you find yourself wondering, and unable to sort thru the half-truths and mis-information, this is a very good place to start.
There are some Hillary Clinton supporters are out on the Internet attacking Donna Brazile for what they see as her support for Obama in an her op-ed calling on Hillary to stop throwing elbows.
Bloggers from Politico.com, MyDD.com and Hillaryis44.com, Taylor Marsh have been brutal in their attacks. If you read some of their comments you would think that Donna was a supporter of terrorism or something similar. They weren't even reporting all the facts with their attacks, just cutting and pasting what 'they' felt needed to be printed.
I would like to take the time to remind Americans just who Donna is and what’s she’s done for American voters and the Democratic Party during her young life. To make it easier for myself, I’m going to repeat the ‘About’ section of Donna’s own website.
She is the Chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute (VRI) and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University, is a senior political strategist and former Campaign Manager for Gore-Lieberman 2000 - the first African American to lead a major presidential campaign.
Prior to joining the Gore campaign, Brazile was Chief of Staff and Press Secretary to Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia where she helped guide the District's budget and local legislation on Capitol Hill.
Brazile is a weekly contributor and political commentator on CNN’s Inside Politics and American Morning. In addition, she is a columnist for Roll Call Newspaper and a contributing writer for Ms. Magazine.
A veteran of numerous national and statewide campaigns, Brazile has worked on several presidential campaigns for Democratic candidates, including Carter-Mondale in 1976 and 1980, Rev. Jesse Jackson's first historic bid for the presidency in 1984, Mondale-Ferraro in 1984, U.S. Representative Dick Gephardt in 1988, Dukakis-Bentsen in 1988, and Clinton-Gore in 1992 and 1996.
In addition to working on political campaigns, Brazile has served as a senior lecturer and adjunct professor at the University of Maryland and a fellow at Harvard's Institute of Politics.
Brazile is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including Washingtonian Magazine's 100 Most Powerful Women in Washington, D.C. and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's Award for Political Achievement.
That is just a short resume. Read her book, Cooking With Grease, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear the things she’s done throughout her life.
Now, let me return to the issue at hand. Hillary supporters seem to think that Donna is supporting Barack Obama and is trying to hurt Hillary’s campaign with some comments that she’s made.
If folks would evaluate ‘all’ of Donna’s interviews on CNN and ABC’s 'This Week', I’m sure they would find she’s given equal time to both Democratic candidates.
I’m an Obama supporter. I’ve found myself disagreeing with Donna on many occasions over the past few months about something she’s said about the Obama campaign, only to later hear her something about Hillary's camp that I agreed with. Donna's what I call, “Fair and balanced”.
Over the past months and years I’ve emailed Donna about issues of the day. In 2006, Bill Clinton had an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox. Here’s Donna’s response to me, to what he said/did during that interview, “Yes indeed. Clinton made me so proud yesterday. I am so glad he stood up, pointed his finger and fought back.”
On January 8, 2008, I attacked Hillary’s tearing up as a political ploy, Donna didn’t take my bait, she defended Hillary’s choking up before the New Hampshire primary. After Hillary won there, Donna said, “Notice I never wrote her off”.
On January 19th during Nevada's caucuses and South Carolina’s primary I was bragging about Obama’s chances, Donna said, “Women are supporting HRC. She’s whipping ass in Clark County as well. She has strong institutional support.”
These are just a few comments she’s made in support of Hillary directly to me in emails. I don’t have access to CNN or ABC’s show logs or I am sure I could come up with a well documented list of supporting arguments Donna has made for Hillary Clinton.
Yes, of course Donna will say good things about Obama’s campaign; but she also says bad things, believe me, I know. All political pundits and strategists do that.
For example, I once wrote to ask Donna that if she had direct contact with Obama, whether she would pass him something I said, her response was, “I am not interested in passing along comments to Obama. They have to learn from their mistakes. Have a good evening.”
That doesn’t sound like a ‘I support Obama’ statement to me.
None of us have a clue what it's like to be in Donna's shoes. To attack her so 'bitterly' after what she's done for her Party and her nation, is not only wrong, it's plain stupid. We need more people like Donna that are willing to go above and beyond for the rest of us.
As Hillary once said, "Shame On You, Bloggers" for taking you frustrations out on Donna Brazile.
Earlier today I surfaced to get some news after having been too busy
for the past day or two. Now I learn that another 'bombshell' has
exploded,
the news media is swarming over a candidate's off the cuff remarks, the
blogosphere is roiling, the talking heads are busy chattering away,
the spin doctors are spinning like turbines, the faux outrage is so thick that you can almost touch it. All in all, much ado about
nothing, but it's oh so dramatic!
At the same time, it's not like important things aren't happening. The
credit crunch is very real, the economy is headed for a tailspin, and at the same time
blood and treasure are being pissed away in Iraq with nothing to show
for it. But that's not much fun to talk or think about, not half as much as watching the riveting horse race.
This is the time when leadership is needed. Instead, US
politics is on hold, and this is just the primary campaign. The next
President of the United States will be sworn into office about nine
months from now! We are looking at a period of approximately one year
total when everything in politics happens just for politics' sake.
President Bush is a lame duck. Now don't get me wrong, with this administration that is undoubtedly
the best one can hope for, but it's not
exactly good. The protracted campaign seems to be mostly a big waste of time, only it's very easy to get sucked into it and lose all perspective. In a way it's addictive - and that can't be a good thing.
Is this really the best approach to governance? Or even just the least bad? There ought to be a better way... but I hold very little hope that it will be found, let alone taken.
Here we are in the looking glass folks, where up is down.
Now the candidate of hope is defending bitterness while the candidate who says words don't matter is parsing every syllable seeking advantage.
Hillary is immersed in the Audacity of Grope, (Bill was too, as you all remember, but that's another story.) What she's groping for is a way to create a wedge between Obama and the working class, all in the name of "unifying" the democrats by which she means unifying them behind her.
Judging from her behavior these last 24 hours, she thinks she's found it.
Today, on the overly trod campaign trail, she tore up her stump speech in favor of going after her "opponent" (voicing the name "Obama" is a no-no)
What's she going after him for? For saying what is essentially the truth (the original no-no in American politics!).
Because the truth is, though I wish he'd stated it better - and apparently he wishes that too - that after 25 years of no-change-no-help-in-sight, people are justifiably bitter.
This has Hillary sensing blood in the water. All day, she's been knocking Obama for condescending to voters while she herself addresses the crowd in her bobble-head, ruler-on-the-knuckles way that defines condescension.
Meanwhile, the Lanny Davis's of this world - those say-anything-it-takes surrogates breathlessly awaiting a Clinton restoration,-- - have been given their orders: Go For It.
So it's Rev. Wright Redux conducted by an HRC mob hoping that the stuff they throw on the wall will stick. The last time, the people of this country surprised a lot of folks by favoring nuance over sound bite. That was then, this is now.
Keep your seat belt fastened.
In this never ending political season, there is yet another attempt being made by Hillary Clinton and John McCain to marginalize Barack Obama in order to weaken his presidential candidacy. Obama's comments, "When you're bitter, you turn to what you can count on," made in reference to some small town voters, were true. But of course we can't have frank discussions in this country without parts of the conversation being taken out of context and showing up in a political sound byte.
Well leave it to good old Hillary to try to turn a flicker into a flame to try and sway super delegates to overturn the will of the people. Hillary insists that this latest controversy will hurt Obama in the general election and her surrogates are just getting warmed up. Add this latest one to all the other none issues that will weakened Obama in November. Right now goal number one is to get the news media to pick the story up and run with it. Their strategy appears to be working at least in the short term on CNN and XM Radio P.O.T.U.S. 08. Now if we can just get these media types to report the news instead of trying to influence what ultimately is newsworthy.
Of course I hope that super delegates have discerned that no matter what trickery that Hillary employs to cast dispersion on Obama, that she will never be accepted as the nominee if she benefits from her deceptive political tactics. That scenario is more certain to guarantee a Republican victory in November than any comments by Obama taken out of context. The Republicans will also have a hard time convincing anybody that they are more concerned about everyday citizens. The Republicans are the party of the real elitists as evidenced by their well known policies. Given Hillary's propensity to embrace what used to uniquely be Republican strategies and McCain's decades of experience as a Republican, I think that would have the most trouble looking out for the interests of middle America.
Obama is not a career politician and has skillfully adjusted to his political hiccups well. You can bet that Hillary and McCain no longer underestimate him. However, Obama has learned one more lesson. That lesson is, beware of "sleeper" donors who can go live at any moment.
Hillary Goes Haywire in Pottsville
BY MEGAN ESTES
In her increasingly desperate attempt to win the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton exponentially increased her harsh criticism of Senator Barack Obama on Saturday at a town hall meeting in Pottsville, Pa.
In remarks made at a San Francisco fund-raiser on April 6, Obama said, "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them… And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Clinton’s recent criticism of this remark reached another level in this excerpt from her speech in Pottsville:
“My opponent has said that people in small-town Pennsylvania are bitter and has implied that they are downright mean-spirited. This just strikes me as the most out-of-touch thing you could possibly say.
As I have traveled all over this wonderful state in the last several weeks, getting to know thousands of people just like you in places like Bethlehem and Wilkes-Barre and Scranton and Butler and Altoona and right here in Pottsville, I have found that the people of Pennsylvania are some of the most friendly, welcoming, good-natured and optimistic people in the whole country.
So I was shocked when I heard what Senator Obama said to a group of bigwigs in San Francisco about the people of Pennsylvania. Let’s just start with your jobs. So you’ve lost a lot of factory jobs up here. They paid fairly well and they had good benefits. But did you really like those jobs? Did you really get up every morning and say to yourselves, ‘I can’t wait to go into the factory this morning and subject myself to hours of loud noises, hard physical labor, bright flashing lights, and toxic fumes?’ The fact that Sen. Obama would think you’d be upset about losing all that really calls his judgment into question.
And my opponent says nothing has replaced these jobs. I think we all know how ridiculous that is. Instead of working in these infernal factory conditions, you can now work in the service industry, where you can interact with the public in safe, climate-controlled conditions. I mean, what would you rather do, make a sandwich or make steel? Interact with the public or take orders from a slave-driving supervisor? Be a greeter at Wal-Mart or assemble furniture at the Pennsylvania House plant?
And even if you aren’t able to get a job for a while, what’s so bad about that? I would kill for some time off right now!
But all that seems like the less offensive part of my opponent’s remarks. What really stunned me was the part about guns, religion and ‘antipathy.’ Ha! Antipathy! Now that’s a pretty big word. What he’s saying there is that you don’t like people who aren’t as trigger-happy, bible-thumping, or bigoted as yourselves. He makes it sound like you all just wandered out of the hills after marrying your first cousins and having 12 six-fingered kids and now you’re ready to shoot down anyone who looks at you funny.
You know, as I travel across this great state, I reflect on the monumental choice Pennsylvania voters have in just 10 days. You can elect someone who doesn’t understand you, thinks you don’t like him, thinks you’re inbred, and uses words you don’t understand, or you can elect someone who sees you as the contented, remarkable, moral, cherubic people that you are. It’s a clear choice, and I know that you will make the right decision.”
I see a lot of puzzlement expressed as to why Hillary Clinton is still attacking Obama even though his nomination is virtually assured. No mystery to me: in 2012 she'll be 64 years old, still primetime for a presidential candidate. Now that she can't be nominated her game plan has to switch to doing what she can to helping McCain win this year so that she can come surging back with a triumphant "I told you so" and win the next election.
She can't be so overt about it that she hardens the mass of Democrats against her, but under the guise of being a fighter who still thinks she can win she's free to plant many thoughts in voters' minds that will hurt Obama in November. Hence the new theme of her criticisms: he's an elitist who can't beat McCain. Sometimes things come true if you predict them enough.
There's nothing wild-eyed or implausible about this. It's very well documented that a lot Democratic insiders, in collaboration with some big labor unions, actively undermined McGovern's campaign in 1972. They felt that four more years of Nixon, and a chance to "reform" the nominating process, would be better for their branch of the party in the long run. And the Clintons are widely felt to have put their own interests over those of the party from the day Bill was elected in 1992.
The good news for Obama is that he has a lot more clout with the leadership of the party than McGovern did. Still, watch for Hillary Clinton and her loyalists to find many passive-aggressive ways over the next seven months to encourage her supporters to stay home or switch to McCain in November. It's the only thing that makes sense for career plans.
Many people seem to assume that Clinton is trying to score cynical political points by describing her experiences walking around Pennsylvania meeting optimistic, positive and resilient people. This is not true. For weeks, she's been desperately trying to tell these fools: Stop being so goddamn optimistic! The Economy really IS tanking!
Look at what she said in Philadelphia on March 24th:
When I talk about the home foreclosure crisis, sometimes people, I can tell, look at me a little skeptically because they, I can tell, they're thinking to themselves, I didn't buy one of those mortgages, I don't have an ARM, I’m not at risk. But, in fact, that is just not the case.
Given that it seems increasingly likely that Barack Obama will be the
nominee of the Democratic Party, now might be an appropriate time to raise some
doubts about his viability as a candidate in the fall. A popular claim for some years on sites
such as DailyKos, MyDD, and sometimes TPM, is that votes for Ralph Nader were
responsible for putting (and keeping) George W. Bush in the White House. Is the Obama candidacy primed to repeat
this situation?
Marcy Winograd is an Executive Board member of the California Democratic Party. She initiated a story that has played on MyDD, Huffington Post, etc., that Obama operatives have been involved in a purge of possible delegates from California to the Democratic Convention to be held this summer. Winograd suggested that the California Obama campaign had purged almost all progressive anti-war activists from its delegate candidate lists.
I am reminded of the situation at the Democratic Convention in Boston four years ago when Kerry was nominated. Anti-war demonstrators were shunted to obscure locations in pens surrounded by police and security so that they would not be seen or heard. People carrying an anti-war message inside the convention floor, including delegates, on signs or on clothing or pins, were confronted by convention security and forced to remove the messages. Of course, Kerry campaigned on what was essentially a pro-war position, which would have marginalized the anti-war people anyway. I guess the thought on the part of the Kerry people was that with Bush as the Republican candidate, the anti-war vote would go to Kerry even though Kerry, too, was a pro-war candidate. Even so, it seemed at the time to be foolish to thoroughly antagonize anti-war Democrats by marginalizing them physically as well as in terms of policy.
Now, the appearance is raised of similar Obama attitudes, with anti-war activists being purged from the roles of possible delegates. Granted, some more recent reports have held that the purge is being undone, but the damage has been done to the extent that a basic tendency similar to Kerry’s of four years ago exists in the Obama campaign. Whether this indicates that Barack is less anti-war than his posture has suggested is unknown to me, but it certainly raises that fear. This fear is compounded by reports that Obama’s Iraq advisor, Colin Kahl, is saying that Obama will keep 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq for years to come.
Quite independently from the question of how one should read the tea leaves in all of this in terms of what they portend for the policies of an Obama Presidency, there is the short-term question of what this means in terms of votes leaking from Obama to the very real candidacy of Nader, and the possible Green Party candidacy of Cynthia McKinney. When Democrats complain about “Naderites” costing Gore and Kerry the past two elections, my thoughts go to the ways in which their candidacies encourages such votes. I know several people who tried to vote for Kerry last time (because Bush/Cheney are so completely terrible), but ultimately couldn’t get themselves to vote for “the other pro-war candidate, Kerry.” Don’t count out the possibility in a 2008 Obama race that many won’t be similarly tempted if Obama equivocates his positions. I, for one, already am alarmed at his argument that the war in Iraq is distracting the US from “the real war in Afghanistan.” So far as I can tell, Osama Bin Laden is long gone from Afghanistan and the poor folk who are dying there at US, British, and other NATO hands aren’t responsible to much of anything that merits what is being done to them.
There are other signs that Obama is willing to give up many votes to Nader and/or McKinney. His consistent pro-Israel tilt, of course, seems calculated on the perception that his candidacy cannot afford a vigorous anti-Obama attack from the pro-Israel lobby. For me, however, some of the good of his famous “more perfect union” speech was undone when he referred to Israel as a stalwart ally and placed the blame for the problems of the middle East as “emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.” There are plenty of legitimate reasons for people the middle East to resent both Israel and the US that don’t follow simply from some perverse Islamic ideology. The seeming dismissal of all responsibility for Israel and the US (and other Western powers) by Obama is appalling and it too will bleed votes from the Democratic nominee to Nader/McKinney.
Obama repeatedly has stated a willingness to meet with foreign leaders who have been banished from diplomatic contact for years, including the leaders of Cuba, Iran, and North Korea, but he has resisted the possibility of meeting with the Hamas leadership of Palestine. "They're not heads of state. They don't recognize Israel," Obama said. "You can't negotiate with somebody who doesn't recognize the right of a country to exist." Yet, Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people in an election that outside observers, including the pro-American politician, Jimmy Carter, as legitimate.
So, even as Obama campaigns as the candidate for change, he is inviting many to view him as the same old same old. He’s for talking, so long as the pro-Israel lobby won’t be prompted into attack mode against him. Apparently the anti-North Korean and anti-Castro lobbies are perceived as less powerful, so he’s enthusiastic about change that they won’t like. He’s anti-war in that he talked against the war when Hillary voted for it, but he has consistently voted to continue funding it since he entered the Senate. Now, by all appearances, he has no enthusiasm to permit a visible and audible anti-war presence at the Democratic Convention. If the election in November is as close as the current polls suggest that it will be (and as close as the last two Presidential elections were), should we be surprised if Obama’s losing margin is less than the votes that go to Nader and McKinney? And if this happens, will the Democrats again be blaming the “Naderites” or will they blaming the failure of the Democrats to provide a clear alternative to the pro-war policies of the other pro-war party?
I may yet find myself able to vote for Obama in November (although I cannot imagine being able to vote for Hillary, even against McCain; she hasn’t distinguished herself from the Republicans sufficiently for my vote). Obama’s recent behavior, however, is lessening that possibility.
Hey, this is Nadia. I work for SEIU and I've been following this Ohio organizing stuff pretty closely. Wanted to try to give the debate some context for folks:
By now you may feel like you’ve heard quite enough of the back-and-forth between SEIU and the CNA over union representation of nurses and healthcare workers in Ohio. You may have also heard that the dispute runs deep and wide and goes back years and across state lines into Nevada, California, Texas and several others, and that the encounters have become more extreme.
And perhaps you’re wondering—why should I care?
If this were just about CNA and SEIU, or even just about a dispute at an isolated hospital in one state, you could move on. The thing is, these struggles are not taking place in a vacuum—and what becomes of them has far-reaching impact that touches us all. At a time when the economy is bad and getting worse, and the number of workers represented by a union in this country is an anemic 12%, labor unions face a choice…and workers everywhere face the consequences.
Unions can fight for turf within the ever-shrinking pool of unionized workers, or we can get back on the offensive by reaching out to help more workers join unions to strengthen the hand of more working families.
SEIU has been at the forefront of unions doing exactly this since 1996. And the results speak for themselves. Since 1996, more than 1 million new members have united to join SEIU. Today SEIU represents 1.9 million workers. These new members range from child care workers to city employees in nonunion right to work states like Texas and Arizona to, significantly, hospital workers.
By contrast, CNA, harking back to old-school craft unionism, has pursued an elitist agenda that not only excludes hospital workers who aren’t registered nurses, it prevents registered nurses who want to join a union other than CNA from doing so simply because it’s not the CNA.
Six days before union elections at nine hospitals in Ohio—one with unprecedented ground rules that resulted from three-plus years of hard work by hospital workers, their community allies, and SEIU to hammer out fair election guidelines with the state’s largest health care system—CNA dropped into the state. CAN organizers ran a fiercely anti-union campaign encouraging workers to “vote no.” Their tactics so poisoned the environment that the elections were cancelled. I won’t go into detail here—it's all detailed in this timeline: http://www.shameoncna.com/include/timeline.asp.
By disrupting this process, CNA sent an unmistakable message to the hospital industry: if a hospital agrees to a fair organizing process, it will be subjected to outlandish accusations of “company unionism” and “backroom deals.”
The CNA’s actions in Ohio represent a major setback in the labor movement’s efforts to raise the standard of employer conduct in organizing campaigns. And it's not the first time CAN has used such divisive tactics to poach members from an existing union or otherwise divide workers who are in the process of forming a union. It's happening in California, Nevada, Texas, and elsewhere.
But why might it matter to you? It should if you (you being a working person, a progressive, a consumer in the American economy, or all 3) because this approach undermines the future of the labor movement. At this time of historic inequality and utter insecurity in the American economy, workers need more than ever the strength in community that comes from being organized at work.
In the healthcare sector alone, there are nine million workers out there who don’t have a union. As boomers age, our healthcare needs grow, and the industry’s identity crisis drags on, healthcare workers united in unions have a crucial role to play.
The same is true for the other industries that employ hundreds of millions of American workers—88% of whom don’t have a voice on the job.
But our ability as workers, progressives, and consumers to sit at the big kids’ table depends on our ability to grow and our ability to work together. On a national scale, we’re living the reality of what happens when a smaller and smaller percentage of workers stand together: corporations get to have a bigger and bigger say in the way things work and who gets what.
But at SEIU, we’re living the reality of what happens when workers—with tremendous courage and at great odds—stand together for the interests of all working people: lives, neighborhoods, cities, and whole industries are transformed for the better.
Experience has taught us the hard lesson that circling the wagons simply doesn’t work. And our progressive sensibilities—our concern for the common good—confirm it.
This struggle matters because it’s not just about CNA or SEIU, or Rose Ann DeMoro or Andy Stern. It’s about the future direction and vitality of the American labor movement—a movement that has the ability to blaze a path to an economy and a society that works for everyone—not just the lucky 12%...or 11…or 10…or 9%...
As a political year, 2008 will be doubtless be remembered in many ways -- the Year of Obama-Clinton campaign, and hopefully the year the voters turned out the GOP. But for me, 2008 will always be the Year of the Whore. When one examines the rich tapestry of political argument in this strange year, one thread shines through -- the use and abuse of the word "whore," as well as some actual whores to boot. It is a pronounced enough aspect of the political year to merit sustained analysis.
One of several eruptions of "whore" into our discourse was Air America's Randi Rhodes using it to disparage both Geraldine Ferraro (apparently for her dismissal of Obama's candidacy by saying he was "lucky" to be a black man), and also Hillary Clinton (who came in for the intensifier "fucking whore"). Rhodes was deservedly fired for this outburst, which shows that our political discourse is not entirely debased (just mostly). Rhodes' use of sexualized language to disparage, while disturbing in and of itself, is a rhetorical move in which members of a discrete social group take ownership of a word and claim, expressly or otherwise, the power to use words that seem most offensive when used by folks outside the group. Thus, Tina Fey can call Hillary Clinton "a bitch," because (nudge, nudge), it's ok for us to say this, as long as it's among the sisters. This is also like gay appropriation of the word "queer" as ok for gay folks to use, memorably captured in Joe Jackson's "Real Men," in which Joe sings "don't call me a faggot/not unless you are a friend." It's hard to imagine even Chris Matthews going all Rhodes on Hillary (or being rehired if he did on air), so Rhodes' use of the language both sprang from a privilege of women to speak in a vulgar or vile way of women, and was rewarded by a less extreme response than would attend a man's use of the same contemptible language to describe a woman politico.
Unfortunately, Rhodes was far from an outlier. In a less offensive invocation of whoring in political commentary, MSNBC's David Shuster suggested that in sending out Chelsea Clinton to speak for Hillary's campaign, but preventing her from speaking to the press, that Chelsea was "sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way." Shuster raised a point about the use of Chelsea that was not only fair commentary (much more than one can say about Rhodes), but was one I agree with. But why the recourse to the leitmotif of whoring? Part of the answer is, this is 2008, the Year of the Whore. But why is 2008 the Year of the Whore? In part, it seems, the collective subconscious, or conscious, of our politic cannot refrain from gender-based critique, and disparagement, of the woman candidate. This is the partner to the race-based disparagements of Obama as an "empty suit," "not that smart," "an affirmative action baby," despite his obvious intellectual heft and academic achievement, and "lucky" to be running as a black man, though our nation has elected to governorships and Senatorships literally only a handful of blacks in American history, which is an enduring national disgrace.
The Clinton camp is no stranger to whoring, having previously employed Dick Morris as strategist, before firing him for sucking whore toes back in '96. References to Mark Penn as a "corporate whore" choke the internet, but he was fired too (or was he?) But Clintonite Paul Begala signaled that there was a further level of hyperbolic criticism past "whore," when, after stating, "I have nothing for contempt for Mr. Penn," he called his presence in the Clinton campaign "Rumsfeldian," marking the new outer limit in Democratic insult-space, well past "whore" and likely toward the Oort Cloud that exists past Pluto.
The Year of the Whore could not have been without the active help of our new favorite misanthrope and apostle of permanent war, Senator John McCain (R.-Ariz). Called McNasty in high school (a popular nickname for D.C. hacks -- the Washington Bullets' talentless hatchetmen Rick Mahorn and Jeff Ruland, who have also done nothing for humanity, were likewise collectively nicknamed McFilthy and McNasty), joking gaily about bombing Iran to the tune of the Beach Boys' standard "Barbara Ann," McCain is also no stranger to misogyny. He famously joked (he was joking, right?) at a Republican party dinner that Chelsea Clinton was so ugly because, he said -- her father was Janet Reno! (Get it? They're lesbians. Ugly lesbians. Hi-larious. And born-agains are going to vote for this guy?) Consistent with the warmth he radiates, the Maverick has given us two crowning jewels of whore-reference this year.
First, we just learned from the new book The Real McCain that in 1992, before both campaign staff and press, McCain rebuked his wife's gentle teasing with the light rejoinder, "at least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c*nt." Of course, even Americans in the overcharged, hyperbolic world of 2008 do not typically call their female public figures "c*nts" (let's all pat ourselves on the back, now!), but putting aside his use of the C-word, McCain was then calling his wife Cindy a "trollop," which is a charming, old world word for "whore," kind of like if Ward Cleaver used it to warn Beaver away from a young lady of loose morals. McCain's other whore moment is likely to play out through the year, unless Democrats have forgotten how to fund 527's -- it is of course the fact that he sought, received, and did a joint appearance to publicize the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee, who famously termed Catholicism "the Great Whore," giving McCain his own Pastor disaster.
Bandying about "whore" as a cool new metaphor is one thing, but don't forget those literal whores out there too! They were a big part of the Year of the Whore. Eliot Spitzer took up with whore Ashley Youmans, whose biography is chronicled for all of us on the net. (See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashley_Alexandra_Dupre). Good publicity move for young Ashley, who grossed $206,000 from downloads of her crappy music, publicized in the wake of her expensive sessions with Spitzer. Spitzer, of course, had prosecuted both johns and whores, so in his fall we see our love-hate relationship with whores, already implicit in our calling politicians whores and voting for them in droves -- not to mention that in the metaphor, if politicians are whores, we're all arguably the johns feeding them money, and for whom they perform a full range of salacious acts upon command (oh, baby, flog Colombian President Alvaro Uribe harder over CAFTA! Stoop lower! Lower!). Just as U.S. Attorneys typically prosecute the whores and not the johns, we follow that metaphor through and revile our politicos as whores while we, the johns, escape the scathing self-critique that should follow.
But New York Governor David Paterson, you ask? How did _he_ make this the Year of the Whore? When asked in all seriousness by crack New York media on his second day in office whether he had ever patronized prostitutes (you know how those New York governors are), Paterson paused and quipped memorably, "Only the lobbyists." Way to propagate the whoring meme, Governor! In days that followed, Paterson disclosed his and his wife's affairs, and illegal drug use, as if to say, I do unsavory and illegal things, but no whoring, definitely, no whoring. (And Patterson's crack about lobbyists as whores then takes us back to the New York Times' expose of John McCain's cozy relationship with D.C. lobbyists, including Vicki Iseman . . . but as a Clinton-supporting male lobbyist friend of mine in D.C. is wont to say, 'lobbyists are people too,' so let's not go there too long.)
Is there anything to learn from all this "whore"-ing and whoring? Despite the profusion of "whore" references, we apparently still deplore _actual_ whoring to mess up perfectly good careers. Also, don't be whoring when you prosecute whores. As Martin Fry once sang, "we know this/much is/true." Ah, Spandau Ballet.
But what about all this "whore" talk? To me, it's a marriage of the general debasement of political dialogue with the chest-puffed out, sometimes too self-conscious dewussification of the Left that has brought us the periodically moronic excesses of Bill Maher and lately Randi Rhodes. As Chancellor Palpatine remarked to Anakin, "I can *feel* your anger. It gives you focus, makes you stronger." (See also http://ifoughtthelaw.cementhorizon.com/archives/003870.html, for smart-humored, related tangent) But remember, the guy he said it to got his arms and legs chopped off by his best friend, and eventually threw the guy who said it into a big tube that incinerated him, ending their 30 or so year period of jointly ruling the galaxy while wearing dark, form-obscuring clothes. Put another way, sure the Dukakis campaign sucked, but there's a metier of focus, rational lashing-out (kind of at Jon Stewart's or Obama's temperature, IMHO) that doesn't require us to become either Alistaire Cooke or buffoonish screamers. We have too much good material to resort to that kind of crap.
An important, unmistakeable teaching of this year is that we don't know how to have a national campaign in which a woman runs without at least some really hateful, messed up discussion. If the Obama-Clinton cagematch could be paused (and it soon will be for all time), hopefully we can all recognize as Democrats, whomever we supported, that running either a woman or an African-American leads to deformed dialogue at the margins. The Obama campaign skates on whore references, because it employs no Mark Penn, and because the crapola meme used to attack it is racism (he's a dimwitted, emptysuited, unqualified affirmative action baby), and not misogyny, which Senator Clinton has faced and IMHO substantially overcome. So in a final "ho" reference: as N-Trance sang in its reworking of Stayin' Alive, "Come on everyone in the house/let me hear you say ho ho ho" -- let's laugh McCain to the door with Hagee, Rhodes, Shuster, and Spitzer in this Year of the Whore. (Ashley Youmans can stay. It gets lonely in the blogosphere . . .)
The right wing of the Dems represented by the Clintons has always based its politics on the fear that Bayh reveals here. They're simply scared of the far right and of saying anything that might offend it. Now they might be right, but this election is a chnace to test that strategy.
John Whitesides, Political Correspondent, Reuters
reports from Indianapolis April 12, 2008. full story at http://www.comcast.net/news/articles/general/2007/12/22/NEWS-USA-POLITICS-DC/:
.
Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a Clinton supporter, said the controversy [over whether people in depressed areas are angry] could hurt Obama's effort to win over superdelegates.
"It's a real potential political problem and it's something for superdelegates and voters to think about," Bayh said.
"We have to win the election in November and the far right wing has a real good track record of using things like this against our candidates," he said.
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I think it is, but I do waver from time to time. This country needs great presidents. However, the state of politics in the US is disheartening. As long as I have been following politics, it usually seems as if the presidential candidates with the best intentions for our nation are usually treated the worst. Indeed, this is because, in my opinion, the worst elements of our nation hold the most economic power and sway over shaping public perception.
For all of the great things America is, smart does not seem to be among them, or if it is, it gets lost in the shuffle between outrage, knee-jerk reactions, and sheer stupidity.
I guess some will say it is worth it no matter what. Look at Bill Clinton. He was able to cash in on the presidency unlike anyone before him.
All in all, I do not really know how I feel about presidential politics at the moment. I have long dreamed of getting involved but I am not so sure anymore. My confidence in the direction of this country has been shaken but it is the only country I know. It is also the only country that knows me.
I know that I am simply rambling on and I apologize. It is stream of consciousness time in my house. Sometimes certain things bother me to my core and it is hard for me to let go of them.
In the Washington Post today, the Admin plants the latest reason for never leaving Iraq.
Here's the very telling money quote,
WithIt
"al-Qaeda in retreat and disarray" in Iraq, said one official who spoke
on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on
the record, "we see other obstacles that were under the waterline more
clearly. . . . The Iranian-armed militias are now the biggest threat to
internal order."
Partly in response to advice from Petraeus and
Crocker, the administration has initiated an interagency assessment of
what is known about Iranian activities and intentions, how to combat
them and how to capitalize on them. The review stems from an internal
conclusion, following last week's fighting, that the administration
lacked a comprehensive understanding and a sophisticated approach.
Excuse my denseness, but my parents visited me for a week and then my boyfriend just moved to Chicago, so I've been distracted. But today I was listening to NPR and I heard Senator Clinton call Senator Obama an elitist, and I thought, is she really still doing that kitchen sink thing? Is she really still tearing down the eventual Democratic Nominee? Is she really still putting herself ahead of the party? I mean, I love a fighter, and I'm sure her supporters are getting some thrills from the fact she's doing her Don Quixote imitation, but as a Democractic Party loyalist, I find her willingness to attack at this late date in the nomination process to be nothing short of disgusting. You may quote me: Hillary Clinton's quixotic run for the Democratic nomination has moved from being sad to willfully disgusting. It is the Democratic Party, not the Hillacratic Party.
The pounce on Obama's comments about rural voters -- in which the gist of what Obama was saying is ignored and Obama's made out to be an elitist, notwithstanding Hillary's vulnerabilities in this area -- seems not a lot different from anything Mark Penn might do.
But is it the same? Am I missing some way in which this might work that Penn's similar tactics did not?
And if it's the same, what is it that
