Category: Obama

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11 Reasons to Donate to Barack Obama Tonight

[digg-reddit-me]Sarah Palin’s speech last night galvanized Obama’s supporters and created a surge in fundraising for him. Tonight, it’s John McCain’s turn to speak. Though it seems unlikely he will inspire feelings as strong as Palin either for or against him, he is the candidate we are running against. And now that McCain is the official nominee and is accepting federal financing, he will be forced to curtail his spending. ((To $84.1 million dollars – so it’s no chump change.))

We all know this is an important election. This is the time to donate for the maximum effect – to allow Obama to out-manuever McCain over the coming months.

Here are some reasons to donate right now, while McCain is giving his speech, and in the immediate aftermath:

  1. To throw the bums (aka Republicans) out. Enough is enough. We need change before it’s too late.
  2. To prevent (another) unnecessary war. A new cold war with Russia? Killing the United Nations? Sabre-rattling with Iran – which would be further destabilized if the situation with Russia deteriorates. John McCain thinks that Iraq and Pakistan border one another and can’t tell the major Muslim factions apart. All he knows is that there are enemies, and we must defeat them. Sun Tzu said that you must know your enemy to defeat him. John McCain prefers to wing it, and he has quite a temper.
  3. To save the internet as we know it. Barack Obama supports net neutrality. John McCain opposes it.
  4. To get out of Iraq. The Iraqi prime minister said he likes Obama’s plan. The Iraqi people prefer Obama’s plan. George W. Bush is moving towards Obama’s timeline. The only person still too stubborn to acknowledge the facts on the ground is John McCain.
  5. To reinvest in America – with tax cuts to the middle class, with investments in infrastructure, with incentives to develop green energy alternatives, with health care reforms.
  6. To stop Palin from burning our books, teaching creationism, and opening up our local parks to hunters in helicopters.
  7. To restore the Constitution. To restore the balance of power in Washington, to stop the cruel and inhuman torture of our prisoners, to acknowledge the vice presidency is part of the executive branch, to have a president who does not consider himself above the law, and to punish those who have committed crimes against the Constitution in the Bush administration. ((For those whose thoughts immediately went to FISA when seeing this, I gave my opinion already.  And regardless – you have to admit Obama would be better on these issues than McCain.))
  8. To get my tax cut.
  9. To finally have a president who will be serious about national security.
  10. To demonstrate against the crass politics of celebrity and the crowds chanting, “Drill, baby, drill!” so that we can take on the serious and complex challenges facing America – including terrorism, global warming, the destabilizing effects of globalization, the massive shifts in power in the world, and the economic stratification of America.
  11. Because after over 25 years of Republican dominance in Washington, four more years is not an option.

Bonus:Because John McCain’s campaign will be under spending restrictions from here-on out. And Obama can pursue a 50-state strategy.

Aside from all this, here’s my one sentence explaining why I support Obama.

If you think this election will be important, now is the time. Our moment is now. Donate tonight.

Believe that there is a better place around the bend, as yet unseen. And help make that a reality.

Thank you.

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Election 2008 McCain Obama The Media The Opinionsphere

How the Media Created Independents

[digg-reddit-me]Many pundits and both campaigns have declared this the year of the independent voter ((It’s also the year of the Hillary voter, Reagan Democrats, and the libertarian voter.)) – and both presidential campaigns are making serious attempts to reach out to these unaffiliated voters. It is often noted that not all of these independent voters are created equal. They can be divided into three roughly described camps:

  • the partisan independent who is a conservative or liberal, in all but name, who generally consumes media appropriate to his or her silent affiliation (e.g., the independent who watches Fox News, listens to Rush Limbaugh, and reads Ann Coulter, and agrees with all these sources or his or her liberal counterpart);
  • the issue independent who has strong positions on particular issues and will vote for whatever candidate supports those issues (e.g. a pro-life independent who is against the death penalty, war, and abortion who doesn’t know who to support this election cycle);
  • the character independent – whom this piece is about.

The character independents (hereinafter, just “independents”) supported McCain over Bush in 2000; and Obama over Clinton in 2008. In this election season, independents supported Obama over Clinton and his opponents and McCain over all of his Republican opponents, and in the polls so far, the independents are breaking evenly between Obama and McCain.

How is it that this group can be so evenly split – see-sawing this way and that – when the differences between the two candidates they are viewing are so stark?

I have a suspicion as to what’s going on here – as I am in many ways a character independent myself. My central idea is this: These independents are media creations – not media creations in the way that soccer moms and security moms were – stereotypes created to give flavor to election coverage – but creations of the media environment itself. Independent voters are individuals who have internalized the media’s approach to issues.

A while ago, I wrote a piece about a fundamental flaw in the mainstream media coverage of virtually every issue, every event, and every policy. While opinion columnists and the partisan press often take a side in reporting these issues – for example, “Global warming is real;” or “Obama is not a Muslim;” or “As far as we can tell, the Swift Boaters are just making stuff up” – the mainstream media will report both sides of each issue or policy or accusation. Within their piece, they might give slightly more credence to one point of view than another – and end the piece on a high note for one side or another – but they are generally careful to avoid taking sides, even when the facts support one side overwhelmingly.

The problem is that the mainstream media has adopted an understanding of fairness that treats competing claims as equally valid, irrespective of the opinion of the reporter, or even of the facts. ((This is demonstrated rather clearly in this piece in the Washington Post from 2004 that asserts that both Kerry’s account and the Swift Boaters’ accounts “contain significant flaws and factual errors” while only providing evidence to back up the flaws and errors in the Swift Boaters’ allegations. The main flaw in Kerry’s information is that he did not provide enough evidence to disprove the Swift Boaters, while the Swift Boaters also provided no evidence to prove their case. Thus, overall the piece portrays it as a wash.))

The mainstream press attempts to adapt every story into their he-said, she-said paradigm – rather than fulfilling their journalistic responsibility to attempt to write the first rough draft of history, however flawed it may be. They avoid the facts at hand and instead merely transcribe the competing allegations, careful not to let their own reporting interfere. This leads – for example – to 53% of stories in the mainstream press about global warming to question the basic premises of this theory, while within peer-reviewed scientific journals, 0% of stories call into question the basic premises. This disconnect between reality as understood by science and the reporting on the science is what has lead to a 15 year interim between the scientific consensus on global warming and the finally emerging political consensus. If the reporters covering this story had done their work properly, they could have called the global warming skeptics what they were – oil industry shills – instead of reporting on their work as independent and nearly as credible as the vast majority of scientists.

Most voters’ only contact with any presidential candidate is through the media – so it is only natural that the media substantially affects their choices. ((This goes for those whose main sources are partisan media as well.)) An independent-minded person viewing or reading media that presents every issue as he-said, she-said has to develop a method of resolving this conflict between  the he’s and she’s. While a partisan will pick a team, and strongly tend to come down on the side of that team, an independent takes pride in seeing both sides of every issue – just as the media does. But while the media can avoid taking a side, an independent must – every two years or so – vote and make a choice. ((I don’t mean to suggest that independents don’t have strong opinions and preferences; rather, once they have resolved how to deal with the media’s framing, they often have very strong opinions.))

While the media is always able to find opposing sets of competing allegations, reality is not so simple. The media shouldn’t give equal time to claims by McCain that offshore drilling will reduce oil prices significantly and by Obama that it will not. They know one side is wrong and the other right. The media shouldn’t give equal time to scientists and skeptics about global warming. One side has evidence – the other side only has money. Since the right learned to manipulate the media by directly contradicting their opponents’ positions, no matter the facts, they have won election after election.

By distorting the news to fit into their paradigm, the media has created a class of voters who see both sides of every issue – even when the facts clearly favor one side. For the past ten years, as the media has been manipulated, so have they. And obvious policy choices and elections suddenly become competitive. This same pattern is emerging this year as the media treats Obama’s policies and McCain’s policies equally – even when one is reality-based and the other defined by political expediency. And so, independents are split equally so far in a year that should favor the Democrats.

But you can see that the Republicans are getting nervous – as the media finally began to cover the McCain campaign with the same intensity it has been using to cover Obama’s because of the Palin pick. Yesterday – all night – the Republicans attacked the media. They want to raise doubts in the minds of independents in case the media finally turns on them. In the end, it’s clear how the media will cover these attacks. They will get McCain operatives to give quotes bashing their reporting, and then they will get some reporters to comment on how they’re trying to be fair. And independents will see both sides.

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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons The Opinionsphere

Unhinged

Too much ink has been spilled discussing the bitter, clingy, and disgruntled supporters of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. I should call them former supporters – as those supporters who are now the focus of attention are now spurning Hillary’s requests that they back the candidate who represents the same agenda as her.

But – once again – the extent of one particular disgruntled supporter’s unhinging has amazed me.

katiebird over at RiverDaughter – formerly a progressive diarist for the Daily Kos – posted this incoherence on her blog today:

I just thought of a new basis for my vote.

Issues? I don’t trust a word Obama says so his speeches (with their laundry lists) and plans mean nothing to me. He’s already taken Universal Health Care off the table and that’s my “one issue” if there is such a thing. And McCain on the issues (giggle) I know people think I’m a Republican but believe me McCain does not speak for me.

Personality? I’ve got NO desire to have a beer with Obama. Much less spend the next four years listening to his speeches. I’ve got nothing in common with McCain either. And I’ve no illusions — none of them want to have a beer with me either.

Trust? I don’t trust any politician. Well, except maybe Hillary.

But Spite — Ah: This might be the first time I cast a vote almost wholly based on spite. It sounds absurd; could I really do it? Could I cast an important vote based on my frustration with Barack Obama’s disgusting supporters?

(gagging) At the rate this campaign is going, I’d say it’s a nearly sure bet.

It’s entitled “Up All Night” – so, I have to make room for the possibility that katiebird was clinicly insane at the moment she wrote it. More disturbing are the number of commentors who are supportive of this (giggle) post. Truly unhinged.

I suppose when Hillary Clinton described her agenda and what was wrong with the country and asked her supporters:

Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

It sounds like katiebird and the other disgruntled PUMAs were only in it for Hillary. And now that she has no chance and challenged them to support Obama, they are becoming unhinged.

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Economics Election 2008 Foreign Policy History McCain Obama Political Philosophy Politics The Opinionsphere

Vision versus Compromise

Sam Tanenhaus, an historian and editor of the New York Times Book Review, had a piece in Saturday’s Week in Review discussing vision and compromise in politics. The byline was: “Vision has its limits. Compromise has its opportunities.” While I agreed with the overall thrust of the piece – that a mediocre man’s compromise is often more effective a great man’s vision – Tannenhaus is setting up a false dichotomy:

Visionary leaders are inclined to create or imagine their own goals and then try to propel others toward them. Sometimes these leaders achieve greatness. Lincoln is the salient example. But he was also a canny and calculating politician, attuned to the nation’s mood, whereas another visionary president, Woodrow Wilson, was stymied precisely because of his imperious disregard of the public will.

I don’t see how an historian who had studied Lincoln can believe that vision and compromise can be mutually exclusive. The genius of Lincoln was that he first saw the world for what it was, saw what was possible and what was not, identified the core challenges ahead, and took what steps were necessary to achieve his objectives. Lincoln did have a vision – but it was a vision anchored in reality, and one that changed as realities changed. For Lincoln, his vision was not an independent idealistic end, but a goal that was based on the best he could do at that moment. He was willing to allow slavery to preserve the Union; he was willing to fight a brutal war to prevent secession; he was willing to let Britain commit acts of agression without retribution in order to keep the nation’s focus; he was willing to contravene the Constitution in order to preserve it. Lincoln cast a cold eye on war and peace and did what he believed was needed. Lincoln was neither an idealist nor a flip-flopper. He did not act as if there was something irreconcilable about having a vision of a better nation and actually accomplishing something. Lincoln believed that through powerful words and determined action, and most important, an understanding of the world and the possible – an individual must strive to do whatever they could, and to make the world a better place. Wilson failed because he was a stubborn idiot (whose stubbornness was exacerbated by medical issues) – not because he was a visionary.

Tanenhaus tries in his piece to treat John McCain and Barack Obama evenhandedly. But clearly, he favors Obama. He treats Obama’s flip-flip on public financing and change in tactics regarding telecom immunity (which Tannenhaus grossly mischaracterizes or misunderstands as a change in position on FISA) with McCain’s radical changes of position on tax cuts and on whether or not to run an honorable campaign. (He doesn’t mention McCain’s other flip-flops on offshore drilling and torture.) In attempting to treat them equally, he does a disservive to both men. But most importantly, by setting up an inherent conflict between being a visionary and a statesmen, he ignores the clear lessons of history. (And by equating partisan politicians with visionaries, his argument verges on the ridiculous.) Statesmen have propped up some of the worst regimes on the planet and protected the worst practices – all in the name of reasonableness and compromise. Visionaries have wreaked the worst violence on the history of the planet, attempting to remake the world to match their visions.

If all we can do is choose to compromise or choose to see a better world, then there are no good choices. But history shows us a better path – one which Lincoln demonstrates above all. Radicals are visionaries who seek to remake the world to match their visions; apologists are statesmen who compromise to protect the status quo at all costs. Lincoln was a pragmatic politician who had a few ideas about how to approach the challenges our country faced, who was willing to compromise to get something done, who saw the world as it was and not as he wished or feared it to be,  but who most of all attempted to push – to nudge – the country in a better direction.

As Sam Tanenhaus knows, and as I know – John McCain is not that type of politician. He has a set view of the world – and he believes that America can demand everything it wants and get it. He does not realize that we live in a nonpolar world in which states have great power, but not all power. He does not realize that if we kick Russia out of the G-8 as he was threatening to do before their invasion of Georgia – then we will pay a price in less cooperation on other fronts. He has accepted the failed orthodoxy of the far right-wing on economic policy – an orthodoxy that has led us to Enron, to a shrinking and less stable middle class, to a destabilizing dependence on oil, to an ossification of American society into classes, ((Except that those in the middle have no safety net to prevent them from falling into poverty while those as the top have various safety nets to prevent them from becoming middle class.)) and to the perfect storm of crises we are in the midst of now.

As Sam Tanenhaus knows, and as I know – Barack Obama could be that politician. He might fail – but there is no doubting that he is a pragmatist who sees that we are the single most powerful force in in a nonpolar world; but who also sees that unless we invest in our infrastructure, in new industries, and take steps to prevent us from becoming a stratified society, we will not be able to maintain our power. He has a vision of a better America, still unseen, around the corner – and his policies are all attempts to nudge our society in the right direction.

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Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics The Clintons

She was born with ovaries! I was born with ovaries!

Michelle Cottle over at The New Republic suggests what the Hillary supporters’ response to McCain’s pick of Palin should be:

How insulting, how condescending, how downright patronizing of Senator McCain to attempt such ham-fisted identity politics. Does he really think women are so pathetic, so irrational, so weak-minded that a former supporter of the proudly pro-choice, feminist, progressive, grand and glorious Senator Clinton will now look at this staunchly conservative, possibly promising but currently totally unqualified woman from Alaska and think, She was born with ovaries! I was born with ovaries! Hell yeah! You go girl!

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Election 2008 McCain Obama

The Single (Compound) Sentence That Describes Why I Support Obama

[digg-reddit-me]Why I Support Obama

Obama is a liberal pragmatist, with a conservative temperament, who seeks to understand the world as it is, to identify our long-term challenges, and to push (to nudge it) in a positive direction by tinkering with processes and institutions and creating tools to get people more involved in the government.

The sentence was buried in this post.

Why I Oppose McCain

He’s an excitable guy, reputed to be so unstable you can’t wear a tie around him, with an economic policy identical to Bush’s, benefiting the biggest corporations and the richest individuals – after Bush’s policies have been proven disastrous, shrinking the middle class, and leaving our economy less stable – coupled with a foreign policy more hawkish and more determined to undermine the international order than Bush’s, but based on the same misconceptions and moral cowardice – after Bush’s foreign policy has made our country weaker in nearly every region in the world.

Why I Support Obama Over McCain

Enough. We need Change, Before It’s Too Late.

And I’m confident Obama can pull this off.

Continue reading “The Single (Compound) Sentence That Describes Why I Support Obama”
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Election 2008 Foreign Policy Iraq McCain National Security Obama Politics The War on Terrorism

Bush-McCain Refuses to Make Tough Foreign Policy Choices

Last night, Barack Obama said:

You don’t defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq.

Joe Biden, in a 2004 interview with Joshua Marshall of the Talking Points Memo, made a similar point, but in a more roundabout way that encapsulates some portion of the difference between the two men and their approach to speaking:

No, I really mean it, ask Norm [communication director Norm Kurz]. I mean Norm’s had to sit through, listening to me in all these things. This is the point that I was trying desperately to make to my colleagues and I tried to articulate it on Stephanopoulos’ show. The fundamental flaw in the neo – forget flaw, the fundamental difference between Joe Biden, John Kerry on the one hand, and the neoconservatives on the other is that they genuinely believe – I’ll put it in the negative sense – they do not believe it is possible for a sophisticated international criminal network that will rain terror upon a country, that has the potential to kill 3,000 or more people in a country, can exist without the sponsorship of a nation state. They really truly believe – and this was the Axis of Evil speech – if you were able to decapitate the regimes in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, you would in fact dry up the tentacles of terror. I think that is fundamentally flawed reasoning. If every one of those regimes became a liberal democracy tomorrow, does anybody think we wouldn’t have Code Orange tomorrow in the United States? Rhetorical question. Does anybody think we don’t have to worry about the next major event like Madrid occurring in Paris or Washington or Sao Paulo? Gimme a break. But they really believe this is the way to do it. [My emphasis.]

Richard Haas, President of the Council of Foreign Relations, has been making the point in broader terms – explaining that we have moved from a unipolar world in which America’s power in every sphere was unrivaled to a nonpolar world in which power is decentralized – and many large corporations have more power than states and local power often trumps world power. Haas sees America as the single greatest power on earth – but rather than understanding the entire world as a system of countries, he sees a vastly more complicated power structure – where a loosely organized band of a few hundred can change the course of the world, and corporations operate according to their own interest rather than national interest; and large countries can exert influence in their backyard without American retaliation (as China and Russia proved recently).

McCain and Bush just don’t get these two realities of the world we live in today – a world in which power is decentralized and not exclusively held in nation-states and a world in which America cannot impose it’s will everywhere all of the time. They act as if we have the power to force our will upon every nation and organization. They do not believe we need to choose between Russia’s cooperation on terrorism-related issues and expanding NATO to Georgia and the Ukraine. They believe we can do both. They do not believe invading Iraq took away resources from Afghanistan – because we can do both. Their is an unreality in these positions, a determined insistence that refuses to make the tough strategic choices that foreign policy is about. That cowardice is at the heart of the Bush-McCain foreign policy. They do not acknowledge the central truth that drove America’s greatest foreign policy successes – in World War II and in the first years of the Cold War:

We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized.

They insist instead on our absolute power and on our moral purity. Coupling this with a mistaken view of the nation-state as all-powerful, a view substantially at odds with the titular Republican position of focusing on the power of individuals and corporations over that of government, they led us into Iraq, and now they are playing games of brinkmanship with Iran and Russia, in the vain hope that neither sees how weak our hand has become since we invaded Iraq.

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Election 2008 Humor Obama The Opinionsphere Videos

Obama, the Lion King

[digg-reddit-me]

While Rush Limbaugh thinks the best way to make fun of Obama is to appoint a black man to be the “Official Obama Criticizer” – and allow him to make racially insensitive remarks and “talk ‘hood” – Jon Stewart knows better – and last night, with his show pre-taped but scheduled to run after Obama’s big speech, his show ran this pitch-perfect Obama introduction telling the story of Barack Obama, “which begins 180 million years ago”:

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Election 2008 Obama

That Better Place Around the Bend


[Obama announcing his bid for the presidency in 2007.]

[digg-reddit-me]It’s funny to think of how much the pundits were complaining about how the convention speakers weren’t going after McCain before tonight. All that worrying. Yet, now, the plan is clear – all these other speakers were supposed to build Obama up – and then, Obama was supposed to tee off on McCain himself – at the moment of maximum publicity.

The Corner over at the National Review is sniping – nitpicking. They have pronounced the speech “LAME,” “Same old same old of the last two decades,” “pie-eyed utopianism,” “a September 10th convention,” and “This is not a great speech, and it is not a great delivery.” For the coup de grace, Kathryn Jean Lopez suggests “Maybe McCain shouldn’t speak next week and replay this instead?”

With that type of response, it’s a wonder the Republicans haven’t been run out of town. Talk about out-of-touch. Or perhaps, these comments are better understood as the rationalizations of the captain of a sinking ship – trying to convince his crew to keep doing their jobs, and the band to keep playing.

Barack Obama gave, tonight, not his best speech – and not his best delivered speech – although it was delivered well and was a great speech. Because of it’s ambition, it could not be perfect. Instead of small perfection – like Obama’s keynote address in 2004 – it was a broad vision, with specific detail, responding to all of the charges thrown against him, and striking at the perceived strengths of his opponent while praising his past opponents and calling on the best in America. It was exactly the speech he needed – accomplishing so much without overstretching. It was truly remarkable.

MSNBC made some headlines for it’s on and off-air catfights recently, but Chris Matthews summarized the highlights and the genius of the speech well in the immediate aftermath:

Keith Olberman: I’d love to find something to criticize about it. Got anything?

Chris Matthews: No. I’ll be criticized for saying he inspires me, but to hell with my critics…I think what he said was about us; and that’s why we care about what he said. It was not about an ego – it was about a country. And when he said it at the end, he really challenged the country to make a decision. He said our strength is not in our money or our military or even our culture – he said it’s the American spirit, the American promise that pushes us forward even when the  path is uncertain. It binds us together in spite our differences; it makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but in what is unseen – that better place around the bend. That is America. And I think that is the challenge. It is an open challenge to the hearts and minds of the country. They can choose him or the other guy. It’s an open election.

But what he was saying is choosing the unknown is what we did when we picked Roosevelt; it’s what happened the country chose Reagan; it’s what they chose when they chose Clinton; oftentimes you have to take the unknowable and move away from the unacceptable. And in this case he’s saying: ‘Place your bets on the 90% not the 10%’ where McCain disagrees with Bush.

I thought it was an amazing..but…I’ve written speeches all my life, of course nothing like this. Let me tell you what was great about it. What he did was – and it’s a military practice – it’s called attacking from a defensive position. It’s how Henry won in Agincourt; it’s how Alexander won; it’s how Reagan kicked the butt of Jimmy Carter. And what you do is this: you take your opponent’s best shot and throw it back at him.

Are we a nation of whiners? If this is an ownership society, you own your failure. Was my upbringing a celebrity’s upbringing? If you’re going to follow Bin Laden to the gates of hell, how about going to his cave and getting him? And how dare you say this election is a test of patriotism when we’re all in this together? It was a great way of throwing back the other side’s best shot and saying it’s full of crap.

Politically, it was a remarkable performance. Now we see if the McCain campaign and the Republican noise machine can match him – or at least neutralize him and his message. “Class warfare!” they will say, because he spoke of how the tax code penalizes work; “Tax and spend” they will say because he want to fix our nation’s failing infrastructure. They will paint him as weak on national security – despite his pledge to build up our military and defend our nation’s interests. They will call the same plays as they have for the past three decade.

I pray that enough of us will choose something better – will choose the unknown over the unacceptable – will choose to find that better place around the bend.

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Yet Another Blatant Power Grab By the Obamas

According to the Rocky Mountain News:

“I move that the convention suspend the procedural rules and suspend the future conduct of the roll-call vote,” Clinton said. “All votes cast by the delegates will be counted. and I move Senator Barack Obama of Illinois be selected by this convention by acclamation as the nominee of the Democratic Party as the president of the United States.”

The motion was met with a rousing ovation. It was quickly seconded and approved by the thousands of people in attendance.

Pelosi did not wait for any “no” votes before slamming down the gavel.

Why do I suspect that some PUMAs out there are going to make a big deal about that last event?