Hillary Clinton did not participate in the attempt at adding a flag-burning amendment to the Constitution. She instead attempted to defuse it by proposing a non-amendment that very narrowly fit the Constitution as interpreted generally by the courts. Consequently, this paragraph,

Why would you celebrate a trait and praise Clinton for—-let’s face it—-pandering like any politician to a characteristic that allows people to be classified by how much they’re willing to suck up to the powerful? Because that’s what flags ultimately represent: they are symbols of the state. And who presently owns the state?

and this paragraph,

Yes, yes, national symbol, unifying (???) force, etc, etc, etc. After this campaign I’ve come to appreciate Hillary more than I used to (but that isn’t saying much about US politicians), and I developed no particular love for Obama by comparison. But a flag-burning amendment is pandering, is tantamount to burning the Constitution in its best and most vulnerable parts, and is above all in the service of the right.

should be corrected by saying that it was not a constitutional amendment, but a non-amendment. However, I do believe that the non-amendment, while it may have been in the “art of the possible” at the time, does not fix the real underlying problem, if indeed the US citizenry are so attached to their flags that it is possible to be politically vilified for supporting freedom of expression over state heraldry.

None of this actually bears on my original point, which stems directly from the Confluence post in question. There seems to be a general belief there that the defense of expression is an act of contempt for the masses. That’s the only way I can interpret it.

This is further reflected in some commenters attitude towards Obama’s church and Rev. Wright and Michelle Obama’s alleged “chip” on her shoulder. Given that, I maintain everything I said about it. If people wish to focus on the factual error, which is a minor part of the piece, then there’s not much I can do.

But there are a few moderately popular reasons for preferring Clinton to Obama that disturb me. A variant of one of these is present in this post at The Confluence.

One of the most die-hard of these right-wing frames is that liberals “hate America.” Why in the world would conservatives think that, we liberals wonder? We love America. We love America so much that we want her to have the best government possible. Can’t these idiotic conservative buttheads understand the difference between hating America and hating America’s government and policies?

Well, maybe they can’t. And maybe…it’s partially our fault, because we do things like this.

You see, we liberals don’t choose our symbols wisely. If we are upset with the government, we should not burn a flag. The flag is not Democratic, Republican or Rosicrucian. It is simply a symbol of America itself. Why would we burn a symbol of America…if we don’t hate America?

Now, who is the idiot - the one that draws simple conclusions from symbolic acts, or the one that doesn’t understand what conclusions will be drawn from these very same acts?

No one understands the power of framing and symbols better than Hillary Clinton, who was re-elected in 2006 with 67% of the popular vote. Senator Clinton took a lot of flak from self-professed “progressives” because she co-sponsored a bill to make it illegal, in certain circumstances, to burn the flag.

(And later: “Burning the flag is like burning the Constitution.” Aren’t limits on political expression—-and deeds like flag-burning are political deeds—-kind of like burning the Constitution? Even a little bit? In theory?)

I’m sure readers here can see that there’s lots of objections to be made about that passage. If I had the energy, I could do a sentence-by-sentence deconstruction of it, but you’d all get bored, as would I. But I think that the objection that is most salient to Corrente readers is this:

If anything, the US cultural overvaluation of symbols is why the Reagan Revolution managed to stick.

Why would you celebrate a trait and praise Clinton for—-let’s face it—-pandering like any politician to a characteristic that allows people to be classified by how much they’re willing to suck up to the powerful? Because that’s what flags ultimately represent: they are symbols of the state. And who presently owns the state?

That is one of the ways by which propaganda allows the Reagan Revolution to have such a lasting effect on American culture.

So why would you (as people regularly do in Confluence comments) blame Michelle Obama for having a “chip” on her shoulder? If truly love and loyalty for the symbols of the powerful is a characteristic of the working class, why would you celebrate that characteristic, and why would you hold Obama’s associates to blame for what is by all reasonable lights a responsible reaction?

Yes, yes, national symbol, unifying (???) force, etc, etc, etc. After this campaign I’ve come to appreciate Hillary more than I used to (but that isn’t saying much about US politicians), and I developed no particular love for Obama by comparison. But a flag-burning amendment is pandering, is tantamount to burning the Constitution in its best and most vulnerable parts, and is above all in the service of the right.

This part of PUMAism is by far the most obviously reactionary. It responds to a resentment of the working class by Whole Foods Nation with a celebration of exactly the things that Obama supporters might actually be right about, without contributing to a critique of the parts that are wrong.

While I occasionally like to throw cold water on the idea of Canada as USlib paradise, it’s just this sort of thing that makes me glad I’m a Canuck. For all his faults, Pierre Trudeau was right about this one, historically right. I’ve lately inched over to the point where I am starting to appreciate the hereditary monarchy and their pop icon vice-regents. I’m mean, it’s a horrifying anachronism and in terrible taste, but it serves its purpose.

Anyway, Lambert quoth:

How about they go fuck themselves?

Either that, or start pushing universal health care, even if it doesn’t have life or death consequences for them. They could console themselves with the thought that the policies FDR put in place led to some pretty good process as well.

And that’s the kicker, isn’t it? They seem to think that policy is a function of process. But we already have (or, at least had) a process that constrains most other processes at a very high level: It’s called constitutional government. Below that level, I’d say process is a function of policy. Put a policy in place to end hunger; the process (Food Stamps, agricultural subsidies (sigh)) follows.

So the “creative class” has it exactly backward. They’re fetishizing the role they play, which is at the process level, and treating their part of the system as a proxy for the whole system.

That is, indeed, the kicker. There are two interpretations of the world going on here, and have been for some time now, and now that the “netroots” hasn’t been cut off at the knees after the first primaries as it was in ’04, these conflicting interpretations have come to the fore.

One view (a view held by a good chunk of the most devoted OFB) is that the “right, natural” policy falls out automatically: after all, the rest of the world has universal health care. Universal health care is so natural and obvious that even the Harper government in Canada is not touching that third rail—-some of their own corporate contributors apparently like it too much.

So if it’s not falling out automatically, then there’s something wrong with the matrix in which policies are being grown. That means that talking about policy—-substantive policy—-is a waste of time. The only thing to do is experiment with process changes and meta issues. One such meta issue is the role of race in the USA. Perhaps by exorcising the Ghost of Racism Past (And Present) with a black Meta Leader. There are other meta issues variously held by other people. But the outline of this viewpoint is the same regardless.

The other viewpoint is the one reflected by Lambert. The meta issues are themselves a result of policy. Policy choices have made Americans increasingly unequal and, for example, created an “I’ve got mine” dynamic that makes such an obvious thing as universal health care impossible to consider. The times when the process has worked best in pushing forward a progressive agenda are ones that existed alongside policy reforms like those of FDR. The USA has the infrastructure to make policy changes—-that’s why it has a constitution, and Congress, and so on. It’s a matter of the will to choose to use it.

The riposte to this is that: structural issues prevent the will to make policy changes from ever being realized at the level at which it matters. Obama has the potential to change these structural issues. More potential than Clinton, at least.

And the response to that is to say that Obama’s structural change has so far involved throwing the policy change under the bus.

And so on, and so forth, ad infinitum, amen.

But the real-world upshot is, Obamafans clearly believe in the process before policy interpretation, and the majority of working-class Dems implicitly accept the policy before process interpretation, and if Clinton takes the nomination, the process people, believing that policy is futile, are likely to make choices that affect US politics adversely—-unless something can be Done With Them. I wonder if this dilemma could have been avoided if Clinton had made process a bigger issue in this campaign (giving a bigger weight to the Dean effect)—-certainly she has made some crucial mistakes. And certainly the lack of process emphasis seems symbolically reflected in what might be seen as poor performance in the caucus states, but that’s just a speculation.

For those of you who know me from elsewhere or even have observed my occasional effusions here, I kind of enjoy skirting the bounds of devil’s advocatry, and, more seriously, I like to take time to entertain the perspective and feeling of the Other Side in almost anything. As I have said before, I currently (Correntely?) disprefer Hillary less than I disprefer Obama, and also think that Hillary would do better than Obama against McCain. So consider this an Olive Branch post in the manner of Kid Oakland. What would the effect of a Clinton win be on the wing of the party that *does* believe, rightly or wrongly, that procedural and symbolic issues are the ones that the Democratic Party needs to confront?

Indeed, that I believe that Obama would have a harder time winning the GE doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t entertain the idea that the (D) party also stands to lose something from a Clinton victory in the primary. For one thing, it seems to me that Obama *has* tapped into something that’s more than mere Clinton-bashing. The fact that he *was* and *is* able to raise money and get feet on the ground and command such devotion and enthusiasm also suggests something. The fact that not only the Big Bloggers ended up in his camp, for the most part, but that low-level dKos diarists ended up Obamafans and are able to stir up this level of passion/desperation over a candidate with a lot of other weaknesses also suggests something to me.

(And that passion is still focused on procedural issues like superdelegates…)

It suggests that there *is* a segment of the Democratic-voting population that *is* passionate about process issues, and that this segment is also the one that can command a lot of fundraising dollars and feet on the ground and/or the web. They’re passionate about process issues, because they believe that structural factors about the party and about US politics have prevented them from taking power in one way or another. And I think that’s a perfectly fair thing to be resentful about, even if it’s not something that can be safely appeased in this or maybe any election cycle.

So while I think that Clinton can defeat McCain more easily than Obama can defeat McCain, either way it’s still going to be hard for either of them to go up against the Maverickociousness (cf. truthiness). Clinton *is* going to need the money and the feet on the ground and the blogthusiasm. So on a Clinton nomination, is it possible to heal this divide? I guess the only way to do so would be for a Clinton candidacy to make process issues somehow relevant to a campaign as well. I don’t know if that can be done in time.

While threats like this and the ones that Donna Brazile seem to have implied may rankle, it remains the case that, whatever the outcome, this nomination campaign will an effect far in the future for the Democratic Party, particularly in the attitudes that its factions will have towards one another.