Category: Domestic issues

The New York Times Endorses Hillary Clinton

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date January 25, 2008
5 Comments on The New York Times Endorses Hillary Clinton

[digg-me]In an article full of hedged opinions and criticisms of Senator Clinton and praise for Obama, the New York Times endorsed Hillary Clinton because she was the safe choice. Their conclusion:

Mrs. Clinton is more qualified, right now, to be president.

The also manage to deceive themselves into thinking that Senator Clinton can be as unifying as Senator Obama – and that she will win over her critics; they paint the differences between Clinton and Obama as marginal – because both Senators propose similar policies. But they ignore the difference in temperament and political approach that Obama would give – and the fact that his focus would be on improving the process rather than on achieving particular ends. Senator Clinton has shown time and time again that she is willing to use any means at her disposal in order to achieve whatever end she believes is necessary. Senator Obama has shown remarkable restraint – and his public record indicates a seriousness about the abuse of government power that Clinton lacks. ((Including especially his work in Illinois to have all capital case interrogations recorded, and his bill that created this site, and in general his focus on transparency in government.))

Especially at a time when the balance of power in Washington has been skewed in favor of the presidency, we need a president who will restrain himself or herself – as the Times acknowledges. The Times makes the perplexing statement that “Mrs. Clinton is equally dedicated to those issues” as Obama while acknowledging that she doesn’t talk about them. The editors also fail to mention that the Bush administration built on many precedents set by the Clinton administration in their quest for further executive power – including one major early victory which was based on assertions of executive privilege by Hillary Clinton’s health care task force.

In the end, I think the New York Times fundamentally mis-interprets the state America is in – and the relative qualifications of Senators Clinton and Obama.

Here’s what I propose

Write a letter to the New York Times expressing your disapproval of their endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Make the next news story that they received more mail disagreeing with this decision than any other in their history. We can do it.

Email @ [email protected]

Fax @ (212) 556-3622

Mail to:

Letters to the Editor
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

Or even better do all three.

Letters submitted for publication should be 150 words or less, must refer to an article that has appeared within the last seven days, and must include the writer’s address and phone numbers according to the Times Letters to the Editor page.

If you can, let me know you’re sending the letter by emailing [email protected] so I can post updates on how much of a response the Times is getting.

Spread the word! Post this information on your own blog!

We can show the New York Times that we, at least, can see the Great Need of the Hour. And it’s not Hillary Clinton.

Domestic issues Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

A Ship In Need of Repairs

[digg-reddit-me]I have heard many times that Barack Obama won’t change anything; that he has the same policies as Hillary Clinton; that he isn’t a radical. Here’s my response:

There are 5 measures I use to evaluate a candidate:

What they believe is reality, specifically as it affects policy (e.g. Is global climate change substantially effected by human development?)
What changes should be made? (aka, What policies should be adopted in response to the perceived reality?)
How do they want to achieve their changes? (as indicated by their temperament,
their campaigns, and to some extent, their policies.)
What role do they see for the government?
What is their character? (which can be very subjective – but is still basic to understanding any candidate.)

Obama and Hillary agree to a large extent on the first two questions. Arguably, they agree on the general role of government as well. In terms of character there are significant differences, but those are more subjective – and not something I want to delve into at the moment.

The real conflict between Obama and Clinton is on how to achieve change. And it is why I came to believe in Obama’s approach and to reject Clinton in such strong terms. The past few weeks have only solidified my position.

Obama believes in change that is gradual, driven by the grassroots, and done through an open and transparent process. Clinton believes in imposing policies from Washington and using whatever means are necessary to achieve whatever change she can.

Obama and Clinton are both only proposing minor changes in policy so far. But Obama is proposing major changes in the process, which he has indicated will lead to lasting and substantial changes in policy. I believe – as does Senator Obama – that America is not on the wrong track because the president has been steering the country wrong – like a captain setting the wrong course on a ship in working order, but because the processes which drive our policy and actions and politics have become distorted – as if the ship, still afloat and strong, needed repairs and maintenance.

Domestic issues Election 2008 History Obama Politics

Only If We Become a Great People

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date January 24, 2008
8 Comments on Only If We Become a Great People

via Flickr

[digg-reddit-me]Grace Lee Boggs, a prominent writer and speaker who has been involved in the civil rights and feminist movements for the past sixty years, wrote in The Nation this past week about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Legacy of Change”. She writes:

At 92, going on 93, I am fortunate to still be around to rejoice at the new energies being unleashed all across this country by the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. In his person and in his prose, Obama embodies the achievements of the great movements of the twentieth century and the hope that by building on these movements we can become the agents of change that we urgently need in our country and in the world in the twenty-first century.

The challenges before us now are not unlike those King described: ending our catastrophic occupation of Iraq, addressing global warming, rebuilding cities and industries devastated by globalization, reducing the growing gulf between the haves and the have-nots. These demand huge changes, not only in our institutions but in ourselves. To become part of the solution, we, as a people, must recognize that we are a large part of the problem. To change the world, we must practice a much more active and participatory concept of American and global citizenship.

Obama can become a great President only if we become a great people. Though his image inspires us, Obama alone is not the movement for change. We have the right and the duty to create the vision that we want him to represent. Instead of projecting desired outcomes on his redemptive persona, instead of viewing ourselves solely as followers of a charismatic leader, we can and must become the leaders the nation has been looking for. This is the best way to make us less vulnerable to corporate funders and lobbyists who refract our values for private gain.

None of us can step back from the responsibility of becoming part of the solution. Because of the struggles of working people in factories and on farms, African-Americans, women, Chicanos, Native Americans and immigrants, gay people, youth and the disabled, all of us have a new “burden and responsibility.” All of us have the opportunity to create a more human, more socially conscious and more ecologically responsible nation. I cannot imagine a better way to celebrate King’s birthday and to honor his true legacy.

Unstated but implicit in Boggs’s message is that America had great opportunities along with its great challenges at the end of the 1960s – and that we as a nation failed to rise to the occasion. Instead we muddled through – and with every step forward, we took one backwards. By the late sixties, with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, and growing internal chaos, we had put off the challenges of that time – but not for long: we were forced to reckon with the stagflation of the 1970s and with the simmering “Cold” War until 1989. And today, we now must reckon with the destruction of our environment, with global instability, and with a growing gap between the rich and poor. Today, the problems deferred in the late 1960s have been growing more severe. Globalization, global warming and global instability; executive overreach, civil liberties, and terrorism.

For a brief time during the 1960s, America showed signs of becoming a great people. ((I think that there is much to admire and much to find fault with in the 1960s radical movements. And I believe that America has often shown signs of greatness – and a few times in its history lived up to them.)) We approached some greatness, some moment of reckoning – a grand resolution and revolution in our institutions and our way of life. But, in the end, the sixties radicals devolved into anarchy and violence; and those not consumed by the movement, melted back into society. The 1960s generation failed because they did not follow through – and instead began to war with one another.

Boggs says that: “Obama can become a great President only if we become a great people.” She focuses on Obama – and rightly so. At this moment, he is the candidate who can start a movement and who will focus on the long-term challenges America faces. But her conclusion is too narrow – this is not about Obama very much at all. We will only be challenged by a great president if we become a great people.

As Obama has acknowledged – the movement rising behind him is not about him – it’s about us, and what it says about us to look beyond the stale politics of tears and smears, of Bushes and Clintons, of money and more money; there are many who are cynical – with good reason. There are even many reasons to believe that Obama – for all of his strength of character – may well fall victim to the lure of power.

Truly, Barack Obama can only become a great president if we, the people, force him to be. There is a very specific but difficult to pinpoint relationship between the people and a president. It is almost certainly a sign of America’s descent from its republican ideals that the mood of the country is profoundly shaped by the occupant of the White House.

Domestic issues Election 2008 Politics The Clintons

Be honest.

[digg-reddit-me]The man in question became a lawyer straight out of college, married a law professor and aspiring politician. He fathered one child. The son of two white Republicans — he became a Democrat and remained married to his wife while she attained higher and higher levels of political success, culminating in her election and re-election as president of the United States of America.

In an unprecedented move, the first spouse was put in charge of one major area of policy – and failed miserably, as a result of his own egregious mistakes, his arrogance, and the powerful forces arrayed against him. This colossal failure doomed this major policy initiative for a generation despite significant majorities continuing to support it. After this failure, he maintained a lower profile and surfaced mainly to attack political opponents of his wife.

Be honest: Do you think this is the biography of someone who could be elected to the United States Senate? After one full term there, do you believe he could be a viable candidate to head the most powerful nation on earth?

Contra Gloria Steinem.

Domestic issues Election 2008 Obama Politics

Against deep odds and great cynicism I will ask you to believe…

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date January 6, 2008

Andrew Sullivan posts tonight trying to counter the new meme spreading around about Obama: that he lacks substance. Hillary for example tried to make this point in a typical Clintonian backhanded manner at the debate tonight. Sullivan points this out for the tripe it is.

The reason this meme has been marginally effective though is not that Obama lacks substance, but because it is not substance that is drawing people to him. There are many things that are working for him – style, substance, class, gravitas, charisma. The key element though is that ineffable, almost poetic, quality to his thought and speech. Normal politicians speak to our rational minds, or to our fears, or to our hearts. Obama manages to combine these. He brings soul back to politics:

The truth is, one man cannot make a movement. No single law can erase the prejudice in the heart of a child who hangs a noose on a tree. Or in the callousness of a prosecutor who bypasses justice in the pursuit of vengeance. No one leader, no matter how shrewd, or experienced, or inspirational, can prevent teenagers from killing other teenagers in the streets of our cities, or free our neighborhoods from the grip of homelessness, or make real the promise of opportunity and equality for every citizen.

Only a country can do those things. Only this country can do those things. That’s why if you give me the chance to serve this nation, the most important thing I will do as your President is to ask you to serve this country, too. The most important thing I’ll do is to call on you every day to take a risk, and do your part to carry this movement forward. Against deep odds and great cynicism I will ask you to believe that we can right the wrong we see in America. I say this particularly to the young people who are listening today…

I know that you believe it’s possible too.

via Andrew Sullivan.

Domestic issues Election 2008 History Obama Political Philosophy Politics

To be partisan

Karl Rove & George Bush

[digg-me]

par·ti·san

noun, [Origin: 1545–55; < MF < Upper It parteźan (Tuscan partigiano), equiv. to part(e) faction, part + -eźan (< VL *-és- -ese + L -iānus -ian)]

1. an adherent or supporter of a person, group, party, or cause, esp. a person who shows a biased, emotional allegiance; a firm adherent to a party, faction, cause, or person; especially : one exhibiting blind, prejudiced, and unreasoning allegiance;

2 a: a member of a body of detached light troops making forays and harassing an enemy b: a member of a guerrilla band operating within enemy lines

In the past two weeks, a fight has broken out in the Democratic primaries between John Edwards and Barack Obama (with Paul Krugman and Hillary Clinton playing supporting roles for Edwards) over the best way to effect change. Edwards insists that in order to effect change, we must fight for it and demand it. He argues that those in power, who are benefiting from the current system, will not give up their powers or benefits easily. We, as the people, as the government, need to wrest the power from the powerful and end the corrupt system that does not benefit the majority of Americans. We need to force change upon those in power. As Krugman has put it, seconded by many Edwards supporters, and echoed in her way by Hillary Clinton: we need to be partisan, because partisan force is the only way to effect change. Obama has a different view on how to effect change. He says that lasting change comes from consensus – and that partisanship is one of the biggest obstacles we face in effecting lasting and significant change.

The conversation around the web

This back and forth has prompted one of the better public discussions in recent years – both substantial and interesting. Paul Krugman has attacked Obama as the anti-change candidate, for opposing health care mandates, for attacking John Edwards, and for talking about the problems with Social Security. Others have weighed in: the Street Corner Society, Michael Schwartz, Greg Sargent, Richard Baehr, John McCormick, Frank Rich (here, here, and here), David Brooks (here, here, and here) and Sam Sedaei.

The value of partisanship

Paul Krugman illustrates as well as anyone the value of partisanship. For a political minority, partisanship is the key to survival, and the only means of blocking change. Partisanship is, in essence, a defense. The problem with the Democrats from 1994 to 2005, and even with some Democrats today, is that they were trying to be non-partisan in an environment that demands steadfast opposition – that demands partisanship.

There is little doubt that from 1994 until the impeachment of Bill Clinton that the political environment was moving rightward; and after September 11, the country swung rightward again. During this time, Democrats continued to act on the assumptions that had served them well for the past few decades. Confident that the nation was behind them, they attempted to make reasonable compromises. In this, they made two errors: first, they assuming that the nation was still behind them, when on several important issues, it was not; second, they assumed that the people they were dealing with were reasonable. But the Republicans from the class of 1994 were ideologues. Bill Clinton saw this, and saw his presidency imperiled, he started triangulating – trying undercut the conservative agenda by adopting it. It was a brilliant strategy – but it failed in one key area. It left liberal Democrats to fend for themselves and undercut the partisanship that would be needed to effectively oppose and reverse the gains Republicans had made.

To this day, the Democrats have only made minor gains in their effectiveness to oppose Republicans. But, thankfully, the country has turned, and we are now faced with (another) historic moment.

Although as long as President Bush is in power, the Democrats must take a partisan strategy in Washington, those candidates running for President themselves should focus on the future, and on growing the Democratic party.

The flaw of partisanship

If partisanship is the best strategy for a minority party, because, by it’s nature it is biased and divides the population; it is not the best strategy for a majority party. To me, this is one of the key lessons of the past seven years of Rove-Bush. Despite tremendous advantages, Rove failed to turn September 11 into the defining conservative moment he sought because he never ceased to be partisan. By forcing the change they sought through again and again, by marginalizing moderates, by alienating liberals, Rove and Bush set a timer on how long any of the changes they sought would last and destroyed the possibility of a conservative realignment.

Barack Obama makes clear what he wants to do – and what it seems only he can do, based on polling data – to unite the country, to bring in liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and independents in order to face the serious challenges America faces. He wants to forge real change – which requires consensus and the judgment about when to stand firm and when to compromise.

After September 11, America united. George W. Bush, with his relentless partisanship, re-polarized the nation in the aftermath. In 2008, we need a president with the judgment to know when to fight and when to compromise. We need a president who can bring the country together to forge lasting change – not the short-term fixes that fall apart with every change of office. In 2008 we need a president who can bring the country together to face the issues of global climate change, terrorism, runaway executive power, extremism in the Middle East, a declining dollar, tremendous deficits, and escalating entitlement spending.

Partisanship can only take us so far. In 2008, we need Barack Obama.

Domestic issues Election 2008 Obama Politics

Edwards v. Obama: The closing arguments

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date December 28, 2007
1 Comment on Edwards v. Obama: The closing arguments

We need a president who will take these powers on and fight to get you your voice back, and your government back. We need a president who is going to fight every day to make sure that all Americans can find good jobs, save for the future, and be guaranteed health care and retirement security. We need a president who is going to lift up the middle class…

None of this is going to be easy. I hear all these candidates talking about how we’re going to bring about the big, bold change that America needs. And I hear some people saying that they think we can sit at a table with drug companies, oil companies and insurance companies, and they will give their power away. That is a fantasy. We have a fight in front of us. We have a fight for the future of this country. And the change we need will not happen easily. We need someone who is going to step into that arena on your behalf, someone who is ready for that fight. [my italics]

Obviously, Edwards has been emphasizing this time around that he is a fighter. He makes clear that he thinks change comes from fighting – that change must be pushed through and forced upon those who would oppose it. He believes the moment for force and fighting is now – in a rhetorical sense at least. The model he looks to is Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Obama’s closing pitch strikes a very different note:

It’s change that won’t just come from more anger at Washington or turning up the heat on Republicans. There’s no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there. We don’t need more heat. We need more light. 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. And although the Republican operatives in Washington might not be interested in hearing what we have to say, I think Republican and independent voters outside of Washington are. That’s the once-in-a-generation opportunity we have in this election.

For the first time in a long time, we have the chance to build a new majority of not just Democrats, but Independents and Republicans who’ve lost faith in their Washington leaders but want to believe again – who desperately want something new…

n the end, the argument we are having between the candidates in the last seven days is not just about the meaning of change. It’s about the meaning of hope. Some of my opponents appear scornful of the word; they think it speaks of naivete, passivity, and wishful thinking.

But that’s not what hope is. Hope is not blind optimism. It’s not ignoring the enormity of the task before us or the roadblocks that stand in our path. Yes, the lobbyists will fight us. Yes, the Republican attack dogs will go after us in the general election. Yes, the problems of poverty and climate change and failing schools will resist easy repair. I know – I’ve been on the streets, I’ve been in the courts. I’ve watched legislation die because the powerful held sway and good intentions weren’t fortified by political will, and I’ve watched a nation get mislead into war because no one had the judgment or the courage to ask the hard questions before we sent our troops to fight.

But I also know this. I know that hope has been the guiding force behind the most improbable changes this country has ever made. In the face of tyranny, it’s what led a band of colonists to rise up against an Empire. In the face of slavery, it’s what fueled the resistance of the slave and the abolitionist, and what allowed a President to chart a treacherous course to ensure that the nation would not continue half slave and half free. In the face of war and Depression, it’s what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation. In the face of oppression, it’s what led young men and women to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through the streets of Selma and Montgomery for freedom’s cause. That’s the power of hope – to imagine, and then work for, what had seemed impossible before.

That’s the change we seek. And that’s the change you can stand for in seven days.

It’s a longer excerpt because Obama’s idea is more complex, more subtle. It is to Edwards’s credit that he is able to take complex ideas and boil them down into a simple formula – and it is how he won so many court cases. Obama prefers to make his audience rise to the rhetoric, to make them work to understand him. And it has been a surprisingly effective formula so far.

Domestic issues Foreign Policy Politics Roundup

Two articles to mull over

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date December 3, 2007

World War III

Ron Rosenblum had this must-read article about World War III over at Slate magazine this weekend.

I think this is the urgent debate question that should be posed to both parties’ candidates. What happens if Pakistan falls into the hands of al-Qaida-inclined elements? What happens if Musharraf hands over the launch authorization codes before he’s beheaded?

Don’t kid yourself: At this very moment, there’s a high probability that this scenario is being wargamed incessantly in the defense and intelligence ministries of every nuclear nation, most particularly the United States, Russia, and Israel.

War is just a shot away, a well-aimed shot at Musharraf. But World War III? Not inevitably. Still, in any conflict involving nukes, the steps from regional to global can take place in a flash. The new “authorized” users of the Islamic bomb fire one or more at Israel, which could very well retaliate against Islamic capitals and perhaps bring retaliation upon itself from Russia, which may have undeclared agreements with Iran, for instance, that calls for such action if the Iranians are attacked.

If Pakistan is the most immediate threat, U.S., Israeli, and Iranian hostilities over Iranian bomb-making may be the most likely to go global. That may have been what the “very senior” British official was talking about when he said the Israeli raid on Syria brought us “close … to a third world war.” Iranian radar could easily have interpreted the Israeli planes as having its nuclear facilities as their target. On Nov. 21, Aviation Week reported online that the United States participated in some way in the Israeli raid by providing Israel information about Syrian air defenses. And Yossi Melman, the intelligence correspondent with Haaretz, reported a few days later that—according to an Israeli defense specialist—the raid wasn’t about a nuclear reactor but something more “nasty and vicious,” a plutonium assembly plant where plutonium, presumably from North Korea, was being processed into Syrian bombs.

How America Lost the War on Drugs

Ben Wallace-Wells meanwhile wrote this instant Pulitze prize contender for Rolling Stone on “How America Lost the War on Drugs” with the subhead: “After Thirty-Five Years and $500 Billion, Drugs Are as Cheap and Plentiful as Ever: An Anatomy of a Failure.”

On anti-drug advertisements

The ads, which ran under the slogan “The Anti-Drug,” had been designed by a committee of academics who apparently believed that kids needed to be shown that not doing drugs could be fun too. In one characteristic spot, a pen draws an animated landscape, with a cartoon boy avoiding the advances of cartoon dealers before driving off into the distance with a cartoon dragon on a cartoon motorcycle. “My name is Brandon, and drawing is my anti-drug,” the narrator says sweetly. The commercials made abstinence seem so lame they could have been designed by the cartels…

On the escalating political rhetoric

[Bush’s drug czar] Walters called citizens who plant and tend marijuana gardens “terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties.”

Ben Wallace-Wells’s conclusions

By virtually every objective measure, the White House had lost the War on Drugs. Last year, Walters boasted that drug use among teenagers has fallen since 2002 – ignoring the fact that overall drug use remains unchanged. The deeper problem is that the drug czar has stopped measuring anything other than drug use. During the 1990s, at the direction of Gen. McCaffrey, Carnevale had created a comprehensive system to measure whether we were winning the drug war. The system took into account drug price and availability in the United States, how difficult it was for drug smugglers to get their product into the country and the consequences of drug use on public health and crime. But Walters simply tossed out that system of evaluation – as well as the unflattering facts it highlighted. “Had we kept it,” Carnevale tells me, “we would see that the Bush administration has not made a positive impact on any of the measures.”

Most unexpectedly of all, crime – a problem that seemed to have been licked a decade ago – is beginning to creep back up. In October 2006, the Police Executive Research Forum released a report declaring that violent crime in the country was “accelerating at an alarming pace.” Murders were up twenty-seven percent in Boston over the previous year, sixty percent in San Antonio and more than 300 percent in Orlando. Even in the cloistered world of policing, complaints began to build about the numbers and about the cuts in federal funding. “The reality is a lot of police officers are politically conservative folks,” says Ron Brooks, the president of the National Narcotics Officers’ Association. “But there’s been a lack of leadership in this administration on this issue.”

Domestic issues Humor

Tim Meadows explains why pot is bad for you

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date December 3, 2007
1 Comment on Tim Meadows explains why pot is bad for you

A clip from Judd Apatow’s new film, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story with John C. O’Reilly and Tim Meadows.[reddit-me] A spoof of Walk the Line, the film has cameos from Jack White as Elvis, Paul Rudd as John Lennon, Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly.

Domestic issues Election 2008 Law Politics The War on Terrorism

Our Lady of the Law

Post author By Joe Campbell
Post date November 25, 2007

I’m still hoping someone out there has the full text of this speech by former Governor Cuomo that is being called “Our Lady of the Law”:[digg-reddit-me]

Cuomo said we have to make them understand that we are after

“something sweeter than the taste of partisan victory”

The clear message was that he fully expected that it was the obligation of lawyers everywhere to speak up in support of the Rule of Law or as he persisted in calling it “Our Lady of the Law.” That he expected us to take to the streets, to the OpEd pages, the airwaves, and to every other medium available to us…