leah's blog http://www.correntewire.com/blog/7/atom/feed 2007-09-12T16:15:24-04:00 About That Late, Lamented Media Critique: Pt. 2: The Luttwak Edition http://www.correntewire.com/about_that_late_lamented_media_critique_pt_2_the_luttwak_edition 2008-05-12T18:32:20-04:00 2008-05-12T18:32:20-04:00 leah How on earth did this Op Ed get published? That is what I want to know.

Here is Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member in good standing of the Washington foreign policy establishment, all dues paid up, (which probably answers my opening question), speculating in this morning’s New York Times about the security implications of an Obama presidency, for Obama himself and for the country, unembarrassed to tell us that Obama’s conversion to Christianity makes him ripe for punishment by beheading, no less, or at best, by stoning or by hanging.

]]> How on earth did this Op Ed get published? That is what I want to know.

Here is Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member in good standing of the Washington foreign policy establishment, all dues paid up, (which probably answers my opening question), speculating in this morning’s New York Times about the security implications of an Obama presidency, for Obama himself and for the country, unembarrassed to tell us that Obama’s conversion to Christianity makes him ripe for punishment by beheading, no less, or at best, by stoning or by hanging.

No, I’m not kidding:

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings. (Some may point to cases in which lesser punishments were ordered — as with some Egyptian intellectuals who have been punished for writings that were construed as apostasy — but those were really instances of supposed heresy, not explicitly declared apostasy as in Senator Obama’s case.)

It is true that the criminal codes in most Muslim countries do not mandate execution for apostasy (although a law doing exactly that is pending before Iran’s Parliament and in two Malaysian states). But as a practical matter, in very few Islamic countries do the governments have sufficient authority to resist demands for the punishment of apostates at the hands of religious authorities.

For example, in Iran in 1994 the intervention of Pope John Paul II and others won a Christian convert a last-minute reprieve, but the man was abducted and killed shortly after his release. Likewise, in 2006 in Afghanistan, a Christian convert had to be declared insane to prevent his execution, and he was still forced to flee to Italy.

Think about those three paragraphs. Luttwak is talking about a potential Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States. Aside from being bizarre, could it be a more lurid speculation?

Gee, and here I’d been told by Senator McCain that Obama had been endorsed by Hamas, not that Luttwak is responsible for anything he doesn’t say himself.

Luttwak isn’t imagining that any particular Muslim country might be able to get its hands on an apostate President Obama, but look at his loony approach to what kind of security issues might be involved in protecting such a resident.

Because no government is likely to allow the prosecution of a President Obama — not even those of Iran and Saudi Arabia, the only two countries where Islamic religious courts dominate over secular law — another provision of Muslim law is perhaps more relevant: it prohibits punishment for any Muslim who kills any apostate, and effectively prohibits interference with such a killing.

Wait! Before you wipe that sweat from your brow, get a load of this, and we use the word “load” advisedly:

At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.

Note that I didn’t tag this with any right-wing categories, although Luttwak has exhibited decided right-wing leanings in the past, but he also has a maverick reputation, (not the equal of McCain’s, of course), which he has occasionally justified. But here we have a sophisticated sample of what the right and Republicans have in store for presidential candidate Obama. Makes that big, bad do-anything-to-win Clinton campaign look like a bunch of dry pussies, doesn’t it?

We’ve already seen cruder versions of what is essentially an attempt to rerun Bush-pere’s campaign against Michael Dukakis against Obama, to paint him as vaguely exotic in ways that aren’t quite American, urban, academic, intellectual, ethnic, liberal, a card-carrying ACLU member, whose political beliefs place him outside the American mainstream. It was crude then, and is stil crude, but it worked. And Luttwak has a masters’ touch.

He never claims that Obama has ever been a Muslim, only that he will be so regarded in the Muslim world because Obama was born to a Muslim father.

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

Luttwak’s stated purpose in the piece is to disabuse Americans of any hope that an Obama presidency will improve America’s relations with Islamic countries. Yes, Obama is popular in Africa, but Luttwak warns us, “…it is a mistake to conflate his African identity with his Muslim heritage.” Notice how skillfully inserted is the notion that Obama has a “Muslim” heritage, separate from his “African” identity?

Why should we consider Obama’s ties with Africa through the figure of his father, as an “identity?” Doesn’t it make more sense to consider it a heritage? Well, we all recognize that Obama has a fairly direct tie to Africa through his African father, so Luttwak pairs that so-called “identity” with his own insistence that there is some genuine way for all of us to think of Obama having a Muslim heritage, which becomes a kinder, gentler, and therefore more believable tie between Obama and being Muslim than the apostate Muslim “identity” Luttwak insists the vast majority of Muslims will insist on seeing.

To make his case that an Obama presidency might actually complicate and even make more difficult America’s relations with Islamic countries and peoples, Luttwak makes a claim that Obama’s appeal is self-consciously charismatic, and thus invites voters to project onto him their “well-meaning hopes,” among which better relations with the Islamic world have an understandable priority.

A similar critique of Obama’s leadership style is not unknown here at Corrente, although Luttwak is at pains to claim that he is not criticizing Obama, he’s not even saying that worries about a President Obama’s impact on our relations with Islam will likely be an issue in the campaign, or that it should be. One wonders, then, why he bothered to write a his op ed?

I would hope that the fact that some of you have specific criticisms of the Obama campaign, and in particular, the charismatic aspects of it, won’t be tempted to feel that Luttwak has any point in his op ed worth making. Because he doesn’t. I’m not going to claim that I know what his motives were in writing it, but I know that it does the work of the right-wing, and the problems we are having with the Muslim world are far more complex, and have been injured far more by the actions of the Bush administration and it’s rightwing supporters than any negatives that might accrue from Barach Obama’s birth to an African father and an American mother.

Consider this post my attempt to keep our late, lamented media critique alive and well here at Corrente.

]]> Upset At Bowers? Here's A Better Awful Scarey Post To Be Upset About http://www.correntewire.com/upset_at_bowers_heres_a_better_awful_scarey_post_to_be_upset_about 2008-05-10T11:47:49-04:00 2008-05-10T11:47:49-04:00 leah Frankly, I don’t find all that much to get upset about in the Chris Bowers Open Left post to which Lambert refers here. Okay, the post has a slightly condescending tinge to its tone, but why shouldn’t Democrats be proud that now more than ever the Democratic base looks like America? Bill Clinton himself once noted the same, and pledged that his administration would too, one pledge among many, many that Clinton kept.

While I’m on this subject, I want to remind everyone that neither any particular African-American nor the African-American community as a whole needs to apologize for voting for an African-American candidate for President, or any other office, for that matter. Black folks have been voting for white folks for decades now. And it isn’t as if Obama got their support automatically. It was only when he convinced many of them that he was viable, and presented a vision they obviously found inspiring, as is true for a large swathe of the electorate, that they have flocked to him. So, we are not talking about identity politics here. Remember, it was Obama who has been running as a post-racial candidate, for which many of us here at Corrente criticized him, rightly so, in my opinion.

Back to Bowers. It’s this stunning post that should be the focus of our incredulous ire, although I do realize that in Lambert’s majestic takedown, of Matt Stoller’s chilling foray into Obama triumphalism, this Bowers post is mentioned along with the fact that Bowers starts with an admiring nod to the Stoller post.

In his post, Bowers is imagining/predicting what kind of changes in Democratic governance we might be seeing from an Obama presidency. Fasten your seat belts.

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

I’m not even sure what that means. Who the hell are the creative class?

]]> Frankly, I don’t find all that much to get upset about in the Chris Bowers Open Left post to which Lambert refers here. Okay, the post has a slightly condescending tinge to its tone, but why shouldn’t Democrats be proud that now more than ever the Democratic base looks like America? Bill Clinton himself once noted the same, and pledged that his administration would too, one pledge among many, many that Clinton kept.

While I’m on this subject, I want to remind everyone that neither any particular African-American nor the African-American community as a whole needs to apologize for voting for an African-American candidate for President, or any other office, for that matter. Black folks have been voting for white folks for decades now. And it isn’t as if Obama got their support automatically. It was only when he convinced many of them that he was viable, and presented a vision they obviously found inspiring, as is true for a large swathe of the electorate, that they have flocked to him. So, we are not talking about identity politics here. Remember, it was Obama who has been running as a post-racial candidate, for which many of us here at Corrente criticized him, rightly so, in my opinion.

Back to Bowers. It’s this stunning post that should be the focus of our incredulous ire, although I do realize that in Lambert’s majestic takedown, of Matt Stoller’s chilling foray into Obama triumphalism, this Bowers post is mentioned along with the fact that Bowers starts with an admiring nod to the Stoller post.

In his post, Bowers is imagining/predicting what kind of changes in Democratic governance we might be seeing from an Obama presidency. Fasten your seat belts.

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

I’m not even sure what that means. Who the hell are the creative class?

Many of my friends, all of them like me, unabashed, unrepentant, unbowed, unapologetic old-fashioned liberals, are academics; in fact, I’m almost the only one among them who doesn’t have an advanced degree. However, I’m the only one among them who has ever done any community organizing. That also means that I’m the only one who has ever had much contact with genuinely poor folks, both white and black, and the only one who has counted among her friends, woman and families trying to bring up their children on public assistance.

Lambert already highlighted this paragraph, but it’s worth quoting again; yes, it’s that cluelessly awful.

Policy Shift: Out with the DLC, up with technocratic wonks. My sense of Obama and his policy team is overwhelmingly one of technocratic, generally less overtly ideological professional policy types. We should see a shift from the more corporate and triangulating policy focus of the Democratic Party in the 1990’s, and see it replaced by whatever centrist, technocratic policies are the wonkish flavor of the month. It will all be very oriented toward think-tank and academic types, and be reminiscent of policy making in the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s. A sort of “technocratic liberalism” that will be less infuriating than DLC style governance, but still not overtly leftist.

What seems to continually evade the notice of Obama supporters like Stoller and Bowers is that most of what they have to say about Obama and the direction he will take the Democratic Party could have been said about Bill Clinton and the DLC in the late eighties and early nineties. What were Al From & co but “technocrats, think-tank and academic types.”

Even more off the Stoller/Bowers radar screen is the fact that in 1992, Bill Clinton did not run a DLC campaign. Yes, he has remained a loyal member of the group, as he has of other constituent and policy and power broker groups in and out of the party, but he has never limited himself to DLC ways of thinking and speaking.

One instance: Bill Clinton ran a frontal campaign against Reaganomics, and his critique was based on the entirely liberal/progressive issue of the lack of fundamental economic justice during the Reagan/Bush years, which Clinton used the word “fairness” to describe. Clinton combined that critique with technocratic, wonkish fixes to correct the neglect during the previous 12 years of such issues as health care, rents in the middle class security net, the lack of investment in infrastructure, and the over-reliance on market solutions to all problems, particularly as regarded job insecurity.

What is it about these younger “creative class” types that causes them to remain so completely clueless about the fifties and sixties? It is true that liberal and left think-tanks reigned supreme during this period; it was to these experts that most media people turned for information, Most of the think-tanks were academically based, and since academia is more liberal than it is conservative most of them leaned left, nor was there much counter-balance, since the right hadn’t yet figured out that it needed to build a parallel structure separate from the academia itself.

But change in the sixties was a bottom up phenomenon, which the Democratic Party could barely keep up with, whether it was the civil rights movement, Mario Savio and the free-speech movement, or the anti-war movement, or the anti-nuclear movement. Remember, these movements were mounting a critique of essentially liberal institutions - like Savio at Berkeley, where the critique was pointing out that this famously liberal campus had entirely too many decidedly illiberal, corporate connections; the military-industrial complex, anyone?

Call me a boomer if you want, even though I was a war baby, but damnit, history matters, and knowing what went on before you got to the scene is important. “Technocratic liberalism?” Wasn’t that what was meant by “the best and the brightest?”

Bill Clinton’s message in 1992 was not that different from Obama’s. The Clintons didn’t see themselves as divisive figures. They didn’t intend to govern by partisan means. It was a centrist Republican like Bob Dole who signaled right from the beginning of the Clinton presidency that Republicans did not intend to treat Clinton has if he had any legitimate right to be President. And with the help of a press which had become increasingly controlled by the increasingly right-wing messages of the Republican party, that is precisely what they did for the next eight years, using the levers of governmental power in the most narrowly partisan way, to attack the Clinton administration, falsely, as far-left, corrupt, feckless, and un-American.

Have either Stoller or Bowers looked at the income statistics recently? What is it - 80% of Americans, which means American families, who make less than fifty thousand dollars a year. Or maybe it’s even less than that. Readers?

Apparently it isn’t income that makes you part of the creative class? What about small-scale organic farmers? What about suburbanites? All of us have more than one identity, for heaven’s sake.

I think it’s fine if the Democratic Party doesn’t have to depend on the South. But write the South off? What about all the black folks who live there? What about the miners in West Virginia; what about the ex-textile workers in the Carolinas? What about the Latino populations who work in those industrial food production factories, plucking chikens, and God only knows what else?

And what the hell does this mean?

# Coalition reorganization: Out with party silos, in with squishy goo-goos. In addition to a shift in culture and policy focus, I also expect a different approach to coalition building. A long-standing Democrats approach of transactional politics with different issue and demographic silos in the party shift toward an emphasis on good government (goo goo) approaches. We will see lots of emphasis on non-partisanship, ethics reform, election reform instead of on, say, placating labor unions, environment groups, and the LGBT community by throwing each of these groups a policy bone or two. Now, the focus will be on broad, squishy fixes that are designed to appeal to several groups at once. George Lakoff wrote about this a couple months ago.

Throw a policy bone? Global warming is of concern only to environmental groups? Is that what’s being said here? Isn’t the whole point of a unity approach to find the common themes that unite different perspectives.

I don’t know anyone among my friends who doesn’t think that election reform is a first order need, whether they are academics, working class blacks, and remember, there are a lot those folks around, or rural farmers with their own environmental concerns. Let’s just hope that the many congressional Democrats who are flocking to Obama will do a litle better in the coming years about doing something about an electoral system that makes it too hard to vote, and impossible to be sure that all the votes will be counted accurately.

As a final note, let me only point out that we, or at least I, have no idea how much of this is actually coming from the Obama campaign. But both Stoller and Bowers and so many other Obama supporters are beginning to make me regret my own vote for Obama.

Checking the links for this post, I noticed that Turkana takes on Bowers at The Left Coast; had I known, I don’t think I’d have bothered, he does such a first-rate job; check it out here.

]]> WWTFBQ Watch: The Hoosier Edition http://www.correntewire.com/wwtfbq_watch_the_hoosier_edition 2008-05-01T20:20:35-04:00 2008-05-02T06:11:51-04:00 leah And surely, what is helping to make this primary season so hellish are all the attempts to close it down.

In case you haven’t heard, and assuming I get this up before anyone else posts on it, a superdelegate Bill Clinton once chose to head the DNC and was up-to-now a declared Hillary-supporter, has just announced today that he is switching his support to Obama, and urging all Hoosier voters to do likewise in order to end the primary process in its tracks after next Tuesday. As part of this strategy, he is also urging his fellow superdelegates to wait no longer to declare their preferences, so we can all unite behind Barack and begin to do battle with McSame.

Joe Andrew may not be a household name, but he is from Indiana and he made his statement in the state, and in a letter published on the Huffington Post.

]]> And surely, what is helping to make this primary season so hellish are all the attempts to close it down.

In case you haven’t heard, and assuming I get this up before anyone else posts on it, a superdelegate Bill Clinton once chose to head the DNC and was up-to-now a declared Hillary-supporter, has just announced today that he is switching his support to Obama, and urging all Hoosier voters to do likewise in order to end the primary process in its tracks after next Tuesday. As part of this strategy, he is also urging his fellow superdelegates to wait no longer to declare their preferences, so we can all unite behind Barack and begin to do battle with McSame.

Joe Andrew may not be a household name, but he is from Indiana and he made his statement in the state, and in a letter published on the Huffington Post.

I have been inspired.

Today I am announcing my support for Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. I am changing my support from Senator Clinton to Senator Obama, and calling for my fellow Democrats across my home State of Indiana, and my fellow super delegates across the nation, to heal the rift in our Party and unite behind Barack Obama.

The hardest decisions in life are not between good and bad or right and wrong, but between two goods or two rights. That is the decision Democrats face today. We have an embarrassment of riches, but as much as we may love our candidates and revel in the political process that has brought Presidential politics to places that have not seen it in a generation, we cannot let our family affair hurt America by helping John McCain.

edit

Let us come together right now behind an inspiring leader who not only has the audacity to challenge the old divisive politics, but the audacity to make us all hope for a better America.

I believe that Bill Clinton will be remembered as one of our nation’s great Presidents, and Senator Clinton as one of our nation’s great public servants. But as much as I respect and admire them both, it is clear that a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue this process, and a vote to continue this process is a vote that assists John McCain.

I ask Hoosiers to come together and vote for Barack Obama to be our next President. In an accident of timing, Indiana has been given the opportunity to truly make a difference. Hoosiers should grab that power and do what in their heart they know is right. They should reject the old negative politics and vote for true change. Don’t settle for the tried and true and the simplistic slogans, but listen to your heart and dare to be inspired. Only a cynic would be critical of Barack Obama inspiring millions. Only the uninformed could forget that the candidate that wins in November is always the candidate that inspires millions.

I ask the leaders of our Party to come together after this Tuesday’s primary to heal wounds and unite us around a single nominee. While I was hopeful that a long, contested primary season would invigorate our Party, the polls show that the tone and temperature of the race is now hurting us. John McCain, without doing much of anything, is now competitive against both of our remaining candidates. We are doing his work for him and distracting Americans from the issues that really affect all of our lives. (emphasis mine in all blockquotes)

Well, fuck you, Joe Andrew.

You’ll notice after praising Bill and Hill, Mr. Andrew goes on to imply that they and Clinton voters are divisive, negative, uninspired, cynical, and simplistic. Yeah, that’s the way to get us all united.

In addition to the honey-coated insults, check out this edition of Memeorandum, wherein the Joe Andrew story is aggregated.

Notice anything? Like the surrounding stories that show Hillary completely competitive with Obama in Indiana, and also in North Carolina. Not to mention the teeter-tottering they’re both doing in the national daily tracking polls. I’m of the opinion that we need to throw that damn throwing someone under the bus meme under the nearest bus, but could it be any clearer that what Joe Andrew is trying to do is throw Hillary Clinton under the on-rushing express train that her campaign has recently become?

I’m not particularly pleased by those polls, especially if Hillary’s new competitiveness might have come as a result of the Wright blow-up, about which I’ll speak at greater length in a different post, for which, please note, neither Senator Clinton nor her campaign deserves condemnation, not having had anything to do with why and how it erupted. But it is a fact that by any measure the Democratic base is almost evenly split between these two candidates. That doesn’t mean there is no way for either of them to win legitimately. But it does argue for the necessity of allowing the remaining states to hold relevant primaries, not ones already superseded by superdelegates having closed down the nominating process by uniting behind a single candidate.

Whatever happened to all that concern about those elite delegates being guided by the popular will? Granted, it is mathematically unlikely that Hillary can beat Obama in the pledged delegate count, but she might well garner more of the popular vote than he. That doesn’t mean Obama can’t win legitimately even if she does, but how can it possibly be a legitimate win, as opposed to a legal, by-the-rules one, if millions of voters are once again disenfranchised by party elites, apparently frightened by vigorous debate, and elections themselves, the very foundation of democratic governance.

So much hot air has been expended by the OFB and the SCLM

”> warning against the possibility that the fabled Clinton “machine,” and we do mean “fabled,” will find a way to steal the nomination in some underhanded, against-the-rules manner by convincing superdelegates that she is the better candidate, and thus fatally divide the Democratic Party, (as if there is any way for Obama to win without convincing the superdelegates of exactly the same thing), very few people seem to have noticed that the WWTFBQ faction, in and out of the media, is pushing for a scenario that is just, if not more, undemocratic, and equally as likely to disrupt party unity.

So, while I’m handing out obscenities, fuck you, too Matt Stoller, and your outrageous suggestion that Obama needs to shut down the primary process any way he can, by destroying Hillary, perhaps by catching her upside the head with her own kitchen sink strategy, or so Stoller implies, as if the Obama campaign hasn’t been doing that almost from the beginning.

“…the point is that Clinton is running as a full-blown conservative. And why shouldn’t she do that and go on O’Reilly? We have rejected her, so she has to find her votes somewhere. Nevertheless, it’s time to recognize that she is an opponent of liberals, and act that way.

Moveon and SEIU are probably the only groups with the capacity to do this, but basically, the Bosnia sniper fire lie needs to be replayed over and over in Indiana, and then spliced with this tax scam and the quote that her plan will lose 300,000 highway jobs because she will say anything to get elected. Clinton needs to be called out as a liar who is a weak candidate, and it is Obama-supporting Moveon members that could do this. Obviously the group would have trouble since many of its members do like Clinton, but honestly, we need a killer instinct here and not more praise of Obama.

Alternatively, SEIU could do it, but they run into a similar institutional hurdle of having ties to Clinton. Maybe the only group that could do it would be a savvy group of wealthy Obama backers who could form a 527 and just get this done.”

Democracy in action.

Lambert has already noted the extreme misogyny of the language employed, but let’s not fail to notice the hypocrisy of those who have warned us constantly about that fearsome Clinton machine, and are now busy trying to find ways to shut down all elections after Indiana.

And about that kitchen sink strategy the Clinton campaign has supposedly admitted to employing, check out Bob Somerby, who decided to try and discover the actual provenance of this now well-established oft-mentioned trope, and lo and behold, the author is one of the less reliable political reporters at The New York Times, and that’s saying something, whose single source is an unnamed Clinton campaign aide. I’ll give you the link at the end of the post.

In fairness to Matt, I should note that he has an excellent post up that seeks to bring some sanity to the discussion of whatever problems have developed out of the WVWW voter registeation efforts by reminding readers of “…WVWV’s long track record of registering unmarried women and statements from both Obama and Clinton supporters validating their work. WVWV has worked with the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza, and is a highly respected organization that does real data-driven voter registration oriented towards registering the 20 million unmarried women that were not even registered in 2004.”

And yet, these are the kinds of nasty accusations coming at WVWV.

edit

I believe this is the lowest point I have ever seen the blogosphere sink. There is no reason whatsoever for this mob mentality to go after one of the most important voter registration efforts out there designed to empower women. I don’t meant that WVWV shouldn’t be questioned and held accountable for its incompetence, but there is a difference between arguing that the group made mistakes and making the case that it is a voter suppression effort.

There is simply no motive here for voter suppression. If WVWV was trying to suppress votes in North Carolina for Clinton or Obama, why would they also be doing this work in 24 states at the same time? If they are such an evil anti-progressive group, why would they award ’female blogger of the year to Digby’ and run ads encouraging women to vote?

The most likely reason WVWV is engaging in weird voter registration efforts is because they didn’t expect the primary to go on this long and their strategy was organized around registering voters for the general election. There’s a lot of hype around WVWV sending people information after the voter registration deadline had already passed, as if WVWV was trying to suppress primary votes. But it’s quite clear that WVWV is trying to register people for the general election, and that deadline hasn’t passed.

Read the whole thing and several others that manage to spread more light than heat on this new “Clinton scandal,” in which John Podesta is now being smeared as part of this dark Rovian plot.

What is frustrating is Stoller’s inability to see any connection between his own anti-Clinton post and the kind of comment threads he now sees as a low-point for the blogisphere.

For awhile I didn’t think it would matter, because so many voters continued to say they would vote for whomever won the nomination, but with the ruination of the Democratic Party always being such a favored media narrative, even non-blog-reading voters are picking up on the divisiveness and the bitterness, and worst of all, on the negative talking points being presented against both candidates.

As much as I think intra-party divisiveness is now something we should be worried about, without clear thinking about the sources of that disunity and some real attempt to genuinely bring both sets of voters together, Obama’s and Clinton’s, the kind of worry being expressed by Matt Stoller and Joe Andrew and countless other mainly Obama supporters is more more likely to produce yet more discord and bitterness all around.

There are signs from the Clinton campaign that they expect some sort of resolution to happen in June, after the last primary, and Chairman Dean has indicated he sees a similar timetable ahead. The only way it goes to the convention is if Hillary Clinton has made a strong enough showing in the remaining weeks to change the dynamic of what still looks like Obama taking the nomination. But there was never anything certain about that, and it is less certain today. Talk about playing the inevitability card - that may be where Hillary started her campaign, but it appears to be where Obama is ending his, which is okay, as long as he doesn’t damage the Democratic Party by telling whole blocs of voters their voices need not be heard, their votes need not be counted.

I’m not just putting this onto Obama voters. The anger and bitterness being expressed on blogs in posts and comments crosses campaign lines. Even here at Corrente, I’ve found some dispiriting examples of comment threads, and occasional posts in which that late, lamented media critique Lambert rightly criticizes the boiz on the A-blogs for having deserted is similarly absent. In fact, I’ll go further; whether its a pro or an anti-Clinton thread, a pro or an anti-Obama thread, too often not only does it seem as if our blogispheric media critique has gone walkabout, but worse still, that
we are beginning to pick up some of the nastier habits of our plutocratic media courtiers.

In my next post, I’ll explore the frightening possibility that we’re all Maureen Dowd now.

Is intra-party divisiveness something we should be worried about? Yes, we should. But worry without clear thinking about the sources of that disunity and some real attempt to genuinely bring both sets of voters together, Obama’s and Clinton’s, is not the way to go about it. It’s much more likely to produce yet more discord and bitterness all around.

There are signs from the Clinton campaign that they expect some sort of resolution to happen in June, after the last primary, and Chairman Dean has indicated he expects a similar outcome. The only way it goes to the convention is if Hillary Clinton has made a strong enough showing in the remaining weeks to change the dynamic of what still looks like Obama taking the nomination. But there was never anything certain about that, and it is less certain today. Talk about playing the inevitability card - that may be where Hillary started her campaign, but appears to be where Obama is ending his, which is okay, as long as he doesn’t damage the Democratic Party by telling whole blocs of voters their voices need not be heard, their votes need not be counted.

Here’s that Daily Howler Somerby link; go read.

]]> Take A Look At What Real* Racism Looks Like http://www.correntewire.com/take_a_look_at_what_real_racism_looks_like 2008-03-28T14:54:15-04:00 2008-03-28T14:54:15-04:00 leah No, I’m not talking about the Klan, or even the Republicans “southern strategy.”

But I do want to place this post in the context of much of the back and forth that is going on here at Corrente and through-out the liberal blogisphere about race and racism, what is it, when is it, and who is playing with it.

Mary-Beth at Wampum reminds us of an even wider perspective that liberals have as much difficulty even remembering exists as do right-wingers.

For anyone who doesn’t understand why the national discussion of race needs to address more than just African-American concerns, here’s exhibit one, from today’s LA Times editorial page:

Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the American Indians? Will they be reduced to being little more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what was once a great culture? In Tibet itself, that sad fate is looking more and more likely.

What makes it all the more remarkable is that aside from its placement in a major American newspaper, the piece in question is by Ian Buruma, a regular contributer at the NYRB, and as Mary-Beth points out, “the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College.”

Here’s a question I’d like to ask our readers. Have you already been able to spot what it is in this quote that deserves to be considered within our discussions of American racism?

For those of you who might be distracted by Buruma’s tip of the hat to the “once great culture” of native Americans, which, in fact, was actually multi-cultural and multi-lingual, Mary-Beth has a second post up today that will help you see through these apparently innocent bows to a conception of Native American past greatness.

You see, it seems there was another writer/journalist back in the 19th century who bemoaned the tragedy of exactly that past greatness, in terms remarkably similar to Buruma’s take today.

]]> No, I’m not talking about the Klan, or even the Republicans “southern strategy.”

But I do want to place this post in the context of much of the back and forth that is going on here at Corrente and through-out the liberal blogisphere about race and racism, what is it, when is it, and who is playing with it.

Mary-Beth at Wampum reminds us of an even wider perspective that liberals have as much difficulty even remembering exists as do right-wingers.

For anyone who doesn’t understand why the national discussion of race needs to address more than just African-American concerns, here’s exhibit one, from today’s LA Times editorial page:

Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the American Indians? Will they be reduced to being little more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what was once a great culture? In Tibet itself, that sad fate is looking more and more likely.

What makes it all the more remarkable is that aside from its placement in a major American newspaper, the piece in question is by Ian Buruma, a regular contributer at the NYRB, and as Mary-Beth points out, “the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College.”

Here’s a question I’d like to ask our readers. Have you already been able to spot what it is in this quote that deserves to be considered within our discussions of American racism?

For those of you who might be distracted by Buruma’s tip of the hat to the “once great culture” of native Americans, which, in fact, was actually multi-cultural and multi-lingual, Mary-Beth has a second post up today that will help you see through these apparently innocent bows to a conception of Native American past greatness.

You see, it seems there was another writer/journalist back in the 19th century who bemoaned the tragedy of exactly that past greatness, in terms remarkably similar to Buruma’s take today.

******

Actually, both the 18th and 19th centuries are replete with expressive appreciations for the beauty and majesty of various Indian cultures, which, nevertheless, didn’t cause much hesitation on the part of European Americans to destroy those cultures by destroying the people who’d created them. In addition, the past greatness trope has the effect of freezing even that past “greatness” in a time warp, as if native American cultures were static, not subject to change, until the coming of Europeans, which is just another way of dehumanizing Native Americans. Human beings live in time and space; all cultures have a history, all cultures are subject to change.

There is no reason to think that American Indians would not have found their own ways to adapt, (think of the great horse cultures of the American plains), to compromise, or not, with the coming of the Europeans to this continent, had those Europeans not been so determined to rid the continent of those very peoples and their cultures said Europeans found here, an impetus, I probably don’t need to remind you, which was continued relentlessly after America wrested its independence from Britain.

I won’t spoil the surprise of who the writer Mary-Beth quotes is, so you’ll have to go read her post to find out, I will only say that the logic of the two quotes she presents are shattering.

The original post is right under the second post.

Mary-Beth notes that except for Susie Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla,, also a Corrente favorite, there hasn’t been much notice of Buruma’s piece or Wampum’s coverage of it, but just in case you get inspired, Mary-Beth does include Buruma email address: buruma@bard.edu.

*Please note that my reference to “real” racism is not meant to start a competition between which racism directed at which minority group is the more “real,” okay?

]]> For President's Day: Some Presidential Comparisons http://www.correntewire.com/for_presidents_day_some_presidential_comparisons 2008-02-18T17:43:15-05:00 2008-02-18T23:07:17-05:00 leah What follows is a post I wrote some time ago, shortly after Bush’s 2nd Inaugural. I thought it might be worth reposting on this particular day, since it includes a comparison of both Lincoln and Truman to Bush, and seeks to discuss political rhetoric and its discontents. I also thought it might be a pleasant respite from our current obsession with the Democratic Presidential primary, as well as offering a frame for contemplating the ruin Bush’s second terms has wrecked not only on the country, but on his own likely historical reputation.

Dubya’s Dubious Second Inaugural:The Bad Faith Of George W. Bush

Four years ago, at the time of Bush’s 1st Inaugural Address, despite the bitterness left behind by the manner in which the 2000 presidential election was decided, despite the “winner’s” inability to find a graceful way to acknowledge the extraordinary circumstances that had brought him to the Presidency, or even an ungraceful way, swept up in the grandeur of that peaceful transfer of power without which no democratic republic can long endure, I was able to acknowledge the surprising power of some of Bush’s rhetoric, and to feel some hope that he actually meant some tiny fraction of what he was saying.

Nunca mas, as they have had occasion to say in Argentina.

Bush made it easy last Thursday; everything about his second inaugural address, its grandiosity, its simple-minded diction and biblical intimations, the insistent refusal to acknowledge complexity, its wildly overstated and pitifully under-defined ambitions, its ahistorical smugness, struck me as downright preposterous, which will explain my amazement at the credulity with which the speech was received; yes, there were some reservations expressed at the practical implications and applicability of such a pure statement of American idealism, but rather less comment willing to point out that the speech’s efficacy as a statement of policy could be measured in inverse proportion to its almost demented insistence that ideas exist in some ethereal space untouched by anything as gritty and unpleasant as a fact.

Instead, once again we were asked to wonder at the poetic eloquence of Michael Gerson’s prose, and if we happened to be liberals, admonished not to get too picky about the fathoms-deep divide between Bush’s rhetoric and the reality of his policies, lest we peg ourselves, once again, as outside the great and grand ideas upon which our republic stands.

Chris Suellentrop, for instance, writing in Slate, parses the speech to bolster his own praise for it as a wonderful piece of oratory, credits it with announcing a second Bush doctrine, (the first, preemptive war, this second, the peaceful pursuit of democracy everywhere, and nary a hint the two doctrines might contradict one another), then proceeds to question the validity of the speech’s central thesis, which strikes Chris as being as simple-minded as the formulation by “some” on the left, that 9/11 was caused by poverty, and then finishes by warning liberals — well, unlike Mr. Suellentrop, I shall let him speak for himself:

]]> What follows is a post I wrote some time ago, shortly after Bush’s 2nd Inaugural. I thought it might be worth reposting on this particular day, since it includes a comparison of both Lincoln and Truman to Bush, and seeks to discuss political rhetoric and its discontents. I also thought it might be a pleasant respite from our current obsession with the Democratic Presidential primary, as well as offering a frame for contemplating the ruin Bush’s second terms has wrecked not only on the country, but on his own likely historical reputation.

Dubya’s Dubious Second Inaugural:The Bad Faith Of George W. Bush

Four years ago, at the time of Bush’s 1st Inaugural Address, despite the bitterness left behind by the manner in which the 2000 presidential election was decided, despite the “winner’s” inability to find a graceful way to acknowledge the extraordinary circumstances that had brought him to the Presidency, or even an ungraceful way, swept up in the grandeur of that peaceful transfer of power without which no democratic republic can long endure, I was able to acknowledge the surprising power of some of Bush’s rhetoric, and to feel some hope that he actually meant some tiny fraction of what he was saying.

Nunca mas, as they have had occasion to say in Argentina.

Bush made it easy last Thursday; everything about his second inaugural address, its grandiosity, its simple-minded diction and biblical intimations, the insistent refusal to acknowledge complexity, its wildly overstated and pitifully under-defined ambitions, its ahistorical smugness, struck me as downright preposterous, which will explain my amazement at the credulity with which the speech was received; yes, there were some reservations expressed at the practical implications and applicability of such a pure statement of American idealism, but rather less comment willing to point out that the speech’s efficacy as a statement of policy could be measured in inverse proportion to its almost demented insistence that ideas exist in some ethereal space untouched by anything as gritty and unpleasant as a fact.

Instead, once again we were asked to wonder at the poetic eloquence of Michael Gerson’s prose, and if we happened to be liberals, admonished not to get too picky about the fathoms-deep divide between Bush’s rhetoric and the reality of his policies, lest we peg ourselves, once again, as outside the great and grand ideas upon which our republic stands.

Chris Suellentrop, for instance, writing in Slate, parses the speech to bolster his own praise for it as a wonderful piece of oratory, credits it with announcing a second Bush doctrine, (the first, preemptive war, this second, the peaceful pursuit of democracy everywhere, and nary a hint the two doctrines might contradict one another), then proceeds to question the validity of the speech’s central thesis, which strikes Chris as being as simple-minded as the formulation by “some” on the left, that 9/11 was caused by poverty, and then finishes by warning liberals — well, unlike Mr. Suellentrop, I shall let him speak for himself:

******

The abolition of tyranny is a worthy goal for an American government, even if it is unattainable. Liberals, who will be inclined to quarrel with Bush’s message, should have no objections to the values Bush identified as the guiding principles for his second administration. The issue is whether he really has any intention of promoting democracy in Russia, China, and the Mideast when promoting it comes into conflict with other economic and security interests of the United States. There is much reason for skepticism here, such as Bush’s policy in relation to Saudi Arabia, Tibet, and Chechnya during his first term. But rather than criticizing Bush’s speech, Democrats should nod vigorously and then hold him to it.

Really now, Suellentrop, when has George W. Bush ever been held to account for anything he’s said as President; in order for that to happen we’d have to have a whole other kind of journalist than the likes of you.

Similar remarks could be heard on the cable news chat shows from people like Andrea Mitchell and Howard Fineman - Bush’s inaugural address was a rhetorical triumph whose only problem was that he’d laid out such an ambitious foreign policy that now he could and would be criticized whenever he might seem not to be backing democrcy anywhere in the world; like Chris Sullentrop, all these commentators appeared to accept the notion that values exist exclusively in the words used to describe and define them.

I think it probable that George W. Bush believes he meant every word that his speechwriters cooked up for him, although I think it just as probable that he also enjoys the malicious pleasure of believing that his ringing claims of idealism are a thumb in the eye of all those “elitist” liberals. In fact, one of the most unremarked upon aspect of his stint as President is Bush’s odd relationship to words. No, not those tiresome Bushisms, although Mark Crispin Miller has shown us brilliantly how revealing they are of Bush’s true self. What I refer to is this President’s strangely reverent approach to his own language, in which I include rhetoric supplied to him by his speechwriters; once he states a fact or an idea, once he promises this or that policy, it’s as if what he has said is now true, by the sheer force of the fact that he’s proclaimed it so.

For Bush, language has the power to embody that which it describes, whether or not what he says is true at the time, or will ever actually become true. And language has the power to disembody that which was previously claimed as true, but has now become inconvenient. That belief in the corporeal power of language is sustained by the generalities in which the President’s speech writers cast what pass for his ideas.

The internal contradictions of his 2nd Inaugural address were on view right at its beginning:

On this day, prescribed by law and marked by ceremony, we celebrate the durable wisdom of our Constitution, and recall the deep commitments that unite our country. I am grateful for the honor of this hour, mindful of the consequential times in which we live, and determined to fulfill the oath that I have sworn and you have witnessed.

At this second gathering, our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together. For a half century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical - and then there came a day of fire.

Having invoked “the deep commitments that unite our country,” he immediately goes on to clearly imply that those deep commitments were, in fact, on “sabbitical” during the eight years of the Clinton administration, and quite possibly the four years of his father’s.

Thus does this President divide, even while he is invoking that which unites us, aided in this feat by the vague definition of what that “that” might be, no matter the strained rhetorical flourish of “America standing watch on distant borders.” And thus do Bush’s scriptwriters divert our attention away from the inconvenient fact of exactly on whose watch “came” that “day of fire,” while attempting, no doubt, to draw an echo from Lincoln’s great second inaugural, with its genuinely biblical sweep, and the tragic simplicity of its famous, “…and the war came.”

Without success.

Instead of a Lincolnesque moment, we get the typical graceless, ungenerous Dubya stump speech moment in which all blame for mistakes made accrues to everyone but the man who insists that he is in command, and the typical neo-con moment in which history is used to turn history on its head.

No one at the White House appears to have noticed that Lincoln wasn’t attempting to obscure responsibility:

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

You see the war came not out of the blue, not like a tsunami, unexpected, inexplicable, unaccountable; the war came because men willed it to come, including that man among men, Abraham Lincoln.

When I referred to the president’s writers cooking up this inaugural address, I meant to suggest something more than flippant disrespect for their concotions; many of the points given to the President were carefully derived to answer specific persistent criticisms of George W’s foreign policy, without having to mention any of them. So, in answer to the many critiques of the Bush neo/con policy of waging preventive wars, the president noted on Thursday that the task of spreading freedom around the world will not be primarily the “task of arms,” and to preempt the likely and often made charge that the neocon/Bush vision is an imperial one that embraces a Pax Americana to be imposed on the world, ready or not, Mr. Bush asserted, “America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.” And how will this be accomplished?

We will persistently clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation: The moral choice between oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right. America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.

Well, that’s mighty white of you, Mr. Bush, but really now, when has any American post-WW 2 administration ever made such a pretence. Yes, America has often looked the other way when faced with the depredations of human rights carried on by allies deemed necessary at the time, often wrongly, but pretend the oppressed welcome their oppression? Who does this president think he is? Noam Chomsky? Howard Zinn? The closest I can come to such an attitude actually being expressed was that part of the human rights policy of the Reagan administration defined by Jeanne Kirkpatrick, which posited that traditional authoritarian rulers, like Somoza in Nicaragua, or the Argentine junta, were tolerable in the context of the cold war because such leaders, while not democratic and sometimes despotic, were a bullwark against Marxist insurgents, who would bring a far worse kind of anti-democratic regime than these ancien ones. But now I’m making an observation historical in nature, like the copious warnings about Bin Ladin’s desire to strike on American soil were historical in nature, according to our new Secretary of State to be, and we know what this administration does when faced with anything “historical.” (The correct answer, “nothing.” )

Who could be surprised, then, that this inaugural address, like the President it celebrates, is more comfortable with eternal verities than with historical ones, no matter his prior statement that “our duties are defined not by the words I use, but by the history we have seen together?”

Nowhere to be found in the text are specific references to what has happened in the four years of Bush’s first term, no mention of Iraq, or invasion, or occupation, or preemption, or Saddam, no talk of the crucial nature of democracy in the Middle East, or the Bush roadmap for peace between Palestinians and Israelis, certainly not of torture, nothing about Al Queda, or the war on terror, or even any mention of terrorists and terrorism itself. Understandably, considering that there are almost no specific successes to be pointed to. So the president and his speechwriters content themselves with a big think, strategic vision; at the heart of the speech is this idea, elucidated through-out the rest of the speech.:

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

What liberal, what American today, would disagree? This is hardly a remarkable formulation, having been the commanlity which has linked the foreign policy of the United States under all post-WW 2 administrations stretching back even to FDR, though he didn’t quite make it into the post-war era. That is not how it is presented in Bush’s inaugural, however. No indeed.

Instead, in an ahistoricism that is truly astounding, it is 9/11, Bush’s personal brush with greatness, that is referenced as the point of discovery for this idea.

We have seen our vulnerability - and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny - prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder - violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.

edit

America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one. From the day of our Founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and earth. Across the generations we have proclaimed the imperative of self-government, because no one is fit to be a master, and no one deserves to be a slave. Advancing these ideals is the mission that created our Nation. It is the honorable achievement of our fathers. Now it is the urgent requirement of our nation’s security, and the calling of our time.

Not to pick nits, but the Declaration of Independence does not say that the dignity and rights of mankind derive from its image having been made in the image of God, and of his son, Jesus, which is surely the unspoken reference being made here. The Declaration locates the inalienable rights of mankind in mankind’s own ability to reason from observation and to thus arrive at the self-evidentiary nature of the truth that mankind was endowed by its “creator,” whether that be any particular God, or a long line of DNA, with such rights.

We know that even if Bush is unaware of historical precedent his speechwriters are when nothing less than Harry Truman’s enunciation in front of a joint session of congress in 1948 of what became “the Truman doctrine” is echoed in a line like this one:

So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.

But what post-war President would have the arrogance to pronounce our ultimate goal to be the ending of world tyranny? To have such an expansive goal is to have no goal at all. “Freedom” and “liberty” are everywhere in this inaugural address, but nowhere defined, contextualized, or even tied securely to historical reality. In the United States of Bush, Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms, Truman’s committment to the United Nations, the Berlin Airlift, the Declaration of Human Rights, the Marshall Plan, the formation of NATO, Kennedy’s Peace Corps, his Alliance for Progress, his steps toward a Test Ban Treaty, the interventions in Korea and VietNam, Jimmy Carter’s emphasis on human rights, the intervention against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and many other policies, some wise, some which proved to be both hypocritical and deeply unwise, simply don’t exist.

Has there ever been an administration so besotted with its own arrogance?

In contrast, here is Truman speaking to that joint session of congress to ask that an emergency appropriation be made in response to a plea for help from the elected government of Greece:

I am fully aware of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey, and I shall discuss these implications with you at this time. One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.
To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the United Nations, The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed upon free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace, and hence the security of the United States.
The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation in violation of the Yalta agreement in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.
The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political infiltration. In helping free and independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

Now I’m aware that our policy in Greece did not, in the end, produce democratic governance. But in order to get a sense of how different is the rhetoric of this President from the rhetoric that has come before him, I would still recommend you read Truman’s remarkable speech, along with his 1949 inaugural address, both of which are rooted in the historical struggle then going on, and yet still manage to honor, in the way their arguments are made, the great democratic principles that both speeches seek to protect. Reading them will explain why President Bush’s essentially phony rhetoric is not to be applauded.

]]> Maria Shriver, Garrison Keillor, Michael Bérubé and Me: Why I Will Vote For Obama Today, Probably http://www.correntewire.com/maria_shriver_garrison_keillor_michael_b_rub_and_me_why_i_will_vote_for_obama_today_probably 2008-02-05T18:57:07-05:00 2008-02-06T09:36:13-05:00 leah The joke in that title belongs entirely to Professor Bérubé whose endorsement of Barack Obama at TPMCafe you should read as much for its wit as its wisdom, even though I don’t quite share his Clinton fatigue.

Let me start by discussing all the talked-about reasons for choosing Obama over Clinton that did not, I repeat, did not influence my decision.

I do not believe that Hillary, or her ex-president husband, have run a Rovian smear campaign against Obama.

I do not believe they played the race card.

I do not believe that either Hillary or Bill will say anything or do anything to get elected.

I don’t believe that what either or both Clintons’ careers in politics and governance have always been about is themselves.

I don’t believe Bill Clinton has a pathological need to hog the political spotlight, nor do I believe Hillary’s would be a co-presidency, nor that “Bill” would be rattling around the White House with nothing to do. Clearly, he would resume the work he has been doing with his foundation, his Presidential library and the graduate school of public service he has founded at the U of Arkansas, that is also part of the library.

I do not believe, as William Greider, a writer whose work I have admired and probably will again, would have it in The Nation, that “…the Clintons play dirty when they feel threatened. But we knew that, didn’t we?”

No, some of us didn’t and we still don’t.

Greider continues:

The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package.”

The thought of the Clintons back in the White House makes Greider “queasy.” :

The one-two style of Clintons, however, is as informative as low-life street fighters. Mr. Bill punches Obama in the kidney and from the rear. When Obama whirls around to strike back, there stands Mrs. Clinton, looking like a prim Sunday School teacher and citing goody-goody lessons she learned from her 135 years in government.

edit

The style is very familiar to official Washington, not just among the Clintons’ partisan adversaries, but among their supporters. The man lied to his friends. All the time. They got used to it. They came to expect it. I observe a good many old hands among the Senate Democrats are getting behind Obama. It would be good to know more about why they declined to make the more obvious choice of endorsing the power couple.

Reading Mr. Geider’s unsourced assertions made me queasy, and not about the Clintons.

]]> The joke in that title belongs entirely to Professor Bérubé whose endorsement of Barack Obama at TPMCafe you should read as much for its wit as its wisdom, even though I don’t quite share his Clinton fatigue.

Let me start by discussing all the talked-about reasons for choosing Obama over Clinton that did not, I repeat, did not influence my decision.

I do not believe that Hillary, or her ex-president husband, have run a Rovian smear campaign against Obama.

I do not believe they played the race card.

I do not believe that either Hillary or Bill will say anything or do anything to get elected.

I don’t believe that what either or both Clintons’ careers in politics and governance have always been about is themselves.

I don’t believe Bill Clinton has a pathological need to hog the political spotlight, nor do I believe Hillary’s would be a co-presidency, nor that “Bill” would be rattling around the White House with nothing to do. Clearly, he would resume the work he has been doing with his foundation, his Presidential library and the graduate school of public service he has founded at the U of Arkansas, that is also part of the library.

I do not believe, as William Greider, a writer whose work I have admired and probably will again, would have it in The Nation, that “…the Clintons play dirty when they feel threatened. But we knew that, didn’t we?”

No, some of us didn’t and we still don’t.

Greider continues:

The recent roughing-up of Barack Obama was in the trademark style of the Clinton years in the White House. High-minded and self-important on the surface, smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard to the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package.”

The thought of the Clintons back in the White House makes Greider “queasy.” :

The one-two style of Clintons, however, is as informative as low-life street fighters. Mr. Bill punches Obama in the kidney and from the rear. When Obama whirls around to strike back, there stands Mrs. Clinton, looking like a prim Sunday School teacher and citing goody-goody lessons she learned from her 135 years in government.

edit

The style is very familiar to official Washington, not just among the Clintons’ partisan adversaries, but among their supporters. The man lied to his friends. All the time. They got used to it. They came to expect it. I observe a good many old hands among the Senate Democrats are getting behind Obama. It would be good to know more about why they declined to make the more obvious choice of endorsing the power couple.

Reading Mr. Geider’s unsourced assertions made me queasy, and not about the Clintons.

******

I hope most of you will recognize that Greider is writing from that eye of the perpetual perfect storm of Clinton Hatred that has been distorting and degrading our political discourse since the day the Clintons walked into the White House. That has always been my worry about a Hillary Clinton candidacy, and the war against the Clintons has been even worse this time around, mainly because it has been joined by so many Democrats, especially Obama supporters. Not only do I fear the SCLM

”> will be relentless in their pursuit of bringing another Clinton down, I don’t think it will end if she is elected.

Doesn’t it distress me to allow the conservative movement and the press which serves its interest so relentlessly to choose whom we choose to be our candidate? You bet it does. I’m not suggesting that we give into the right-wing war against the Clintons, which emerged out of the three decades war against liberalism, the sixties, and the Democratic Party, and morphed into the war against Gore and against Kerry. But I’m reluctant to fight it during a campaign for the Presidency that Democrats have a chance to win, and possibly even to win big.

On the other hand, if Hillary does become our candidate, fight it we must, and fight it we will, I hope. This is such an important subject I’m saving my further thoughts on it for a separate second part to this post.

I also want to make clear that I have had my own problems with both Clintons. I’ll never forgive Bill Clinton for what he did to Lani Guinier. Then again, I’ll never forgive FDR for what he did to 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Persons disappoint us; those who wield power often disappoint us deeply. In this post, I think my disappointment with Senator Clinton is palpable.

Hillary has turned out to be a better candidate than I had expected. She’s taken positions that are genuinely liberal. If she wins the nomination I will work for her election and vote for her gladly.

So why am I trending toward Obama?

Well, first, there is Iraq. Let us face it; Hillary’s votes for the AUMF and against the Levin amendment are a problem for her she hasn’t yet found a way to talk about, or to get out from under. It keeps her from being as clear a harbinger of change than Obama. That and the drag on her candidacy the press will exert, with constant references to the Clintons’ past struggles, make it hard to see how she can be as effective as Obama as a messenger for change.

As you can see my decision is based on razor slim differences between these two candidates. Nor do I wish to suggest that Obama is without his own negatives from my perspective.

Like my compatriots here at Corrente, I’m suspicious of the unity theme, especially when Obama stays vague about the kinds of policies around which he wishes to unite us. More problematic than that, I resent the decision of his campaign to use their change trope as equally against Bill Clinton’s presidency as against its Bush bookends. It’s clear to me that is exactly what they have been doing, eliding Clinton and both Bushs, and worse still, using some of the nastiest right-wing anti-Clinton tropes to do it, all the while claiming to be the victim of that “vile Clinton” machine, as Bob Somerby might put it.

It has made me angry that they have been able to pull it off, altough the SCLM made it relatively easy for them; note, I hold Obama himself responsible for this gambit. On the other hand, it was a neat political move, and if he can do that against McCain, I’m prepared to forgive him.

I would never vote for anyone just because he had the right political chops. If I hadn’t become convinced that Obama is a genuine liberal/progressive candidate, I would not be voting for him. I won’t go into the specific data which has led me to this conclusion here, since it is not my purpose to persuade anyone to vote for Obama today. I suspect that by tomorrow we will know that this campaign for the Democratic nomination is far from over. My purpose in this post is to lay down a different set of observations than some of my blogmates as part of an on-going discussion about how this election is related to the movement most of us feel we’re part of that seeks to move this country in a genuinly liberal/progressive direction.

I recognize that Obama represents a gamble, and that the Clinton camp has a point when they talk about a role of the dice. But change elections are always that. In Obama’s case we’ve seen him pull together a first-rate campaign, fully the equal of the so-called Clinton machine, both in terms of raising money and organizationally. He’s won the confidence of people I respect, people like Ted Sorenson, for instance, and yes, Ted Kennedy, Toni Morrison, and more important than all of those, Michael Bérubé. And Barack does seem to be inspiring new and younger voters.

There are important minuses. Obama’s health plan is to the right of Hillary’s, and I fear he’ll find it difficult to get out of the corner into which he’s painted himself. I haven’t liked some of the intra-party divisiveness he and his wife have introduced into the campaign, and her reluctance, yesterday, to say without hesitation that she could vote for Hillary were Obama not to become the nominee almost tilted me back to voting for Hillary. To keep my support past today, Obama is going to have to show me that he can first unite the Democrats behind him, and second, that he will unite his voters behind Hillary if she is the candidate.

The risk is bigger with Obama; he might not be ready for the kind of dirt that will be thrown at him as the actual candidate. Hillary is. Worse still, he may not be as ready to be the President, on day one, as Hillary likes to put it, as he thinks he is.

Bottom line time: I’m willing to take that risk because I also think the gain may be bigger, not only with a bigger win, including increasing the Democratic majority in both houses, but also with a better win than would be possible with Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee, on behalf of a true liberal/progressive mandate that is rooted as firmly in the future as it is in the past.

]]> The Meaning of Edwards' Candidacy and Campaign http://www.correntewire.com/the_meaning_of_edwards_candidacy_and_campaign 2008-02-01T08:40:15-05:00 2008-02-02T17:29:16-05:00 leah [Welcome, Digby readers!]

Nothing became John Edward’s campaign for the Presidency more than the manner of his leaving it.

As noted by Lambert, that was some damn speech.

Let me note, in response to some of the comments in that thread, I don’t think his talk of “one America” was any kind of sop to Obama.

More likely it was meant to make clear that one of his central campaign themes, the fight for economic justice, is a unifying one for all liberal/progressives, (sorry, but I refuse to stop calling myself a liberal), the middle class, the working class, the working poor, and those too poor and marginalized to find employment, as well as being a reference to Michael Harrington’s formulation of “the other America,” which JFK made part of his campaign in 1960, especially in those visits to West Virginia, where grinding poverty was on such conspicuous display.

It wasn’t just the speech, though, the theatrics were perfect in their multiple meanings - NOLA, the Ninth Ward, Habitat For Humanity, Elizabeth at his side, surrounded by family and friends, new ones and old ones, and the meaningful symbolism of their commitment as a family, right after the speech, to join in with a community dedicated to raising up housing out of the watery ruins of New Orleans, a gesture that said, yes a candidacy was ending but not the movement whose values and ideas that candidacy was meant to embody.

All that said, and swallowing the lump in my throat, what are we to make of Edwards’ campaign and its failure to get sufficient traction to take him through Super Tuesday; what can we learn from its strengths and its weaknesses, what worked, what didn’t, and why?

]]> [Welcome, Digby readers!]

Nothing became John Edward’s campaign for the Presidency more than the manner of his leaving it.

As noted by Lambert, that was some damn speech.

Let me note, in response to some of the comments in that thread, I don’t think his talk of “one America” was any kind of sop to Obama.

More likely it was meant to make clear that one of his central campaign themes, the fight for economic justice, is a unifying one for all liberal/progressives, (sorry, but I refuse to stop calling myself a liberal), the middle class, the working class, the working poor, and those too poor and marginalized to find employment, as well as being a reference to Michael Harrington’s formulation of “the other America,” which JFK made part of his campaign in 1960, especially in those visits to West Virginia, where grinding poverty was on such conspicuous display.

It wasn’t just the speech, though, the theatrics were perfect in their multiple meanings - NOLA, the Ninth Ward, Habitat For Humanity, Elizabeth at his side, surrounded by family and friends, new ones and old ones, and the meaningful symbolism of their commitment as a family, right after the speech, to join in with a community dedicated to raising up housing out of the watery ruins of New Orleans, a gesture that said, yes a candidacy was ending but not the movement whose values and ideas that candidacy was meant to embody.

All that said, and swallowing the lump in my throat, what are we to make of Edwards’ campaign and its failure to get sufficient traction to take him through Super Tuesday; what can we learn from its strengths and its weaknesses, what worked, what didn’t, and why?

******

I hope you weren’t expecting that I have the answers. Thinking about what they might be is my purpose.

So let’s start with Jon Cohn, who put up a piece about Edwards yesterday at The New Republic. Because most of the magazine is behind a subscription wall, let me give you a sense of it.

On why Edwards’ perpetual third place position in the campaign wasn’t about his political skills:

As anybody who attended his town meetings could attest, he may have been the most effective campaigner of all—capable of establishing an instant connection with audiences, then sweeping them up with a moving, coherent story about what was wrong with America and how he proposed to fix it. Edwards was also, I would argue, a more versatile campaigner than his rivals. He was terrific working the grassroots, much like Obama, but also excelled in the debates, just as Clinton has. As his advisers were constantly reminding reporters—most memorably, through this priceless video—focus groups frequently named Edwards the overwhelming “winner” in those televised exchanges. Alas, a media preoccupied with the Clinton-Obama rivalry rarely seemed to notice.

So, what went wrong?

Still, if Edwards wants to blame somebody for his defeat, he shouldn’t look at the media. He should look at himself. And I mean that in the best sense possible. Edwards’ biggest problem may have been that he was too compelling—so compelling that his rivals effectively adopted his agenda. From the beginning, Edwards was positioning himself as the champion of Americans struggling to get ahead financially. And rather than simply offer populist rhetoric, he backed it with a serious, comprehensive set of policies.

By the time Clinton and Obama had fleshed out their respective agendas, however, there simply wasn’t that much difference among them. Pundits frequently criticized Edwards for his unabashed populism and, it’s true, his rhetoric was the most openly confrontational of the three leading Democrats. But in terms of what the three were actually proposing to do, the agendas were virtually identical—not to mention widely popular, if the polls are to be believed. We’re all populists now.

Edwards alone can’t take credit for that; Clinton and Obama would have endorsed some of the same policies anyway, given the country’s problems and their similar ideological pedigrees. But Edwards still played a key role in setting the standards for the debate. And no issue showcases this more than universal health insurance.

Cohn, whose field is health care, has a little backstage gossip on why none of the candidates have submitted a single-payer plan.

Edwards was assisted in these efforts by a terrific policy team, including James Kvaal and Peter Harbage, not to mention his wife, Elizabeth. Not only was she an early and consistent advocate for universal coverage. She apparently pushed hard for embracing a true single-payer system—something, I am told, Edwards came very close to doing. He decided against it, largely it didn’t seem politically viable. But he always made a point of telling audiences that his plan created a new public insurance plan into which anybody could enroll—and that, if enough people joined it, eventually his plan would evolve into a single-payer plan on its own. If that happened, he said, he was just fine with it.

Let me note that Hillary’s plan also contains such a public insurance option, which does leave the door open to single payer in the future. I’m not clear on whether or not Obama’s plan has such an option, but without a universal mandate, there is no single payer option at all.

Until I read Cohn’s discussion of one of Edwards’ particular strengths, I hadn’t realized what it is, precisely, that I’ve been missing from Obama’s performance, so heavy on the unity theme, so vague about the vision of what kind of America exactly it is he wishes to unite us in support of.

Which brings me to the one thing I’ll miss most about Edwards’ campaign: His intuitive sense of how to sell policies. On the health care issue, for example, it was Edwards who offered the best rationale for requiring everybody to buy insurance—a controversial measure that Obama, for example, has not endorsed. Eschewing the complicated, if valid, policy arguments about adverse selection, he invoked a simple analogy: It’s like Social Security. Everybody has to pay in so that everybody can benefit. Edwards was also savvy about taxes. Unlike so many Democrats, he didn’t flinch at the accusation that some of his proposed programs would require new spending, leading eventually to more taxes. He would simply say yes, that’s right—and they’re worth it.

His pitch wasn’t always perfect; as my friend Mark Schmitt recently reminded me, he sometimes seemed confused about whether he was fighting for the poor, the middle class, or both. (Ideally, it should be the latter.) But overall he got a lot more right than wrong.

Bill Clinton had that ability, Hillary, not so much. Sigh.
I can only assume Obama has it, God knows he has the gift of oratory, but I’d appreciate some demonstration of his ability to sell specific liberal policies, since implementing a genuinely progressive vision as President will depend on exactly that ability.

Cohn’s whole piece is worth a read, and just in case it isn’t behind the pay wall, here’s the link.

Equally interesting was Ed Kilgore’s response to Cohn, also at The New Republic.

I couldn’t agree more with Jonathan Cohn’s assessment of Edwards’ policy proposals and their impact. Indeed, I’d go further: His bold and imaginative health-care plan headed off what appeared to be an irresistible stampede of progressives towards a single-payer system as the only alternative to a timid, confusing, incremental approach. And let’s remember that Edwards’ effort to inject economic inequality and poverty into the debate began in 2004, and never flagged for a moment since then.

But while Jonathan generously suggests this is why Edwards really “won” on a conceptual level and among policy wonks, any honest assessment of his campaign has to consider why he actually lost in reality, and among voters. Any fact-based evaluation of the Edwards campaign has to deal with a couple of realities:

Let me take a moment to caution readers not to assume that Kilgore is reciting DLC talking points. It is true that Kilgore has a long association with the DLC, but I’ve been reading his posts at TPMCafe, and its given me an awareness that there are DLCers and then again, there are DLCers.

Kilgore’s reference to single-payer as a political non-starter is a fairly consistent position among progressive health care wonks, but Kilgore isn’t extolling incrementalism. He’s extolling Edwards for having been the first to find a way to avoid it.

Remember, Edwards’ plan, and Hillary’s knock-off of it, don’t nibble at the edges of universal coverage. Their plans are an implementation of universal coverage, and now, with a minimum of disruption to those who have some form of coverage, including government programs, (which would include S-CHIP for example), while preserving some choice, and starting to introduce the kind of efficiencies of scale that are needed if we are ever able to get a handle on our rising health care costs, which are always used by the opponents of universal health coverage as a scare tactic: How will we afford it? The right answer is better than if we stay totally dependent on a fractured private health sector that has done nothing to keep down costs.

Okay, now try to not become incensed by Kilgore’s next point:

His message was a remarkably faithful and wholesale adoption of the Crashing the Gates-style netroots analysis of the parties, of Washington, of the Clintonian Democratic tradition, and of galvanizing value of “fighting populist” rhetoric. It was crafted with the help of the maestro of this approach, Joe Trippi. Yet it did not rouse much in the way of support from its intended audiences. In the end, most of the Deanian excitement in the campaign flowed to Obama, who consistently deployed a rhetoric of post-partisanship that is anathema to the point of view advanced by Edwards, as Edwards himself suggested on many occasions.

No, I don’t think Kilgore is attacking the netroots; he interacts with us regularly at TPMCafe. Nor do I accept entirely Kilgore’s analysis, but facts, as Al Gore has reminded us, are often inconvenient:

While no one will ever know how Edwards would have fared had he won Iowa, his campaign ultimately appealed to the same kind of voters he won in 2004 with a very different message: moderate-to-conservative white men. His exceptional weakness among African-Americans, in 2008 as in 2004, provides a cautionary tale about the breadth of appeal of “populism.”

It is quite simply a fact that John Edwards was able to enlist enthusiasm across racial and class lines when interacting with voters personally, but that the campaign never found a way to translate that success on the wholesale level into success on the retail level, even in Iowa, where he and his family had practically taken up residence. He inspired locally, but not globally.

…Edwards is obviously a very talented person who could be of great value to any Democratic administration. But his political strategy just wasn’t as good as his policies or his own personal abilities. And the failure of his candidacy should make progressives spend some time considering whether the “fighting partisan populist” perspectives on how to expand and mobilize the Democratic base are now as outdated as the conventional wisdom they replaced.

The “why” of that reality is something we all need to think about, although I’m too much of a populist at heart to buy into Kilgore’s final formulation.

First of all, there is a lot more to “populism” than Kilgore acknowledges. One doesn’t usually think of the Sixties as an outburst of populism, but that is certainly one strand of the civil rights movement, as well as the student movement that started in Berkeley with Mario Savio; both were all about grassroots participation in the institutions of which they were the grassroots. Even the SDS, before it gave way to the evils of vanguardism, was all about “participatory democracy.”

Part of the problem for Edwards was Obama’s co-opting of that aspect of populism, minus the fighting mode and rhetoric. Not that Edwards didn’t articulate his belief in the active definition of citizenship, never more so than in his speech yesterday. But that broader issue seemed to get lost.

There is also the structure of our primary campaigns, which mitigate against real dialogue, between voters, between candidates, and between candidates and their potential voters. Edwards’ personal beliefs, policy positions and the politics of his positions began to get boiled down to slogans and talking points, and the repetitiveness became numbing.

Which brings us to the biggest missing piece in both Cohn’s and Kilgore’s analysis, the role of the media.

You should be able to see immediately why John’s populism was anathema to the SCLM

”>. They view voters as members of a passive audience, whereas populism assumes the grassroots are made up of citizens to whom public institutions, like government and the media, are ultimately answerable, and that when they are not, public activism is a vital answer.

Our SCLM is always on the hunt for hypocrisy, although their understanding of the concept is one dimensional. How can John Edwards be an authentic populist, a champion of the poor and the marginalized when he is handsome, accomplished and rich. Elizabeth Edwards’ desire to build her own mansion was portrayed as somehow over the top, as if the Washington townhouses and summer homes typical of most journalists makes them tribunes of the people. Yes, the square footage indicated that it was to be a huge house, although little attention was paid to the fact that some of that footage was to be taken up with an indoor tennis court and swimming pool, which might have been especially attractive to a family in which the mother had already had one bout with cancer, and everyone had full knowldge that a second one was a possibility.

That such a formulation would have applied to FDR, JFK and to Bobby Kennedy, not to mention Teddy Roosevelt, was a point occasionally made by guest commentators, very occasionally, and naturally, such calls to think historically were ignored.

The haircut, the mansion, the grooming video, and the use made of them by the usual rightwing meme-makers, aided immensely by the happy collaboration of the media, from Maureen Dowd all the way to the dizzy heights of broadcsst stardom and the estimable biographer of that great generation, Tom Brokaw, one of the great dullards of all time, are too well-known to go into here. Digby has done brilliant work excavating this particular swamp, although I don’t have any specific links for you, (the search function on her site is inoperable), but here is a superlative piece by Jamison Foser at Media Matters that sketches in the bigger picture against which the attacks on Edwards as yet another Democratic girly-man need to be understood.

What the press mainly did to Edwards was to ignore him. Remember the brilliant speech on foreign policy John gave at Pace University? Totally ignored, not a hint anywhere in the SCLM that anyone even knew he gave one. You can read it and the updates made by the campaign to the speech here. Read it and weep, because I think you’ll agree that it is the most fully developed vision among all three of the top candidates, of what our relationship to the rest of the world ought to be, as well as a brilliant critique of what’s wrong with our current “war on terror>” More tragically, it’s one that I believe a large majority of Americans, including independents, would have happily embraced as a genuine and much needed change from the poisonous policies of George W. Bush.

Nothing illustrates better the role of the media in undermining Edwards’ campaign than the manner of its coverage of his leaving of it.

I was watching MSNBC, but I’m sure it was typical, since the same themes and attitudes about Edwards have been ubiquitous across the media. Mrs. Allen Greenspan was anchoring, and trying to fill the time before Edwards made his appearance, she noted the fascinating schisms in the Democratic Party, although she called them “threads,” but divisions was clearly what she meant. Then Chris Matthews responded to Andrea’s request for enlightenment on how you could have the suave Obama and the down-home populist Edwards in the same party with the nuttiest analysis I’ve ever heard; Democrats, it seems, are divided into the regular, traditional Dems, divided among old-fashioned interest groups, which are essentially populist, and the outsider/insurgents, who are upscale and intellectual, examples given were Gene McCarthy, Paul Tsongas and Bill Bradley, and whose main interest is in an abstract notion of ethics and good governement, Clinton being in the former camp, Obama being the idealistic good government guy. And before any of you jump on this particular circus wagon regarding Obama, remember, we’re talking about Chris Matthews.

Once Edwards had spoken, the general tone was respectful, as Xan pointed out here, the way people tend to be at a funeral. Even so, the expensive hair cut came up, and all the rest, with special emphasis on the fact that Edwards ran such a different campaign than he had in 2004, as if nothing that might have happened in the interim could have changed his views. This lead immediately to the question of whether or not Edwards had suffered from an authenticity gap, running as an angry populist.

Jim Warren of the Chicago Sun-Times rejected the notion that someone rich can’t take the positions Edwards had, pointing to the Kennedys and FDR, but he then went on to explore what fascinated him about what they’d just seen, which was the awful emotional deflation we had been watching, covered up, to be sure, by a brave front, but just think what it must have meant to Edwards, so confident as a top trial attorney, having to confront this stunning electoral defeat, and on and on. Yes, they all agreed, they had been watching an intensely sad moment.

That nothing about this description comported with anything we had just viewed mattered not.

Of course we can assume that there was pain and disappointment for everyone associated with the Edwards’ campaign in coming to terms with its suspension, but that funereal note had been introduced exclusively by our media monitors. I’m bothering to go into this kind of detail to make clear to us all that our media is not only uninformed about policy matters, but it is just as clueless, just as mired in cliches, just as incapable of reality-based reporting when it comes to understanding what our politics are all about.

There was nothing funereal about Edwards speech, or any aspect of the occasion. There was no display of anything but satisfaction that his campaign had made some kind of difference and there was a clear and compelling call to community and to action within a liberal/progressive movement, both at the grassroots and at the electoral and governmental levels, from which Edwards draws comfort and inspiration, and within which he and Elizabeth will remain active.

One more link, which had I discovered it earlier, I might not have bothered with this post, so close to mine and so good is the analysis of Meteor Blades writing at Daily Kos; be sure to read it.

]]> Dr. King In 1963 http://www.correntewire.com/dr_king_in_1963 2008-01-21T18:17:29-05:00 2008-01-22T08:22:21-05:00 leah On this day of celebration that we were gifted with the life of Martin Luther King, tragically short as it was, I thought it might be apropos to look back at one of his pre-“I have a dream” speeches. It wasn’t one that he orated. He couldn’t. He was in jail, the only place to be for a patriot like Dr. King in the Birmingham GA of April, 1963.

It was a written communication, but when you read it you can hear his voice, his early voice, which turns out to be not so different from his later voice, although it is also true that Dr. King grew and changed, became bigger, bolder, as did his view of what issues required the attention of true American patriots determined “to rise up and live out the true meaning…” of our American creeds, even in the face of criticism, of isolation, of backlashes, and of continuing, and even worsening, inequalities.

His “Letter From A Birmingham Jail,” was written in response to an open letter to Dr. King signed by a group of white clergyman, mostly Christian and Protestant, although one Rabbi signed his name to it, criticizing the civil rights movement and Dr. King’s role in it. Here is how he begins his reply:

]]> On this day of celebration that we were gifted with the life of Martin Luther King, tragically short as it was, I thought it might be apropos to look back at one of his pre-“I have a dream” speeches. It wasn’t one that he orated. He couldn’t. He was in jail, the only place to be for a patriot like Dr. King in the Birmingham GA of April, 1963.

It was a written communication, but when you read it you can hear his voice, his early voice, which turns out to be not so different from his later voice, although it is also true that Dr. King grew and changed, became bigger, bolder, as did his view of what issues required the attention of true American patriots determined “to rise up and live out the true meaning…” of our American creeds, even in the face of criticism, of isolation, of backlashes, and of continuing, and even worsening, inequalities.

His “Letter From A Birmingham Jail,” was written in response to an open letter to Dr. King signed by a group of white clergyman, mostly Christian and Protestant, although one Rabbi signed his name to it, criticizing the civil rights movement and Dr. King’s role in it. Here is how he begins his reply:

******

My Dear Fellow Clergymen:

While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling present activities “unwise and untimely.” Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work. But since I feel that you are men of genuine good will and that your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I want to try to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.

I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against “outsiders coming in.” I have the honor of serving as President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization operating in every southern state, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. We have some eighty-five affiliated organizations across the South, and one of them is the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. Frequently we share staff, educational and financial resources with our affiliates. Several months ago the affiliate here in Birmingham asked us to be on call to engage in a nonviolent direct-action program if such were deemed necessary. We readily consented, and when the hour came we lived up to our promise. So I, along with several members of my staff, am here because I was invited here. I am here because I have organizational ties here.

But more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their “thus saith the Lord” far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian call for aid.

Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.(all emphasis are mine)

So we can see that Dr. King knew how to reach out in civility to those in his own community, the Baptist one in this case, who held opposing opinions of his actions. And he also knew how to draw the distinctions between himself and those same people, even harsh distinctions, and he was ready to acknowledge that his actions might well intensify the tensions disagreement gives rise to, and he was unafraid to argue that tensions, difference and even crises were not merely the price of progress, but might well be inseparable from the search for truth, equality and justice.

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails so express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city’s white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

edit

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches, and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and halftruths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

The ministers had asked in their own open letter why now; why such impatience, why not give the newly elected Major of Birmingham and chance to make changes? In response, King was clear on his own view of how change happens:

My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral that individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was “well timed” in view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

What of Dr. King’s paradoxical willingness to break laws?

You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of Harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I-it” relationship for an “I-thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man’s tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus is it that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal.

Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state’s segregation laws was democratically elected?

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Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in it’s application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. ’Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s anti-religious laws.

I think my favorite part of the letter happens when Dr. King takes up the issue of the “white moderate:”

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another mans freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro the wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating that absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would unde