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Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons Videos

Hillary: Stay in this Race!

[digg-reddit-me]A few weeks ago, when the electoral math began to indicate that Senator Hillary Clinton had little no chance of catching Senator Barack Obama, the voices of the Democratic establishment who had remained mainly neutral began to push a new meme. These establishment voices clearly wanted to send a message to the Clintons: “Stay in the race as long as you want. But keep it clean.”

Bob Shrum wrote in the New York Times two weeks ago:

She has very little chance of winning, but Hillary Clinton has no reason to get out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination — for now. A long shot isn’t the same as no chance at all. And an extended campaign doesn’t have to wound the nominee, assuming a measure of self-restraint on both sides…

The degree of aggression on each side may not be comparable, as both sides argue on their own behalf. But the Democratic nomination may not be worth winning if the victor is lacerated as unready, unfit to hold the office, or un-American — not, as expected, by the vast right-wing conspiracy but by a Democratic rival.

The editors of The New Republic wrote:

[C]alls for Hillary to withdraw – calls that invariably rest on the mathematical case against her candidacy – are premature. By winning Ohio and Texas, Hillary won the right to continue in this race.

… [But] it’s imperative that, as Hillary Clinton continues her campaign, she conduct it in a certain manner: She can’t run the type of campaign she ran in the lead-up to Ohio and Texas. For weeks, Clinton attacked Obama with a relish not previously seen in this race. But it wasn’t the fact she was attacking Obama that was problematic, it was how she was attacking him–namely, in a way that will make it more difficult for Obama should he, as is still likely, be the Democratic nominee in November. For instance, it would have been fine for Hillary to argue that she’d make a better commander-in-chief than Obama; but it was wrong for her to essentially argue, as she did on more than one occasion, that she and John McCain would make better commanders-in-chief than Obama. Similarly, her strange hedging on “60 Minutes” about whether she believes Obama isn’t a Muslim only added fuel to the unfounded rumors that are already circulating about his faith. Frankly, Clinton’s chances are slim enough that a win-at-all-costs mentality from her campaign is not worth the risk of doing irreparable damage to the candidate who will likely be her party’s nominee.

Yet – for whatever reason, despite the fact that she has little chance of winning – Ms. Clinton has continued to attack Obama using Rovian tactics of guilt-by-association, character assassination, the questioning of patriotism, and divisive identity politics. Barack Obama’s campaign has not been pure – from the beginning, he made it clear that he was willing to fight when challenged, as the hiring of David Axelrod as his campaign manager demonstrated. But the restraint he has shown has been truly remarkable. Just a taste of the topics he hasn’t brought up: cattle futures; Travelgate; Filegate; her own pastor; pardons by her husband of terrorists that were intended to help her 2000 Senate campaign according to internal documents; the many shady deals her husband has made since leaving the presidency, often acting against his wife’s public positions. All of these directly relate to the kind of president she might be. We’re not even touching on Monica Lewinsky, on Whitewater, on Vince Foster, and the dozen other scandals of her husband’s administration as well as the persistent rumors of his continued infidelities and disconcerting business deals.

If Mr. Obama’s campaign has showed great restraint, Obama personally has shown even more restraint. Ms. Clinton has not – and her campaign has been worse. Last night, she demonstrated – in front of over ten million viewers – that she has no shame.

Perhaps that is why, today, without any significant event to move him except Ms. Clinton’s unconscionable performance at last night’s debate, Howard Dean demanded that superdelegates make their decisions “now.”

The Democratic party is worried about the damage Ms. Clinton is doing; as a co-worker of mine listens to hard-right talk radio through much of the day, I can hear the memes starting to spread – I can hear them gaining traction. Ms. Clinton is damaging herself, her party, and Obama – and she is attacking him using the very tactics she abhorred and laying the same groundwork for the “conservative” attacks on Obama that the right launched at Al Gore, Bill Clinton, John Kerry, Max Cleeland, and many more Democrats (and a few Republicans).

That’s why I want Ms. Clinton to stay in the race. As I wrote almost two months ago:

If Ms. Clinton wants to help her party win the White House this November, she can give Mr. Obama the “vetting” she claims he lacks, and with ever increasing histrionics, throw every smear, every false allegation, every innuendo at him. She can make her name synonymous with the sleaze she throws at him; she has proven that she is capable of a viciousness reminiscent of a Karl Rove. And by playing the villain, she can discredit and de-fang the many attacks that are sure to come at Mr. Obama after he secures the nomination.

It is better for these attacks on Obama to come out now than in September or October before the election. And Mr. Obama must overcome this type of politics if he is to win in November. Perhaps it is best if these attacks come from a source reviled on the right, so they can be more easily dismissed as time goes on. Though I doubt that Ms. Clinton is thinking in these times, I am trying to determine the best way Ms. Clinton’s destructive course could be used to benefit Mr. Obama.

Most observers thought that Mr. Obama looked weary last night. He wasn’t able to – and didn’t seem to even try to – launch the “knockout punch” that would end the race. Some quip, some throwaway line that would undermine the basis of Ms. Clinton’s candidacy, as Lloyd Bentsen’s response to Dan Quayle:

What Obama did – again and again – was to respond to the allegations and pivot back to the issues. Mr. Obama was tired and off of his game, and Ms. Clinton was on point – yet, my gut feeling is that Mr. Obama won more votes last night than he lost, because a weary Obama was far more compelling and far more presidential than an invigorated, desperate, and affected Clinton.

Ms. Clinton is playing the villain well so far. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like an act last night.

Here’s my proposition: the Pennsylvania primary is less than 10 days away. Let Ms. Clinton bring everything she has to this – which is to say, let her throw all the mud she can. We’ll see in 10 days who the mud is sticking to – and if Mr. Obama survives these Rovian, Atwater-style attacks, he will be a significantly stronger candidate. If he can rise above them, then he will be a truly great candidate.

I say let Ms. Clinton play the villain – because she is not giving us a choice. She is staying in this race. Obama has bet his candidacy on the fundamental decency and good sense of the American people. And he’s gotten this far. I have hope that he can make it a bit farther.

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Election 2008 Giuliani New York City Obama Politics The Clintons

Hillary running to be president…of 9/11

Ben Smith at the Politico also picked up on one of my observations from my post about last night’s debate:

Hillary… brought up 9/11, more or less unprompted, three times so far in the debate, a level not seen since Rudy Giuliani dropped out in January.

The three examples:

“For Pastor Wright to have given his first sermon after 9/11 and to have blamed the United States for the attack, which happened in my city of New York, would have been just intolerable for me.”

Later:

“If I’m not mistaken, that relationship with Mr. Ayers on this board continued after 9/11 and after his reported comments, which were deeply hurtful to people in New York and, I would hope, to every American, because they were published on 9/11, and he said that he was just sorry they hadn’t done more.”

And:

“I certainly would not meet with Ahmadinejad, because even again today, he made light of 9/11, and said that he’s not even sure it happened and that people actually died.”

She’s not at the “a noun, a verb, and 9/11” level yet – but then she just started playing this card last night…

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics

The Shockingly Widespread Sense

Mark Morford of SF Gate:

For the moment, I trust the collective intuition. I trust the shockingly widespread sense, not merely of hope and change, but of collective wisdom swimming though the air like an electrical surge between every smart, creative person on the planet right now, a bolt of energy that says: Hey, we’re still together. We still got it. Smart, intuitive people are still a force. There is life in the revolution yet.

And Obama? He gets it, too. Hell, he may have kindled it anew, all by himself. Either way, it’s back. And it’s powerful. And that, to me, is the most hopeful thing of all.

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Following Up “The Paradox of Barack Obama”

I wrote a piece a while back – before the February 5th Super Primary – about “The Paradox of Barack Obama“. asking a few questions:

What Obama and his supporters are counting on are the choices of many individuals to take a leap of faith – a faith not borne out by recent history, but a faith in a better tomorrow – specifically a better tomorrow founded on the discernment of the American people. This is what Obama means when he speaks of “the audacity of hope”, the “fierce urgency of now”, and “the great need of the hour”. It is what skeptics call “drinking the Kool-Aid“.

What Obama is attempting to do is call on the “better angels of our nature”. The paradox is that he will only succeed if America is transformed through a leap of faith. And a majority of individuals will only take the leap of faith if they first believe he will succeed. Which is why his campaign is a conjuring act. It is also why his campaign – unlike Hillary’s – will require American politics to rise to a different level.

The question now is:

  1. Can he get Hillary to rise to that level?
  2. Can he convince Hillary to trust the American people and say what she means?
  3. Can he convince Hillary that the American people will see beyond the gutter politics dominating the campaign?
  4. Can he convince Democrats that he can win in a politics dominated by character assassination?

Now that the campaign has progressed as far as it has, I think we can answer these questions:

  1. No.
  2. No.
  3. No.
  4. Yes.
Categories
Domestic issues New York City

1928

This line jumped out at me from yesterday’s New York Times article on the astronomical income brought in by Wall Street’s big shots:

Since 1913, the United States witnessed only one other year of such unequal wealth distribution — 1928, the year before the stock market crashed…

Yikes.

Categories
Domestic issues Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Betting on the American People

[digg-reddit-me]I wanted to call this post, “The End of Hillary 2008” but there were no “knockout blows” in this debate. Only the gradual erosion of Ms. Clinton’s candidacy and the demonstration of Barack Obama’s resilience.

On October 30, 2007, the Democratic candidates for president debated in Philadelphia. At the time, I noted that this debate might mark”The Beginning of the End of Hillary 2008“. I based this prediction on the fact that the fundamentals of this election year favor Senator Barack Obama, and that Ms. Clinton had just made a significant mistake that played into her perceived weaknesses. Many people scoffed – and the conventional wisdom of the time was that although Ms. Clinton made a large blunder, she hadn’t offered a large enough opening for Mr. Obama to take advantage of. It is hard to recall now how obvious it seemed then that Ms. Clinton would be the Democratic nominee.

Now tonight, 170 days later, and 10 days before the umpteenth “final showdown” between the candidates, they debated again. In the October debate, Ms. Clinton complained that Tim Russert and Brian Williams were “ganging up” on her because they pressed her to answer questions that she was trying to evade, most specifically regarding driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants.

Tonight though Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos did gang up on Mr. Obama. They used a surrogate to ask if he was loved the country and the flag; they brought up the fact that he had once served on a charitable board with a former member of the Weather Underground; they of course mentioned Bittergate; they brought up again the comments of Reverend Wright. Ms. Clinton piled on – especially by trying to raise the issue of William Ayers, the former member of the Weather Underground who Mr. Obama knew from the charitable board and the University of Chicago and by saying, again, that Mr. Obama’s comments about “clinging” to religion, guns and nativism were elitist and out-of-touch. Watching her closely as she flung this mud – which had often been thrown at her in the past two decades – I thought I could see her squirm, as she refused to focus her eyes on anyone or anything in particular, looking up, then down, then left, and right, all awkward yet determined. I thought I could see Ms. Clinton’s conscience squirming as she tried to teach Mr. Obama the lesson that she had been taught: the only way to win is to ignore the issues and the truth as you know it, and try to bring down your opponent.

The National Review‘s Jonah Golberg halfway through the debate wrote on The Corner:

I’m no leftwing blogger, but I can only imagine how furious they must be with the debate so far. Nothing on any issues. Just a lot of box-checking on how the candidates will respond to various Republican talking points come the fall. Now I think a lot of those Republican talking points are valid and legitimate. But if I were a “fighting Dem” who thinks all of these topics are despicable distractions from the “real issues,” I would find this debate to be nothing but Republican water-carrying.

I think if he were more honest, Mr. Golberg might say he did find the debate to be “nothing but Republican water-carrying” and that the issues the moderators and Ms. Clinton kept pressing were “valid and legitimate” points only if “valid and legitimate” points were defined to mean those issues which would help Republicans beat Mr. Obama.

It’s worth noting how far Hillary Clinton has come – as demonstrated in the following video which many redditors will be familiar with:

(h/t The Nation ‘s Ari Melber.)

In the debate tonight, Ms. Clinton attacked Mr. Obama as an elitist, attacked him by invoking 9/11 (some 4 times by my informal count), and attacked him for associating with a former terrorist (a charge which Obama parried very well, pointing out that President Bill Clinton had pardoned several members of the same group that Ms. Clinton was attacking Obama for having served on a charitable committee with.)  Ms. Clinton has gone from the foremost victim of the Drudge-style smears and gaffes to the foremost practitioner of the varied and dark arts of dirty politics (now that Karl Rove has retired).  Tonight’s debate on ABC provided her with an ideal platform with sympathetic questioners who aided her.

And yet here is the key: Obama scored no knockouts, but he kept going, and he kept talking about the policy issues that matter to most Americans without looking like he was dodging the questions.  He answered, then pivoted.  Again.  And again.  And again.  And it worked.

What his candidacy comes down to is this: he is betting on the American people.  That’s why, when confronted with the incendiary statements of Reverend Wright, he didn’t do the typical political move and disown him; he condemned the comments and sought to explain why he still admired the man who said them, speaking to Americans as if they were adults.

Mr. Obama’s candidacy is not magical, as it did feel for a time in the days after Iowa.  What his candidacy is is grounded and methodical and competent and substantiative and groundbreaking.

Maybe there’s a bit of magic mixed up in there too – but it’s not in the candidate himself.  It’s in the hopes of the people who are coming into the political process to support him; it’s in the sense that America is righting itself after many, many rocky years; it’s in the movement that is swelling around his candidacy; it’s in the connection between Barack Obama’s story and the nation’s; and it’s in the fact that the candidate who is winning is the one who was willing to bet on the good sense of the American people.

Categories
Domestic issues Law Politics

Attorney-Client Privilege

[reddit-me]In commenting on the Torture Memo scandal (that has incidentally gotten far less attention than Bittergate), Stephen Gillers of The Nation brings up an important point:

The lawyers told the President what he wanted to hear, but the nation was their client, and its sole interest was in thorough and independent legal analysis. Neither the President’s political agenda nor the authors’ views of what the law should say can be allowed to slant the OLC’s work. So maybe the best and brightest lawyers got it so wrong because they forgot whom they served. Maybe they acted politically, not professionally. If so, we are dealing with a perversion of law and legal duty, a betrayal of the client and professional norms, not mere incompetence, which would be bad enough.  Whatever the reason, [H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility] should find that this work is not “consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys.” Jarrett must hold the lawyers accountable if he means to restore OLC’s reputation and vindicate the rule of law.

It’s an important point to make – and one which undermines those who argue that John Yoo and other lawyers who justified explicitly illegal actions were just providing legal advice to their client.  Not only was their advice bad, but they were bowing to the pressure of a third party that wasn’t their client.

At the same time, if the nation itself is their client, rather than the president, they are required to be more independent than the Bush administration’s view of the executive branch allows for.  Unlike in a monarchy, neither the president as an individual nor the presidency as an office is considered to solely represent or speak for the nation.  At least that was what the founders thought.

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Humor Political Philosophy Videos

The McLovin’ Fund

Donate today. It’s a worthy cause.

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics The Clintons

Hillary’s great favor

Barack Obama on Ms. Clinton’s recent campaign strategy yesterday:

I’m sure that Senator Clinton feels like she’s doing me a great favor, because she’s been deploying most of the arguments that the Republican Party will be using against me in November.”

Categories
Election 2008 Obama Politics

There is no Obama in Italy

[reddit-me]Alexander Smoltczyk of Der Spiegel, an influential European newsmagazine, writes of Silvio Berlusconi’s challenger, Walter Veltroni, a dour and uninspiring liberal who lost in yesterday’s Italian elections:

“It is difficult to give them hope. But we can do it,” says Veltroni. “Obama has also done it.”

Veltroni’s campaign slogan is: “Si può fare,” or “Yes, we can” in Italian. “I met Obama in Washington,” says Veltroni. “He was different. Modern and inspiring. I wrote the foreword to the Italian edition of his book.” Perhaps it was intended as an attempt to influence Veltroni’s own destiny.

“Si può fare” are the words printed on the cardboard signs that Veltroni’s audiences wave when he speaks on their piazzas. But there is something unreal about the slogan, especially in light of the stonewalling and bureaucracy and ineptness Veltroni himself has complained about, and in light of the Italian sickness.

There is no Obama in Italy.

The article makes very clear that Mr. Veltroni was not as skilled of a politician Obama. But read the last sentence of that piece again:

“There is no Obama in Italy.”

It seems to say more, to hint at something that “Obama” means – something that we in America easily lose sight of as the bickering and knee-capping among the candidates obscures it.

“Obama” represents – to much of the world – a restoration of America, a correction to George W. Bush’s strategy, a hope that things can change, a sense that the world is righting itself.

The opportunity we have in this coming election is unique.  Which is something we can too easily forget.