Lambert, December 28, 2007, Obama Stump Speech Strategy of Conciliation Considered Harmful:
Obama presents himself as unifying, but accountability is what’s needed. Let’s repeat that “reach out” paragraph:
I’ve learned in my life that you can stand firm in your principles while still reaching out to those who might not always agree with you.
Fine words butter no parsnips. What principles are we talking about, here? Off the top of my head:
1. The principle that everyone is equal before the law.
2. The principle that this nation does not torture.
3. The principle that there are three co-equal branches of government.
4. The principle that high government officials should not break the law with impunity.
5. The principle that elections are not stolen
6. The principle that war is not made on fake evidence
[To give but a few examples of how the Conservative
Movement violated each principle: 1 Republican Justice Department uses criminal justice system to prosecute Democrats before elections. 2 Abu Ghraib; European gulags; Gitmo; destroyed CIA tapes. 3 Signing statements; Fourth Branch of government. 4 Scooter Libby
. 5 Florida 2000; Ohio 2004. 6 Downing Street Memo (full text).]
Check that list, and start crossing off the Republicans whose actions show that they don’t share those principles, and whose principles differ from all progressives, most Democrats, and most Americans, and by the time you’re done, you’ll have about as many Republicans as would fit in an elevator. A very small, dumbwaiter-sized elevator. In fact, when the elevator door opens, you might just end up “reaching out” to empty space.
This isn’t just a matter of a “food fight,” or “disagreements.” These are not abstract agree-to-disagree issues. Violating these principles ought to entail criminal prosecution (destroyed CIA tapes, election theft), impeachment (signing statements), or whatever the remedy is for just plain evil (torture).
So at best, Obama is feeding us highflown, but vacuous rhetoric. At worst, he’ll let the Conservative Movement operatives who drive the Bush administration get away clean, after committing criminal and impeachable offenses with impunity and no accountability of any kind. That’s not the kind of politics we need to achieve a permanent progressive majority.
Sadly No, July 17, 2008, now that Obama is the presumptive nominee:
So I tried to escape the toxic levels of wingnuttery this evening by flipping through my roommate’s copy of Newsweek. Amazingly, I flipped to page 36 and found this:
The Truth About Torture
To get a full accounting of how U.S. interrogation methods were used, the president should give those accused of ‘war crimes’ a pass.
Question: why did we ever develop the Geneva Conventions in the first place? Why does the Constitution ban cruel and unusual punishment? Hell, for that matter, why did we ever sign the goddamn Magna Carta*? Because what Stuart Taylor, Jr. is telling us is that government officials should simply be able to break the fucking law. And not just the laws against lying about blowjobs under oath — we’re talking about laws against goddamn torture.
The sad thing is: I know Obama will do exactly as Taylor recommends. Except he won’t even bother to set up the fucking bogus-assed truth commission. Just sweep this shit under the rug and enjoy his newfound powers to issue warrantless wiretaps and torture orders. Oh, and be sure to give special immunity to people like Nancy Pelosi and Jay Rockfeller, who should also be tossed in the Hague for being complicit in all this bullshit. This isn’t about partisanship, peeps — it’s about restricting the ability of our political class to behave in the most reckless and lawless ways imagineable. If we don’t want to degenerate into a damn banana republic, we have to demonstrate that we won’t let our most powerful politicians get away with breaking the laws they’ve sworn to uphold.
Predictable, and predicted. At Corrente, but not many other places. Sadly, only 18 million voters agreed.
NOTE My mistake was treating the Democrat and Republican Parties as opposing forces, when in fact they’re two aspects of the Village — granted, the D is more pleasant than the R, but still: Two parties, one system. Another mistake was to over-estimate the progressive character of PB 1.0. Of course, this was before the misogyny and the Hillary hatred had really begun to flourish, so we could cherish the illusion that they were random outliers with no strategic importance.
Front page
listening to Mad World as i read you
plot goes like this:
1. smooth southern liberal outsider guy with scarey smart feminazi wife gets elected president in the middle of the republican wave.
2. oxford hillbilly and his non-cookie baking partner are eager to blaze a new liberal epoch.
3. The republicans begin a war and the senate and congressional dems don’t take a side.
4. President Clinton becomes “the triangulator” to out maneuver the Gingrich revolution.
5. Oh, did i mention the nonstop manufactured scandal war against the Clinton’s from day 1.
6. The hillbilly leaves the country well off and the world feels ok about america.
(jump forward to 2008)
7. Hillbilly’s wife decides to run for president. (wow!)
8. the hillbilly’s party is not excited because they have internalized
a lot of the republican’s PR war against the hillbilly and his wife.
9. the democrats turn on a ’Clinton third term’ because the republicans have defined it as bad and we need to change ourselves so they don’t hate us anymore.
10. but the democrats pretend that they are turning on the clintons because Hillary voted to authorize war in Iraq if the inspectors found weapons.
11. but the democrats never brought that up when Kerry was running so what the f*ck is really up?
plot questions:
• Obama gave a speech but did nothing else to “stop the war”.
• Obama has no strong liberal record to back up his rhetoric
• Hillary has actually DONE more to fight for progressive issues
• Obama has taken republican position on wedge issues and progressives makes excuses
Don’t understand the witch burning of Hillary in relation the air-ness of obama. there is nothing to contrast against.
and why are so many still righteous about a man that is not worth fighting for? why was Hillary, the real progressive, villified?
Hillary Clinton, The Man of My Dreams
Prepositions are used differently in various areas by English
speakers, but I found this usage interesting and a bit ambiguous.
I’ve learned in my life that you can stand firm in your principles while still reaching out to those who might not always agree with you.
Seriously, standing “in” your principles?? How does one do that without stepping on his or her principles? One must be very, very careful and might have to zig and zag to avoid directly crushing some of those principles. Take a serpentine path to objectives. Cut some of those impeding principles down, perhaps. Bend those principles….
Somehow, when people stand on principle, it suggests there is a solid base of belief and commitment to those beliefs. One can move on this base without leaving the principles behind or bending them to get around them.
But standing in those principles? Seems dicey to me. Dodgy, even.
Words, just words, but perhaps these explain something.
Now, I’m from the Midwest, where we stood in line to wait to get into a movie or the voting booth. I was amazed to find that people in the NYC metro area, and some areas of the East, stand on line. How they know where that line is exactly is beyond me, and I still just get into line.
All to say that, perhaps, in some area where Obama lived, people did indeed stand in their principles. I’d appreciate hearing if that locution is used by anyone else.
Yes, but so what
If your point is that Obama “getting wobbly” on upholding the law and supporting fundamental principles of a liberal society was predictable and predicted, agreed. But the suggestion that all Obama supporters couldn’t figure this out or didn’t support the guy with reservations is absurd.
But Democrats didn’t have a lot of choices in the primaries. There was one clear cut defender of the Constitution and attacker of the Bush administration: Kucinich. Can we agree, for better or worse, Kucinich was a non-starter as a serious candidate?
There was also Dodd, who was rather good on the spying stuff. A little more realistic than Kucinich, but not much.
Anyone who didn’t have serious reservations about both Obama and Hillary was flat out bullshitting themselves.
Good
It’s obvious this post isn’t about you then. Unfortunately, too many people, on the blogs and of, were bullshitting themselves when it came to Obama.
That’s who this point is directed towards.
Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!
think jello, and a puddle, etc--
he sees himself as having principles, but values having Village-approved stances as far more important and as a winning strategy, but they’re not.
(or he’s just a Republican, as i see him, and his principles are theirs)
great piece
at Huff Post, surprisingly— http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-allen/…
“…We customarily decline to think through the implications of our religious beliefs, but it should surprise no one that a person who believes an omnipotent God makes special interventions in the operation of the universe on behalf of nations who please or displease Him is not too eager to emphasize the separation of church and state, whatever inconvenience the First Amendment may provide. …
We cannot be sure what policy consequences will result from this lack of a sense of empowerment, but it should not surprise us in the future when a more servile response than seems warranted is the answer to conservative pique. …
Obama’s view of the application of capital punishment exceeded the savagery of even the Supreme Court. Although not widely decried, this reaction may be of high importance. The rest of the civilized world considers capital punishment to be barbaric, even when applied to perpetrators of the most heinous murder. Yet much of Obama’s foreign policy is keyed upon exhibiting “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” and many of us hope that a new President will help restore worldwide respect for the United States. That Obama deemed this less important than expressing a vengeful attitude is cause for apprehension. Attitudes toward capital punishment are often indicative of very basic values …”
jawbone
you raise an issue of interest to me.
i have observed that senator obama speaks quite awkwardly sometimes.
it may be a consequence of his having been raised as a child in several cultures; but it is a distinctive characteristic of his speech. he uses some simple english words and phrases quite awkwardly - as would one who was not a native speaker.
that is one of the reasons, along with his jabbing motions while speaking, that i object to his being considered a great orator. he is not. he most certainly is not martin luther king OR john kennedy - at least not yet.
obama has been getting a pass from the media on the “great speaker” issue because he is partially black and because he is personally very articulate, i.e., his great strength appears to be talking with folks (albeit, very powerful and/or rich folks) face-to-face.
in any event, the issue of obama’s spontaneous language usage is definitely an interesting puzzle for now.
scoutt
nice work
really nice analysis.
i enjoyed reading your synopsis of our plight.