Clinton's comparison of the Florida primary dispute to Zimbabwe

Hillary Clinton abandoned any respect for the truth when she compared the Democratic Party’s refusal to accept the results of the Florida primary (held in violation of the party's rules) to the Zimbabwean dictator Roberto Mugabe’s falsification of election returns a few weeks ago. For the past five years, brave democratic dissidents and protesting Zimbabweans who are both white and black have been arrested and beaten by Mugabe’s security forces, women activists have been raped and killed, and entire neighborhoods known to be politically opposed to Mugabe have been bulldozed. Nothing approaching such repression has happened in the United States since the lynchings and killings of blacks in the South, at the height of segregationist fury in the early 20th century. For Senator Clinton to equate the Democratic Party’s actions on the Florida primary dispute with the murderous brutality of an anti-democratic tyrant is more than an exaggeration, it’s an insult to the party she wants to lead and the intelligence of her listeners -- and indirectly it disrespects the truly portentous stakes in Zimbabwe, whose people who are struggling to surmount infinitely worse abuses of the democratic process than could have occurred in Florida.

Clinton as Obama's Vice Presidential Running Mate?

Comment on The Field, 5/7/08,

http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=1171#comments

There is only one characteristic that Senator Clinton would bring to the Democratic ticket that’s been proven by the 2008 primaries to work in drawing significant numbers of additional voters to the polls: she is an articulate, intelligent woman, who plausibly could be president. That’s why older women have been her most stalwart constituency.

However, the Democratic Party is no longer short of women with gravitas at the national level; Clinton is not unique. And the most compelling one, by far, is Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. More feminine than ferocious, she is endearing on camera but also visibly intelligent and calmly articulate, is natural in manner and not a self-absorbed performance artist like so many politicians, has captured the hearts of her Republican state, was raised in a politically savvy family (her father was governor of Ohio), and would terrify any strategist for the McCain campaign, since she would immediately put in play Midwestern states that would otherwise be safely Republican and reinforce Obama’s appeal to independents and moderate Republicans everywhere. Had Bush lost just the state of Kansas in ‘00, he wouldn’t have been president, and McCain is very unlikely to have any greater margin of error. A great offense gains yardage on the other team’s turf and doesn’t merely defend its own.

Take another look at her endorsement of Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nHp90Z2NJk, and try to tell me you can’t see that there’s some special political chemistry at work here, in such a ticket.

The only obvious objection is that a governor with no national security or foreign policy experience wouldn’t strengthen the ticket in that respect. But Obama will not be elected because a vice presidential candidate has more such experience than he does; indeed, it might be seen as a concession that he himself is under-qualified if he chose a running-mate who had that experience. And just how empathetically and knowledgeably would a retired general, or Senator Webb of Virginia whose sole expertise is defense, answer questions from a nurse whose house is being foreclosed? Obama will dissolve any qualms about his knowledge of national security with how he answers questions about such issues in the debates against McCain, or he won’t — and if he doesn’t, his vice presidential running mate won’t be able to bail him out.

Visualize these two people together on the podium in Denver, and try to imagine a more attractive ticket, a more natural pair with nevertheless different characteristics, or two candidates who could better model the ethnic, age and gender diversity of America while still being from the Heartland and not from Washington. “Change You Can Believe In” would have an even bigger meaning after this Illinois man and this Kansas woman, this sensational senator and this seasoned governor, were nominated in Denver.

The reality behind the Obama "religion and guns" flap

Comment on The Daily Kos, April 13, 2008

The reality is that the Clinton campaign has traction at this point only insofar as it receives or invents another opportunity to hyperventilate about wedge issues -- which aren't substantive but are really rhetorical distractions. And that's what Hillary is doing now, by taking a new ride on her Let's-Bash-Barack bandwagon, in reaction to Obama's "clinging to religion and guns" remark about working-class voters who feel threatened.

Substantively, Senator Obama was describing reasons why people who've been left behind by the economy and been forgotten by government turn bitter -- and he was right: When they're down and out, people take comfort in what gives them a sense of strength and self-reliance, and in many parts of America, that means turning to God and falling back on the old stance of "don't tread on me" (sometimes signified by the rifle your father gave you, hanging in the back window of the pick-up you drive to church).

Obama didn't say that being religious or liking guns was a function of bitterness or fear. "Say a prayer and pass the ammunition" is not just a wartime expression, it's an attitude based on circling the wagons and hunkering down, and Americans have had plenty of crises in their history when they felt like doing just that. But it's not just an American instinct -- it's a common response anywhere chaos looms, and many Americans may be facing the worst economic disarray of their lifetimes. They didn't produce the conditions that are now battering the economy, but they've got to cope with them -- which government has failed to do.

And that's what Obama was saying. His words showed no condescension or elitism, only an attempt to understand what people are feeling. What he hasn't done is to pander to their fears, or try to alienate them from his opponents, something Senator Clinton seems unable to resist doing.

To Fix the Economy, Fix Washington

Comment on The Field, 3/29/08 - http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=962

Nothing builds (or rebuilds) the appeal of a political candidate more than having a superior public argument in the thick of a campaign. Barack Obama may not survive Hillary Clinton in shape to win in November, unless she is forced out by one or two decisive Obama victories soon, and that won't happen unless he makes a fresh, commanding argument at this point in the campaign.

None of his people should be lulled into any sense of inevitability just because the pundits are now saying she is highly unlikely to win. He can't wait for party bigwigs to pull her offstage. He has to take this nomination by main force. To do that, he needs to make a new argument, which is consistent with his innate identity as a powerful voice for change and as a personal harbinger of it.

Because Obama has had a good two weeks now tactically -- thanks to the Philadelphia speech which pretty much got the Wright affair behind him, the Richardson endorsement, and now the endorsement by Senator Casey of Pennnsylvania -- Obama can afford to go on the offense. And he should, or else he'll find himself in the final weeks before Pennsylvania responding to more Hillary attacks. But if he succumbs to the conventional wisdom about the politics of this primary and tries, tactically, to outbid Hillary on economic issues of concern to the white working-class, it won't work: The perception of her strength on that has hardened in the media, and that reinforces the general perception that she's a fighter for them -- which they now appear to believe.

It would be harder for Obama to dislodge that perception, than to jump over it and drive home another issue as decisive -- an issue on which he's perceived as naturally stronger. He has enough media money and enough free media to give visibility to any issue he wants to. But it has to be an issue that dovetails with the cumulative, valid, existing perceptions about what motivates him -- and that issue is this: fundamentally changing a broken political system.

Here's the strategic logic behind why this could translate into fresh new victories in the upcoming states. The white working class is indeed worried about losing jobs and now also worried about either losing their homes or losing sufficient resale value to have enough for retirement. But Obama cannot win a bidding war with Clinton by promising to apply more money to these problems, because he will never top her on pandering to those fears. And if he tries, he will rob himself of the comparative advantage that makes him far more appealing to independents than another redistributionist Democrat.

He must change the way that economic issues are perceived by asking why the economy has been brought to the precipice. And the answer is that the political system has been sold to the highest bidders, which has shifted opportunities away from those who work for a living, to those who can afford to buy access to politicians in Washington. It's not that factory workers can't be productive or don't have the capacity to compete. It's that the tax system and the mortgage finance system and the regulatory system have been mismanaged or corrupted by the way our political system has been rigged.

So changing the impact of the economy on working-class people in Johnstown or Scranton or Bethlehem or Allentown has to start with changing politics in Washington. And then Obama could say: "Let me tell you something that my opponent cannot: No one owns me -- just look at my tax returns. And I don't owe anything to anybody who profits unfairly from what goes on in Washington. I hate that system as much as you do. And if I do nothing else when I get to the White House, I promise that I will change it. It's time not only for equal economic treatment in America, it's time for equal political treatment -- because we will never fix our economy once and for all, unless we fix our political system once and for all. And we can't do that, without someone completely new in the White House."

This is an argument that renders Clinton's language and indeed the premise of her candidacy obsolete. It overrides any constituency-based appeals based on promising more breaks or programs or benefits. People have heard those appeals for election after election after election. They know that politicians promise to do more, and then they don't. The reason they don't is simple: The political system no longer works for ordinary Americans. And that's what Obama can change, and Clinton won't.

If he makes this kind of argument, and makes it passionately, he has a legitimate chance to win in Pennsylvania and will almost certainly win decisively in North Carolina and Indiana -- and thereby end the contest for the nomination.

Obama as the Voice of Public Reason

Comment on The Huffington Post, 3/22/08 - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-jong/why-am-i-so-afraid_b_92876.html

If Erica Jong doesn't know why she is "so afraid" of what is happening in this election year, she shouldn't be pop-psychoanalyzing a serious, fearless political figure like Barack Obama. To call this man a "stallion...drunk on his own rhetoric" is not only completely inconsistent with Obama's public demeanor, which is consistently cool and self-controlled, it is personally demeaning. Ms. Jong seems to have no realization that the language of presidential candidates conveys the argument of their propositions to the nation, about why people should follow their leadership, and in that sense all "rhetoric" should be powerful if it is going to be effective in a democracy. Rhetoric is not merely "words", as Senator Clinton constantly suggests. It is at the heart of functioning self-government, because without a sensible analysis of the current predicament and a vision of tomorrow offered to those who vote, the nation's decision-making about the future cannot be rational. "Rhetoric" is the vehicle of public reason, and Senator Obama is modeling the use of such reason as no other presidential candidate has done since Franklin Roosevelt. That is why he is headed toward his party's nomination.

Buckley the Dissident

Comment on The Huffington Post, 3/12/08, Reply to "Ira Glasser Remembers William F. Buckley, Jr." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-glasser/ira-glasser-remembers-wil_b_91175.html

As Ira Glasser attests, William F. Buckley, Jr., was the kind of conservative who liberals could like -- not only because he was personally gracious, but because unlike many on the right, he actually listened to those he was debating. He did that because he relished ideas, he respected democracy, and he distrusted conventional wisdom.

In the 1960s, I had read "Up From Liberalism," Buckley's book that challenged liberal orthodoxy. As a young student who had done precinct work for Republicans but probably couldn’t tell you why – other than loyalty to my family’s political roots – Buckley spoke like lightning to my fatigue with all the stereotyped arguments of the era.

Then I plunged into the intellectual crises of the ‘60s with my Baby Boomer friends. One thing I couldn’t do, however, was fall in line with the gung-ho, pro-Vietnam War enthusiasm of many conservatives. I was appalled at their cavalier disregard for the costs of that war, as I am today about the Iraq misadventure. When Republicans fell into line with Richard Nixon in ’68 – a man whose campaign that year was philosophically inert and substantively disingenuous -- I realized that the party's establishment would swallow and digest any idea or leader, so long as elections were won and the system didn’t change. By ’72 I was for McGovern, because at least he “spoke truth to power”, as Buckley had in the ‘50s. And I never looked back -- still preferring maverick outsiders like Gary Hart and Bill Bradley, because they too challenged the group-think of those who were inured to the system as it was.

I only saw Bill Buckley in person once -- at a 2003 conference and celebration of the life and work of the late Malcolm Muggeridge, the great British journalist and television host. Muggeridge had reported from Stalin's Russia, edited "Punch", and was the man who'd brought Mother Theresa to the world's attention, through the BBC. Like Buckley, Muggeridge was an entertaining raconteur, a foe of the reigning establishment of his youth -- and also a thoughtful, tolerant Christian. Like Muggeridge, who was his friend, Buckley was a bit of a rebel, a bit of a knave, and loved the friendly clash of ideas. He was a natural dissident with a dash of dry sherry, topped up with cackling good humor. He was a good man.

A Foreign Trip for Obama? Not now....

Comment on The Field [edited], 3/10/08 - http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=870#comments

A foreign trip by Obama before the Pennsylvania primary (which is now rumored) would be a disastrous idea: First, it would appear to many as if he were conceding that he didn’t have enough foreign policy experience, and were doing a last-minute, cram-for-the-exam trip. Second, it would concede Pennsylvania to Clinton, and friends, Pennsylvania is NOT Ohio. Philadelphia is Atlanta, which Obama won decisively: a huge African-American core population, surrounded by well-educated, upscale white suburbs. Pittsburgh has a blue-collar image, but has been strikingly prosperous in the last decade. The rest of the state is socially not unlike parts of Wisconsin or Iowa, in which Obama did quite well. Third, a foreign trip would be reported by the media as if it were either a stunt or a rock-star tour. Neither image has anything to do with the issues faced by hard-working Americans who are staring into the abyss of a financial collapse. Fourth, Hillary would barrel through Pennsylvania, channeling John Edwards, asking “Where’s Barack? Why isn’t he here, answering your questions and listening to your problems?” She’d be on the scene, and he’d be AWOL from American democracy in action — that’s how it would be spun. Fifth, remember, it’s about delegates. Every one in Pennsylvania counts.

What Obama has to do is stay home, reframe the election, and refreshen our sense of what he stands for -- this way: “What kind of government are we going to have? A government of, by and for the special interests? A government in which the oil industry writes energy legislation and drug companies write health care laws? A government run by people who make negative attacks and refuse to release their tax returns? And how do we change government? Certainly not by returning to the past, by asking those who already had their chance to come back again and try one more time. No, it’s time to change the way we do government in America, and that can only be done by making a clean break from the past, from all those who are comfortable with Washington and have benefited from business as usual. It is not merely time for a change. It is time to remake our government altogether, in the image and in the interests of those who’ve been left out. This election is for you — the ones whose voices have been ignored, and whose votes have been taken for granted, and who were promised prosperity but instead got war and recession. The incompetence, the dishonesty, the negative attacks, the stranglehold of money on our government: All that comes to an end, when I walk through the front door of the White House, and take its power, and use it for you…”