NPR really is teh suxx0r. I just listened to today's coverage, and it was all the Obama/Hillary celebrity cage death match. Not one word, not a fucking syllable, about Edwards.
The Edwards media blackout continues. The man can't get votes if he can't get coverage; even negative coverage gets votes, so what they're doing to him is worse than what they're doing to Hillary.
I'm sure Ron Paul supporters feel the same way. And they're right.
And I'm sure one reason Gore isn't running, although he would be an instant contender, is what our famously free press did to him in 2000, and would do to him again in 2008. They helped steal the election for Bush, just as much as Jebbie and Scalia.
Isn't this a remarkable development?
I mean, this is America, and in our democracy we expect that niggers and so forth, the poor, the old, and people like that get disenfranchised. This is normal, and of course it's continuing. Voter ID laws, anyone?
But now, for the first time in our history, I would say, we have the real and systematic disenfranchisement of millions of active voters; people who are involved, who have voted before, given money, worked for their candidates, organized, and seen their work destroyed and their views pissed on, because their candidates' message wasn't acceptable to the Corporate powers that be.
I don't know what this portends, but I can't imagine it's going to be about being good consumers.
NOTE This is why the usual bout of introspection about the NH primary is so inane. The press got their "prediction" wrong? Feh. The best way to predict the future is to invent it, and the press alread did that, by ruling Gore, Edwards, and Paul out of bounds. Those assholes, I hope they lose everything they care about.
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nothing wakes me up faster than NPR!
seriously. it's better than running or kickboxing in the morning.
NPR is guaranteed to make my blood boil, make me see red, want to go out and organize a riot, etc. usually within the first 60 sec of any "news" item they report. every fucking time, friend.
Thank the FSM for Democracy Now!
Lambert: The media has been
Lambert:
The media has been lousy to Edwards but in all honesty Edwards is not a great messenger for the politics he's espousing. I'm not talking about his hair which is a very annoyingly effective piece of media hit job, but after watching his two concession speeches, I gotta tell you I'm tired of his teary invocations of the same individual victims of insurance companies.
What Edwards offers is "trial lawyer populism". I'm not criticizing trial lawyers, they play an essential role in policing corporations, and we need them, but trial lawyers just don't look right as populists. The trial lawyer is all about convincing a jury - which is not the same thing as mobilizing a populace to take on the special interests who are robbing them. It's a tune in a different key. The trial lawyer paints his client as a victim. The populist tries to rouse the rabble to be agents of their own liberation. Not the same thing. It doesn't work.
And it looks like he isn't going to make it. If nothing else, he helps keep Hillary and Barack honest.
What you gonna do? I have no answers.
direct action
I haven't had time to write about this, but years ago when you were subbing for Atrios you wrote a post about Saul Alinsky that has stayed with me. Chosing the political arena as our only battle ground sets us up for defeat again and again.
In 1984, right after Ronald Reagan's landslide victory, Randal Robinson and the TransAfrica group launched the Free South Africa movement. The did it with a series of well planned, and respectively carried out (are you listening Code Pink?) demonstrations. They had sit down demonstrations at the SA Embassy, Deak Perrera Gold exchange, IBM, and so forth. It worked, within months the national coversation changed and you could not avoid the topic.
This is how we need to think in terms of health care and every other issue.
More when I have had a chance to think about it, but we need less League of Women Voters and more Saul Alinsky. We need less Code Pink and more civil rights movement. And we need not to worry about high traffic blogs who don't support this approach until they see some results. Not everyone instantly jumped on board the Free South Africa movement.
We also need to think about taking back our institutions, including our local public radio. How do you get on the Board of Trustees of the local stations? We need to start taking them back.
DCBlogger: Ramen!
direct, sustained action. of all kinds, even the silly code pink stuff.
you wouldn't mind them so much, if they were backed up by legions of more 'civil' protesters. sometimes, you need puppets and preachers (like MLK, that is).
How do you get on the Board of Trustees of the local stations?
Now that is an excellent, excellent question.
I'm seeing the School board to stuff in my town that would curl your hair if it were done nationally.
Well, er, it is being done nationally. Totally unaccountable people making decisison based on no data (except whatever's in it for them privately).
Just bizarre. Or not.
DCblogger, it's nice to be remembered, but after 10K or so posts, I don't remember the Saul Alinsky one. Can you refresh my Big Orange-addled memory? Thanks.a
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Stivo, well reasoned on the lawyers
It's nice to see somebody actually look at what a trial lawyer does, and make an argument. What a relief.
However, Edwards raises my issues. He understands the hole that we're in. And he doesn't insult my intelligence with Unity
Ponies
. And I'm starting to feel about baritones the way some other people feel about hair. (That said, NPR, exhibiting once again its massive suxx0ritude, plays only the oratorial clips, and not the clips from the Q&A, which I understand was an hour long. I might feel differently if that were done. Ditto for the oborg Schwärmerei.) Bottom line is that I'm sticking with Edwards and I hope that everything is decided absolutely as late as possible, and I hope people vote strategically to make that happen. Wouldn't it be great to have a convention that actually mattered?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
To Edwards or not to Edwards
Understood. That's your position and it's an honorable one. As long as Edwards is your guy and he's in the race, stand by your man. You have no choice. He is driving the others toward more populist themes and if he accomplishes nothing else, that's something worth doing. Good on him.
I differ only slightly. I just don't think he will make it, for the reasons I stated upthread. I realize that as an Edwards partisan you CAN'T say that, but let's assume for the sake of argument only, that the nominee is going to be one of Obama or Clinton. What do we do then?
First there is what can you hope for? First, an end to the absurd "Global War on Terror". They're not going to explicitly repudiate it in all likelihood but their base cannot stand for letting it creep back. Rather, the realistic hope is that it sort of fades away, missed by no one except a few die-hard assholes.
Next, and what is the more important issue, IMHO, is the rollback of Reagan-Bushism in the economy, or at least of Bushism. Ending the tax cuts for the plutocrats. Doing something real about offshore tax havens. Leaving Social Security alone, and moving to Universal Health Care. The pressures on both Obama and Clinton from Wall Street will be enormous. Where is the hope?
With Obama, the hope is that this dance he is doing with the DLC types is insincere, and he is really "one of us" all along and will turn on them. Unlikely as hell.
With Clinton, the hope is that the crap her husband and friends pulled in the nineties was as much the product of stupidity and hubris as it was of venality. What would we think of Bill Clinton today if he had made Health Care the price for his support of NAFTA, instead of giving Wall Street NAFTA first, hoping to curry Wall Street's favor with it and get them to sign onto health care? A lot more than we do now. The way he did it was stupid. The hope is that that's all it was, and that the Clintons recognize that now, even if they can't bring themselves to admit it. That sort of Clinton administration might try to do some good. Also unlikely.
But let's not forget, since we are all populists here, that we're not looking for gifts from any of these guys. Franklin Roosevelt did not give the New Deal out of the goodness of his heart, either. They were scared as hell of the Reds back then and HAD to do something.
Things are not standing still. What will be the effects of what Atrios calls the "big shitpile"? I don't think anyone knows.
The goal in an Obama or Clinton administration must be, therefore, to apply effective pressure from the left. To be perfectly frank, this would be necessary with Edwards too.
Would Obama dare to continue the GWOT? I hope not, his supporters would finally take to the streets, I hope, since that is their main argument for Clinton over Obama. Of course he might get backed into "proving his manhood" by doing something military. We have to be prepared to resist this.
And I assume Clinton would not be in a hurry for this either, whatever her cautiousness is based on now.
Similarly on the economy. We have certain weapons that we didn't have in the nineties. We have our corner of the blogosphere, we have widespread hatred of Bushism, we will just have to make use of these things. In the nineties, Bill Clinton was widely seen as the embodiment of liberalism. There was nothing but the "so called Liberal
Media" to say anything else, and we all know what happened to that. I think we have enough tools to make sure that doesn't happen again.
It will be a long road turning this country around. The fight only begins with electing a new president. It doesn't end there.
rules for radicals
looks like you wrote it right after Kerry went down
Not us!
Hecate was 2004. We were 2003. That said, they are great rules, and one of them, especially, we seem to be carrying out con brio:
Good rules. Thanks for bringing them out.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
The problem with Edwards is
The problem with Edwards is the messenger, not the message. I also think he made a major error in his decision to side with Obama against Clinton in New Hampshire. He claims that people want change in this election, and that he and Obama represent it and Clinton does not. If that was truly the case then instead of attacking Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards should have been trying to convince all those change voters that he could better provide it than Mr. Obama. It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Mr. Edwards siding with Mr. Obama had nothing to do with a deep comittment towards change, but rather was an attempt to jump on Mrs. Clinton while she was down and get her out of the race. Mr. Edwards should have gone full scale at Mr. Obama and shown that Mr. Edwards was the only one capable of being an agent of change, rather than just an icon of change. Coming out of Iowa he claimed this was a two person race, but he sure as hell didn't act like it. If he was in a two person race with Obama, what the hell was he doing attacking Clinton who according to him was no longer a factor. Edwards needs to act like he actually believes what he is saying. If people are demanding change, and only he and Obama are change agents, then if follows that either he or Obama is going to win the nomination. He has to pick up the voters who Obama is currently getting, and I think we have seen that attacking Hillary Clinton isn't going to convince them to vote for Edwards over Obama. Edwards only shot is to tap into the forces of change better than Obama, so he needs to start showing why Obama can't produce change. I believe he is right on the mertis of that argument. He needs to make it now, and he needs to make it strongly. A full frontal assault on Obama would also more than likely garner him media attention as well.
Ben Nelson endorses Obama, oh wow
Who next? Joe Lieberman? Tom Daschle? Oh, wait...
Agreed on frontal assault, there. I didn't see the debate, but if what you say is true, it looks tactical, and that's not what he should be doing.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
More binary brain damage
Even Josh.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Aw hell, here's all of Alinsky's Rules:
We could just post this once a day and it wouldn't bother me the teeniest little bit:
Are Alinsky's rules still valid today? Which need to be revised? Which did Rove use successfully to help the Haves hold onto power? Which did Kerry use successfully? Which could Kerry have used that he didn't?
Rule 1: Power is both what you have and what your opponent thinks that you have. If you have few members, hide your numbers and make a lot of noise.
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. The result is confusion and retreat.
Rule 3: When possible, do go outside the experience of an opponent.
Rule 4: Make your opponent live up to his own rule book.
Rule 5: Ridicule is your most potent weapon. Ridicule is difficult to counter and it infuriates your opponent, causing him to react to your advantage.
Rule 6: A good tactic is one your people enjoy.
Rule 7: A tactic that drags on for too long is not a good idea. Change tactics.
Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Maintain a constant pressure on the opposition.
Rule 9: The threat of your tactic or action is more terrifying than the tactic or action itself. Use this to your advantage.
Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. You have to know what to say when your opponent asks you, "If you're so smart, what would you do?"
Rule 11: Pick your target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Don't attack an abstract such as a corporation. Identify a responsible individual and ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
No sense reinventing the wheel when the problem is getting gas in the engine.
personalize it
The importance of this cannot be over stated. Instead of attacking heartless health insurance companies, we should name the stock dumping executives personally.
"There are not very many of the Shing."
As Ursula LeGuin says in City of Illusions.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
shit, what did I do?
Sorry, I didn't WANT to make the thread go all Italic.
You didn't do anything!
I didn't close an ital tag in my own comment, but the problem only showed up when someone (you) posted under it.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
A DK diary on the very same topic...
Just posted today: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/12/15141/2602/171/435115
I consider myself an Edwards adherent
not a partisan. There is an Oborg, and there is an Hborg, but there does not seem to be an Eborg. I'm not sure why; that may be part of the problem.
Nothing prevents Edwards from creating some sort of permanent presence, either. Maybe focused on local issues?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
I stand corrected.
Your point taken (adherent not partisan).
It doesn't really matter to my point. I'm just into the "long view" phase.
You Are Rush
You have now become as useless and mindless as Rush Limbaugh.
The press hates us, Boo Hoo
Edwards sucked as a VP in O4, and he sucks as a candidate now.
He flip-flops and takes whatever position is popular this week.
One more week in Iraq and he will announce how much he is in favor of the war.
Take a look in the mirror, you will see Rush Limbaugh.
wow, ken! thanks for proving lambert right about the OFB
if you seriously expect anyone to take your analysis of lambert/rush without laughing their asses off, you're even more of a fool than you seem on this thread. or more stoned than your writing suggests, whatever.
lambert = rush. i don't think a more stupid thing has been said here in...forever. thanks for the laugh, idiot.
K-K-K-Ken a-g-g-g-g-gain!
He strolled through on another thread the other day. I'm guessing the length of his sentences reflects the length of time he can hold a thought.
Not very long.
But please come again.
K-K-K-Ken.
Because I need a laugh.
Now and then.
Hey, where's Barbie?
No, not Klaus Barbie. Fool.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi
Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama
I know that you are all eager to gain a deeper understanding of Barack Obama and his committment to progressive ideals. I think a key to this is understanding how community organization and activism has shaped his view of the world and led to his career in politics. Obama was trained as an organizer, largely by Alinsky disciples.
I have found three articles that dig deeper into Obama's progressive roots. I encourage you to read them:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/st...
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Artic...
http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/149/oba...
You will find that Obama's vision and calling in life is the empowerment of people. He is building a national grassroots campaign, training his people the same way he was trained in orgainization. If elected, this network will be there to promote progressivism and the democratic party for a long time.
He also has specific plans to expand AmeriCorp (speciffically a ClassroomCorp, HealthCorp, CleanEnergyCorp...) and PeaceCorp, develop other social networks benefitting retirees, workers etc... and he also wants to incorporate community service into college cirricula, and establish a social investment fund network.
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/NationalS...
In short, he has experience, vision and plans to empower individuals through organization. Maybe these will be effective tools to fight powerful corporate interests.
Draw your own conclusions, but there is some good insight in the links I provide.
As soon as Obama stops deking around with Social Security...
... I'll be ready to listen. What Obama did 20 years ago is good, but not necessarily relevant to today. I'm sure all of us have youthful folly to look back on, and youthful ideals lost. It's today and the future that I care about.
What Obama needs to do is take privatization off the table going forward. (In other words, please do not cut and paste position papers from Obama campaign site; they are in the past, before he muddied the waters by using Social Security as a club to beat Hillary with, while in the same breath claiming it should be used as a "political football.") If "everything is on the table," then privatization is on the table. I want it off the table. I'm not the only one. Thanks in advance for your attention in this matter.
Then again, looting Social Security has always been high on the agenda for the Conservative
Movement, and since the subprime debacle, I'm sure they're looking around for new sources for commmissions and perks, so they can continue to live in the style to which they have become accustomed. Obama's Serious
endorsers in the press -- Kristol, Sullivan, Broder, Brooks -- are all for privatization, as is the Village
. Every day Obama and the Oborg don't address this issue makes me more concerned.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Mahatma Gandhi