Tristero over at Hullabaloo has an insight about the bailout BS:
This isn't about obstreperous Republicans blocking a needed financial bailout because it doesn't fit some whacked ideology. This is about a campaign bailout. McCain's campaign bailout.
From Nicholas Kristof in the NYT:Here’s a sad monument to the sleaziness of this presidential campaign: Almost one-third of voters “know” that Barack Obama is a Muslim or believe that he could be.
In short, the political campaign to transform Mr. Obama into a Muslim is succeeding. The real loser as that happens isn’t just Mr. Obama, but our entire political process.
...
What is happening, I think, is this: religious prejudice is becoming a proxy for racial prejudice. In public at least, it’s not acceptable to express reservations about a candidate’s skin color, so discomfort about race is sublimated into concerns about whether Mr. Obama is sufficiently Christian.
The result is this campaign to “otherize” Mr. Obama. Nobody needs to point out that he is black, but there’s a persistent effort to exaggerate other differences, to de-Americanize him.
Comments suggesting that Obama is, in fact, Muslim, a terrorist, the Antichrist, or anything else so stupid will not be published.
... Noting, of course, that it would be perfectly OK if Obama was Muslim.
h/t cnd
Ezra Klein is a very smart person:I think one aspect of the modern press that doesn't get enough attention -- either among folks in the media or folks critiquing it -- is the transition from the fundamental scarcity being information to information being in abundance and the fundamental scarcity being mediation. For instance, the attitude on display in this Marc Ambinder post is fully understandable if you take a newspaperman's attitude towards the whole thing. If everyone got a newspaper once a day, and there were eight political stories, and all of them were different each day, and one of them had pointed out that Palin actually did support the Bridge to Nowhere, then the press would indeed have done its job. The job was to report the story, and they reported it.
But cable news and blogs and radio sort of changed all that and now there's too much information, and so consumers largely rely on the press to arrange that information into some sort of coherent story that will allow them to understand the election. And the press assumed that role -- they didn't create some new institution, or demand that the cable channels be credentialed differently and understood as "political entertainment."
...
Similarly, if the press reports something and never mentions it again, the public knows to forget it. It's not important. If they mention it constantly -- "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it" -- they know it is important. The job of the media, in other words, is now to also emphasize the right parts of the story. [emphasis in original]
This requires deciding what matters.
That last sentence is both true and a substantial problem. It's also partially why I read lefty political blogs - I have found something that filters information in a similar way I do, and considers similar things important, thus saving me from either dedicating all of my free time to sifting through the news or remaining even more ignorant.
To be clear, the reason it's a problem is that the is often based not on, say, information about either policy or instances of lying on the part of candidates, but around the idea of politics-as-game, or even around what the friggin' reporters simply find interesting. In other words, the filters used are often terrible and not conducive to deliberative democracy.
Go read the rest. It's not long.
Sometimes he's just on:Can the super-rich former governor of Massachusetts — the son of a Fortune 500 C.E.O. who made a vast fortune in the leveraged-buyout business — really keep a straight face while denouncing “Eastern elites”?
Can the former mayor of New York City, a man who, as USA Today put it, “marched in gay pride parades, dressed up in drag and lived temporarily with a gay couple and their Shih Tzu” — that was between his second and third marriages — really get away with saying that Barack Obama doesn’t think small towns are sufficiently “cosmopolitan”?
Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself — until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans — really portray herself as running against the “Washington elite”?
Yes, they can.
Read the rest.
Basically, read Atrios; that guy is f'in sharp:Republican on MSNBC is arguing that Palin has much more experience than Joe Biden because all he did was run committees in the Senate.
By this logic Palin has much more experience than John McCain.
*****************Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention was seen by more than 38 million people.
Nielsen Media Research said more people watched Obama speak than watched the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing....
Also almost twice the number Kerry got in 2004. Number does not include PBS or C-Span. Nor does it include those who streamed it over the web.
*****************
Gender
I'll admit a bit of a pause on Palin for two reasons: 1) Don't know much about her and 2) The selection of a woman by McCain requires some careful thought about potential criticisms which inadvertently wade into misogynist territory. Already we have questions asked about her which wouldn't be asked of a man by the media, and I want to avoid going anywhere near there myself.
That last one is very true. Some of the stuff I've read on lefty blogs has clearly crossed into misogyny territory.
UPDATE: From Dover Bitch at Hullabaloo: "McCain got what he wanted and needed the most: Nobody is talking about the magnificent speech Barack Obama gave last night."
That's very much true. However, I wonder if the whole "there's no such thing as bad publicity" trope is going to hold true on this.
Cody (via email): Whaaa?
Cody 2: "The producers of SNL must be scrambling to call Tina Fey, who must be thanking god for her good luck." [Dennis agrees - the resemblance is striking.]
Melissa (IM): I totally didn't expect it at all...this election is becoming more like a sitcom than reality. I'm reading feministing right now... trying to understand what the hell is happening :)
Atrios: "Proof that all the very well connected journalists know absolutely nothing."
Andrea Mitchell (via Atrios): "The campaign has just given up the experience argument."
Dave3544: So McCain is basically going after the Hillary vote. Giving up the attack on Obama for not having experience and going after the women. Doing so in the most craven way possible.
Adam Serwer at The American Prospect: The pick of Palin is dripping with transparent condescension, the notion that the enthusiasm behind Hillary was simply the result of her being a woman, that it had nothing to do with what she actually stood for, and in that sense it's equally sexist. Palin is essentially a hard-right ideologue, and therefore nothing like Hillary as far as substance is concerned. It's not very different from running Alan Keyes against Barack Obama in 2004.
Ann of Feministing: Let me say right off the bat that, overall, I think it's great that Republicans have chosen to elevate a woman to this level -- no matter what their motivations. I want to see more women of all parties involved in politics. But, as we stated over and over in the primaries, a politician's gender isn't everything. It's merely one factor to be considered. And quite frankly, Palin's political views suck.
Kevin Drum: And what I was thinking about was what a bizarrely contrived and calculated choice it is. I mean, aside from six years as mayor of Wasilla (pop. 6,715) — about which I'm sure we'll be hearing much, much more — her political experience consists of 19 months as governor of the fourth smallest state in the union. That's it... It's hard to think of a more intensely cynical, focus-grouped, poll-driven, base-pandering VP choice in recent memory. Even Dan Quayle isn't in the running. This is ridiculous.
Jill at Feministe (though it's more about CNN than anything else).
Jonathan Singer at MyDD: "It has been forty years since someone as inexperienced as Sarah Palin has been put on a national ticket..."
Dennis' co-worker: This was a reactionary pick, decided in response to the convention. Bad idea.
Dennis: The media is going to have a field day accusing the Democratic Party and its base of sexism because Hillary lost the nomination. Women (and some men) everywhere are going to rip their hair out in frustration, because the media, like McCain, doesn't get that Hillary Clinton's appeal is due to a combination of her policies and the fact that she is female. Palin's preferred policies, as noted above, are not good for women. The media (and the McCain campaign) will fail to understand that women act in their own rational self-interest, and are not, in fact, led around by their uteruses. One almost wonders if this is a product of men being led around by their.... never mind.
Maybe more later, but I highly doubt it. On the plus side, I really like the name Sarah Palin, for some reason.
UPDATE: I removed the duplicate feministing post and added a new line from Cody. Also, I think Sarah Palin is an NPR correspondent or a movie star's name: Too good to be true.
He says some interesting things, as usual:There's no need for so many police in Denver, Hayden says. "With Obama having opposed the war, there's no real reason for demonstrations." Hayden also feels that the "radicals of the 60s don't get credit for what has happened for good in the Democratic Party." He thinks there's too much harkening back to 1968. "All this talk about '68 because we have a fascination with round numbers," he quips. "Our country is full of the wreckage of the 60s."
Hayden observes that "there is a new social movement on a vast scale" centered right now in the Obama Campaign. "These young people will plant seeds for the next twenty-five years." But they are "small-d" Democrats, Hayden says, and they are environmentalists and idealists. "They don't want a war in :Pakistan!" And "if Obama loses, which I think he might," Hayden says, nevertheless the Democratic Party will have grown bigger. As for Obama, "he is losing. He is gonna lose the electoral college."
What do you think? Is he right?
The strange thing, I don't really disagree with anything Hayden, but I still have this feeling Obama's chances are better than Hayden gives him credit for. Today, anyway. Yesterday - and probably tomorrow - I'd say Obama has little to no chance.
Go figure.
The GT has a good editorial today supporting the shift to a top-two open primary:Oregon’s Measure 65 essentially would change the way candidates advance to the general election for most partisan offices. Here’s how it would work: All candidates, regardless of party designation, would run in a single primary. Only the two top vote-getters would advance to the general election. Both the primary — and general-election ballots — would contain the candidates’ party registrations. But such designations would not necessarily mean that a candidate had the blessing of the party. The ballots also would list which party endorsements candidates have collected.
I've always been uneasily ambivalent towards this move, largely because I never thought it addressed the actual problem, which is that there are only two major political parties (or that there are political parties at all, ha-ha). As well, if we take the existence of political parties as a given, then open primaries are bad, because they don't allow parties to choose their own nominee.... sort of. I suppose a party can still endorse; this just pries open the voting system, and, in a way, creates a two-round election, which is interesting (and very European, natch).
But that's all a digression. My actual question is this: Why not make it a top-three primary?
Here's why I ask: In a top-two system, one of a few things are going to happen:
1) It's going to be two people from the same party, in which case I predict voters from the other party will either stay home, lowering turnout, or bite their tongue and vote for the person who panders to them the most. From the candidates' point of view, this is good, because it means a Republican who is facing a Republican in the general election can eake out a position just to the left of their oppoonent and then rake in the Dem votes, and vice versa. Once elected, that person can then revert to form, thus effectively disenfranchising all those voters who voted for the lesser of two evils. This is not good.
2) It's going to be a Republican vs. a Democrat. This will be the most common if the top-two system ever gets widely implemented. Not much will change here.
3) A minor party candidate will somehow sneak in, probably because of two or more major-party candidates vying for one of the top spots and splitting the votes. This could make the general election very interesting, as some of those who would normally vote for, say, the Dem, would be tempted to vote for the Green, if there is no Dem. The same could be suggested of Republicans and Libertarians or Constitutionalists. This is a good thing for minor-party candidates.
I think it's fair to say that a top-two primary offers a much greater chance of interesting races, and a somewhat bigger chance of the inclusion of one or more third-party candidates.
However, what would happen in a top-three primary? I think it would even more significantly increase the odds of a minor-party candidate getting into the general election, and the very nature of a "we already had one election and Candidate X (from a minor party) was a top-three finisher" would raise the presence and stature of minor parties in general. It would also promote multiple major-party candidates, which splits votes, again making it more likely that a minor-party candidate would advance to the general election.
Let's face it: A two-party system does not do a good job representing everyone. There are far more than two points of view out there, especially when you throw in the added complexity of platforms (for example, who should I support if I'm a free-market social liberal?). Adding more parties to the mix is a good thing, and a top-three primary is a way to do that. Therefore, I'd call for a top-three open primary system.
So why is a top-three primary not an option? Not having researched this, I don't really know, but I have two guesses: 1) Americans think in terms of a two-candidate election. Lots of history and social conditioning there. That's a pretty sad reason ("we do it this way because we've always done it this way"), but I think it's relatively likely. 2) The existing major parties, disliking but unable to prevent the top-two primary, at least managed to limit them to top-two, knowing that it offers the best chance to continue a D-R matchup.
What do you all think?
No link, but check this out:
"...but we have to quit expecting that if we elect D's, we'll get a fucking pony."
Hering:What did Barack Obama mean when he said in Missouri this week that John McCain would try to scare voters by pointing out that Obama “doesn’t look like all the other presidents on the dollar bill”?
The Democratic candidate and his campaign said the the remark was not about race. What was it about, then?
...
The line probably sounded pretty good to the candidate when he said it. But if he really did not mean it to be about race, he should have been a little more specific so that America could tell what he meant. (hh)
Translation: .... "so that I could tell what he meant."
Some of us got the intended meaning just fine, Hasso. And yeah, it was about race. No question about that - just as is there is no question that there are millions of people in America who will not vote for Obama because he's black. Some of them even admit it when asked by pollsters.
I like the distinction Lebanon Truth makes in this comment thread between politics and government. However, I think Rovian/Bush Republicans don't make that distinction anymore. Government is politics, to a degree never before seen.
Take, for example, any of the following:- Department of Justice disqualifying anyone who worked for any kind of liberal or liberal cause from being hired under certain programs (google 'Monica Goodling').
- Karl Rove giving presentations to civil service employees regarding how to make sure Republican candidates win elections.
- That the Bush administration wants to require all recipients of aid under federal health programs to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control (this was in the NYT recently).
- HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson saying outright that "of course" he would never give contracts to companies who have donated money to Democrats.
- Republican Senators setting records for filibustering once Dems took the Senate in 2006; this after trying to eliminate the filibuster as an option for four years when they had control (the so-called 'nuclear option').
Those are from a few minutes of thinking, and all are focused on those things that, in theory, should be the realm of government and not politics. I've heard dozens, if not hundreds of examples.
When I try to make this point to others, the most common rebuttal I get is that the Democrats are just as guilty, so let me address that now: Of course the Dems are guilty of patronage and bending the rules - but as I mentioned, this is a conflation of politics and government in what is effectively a new way (even if it's really just an old way brought back to life), one that actually threatens the functionality of government. It also shatters the understanding that certain things are best left unpoliticized.
Does this make me naive? Not at all - I am not terribly surprised at the behavior of Karl Rove so much as I am a little surprised the Dems haven't pushed back at all. However, the uneasy consensus that had existed around this distinction is gone, and people's lives are being rather negatively affected by the changes (see, for example, either the refusal to fund anything but abstinence-only overseas or the current housing crisis and the pathetic, ideological response of Ben Bernanke and the Fed). Rather, I'm deploring it not because it's the loss of some ideal state of existence - far from it - but because it's materially hurting people.
Clark’s remark: So?
On the networks and cable TV, the flap over a remark by Wesley Clark shows just how shallow and vacant our politics has become.
...
All he said was that wartime courage and senatorial experience were not enough to qualify McCain for president. Everybody knows that.
...
Clark is a politician who made a commonplace point. That’s all he did. (hh)
You-know-who:The 2008 presidential contest is turning into the same old thing, the thing we’ve had every four years for generations, which is disappointing. But there’s a way to rescue it, if only Barack Obama would grab the chance.
The growing sameness comes from the candidates themselves and their supporters. It comes from the attention on money and who can raise how much from whom. It also comes from the campaign promises by the candidates, especially the policy statements that change depending on which group they are addressing. And the growing sense of sameness also comes from the nasty tone that the campaigns have adopted in statements about each other.
All this could be overcome and pushed into the background if Obama changed his mind and agreed to the suggestion by John McCain that the two candidates meet in a series of town hall-type meetings between now and the fall.
Wow. All of that? The entire way the campaign is being run could change if only Obama would agree to a series of town-hall meetings?
Who knew?
This is a bit long, but well worth reading. It's an overview of the Democratic Party's strategy for the next election, and how Dean and Obama's strategies will mesh. It seems like really smart - and even mildly progressive - stuff, as far as party politics goes.
I've been paying a lot of attention to politics and the media my entire adult life, and I still can't believe this actually happened.SHUSTER: Well, here's the other thing that we saw on the tape, Chris, is that, when Obama went in, he was offered coffee, and he said, "I'll have orange juice."
MATTHEWS: No.
SHUSTER: He did.
And it's just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, "Here, have some coffee," you say, "Yes, thank you," and, "Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?" You don't just say, "No, I'll take orange juice," and then turn away and start shaking hands. That's what happens [unintelligible] --
MATTHEWS: You don't ask for a substitute on the menu.
Chris Matthews is insane.
Perhaps in the future, he will be considered the greatest satirist of all time. People will look back and wonder how he got away with having what was so obviously a brilliant comedy show on a 'news' network (and how he managed to never break character, not even once).
In the meantime....
I had one long day today, but something pretty fun happened at the end of it: I got to have drinks and talk with Mark Rudd, formerly of Students for a Democratic Society.
Plenty of my friends were there, and the conversation was great. I've not the time or energy to rehash things now, but there is thing that is really stuck in my mind that I want to try and get out before I go to bed.
Let me also add that the writing of this post was prompted by this Atrios post.
The larger conversation we were having was around the idea of organizing - what is organizing? How do we define the term? What historical models can we draw on? And - and this came up repeatedly - what's the deal with the kids today? Why are/aren't they organizing? (And I say kids because I am indeed talking about people who are still in high school.)
At one point, the conversation wandered over to electoral politics: What's the deal with that Obama guy? What is he doing to create such a groundswell, especially among youth?
Earlier, Rudd had raised the idea that for many youth, something happened in 2005-2006 that really pierced the usual haze; he suggested it was the combination of Katrina and the mainstreaming of the realization that Iraq was lost. I think he's right.
Putting that together with the Obama phenomenon, I suggested that it's possible the left (broadly and vaguely construed, as always) missed an incredible opportunity by not organizing around that sea change in perspective, by not anticipating and being ready for it, and - frankly - by letting it get sucked into electoral politics and Obama (who, for all his virtues, is not talking about capitalism or imperialism in near the same way he's addressing race and even gender).
The point is - and this is a damn exciting thought for me - that something is going on. Something is piercing the atomized, consumerist haze we normally walk around, at least for a few more people than normal. The potential for change hasn't been this great since, well, before I was an adult - and that means it's time to revive once-common and now-heretic ideas like free education and radical limits on corporate power.
I know this thought is barely coherent and completely undeveloped, but I wanted to get it down and out there before I crash.
Also, Mark had a great question: What is organizing?
Leave your answers in the comments.
Remember when I linked to Citizens Against Government Waste? All of two posts ago?
Turns out they are a GOP front group.
Oops.
See this Hullabaloo post for more.
This essay on Alternet is essentially a call to act stupid. It's a dumb idea (filed under "things that want to be contrarian but are just backwards").
This comment, found on the same page (I couldn't find a direct link to the comment), is a much smarter idea, politically speaking:It would be much more useful and effective, I believe, for the Democrats to pull an entirely different page out of the GOP playbook. Tell the story of giving people back something they regard as wrongfully taken from them and let them dream of how they will make use of that "gift." In the case of the Republicans, the game is played by telling people they can have their tax money back to spend as they please (ignoring the services and devaluation of the currency that results from deficit spending). The GOP has set the table for a whopping round of giving people back their privacy, the security of their identities and private information, the right to be told the truth by a whole range of scientists working the public interest, the right to know what their government is doing on their behalf, and the right to have the government respect their wishes about, say, war or consumer protection even if it is not a presidential election year.
Though, as the commenter notes, Democrats in general have not shown much appetite for challenging a lot of Bush policies. After all, the Dems, as political elites, are the beneficiaries of many of those policies.
