Hope or High Water

Now that numerous sources have begun to speculate that the race for VP is down to a couple of names.  Specifically, Tim Kaine, Virginia’s governor, and Evan Bayh, the Senator from Indiana, have been getting the most attention.  Even Faux news is getting in on the act.

I haven’t posted in awhile for numerous reasons, but mostly because I was getting burned out on this whole election and was furious when Obama cast his vote to pass FISA legislation.  I still believe that Obama is the only candidate that can lead this nation, but I am suspicious of his centrist political posturing.  It seems clear that Tim Kaine and Evan Bayh represent two paths the Obama campaign (and subsequent Obama administration) can choose to follow.  Tim Kaine is a young progressive democrat from a conservative state that tends to lean to the center on certain issues, like the death penalty.  Kaine is a progressive first and his departures from progressive thought are the exceptions rather than the rule.  Kaine is relatively popular in his home state and will help a democratic candidate win Virginia for the first time since Johnson.  Kaine has supported Obama since way back in February 2007 and was the first governor to throw his support behind Obama.  The men have campaigned together in the past, as Obama was a primary supporter of Kaine’s run for governor.  Kaine is not a Washington insider, and would be able to match Obama’s promise to change Washington.  As added bonuses, Kaine is a religious Catholic and speaks fluent Spanish from his days as a missionary, thus helping Obama with two key demographics.  What’s not to like?

I am a Hoosier, so I grew up with the Bayh family running the democratic party in my state.  Evan Bayh’s father, Birch Bayh, was a good man and a great politician.  He was progressive before it was in vogue to use that term.  Evan Bayh, however, has fallen far from the tree.  He is a conservative democrat who Chaired the Democratic Leadership Council and the New Democrats.  These two groups are responsible for low-spending, low-regulation democrats who share many of the same economic values as conservative republicans.  While the Richard Lugar, the Republican Senator from Indiana, was denouncing the rush to go to war in Iraq, Evan Bayh was getting his picture taken with Bush and McCain in an united front to start hostilities in the region.  Bayh was among the first senators to openly endorse Hillary Clinton for president.

While Kaine represents the progressive leaning young democrats, Bayh represents the conservative wing of the democratic party.  Kaine represents the kind of Obama administration I hoped for when I voted for him.  Bayh represents an Obama administration that is kowtowing to party elders asking for Obama to move to the center.

If Obama is true to his word that the people, not the special interests, control his campaign, then we should have a say in his choice of Veep.  I encourage all readers to donate to the Obama campaign now and attach a message that donations will not continue if Bayh is the choice.  We cannot let Obama continue to fail us as a progressive president by moving towards the center.  Please encourage your friends and family to convey the same message to the Obama campaign.

In  policy content I found this debate largely droll and unremarkable.  On the question of what we can do about gas price increases, Clinton answered that she would look into it because truckers were hurting.  Call me an elitist, but you know what,  truckers are a dieing breed, and if the  government would stop subsidizing gasoline, this country would gain just as many jobs as it would lose through the massive effort it would take to build a new transportation  infrastructure.  This infrastructure will only be created if drastic steps are taken by someone with the vision to see the consequences of not making these changes.  The Democrats are normally far too concerned with the current working class complaints that they ignore the need to build a new working class.  And while ending gas subsidies would be unpopular and gas prices would skyrocket to $8-13 dollars a gallon, a courageous step requires a courageous politician.

Enter Barack Obama.

Obama responded to Clinton by saying that he plans on starting a transportation project on the level of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo Program, something that would revitalize the sagging blue collar workforce and chance the way all Americans live their lives.  While I doubt very much that Obama’s plan takes as radical a stance as I would take, he at least has some idea of the scale of the problem.

As an Obama supporter, I have often been discouraged by Senator Clinton’s refusal to drop out of a contest that she has little chance of winning. In a post before the March 4th Texas primary and caucus, I wrote that she should drop out on March 5th. I still believe that if Clinton were going drop out, that would have been the appropriate date, but that time has long passed, and the new reality is that unless Obama wins in Pennsylvania, the race will continue into June. And well it should. The new frame among democrats is to play this race out until every vote is counted, and I tend to agree, though my motives are far from clandestine.

The longer Hillary Clinton stays in the presidential contest, the more she loses standing among prominent democrats. The longer she stays in the race, the more she validates the meme that the Clinton’s care more about themselves than they do about the good of the party or the good of the nation. I am not saying that this meme is true, I am simply saying that the perception of Mrs. Clinton is shifting, and more people will believe that she is self-serving as the contest progresses.  As the Clinton campaign inches closer to completing its implosion the more desperate Hillary becomes. The tax records, the lying about “sniper fire,” telling Bill Richardson that Obama can’t win in November — these are the missteps of a campaign in crisis. I say let Mrs. Clinton keep on going, let her credibility worsen, the democratic party can only grow stronger. Clinton is seriously hurting her chances of gaining the role of Senate Majority Leader if Obama wins the election. The tide of the democratic party is shifting, the younger voters want no more Democratic Leadership Council (i.e. republican-lite) nonsense running the party of reform. I say good riddance.

Mark Penn, up until he was demoted yesterday from his position as Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, serves to underscore my point. Penn also works for a large lobbying group that was hired by the Columbian government to help broker a free trade agreement between the United States and Columbia. Penn spent last weekend in Columbia working for the Columbian government on policy which challenges the policy that Hillary Clinton champions. At first, the Clinton campaign said that they didn’t see a conflict of interests between Penn as a lobbyist an Penn as a strategist, before finally demoting him from his position. Penn’s microtargeting approach is one of the primary reasons why Clinton has not met expectations, he should have been fired long ago, but even after this total lack of judgment, Clinton still refuses to release Penn from the campaign. The Clintons care about loyalty the same way George W. Bush cares about loyalty, and as we have learned from these past eight years, placing loyalty above the best interests of your campaign is not admirable, it is conceded and the wrong path for any democrat.

So let us embrace Clinton’s campaign, she can do little but quicken the demise of a branch of democrats (see: Lieberman) we should have buried years ago.

Hillary Clinton told the Pittsburgh Tribune that she would have left any church in which Rev. Wright was pastor almost week after Obama’s speech on the subject. The Pittsburgh Tribune is one of the most conservative newspapers in the country, the same newspaper that infamously asserted that Hillary Clinton had one of her staffers killed in the 1990s. As Keith Olbermann notes, Senator McCain and Gov. Mike Huckabee have both given their support to Barack Obama over the Rev. Wright issue, but Hillary Clinton has once again chosen to be a negative and divisive force in the Democratic party. Here’s the video with some commentary on the subject of why Clinton would choose to make these comments to such a conservative editorial board, including a quote by an anonymous elected official who said that in order to win Clinton would have to employ a “Tonya Harding” style smear campaign and “kneecap Senator Obama.”

The most surprising piece of news stemming from Clinton’s comments has to be the statement that the pastor of Clinton’s former church released. This statement by pastor Dean Snyder of the United Methodist Church doesn’t defend Barack Obama, it goes the extra mile by defending Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Here is the statement in full:

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is an outstanding church leader whom I have heard speak a number of times. He has served for decades as a profound voice for justice and inclusion in our society. He has been a vocal critic of the racism, sexism and homophobia which still tarnish the American dream. To evaluate his dynamic ministry on the basis of two or three sound bites does a grave injustice to Dr. Wright, the members of his congregation, and the African-American church which has been the spiritual refuge of a people that has suffered from discrimination, disadvantage, and violence. Dr. Wright, a member of an integrated denomination, has been an agent of racial reconciliation while proclaiming perceptions and truths uncomfortable for some white people to hear. Those of us who are white Americans would do well to listen carefully to Dr. Wright rather than to use a few of his quotes to polarize. This is a critical time in America’s history as we seek to repent of our racism. No matter which candidates prevail, let us use this time to listen again to one another and not to distort one another’s truth.

Dean J. Snyder, Senior Minister
Foundry United Methodist Church
March 19, 2008

That Senator Clinton would ignore the common wisdom of both the religious leader of her former church and senior politicians on both sides of the aisle, is not a sign of moral integrity so much as a hint to how desperate she is to win.  That Clinton refuses to answer questions about her current religious institution tells us that she does not want to be open to the same scrutiny as Senator Obama.  That Clinton will not come clean about her her financial records or about her religious affiliation gives the impression that she has something to hide.

I have been waiting to post on this subject for a long while, hoping that the right words would suddenly come to me in my sleep. Unfortunately, the words I have been searching for have not yet come to me, and I can wait no longer.

The clips that have repeatedly played in the media depict Reverend Wright as a hate-mongering antipatriot, but this portrayal could not be further removed from the truth. All Americans owe it to themselves and to this now demonized man to watch the speeches in their entirety. Removed from their context, I find it understandable that people might find his remarks offensive, but Rev. Wright’s remarks aren’t nearly so inflammatory when placed back into the context of the larger speeches he was giving. The quote “Not God bless America. God damn America.” is simply wrong. The actual quote is expanded: “God damn America as long as America acts like she is God and she is supreme.” Even this quote is still out of context because the speech notes the comparative difference between Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, noting that Bill Clinton was a largely positive force in an era of bad times, but that George W. Bush asserted America’s supremacy over God’s supremacy. Rev. Wright concludes that it is that assertion of America’s supremacy that is damnable.

The other statement that Rev. Wright has been often reported as saying is that America brought 9/11 on itself. Once again this statement was taken entirely out of context. He was actually quoting Ambassador Peck, a white man, who had appeared on Fox News to say “America’s chickens had come home to roost.” The Ambassador’s meaning was clear, he did not mean that America had brought 9/11 on itself, he simply meant that America should not have been surprised that there were people in the world who were angry with us, and that our actions in other part of the world have consequences. 9/11 was the reaction of a militant group to actions that we had taken. 9/11 was a vile act, but it did not happen in isolation. We cannot, and should not, avoid stepping on every toe in our diplomatic relationships across the globe, but we should have known that our actions have made numerous people across the globe angry at our country. This is what Rev. Wright was saying, and he goes on to urge us not to take our own anger out on innocent civilians, as we have so many times in the past.

When you watch these videos in full, it becomes apparent that the Reverend has been treated in a manner that is both unfair and unjust to who he is as a man and as an American. Rev. Wright had been in the Marines, he had fought for this nation. Now we will parse his speeches for a few painful seconds of material and turn our collective backs on this man?

I thought Obama’s speech on race was fantastic, but he did not go nearly far enough in exonerating his religious mentor. Obama remarked that the mistake that Rev. Wright made was not that he was angry about the past, but that he lacked an ability to see the capacity for the country to make positive changes. By making these remarks, Obama bought into the narrative that the media had manufactured about Rev. Wright. What Rev. Wright’s speeches actually portray is an America that can both progress and regress, a dynamic America whose citizens must rely on each other because the government is prone to corruption and abuse. For the sin of accepting a forced narrative rather than asserting an honest counter-narrative, Obama owes Rev. Wright an apology.

I did not write these annotations, the Obama Communications team did. This is about the snarkiest they’ve ever come across. I think they should bring this kind of messaging to the forefront of their press releases. The original .pdf is here.

On Behalf Of Bill Burton
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 6:37 PM
To: Bill Burton
Subject: FW: The Clinton Memo… as annotated by the Obama communicationsdepartment

To: Interested Parties
From: Clinton Campaign
Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Re: Keystone Test: Obama Losing Ground [Get ready for a good one.]

The path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue goes through Pennsylvania so if Barack Obama
can’t win there, how will he win the general election?

[Answer: I suppose by holding obviously Democratic states like California and New
York, and beating McCain in swing states like Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota,
Missouri, Virginia and Wisconsin where Clinton lost to Obama by mostly crushing
margins. But good question.]

After setbacks in Ohio and Texas, Barack Obama needs to demonstrate that he can win
the state of Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is the last state with more than 15 electoral votes
on the primary calendar and Barack Obama has lost six of the seven other largest states
so far – every state except his home state of Illinois.

[If you define “setback” as netting enough delegates out of our 20-plus-point wins in
Mississippi and Wyoming to completely erase any delegate advantage the Clinton
campaign earned out of March 4th, then yeah, we feel pretty setback.]

Pennsylvania is of particular importance, along with Ohio, Florida and Michigan, because
it is dominated by the swing voters who are critical to a Democratic victory in November.
No Democrat has won the presidency without winning Pennsylvania since 1948. And no
candidate has won the Democratic nomination without winning Pennsylvania since 1972.

[What the Clinton campaign secretly means: PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE
FACT THAT WE’VE LOST 14 OF THE LAST 17 CONTESTS AND SAID THAT
MICHIGAN AND FLORIDA WOULDN’T COUNT FOR ANYTHING. Also,
we’re still trying to wrap our minds around the amazing coincidence that the only
“important” states in the nominating process are the ones that Clinton won.]

(more…)

Admiral Fallon, chief of the United States Central Command, was forced to resign on March 11th after comments attributed to him were published in Esquire magazine. If you have no idea how important this man was in terms of the military chain of command, let me lay it out for you. Admiral Fallon replaced four-star General John Abizaid in his role as chief of Central Command. General Petraeus, the current commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, answered directly to Admiral Fallon.

So why was Fallon fired? Because he made comments urging less saber-rattling and more diplomacy with Iran in a magazine interview. I realize that the chain of command exists for a reason. I also understand that the civilian administration at the top of that chain of command should not be publicly contradicted by military leadership, but the forced resignation of one of the best commanders we have over comments he made about a war we have not even begun is ludicrous.

(more…)

New data gathered by Survey USA shows Barack Obama beating John McCain 280 to 258 in the electoral college if the election were held today. According to the same data, Hillary Clinton also beats McCain, albeit by 4 less electoral votes.

This new data is interesting in that it adds a regional aspect to the discussion of which candidate is better prepared to lead the Democrats. Would Democrats rather make major inroads in western states, Virginia and North Dakota, at the cost of Florida and Pennsylvania; or would they rather take Florida at the cost of Michigan, and make no major inroads at all?

The fact that this data shows Clinton losing Michigan is perhaps the most surprising part of this whole study, because she is fighting so hard to get Michigan’s delegates seated at the convention when Obama’s name was not on the Michigan ballot. Obama should either get some delegates from a state in which he posts high numbers, or the DNC should stick to the rules and disallow the entire Michigan delegation altogether. But I digress…

What we can be sure of is that these SUSA electoral numbers will change. In this very strange election cycle anything has become possible and major electoral shifts can occur in a matter of days. I doubt very much that Clinton can win Florida, especially if McCain chooses Florida’s popular Republican Governor Crist as his running mate. If Clinton loses Florida, while failing to pick up any other red states on the electoral map, McCain beats her in November. Similar questions can, of course, be made of Obama’s current tally. While I believe in Obama’s ability to win over prominent red and purple states, I feel less confident about his ability to win in Ohio.

The way around all of this mess is a joint ticket. While I am not keen on Senator Obama sharing a ticket with Senator Clinton, it maybe the only way to solve the current impasse and unify the party around the strongest ticket the Democrats have fielded since Kennedy/Johnson (or even one of the FDR tickets). Democrats seem to forget that the primary objective of politics is to win, that no policy objectives can be reached without victory. As distasteful as it might be to many Democrats, Obama, and his appeal to the young and the formerly disenfranchised, must form a coalition with Clinton, and her appeal to the old guard and the white working-class base.

No matter what happens, Democrats should be proud of their gains over the last 2 years. Compare the recent SUSA data with the same data taken in November 2006 for both Obama and Clinton to see how far the Democratic party has come.