J. Bradford Delong's commenters deconstruct Obama

Damn straight:

mg said...

If you look at Obama as a politician, his entire MO is to look at what his political opponents are proposing, and then take a position that's one step closer to the center than theirs. It's what he did in the primaries, it's what he did in the general, and it's what he's done in office. That's the whole thing, the super-high level multi-dimensional chess that the rest of us were too dense to comprehend, the brilliant nefariousness, everything. Of course, such an approach is entirely disinterested in policy and outcomes, but that isn't really Obama's problem or interest. And also of course, if you don't really concern yourself with outcomes, your outcomes aren't likely to be all that great.

If you spend a lot of time trying to deconstruct an approach like that you end up tieing yourself in knots -- it's rather like trying to deconstruct extreme nonsense verse. Such attempts end up revealing more about the doconstructor [sic] than the subject matter itself.

AuOso said...

This is simply the Democratic congressional election strategy transported down Pennsylvania Avenue. Everyone dives for cover and makes sure they camouflage themselves by sounding just a little more moderate than their opponent. The Republicans have become adept at exploiting this, first filling the message void Democrats have created for themselves, then moving ever further to the right, pulling the Democrats with them.

It really doesn't matter how many seats we win, the Republicans win the future. We have been arguing who has the better approach to supply-side economics for the last thirty years. We have done nothing to change that conversation, even when the evidence was plain that supply-side was a sham. This was the President's responsibility and his biggest failure to date.

I mean, am I the only one to find Obamapologistas relentlessly, tiresomely Panglossian? "He did it the best way he could, and no other way could have possible led to a better outcome [in this, the best of all possible worlds]". Or the similar tune, "Maybe it could've been done better, but considering everything, it maybe wasn't the best but it was the most you could expect given the opposition [in this, the best of all possible worlds]."

I understand the impulse to avoid the fallacy of "If X had just done Y, we wouldn't have all these problems." Yet at the same time, it's senseless and anti-logic to insist that nothing could have happened in any other way, or that every other possible way for Obama et al. to have played things in the past 3 years would've been a) worse or b) IMPOSSIBLE.

Ugh and argh. Might I toot my own horn a bit here and say that a number of friends have found my old/previous posts on Obama to have been borne out, in essence? Though most of them, at the same time, don't want to spend too much time thinking about that because it's too disillusioning... Somehow my happy bubble of pessimistic optimism... cynical happy-realism... um, whatever it is I have, I still have. But as for a while now, it doesn't include much confidence, happiness, or willingness to vote for centrist Democrats.

Bill Maher (6/19/09): "We have a Center-Right Party and a Crazy Party... Democrats are the new Republicans"

One of my favorite rants from Maher since "Bush should just carry around an actual straw man with him to argue with. 'I believe in doing whatever it takes to keep America safe -- Straw Man here, nothing!'" (On the same show, Gloria Steinem I believe made the pithy comment "There are two kinds of people in the world: those that divide people into two groups, and those that don't.")

Anyway: Maher rants about the need for a "first party" and critiques Democrats and the lack of coverage of liberals/progressives in the MSM. And when he says "These aren't radical ideas. A majority of Americans are either already for them, or would be if they were properly argued and defended," it's not a liberal fantasy. See for example, part of my discussion with J-fave Becky here and the linked report I discuss in it on actual American public priorities here. (See also this post.)

Maher:

Last week in this space, I criticized President Obama for not fighting corporate influence enough, and it made some Liberals very angry. My phone rang off the hook.
...
As far as you folks on the Right that think that we're somehow in league --- we're not in league! I was criticizing Obama for not being hard enough on the corporate douche bags you live to defend. I don't wanna be on your team. Pick another kid.

So I stand by my words. But there is another side to the story. And that is, that every time Obama tries to take on a Progressive cause, there's a major political party standing in his way --- the Democrats.
...
We don't need a third party, we need a first party. You go to the polls and your choices are the guy who voted for the first Wall Street bailout, or the guy who voted for the next ten.

We don't have a Left and a Right party in this country anymore. We have a center-Right party and a crazy party. And over the last thirty-odd years, Democrats have moved to the Right, and the Right has moved into a mental hospital.

So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby --- that's the Democrats.

And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earthers, and Civil War re-enacters...who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans. And who actually worry that Obama is a Socialist. Socialist? He's not even a Liberal. I know he's not, because he's on TV. And while I see Democrats on television, I don't see actual Liberals. And if occassionally you do get to hear Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky or Dennis Kucinich, they're treated like buffoons.
...

Shouldn't there be one party that unambiguously supports cutting the military party? A party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the right, universal healthcare, legalizing pot and steep direct taxing of polluters?

These aren't radical ideas. A majority of Americans are either already for them, or would be if they were properly argued and defended. And what we need is an actual Progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren't being served by the Democrats. Because, bottom line, Democrats are the new Republicans.

h/t to BradBlog.

Real World: Rachel Larrimore

Slate-slash-Double-X writer Rachael Larrimore joins much of the rest of the world as she moves from "Wishing I could quit you" to "Ok, I'm quitting you" with Sarah "WTF?" Palin. I've previously accused Larrimore and her XX compatriots as being "increasingly gormless", which I pretty much still stand by (despite liking many of them as writers in other contexts), but let us be gracious here and welcome Rachael to the fold. Or rather, not welcome her to the fold because that sounds patronizing and as a Republican woman on a Neoliberal webmagazine, she doesn't need it.

Long story short, her statement that "I realize now that what I most liked about you was an idealized image of you that I created" rings so very true, and is certainly something I think Dems are familiar with [fake sneezes while saying "Obama"... and then fake sneezes and says the names of 99% of all politicians ever]. When she goes on to say "I like that a woman can have a political career while raising a bunch of kids, that one could succeed without having the right pedigree or giving those kids country club names, that you were unabashedly pro-life," well, then her defense of Palin makes sense, a theme I explored last year as part of a more general realization about why wanting a president you "can have a beer with" (or skin a moose with) actually fits within a progressive worldview better than you might think.

So I really want to be snarky about this, but one thing I do respect about Larrimore has been her willingness and bravery in reasoning through her center-conservative politics out loud, in a left-ish forum, and I think such exchanges of earnest views are important and too uncommon. So, I'll stop here before I say something patronizing AND snarky.

The Daily Show: Fuck Yeah. (Coming again to save the motherfucking day, yeah.)

Satire is the only way!

I'm just reminded for the eleventieth time why Jon Stewart is so FUCKING awesome, and that those who've bemoaned the rise of The Daily Show as some kind of rise of political unawareness don't know their ass from a hat.

A) He is interviewing the ambassador from Pakistan, Husain Haqqani. He does this shit all the time -- he's had foreign dignitaries, like Bolivian president Evo Morales and Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, to Obama officials like Peter Orszag (director of the Office of Management and Budget) and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, to important and (or?) thoughtful authors and thinkers, some with viewpoints he very much disagrees with, like Cliff May, and others like Doris Kearns Goodwin and Philip Alcabes. Don't recognize some or all of these names? Good. You see, that's called learning, baby. It feels real good, don't it?
B) He's fucking PREPARED for these interviews, asking Haqqani, for example, various detailed questions based in Stewart's studying of the issues and previous writings of his guest and others ("As you yourself has written sir..." is a phrase intimating research to a degree you don't often hear on late night shows like Leno or Letterman, or even to some extent on Lehrer, when the guest is neither promoting a book nor is a columnist.) He debated Cliff May on torture, and even though they disagreed on it (if I may grossly distort Cliff May's viewpoint, he's all for it), with May actually saying that it was probably the best discussion he'd had of the issue on TV. And I don't think he was bullshiting, either. All in all, Stewart's combination of thorough research, thoughtful analysis, and a (somewhat over-stated but, I think, genuinely felt) "everyperson" (aka "everyman") approach that keeps even hostile guests mostly open to continue the discussion.
C) Given his place (and Colbert's) as a cultural phenomenon in the space between late-nighters like Leno or Conan and earnest news magazines and interview segments on NewsHour, CNN, 60 Minutes, or what have you, his popularity with "the kids" is actually a fantastic thing. He not only invites thinkers, politicians, and authors (and also comedians, actors, musicians, and other people with less urgent effects on global politics), but he interviews them premised on a pretty high level of understanding from his audience. One might surmise that they're simply sitting through this but really there for the rest of the show, though I think one would miss about half the humor without a working knowledge of current events and politics (the other half the humor is a melange of puns, self-referential and self-mocking humor, and graphical puns). And in a way, that's the genius -- whatever the audience is "there for", the relatively high level of discourse in his political interviews might get some learnin' in for him and the audience, intended or not.

From the Colbert/Stewart approach, I feel you get a much more working understanding of global events and ideas than the drier approach of the Lehrer et. als (that tend to AVOID challenging guests on equivocation or directly contradicting them when they spin, and thus remain on a superficial level alarmingly akin to a typical late-night interview like Leno) and yet also keeps the fun of a Leno, Letterman-type interview with jokes, sarcasm, etc. while maintaining nuance and in-depth probing of ideas.

The only other person with comparable deftness and intellectual rigor as a pop figure is Bill Maher, who evinces a similar level of intellectual curiousity as Stewart. With both of them, you don't just get topical thinkers, but also challenging ones that you just don't see on any other channels or shows, news or entertainment, from authors and scientists that simply interest them or whom they find insightful to the dignitaries I mentioned earlier, who I haven't seen on any of the mainstream news shows -- but that could be because I don't typical watch them. (Still, I challenge you to show me an interview of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of similar length on TV -- which there may very well be, but I again doubt it had either the good-natured humor and non-forced light-heartedness of Stewart nor implied the depth of research he did.)

Ok, I'm done flogging TDS. I'm just saying -- at it's best, it's a TV show without parallel or competitor (well, except Bill Maher and sometimes Stewart's own protegé Colbert), and at its worst, it's probably a step or so ahead of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, the light-hearted NPR news quiz show focused on weird currents events to a greater extent than it is to any kind of education about the topics discussed.

Fuck yeah.

Sound and fury, signifying nothing? Activism, Government, and Crowd-sourcing Schmrowd-sourcing

Interesting blog post from Jon Stahl here: "Chaotic, cacophonous, well meaning efforts that will inevitably add up to nothing" on crowd sourcing and the activism of the new generation, so to speak. Stahl and some people he quotes at length note the limitations of the "new" activism, Obama's millions-strong "constituency" and recommends some steps on real change -- including understanding that volunteerism, while laudable, will not alone make things better, and that philanthropy can't replace making the government work.

So interesting ideas. The post is a big old, but worth reading and ruminating on.

Touchdown!!!!!

Big gay touchdown that is. And by touchdown, I mean Prime Minister. And by big, I mean Icelandic. And by gay, I mean gay.

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir has, apparently, become the world's first openly gay head of government.*

Yay! It's a year -- um, or at least, a year-long period going back to last November -- of firsts.




*For pure confusionary fun, try to distinguish head of government and head of state. I keep reading the wiki entries, and the distinction keeps falling out of my head.

A Polar Wind from Congress

That blows nobody any good.

I gotta digest this article on the increasing polarization of the Congress a bit. It conflicts a bit with what I thought before -- indeed, I read an article years ago in the NYT talking about the decrease in moderates in both parties -- problem being that it treated both parties the same while the article's data showed that Republicans went from perhaps 1/3 or 1/2 moderates to like 90% farther right, while the Dems went from something like 1/2 moderate to 60% polarized farther left -- meaning they still had more moderates than the Republicans.

Of course, judging where someone is in a spectrum in a specific way against a static measure is almost meaningless by definition, as knowledge and times change. Nevertheless, I hardly feel like the Left has gotten More Left as much as the Right has gotten More Right -- and though it's easy to just say that's my own bias or lack of self-insight, I didn't make up that NYT article (I just don't have time to find it.)

Anyway. Read the article.

-J

N.B. I really don't feel like finding the links, but it seems like Sarah Palin might be, oh, let's say 80 or 90% not to blame for the "Wasilla charging rape victims for their rape kits." One can, and many do, argue that she had the responsibility to know about it and stop it, and that she hired a sheriff who she should've known was going to do this, but it's far from as if she ordered it, and there's no direct evidence she knew about it. So she can at least plausibly by thought to not have paid adequate attention to the details of her (not overly large) town as Mayor, but she's hardly the seeming monster that one thinks of when one thinks of someone purposefully instituting a policy like that. It doesn't change that I think she's utterly unqualified, but it's important to dislike people for the right, facts-as-well-as-you-can-determine them reasons, rather than for expedient or truthy reasons.

Reason #Eleventy-One why Obama's "inexperience" is not the same as Palin's

Interesting article here from Ruth Marcus of the WaPo (Washington Post). "McCain vs. Palin" is the matchup she envisions, although that delightful debate mental image is actually just a vehicle to talk about Palin's qualifications (achem, lack thereof) and doesn't actually stage a hypothetical meetup between the two parts of the Republican ticket. Sure, what she actually wrote might be more informative, but why break with MSM tradition and inform us?

Anyway, cynicism aside, she makes the point about Palin that I think people, especially the "liberal media" and liberals themselves have been scared out of making: Palin isn't just inexperienced, she's not... um... worldly, let's say. Well-read, let's say. Well-traveled, let's say.

Ok, let's say it: she's not the brightest Cougar in the pack.

This is not to say that she's dumb in some sort of, um, "below average" way -- just that she's too dumb to be Vice. Her statements to Katie Couric that continued to support the idea that somehow Russia's physical proximity to Alaska is relevant to foreign policy -- "It's very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where--where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to--to our state." -- as Fareed Zakaria says in his rather good article on Palin,

There is, of course, the sheer absurdity of the premise. Two weeks ago I flew to Tokyo, crossing over the North Pole. Does that make me an expert on Santa Claus? (Thanks, Jon Stewart.) But even beyond that, read the rest of her response. "It is from Alaska that we send out those ..." What does this mean? This is not an isolated example. Palin has been given a set of talking points by campaign advisers, simple ideological mantras that she repeats and repeats as long as she can. ("We mustn't blink.") But if forced off those rehearsed lines, what she has to say is often, quite frankly, gibberish.

I might amend myself and say Palin is simply inexperienced or unknowledgeable -- except it seems to me that anyone with half a mind would've given up the "we're close to Russia" talking point long before now, which several commentators have pointed out. Someone smart would've made it a soundbite -- "Well, I did say that we were close to Russia, but that was tongue-in-cheek," and then made a politically plausible if still ultimately untrue argument, like "The real point is that, having been so close to Russia, it has been quite an inspiration to deeply study what's going on there, having that presence there makes one curious about the world, and as a result I've felt compelled to read up, to understand our neighbor there." This seems self-evidently not true, as she hasn't shown any special real knowledge of Russia, but if they gave her a crash course and a couple of plausibly deep conservative observations on Russia, they'd have fixed a lot of their problem there, thinkst I. It seems to me that both Palin and her handlers must be incompetent not to have caught that -- or better prepared her questions on the bailout! Instead of what Zakaria described as "This is nonsense--a vapid emptying out of every catchphrase about economics that came into her head..."

BUT, we can't make any of those arguments, because of the worries of anti-intellecutalism and the foul cries of elitism that would come from the Republicans. But it's not -- or doesn't have to be. Traveling abroad is a bit of a luxury for many Americans and simply not on the radar of many others that could afford it -- a discussion for another time. But I could plausibly give you "She hasn't been abroad" -- I could grant someone that -- if she was obviously some sort of student of history. If she'd shown mastery of a subject besides political craftsmanship (her "skills" in which are actually whithering under national attention now), being a working mother, and outdoorsiness. All of those are valuable skills -- just utterly irrelevant ones for national office.

The thing is, in a certain way, the cries of elitism from "the masses" are valid. Getting into top US universities takes ability, LUCK, and, on average, big money. And these top schools are still entrée into elite circles like politics and the top of the business world. We do have terrible problems with class in the US, and our politicians are mostly Patricians who have made their fortune, or are making it from legal and illegal graft in the national government, and the rich and Ivy League educated do dominate the upper echelons of power in the US. Liberals -- and recently, conservatives berating the lack of a deal for the bailout going through -- decrying the idiocy of the common American does nothing to change things for the better. The problem is, when you don't have access to the abilities to better yourself -- good schools for your children, job retraining, and say, free tuition to higher education (see, i.e., a number other countries) -- psychologically, what can you do except belittle the need for them, if only to stay a bit more sane and able to live your day-to-day without never-ending angst? I'm being a bit melodramatic here, but it's true that getting ahead, the "American Dream" is the American exception; most poor stay that way. Many, if not most of the rich are born into privelege. Can you blame people for hatred against the elites? It's the same anger that Edwards was stirring up -- among these same types of people we now berate as "dumb."

The problem is, somehow the Republicans have the corner on a large segment of this class anger, and channel it into counter-productive reactionism. (Another tie to the Southern Strategy, perhaps?) What we need is to stop, as it were, blaming the victim of those Americans in poor schools that are utterly failing to teach critical thinking, and give people the credit for the agency they have. (This is a longer conversation, but I've been against the "people are dumb" meme since I read the excellent "Trust Us, We're Experts" on how that meme started and continues to be used to betray public interest, like in asserting GM foods are fine.) With both the Media and the Schools failing people, well -- garbage in, garbage out. Without adequate training (i.e. GOOD EDUCATION) and good information (which, as I've said, requires me to read an hour+ of news every day, hardly possible for every American), it's not as simple as dumbness.

Nevertheless -- back on topic -- Obama is intellectually curious, well-read, well-traveled. People, for I think not outrageous resasons, want a president that understands them, that is not in the self-sustaining elite class. The fact that there aren't, percentage-wise, that many people who are both well-educated and from humble background (and not sold out to corporate greed) is a failure of the system and not just the individuals. But we need to understand that before we make the argument that Palin is dumb and ill-read -- which she is. That judgement comes from education both from books AND "from the street" -- where Obama also worked, if they'll recall. (Of course, he'll never be "just one of the guys," because most of "the guys" in the US aren't, you know, black.) It's not a judgement of Palin as a person to say that she is not well-read enough to be Vice. And it's not just that she lacks executive experience, which they point out, to some extent accurately, that Obama lacks, too. It's the will and desire to learn about issues outside of herself, that challenge her and her world, that she lacks and Obama has. And we need to find a way to say that that at the same time is not accusatory to the thousands, millions of Americans who, for no fault of their own, were not able to succeed as Obama did, from humble origins. If we forget that it is not just skill that got him where he is, but no small amount of luck, then we are guilty of that elitism, and we're telling people the same tired and wrong message as the Republicans: if you didn't get ahead and get the American dream, it's all your own fault.

We know better.

Good Points from Fred Kaplan

J-Fave Fred Kaplan of Slate rules in favor of Obama in last night's debate on foreign policy issues. He points out the fantastic -- fantastic in terms of being at utter odds with reality -- portions of McCain's statements and the relatively more informed statements of Sen. Obama. Of course, I still think it was a ridiculously boring debate lacking on important details of any kind, but Kaplan's assessment of McCain's utterly goofy ideas (a League of Democracies that not only might be by definition incapable of meeting its own objectives, but also is not backed by supposed members of a potential league) does show again, at least, that Obama would be the realistically better president (imho), even if he was as politically charmless and substance-free as McCain for the most part last night (again, imho).

Obama avoided any boldness, anything showing how he would fundamentally (not cosmetically) change course (a tax cut for the middle class and under is fine and dandy but hardly revolutionary), and gave a lot of non-answers. I think, at this point, I actually prefer John Kerry's debate performances, purely in terms of content. I often agreed with Kerry, once I deciphered what he meant to say it seemed like a great or challenging idea. When you boil down Obama's "nuanced" responses, they usually came out to something like "we should follow my plan, which is specified in detail elsewhere," or "McCain is wrong about this and I have the vision and ability to be right." That's not all he said, but it's the majority; nuance and substance is one thing, nuance and blather is another. I expected more of him -- though everyone seems to agree, he is a remarkably poor debater simply by dint of how his debating pales in comparison to his oration.

Oh, well. What can you expect from a nation that complains of elitism and punishes people for being or sounding too educated, even among our supposed leaders?

Word. Clay/McCain '44! "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb the whales..."

From Mark Fiore (who else?):

Grover Cleveland watched this cartoon on two nonconsecutive occasions.

Why the impulse to vote for "That dude/tte I can have a beer with" makes sense: a progressive perspective

I've just been thinking about, and talking about with J-Mom, the whole "I'mna vote for a normal guy/gal, cuz I don't want no uppity folks with no horse sense makin' decisions for my country," phenomenon of the past few election cycles (or at least, the perception of the increase in this impulse in the past few elections).

Now, certainly this comes in part from the anti-education strain of "progressiveness" in the Republican propaganda, and some of it is a naive "he's a person, just like me, who understands my troubles." (And certainly, in the case of, say, Bush, it's completely artifice since he comes from a family with deep roots in Eastern elitism, wealth, Ivy League, etc.)

But in talking to J-Mom, I remembered myself of just eight years ago; before I became a news junkie, I assumed that basically the US system was ok, and just needed some mild reform to fix. Sure, politicians were politicians, but there wasn't a rot at the core. And I don't think I used to be a purely dumb person -- I just hadn't done the research, in effect.

Just like it takes a certain disposition to be ok with atheism -- to come face to face with that existential crisis of "this is all there is" and to accept it -- it takes a certain disposition (and exposure) to be ok with the fact that our government really, really ISN'T basically ok. That is, pretty much all of our politicians are out for themselves, and not the public good, to a greater or lesser extent. AND, our government has done some pretty horrific things in our names (Iraq is just the latest; cf. the Contra War/Iran-Contra, overthrowing Mossadegh and installing the Shah in Iran, intervention in Haiti, the "Spanish-American War," support for Augusto Pinochet, the Viet Nam war and the Gulf of Tonkin, etc. etc.). (This is not to say that people are inherently out for themselves; I don't believe in "human nature" in that manner of speaking (we're also not inherently cooperative; we're both at the same time, far more complex and more/less reassuring) -- but politicians, by the nature of what they have to do to get where they are, are overwhelmingly out for themselves, imho.) Having taught a class highlighting these actions by our government (as well as going through my own realizations) I know how hard it is to accept that the US is not "#1", unless we mean "#1 at looking at for ourselves using heavy artillery." We're just not a nice people on the world stage.

Any road -- it's much easier to accept that our government is made of good people who occasionally err, than that the elected politicians are basically out to preserve the status quo of American Empire. And if you do believe that there are forces out to preserve the advantages of the elites, it makes far more sense to try and find someone "normal," who won't betray your interests, because they share your optimism, your jingoism, your sense of being slighted, your religion. Basically -- Republicans. It's not just an appeal to prejudices (though that's part of it) -- it's an appeal to the belief that we are in control of our own government; that we can believe in something, and that the scary prospect of fundamental change in the system needn't be so seriously considered. After all, if our government is so cynical, we are complicit in it -- and who needs that on top of other problems?

So I get it, on a certain level. It requires me to remember who I was before, when I was an occasional news watcher, and didn't realize "how deep the Rabbit Hole went". As I've said to many people, I read several hours of news a day to get the understanding I have -- who among us can do that? Of course people buy a lot of bullshit, I'm sure I do too, but being a professional researcher with more flexibility than any non-academic worker, it's not that I'm smarter, it's that my training is in doubting everything and verifying it with 8 sources. (It is true that we are trying to avoid teaching critical thinking to our kids -- as Paulo Freire said -- paraphrased -- you can't expect the system that oppresses people and uses them as workers to educate these same people about the true nature of the system and how to fight it. So while we're all complicit in this, and every person has some responsibility to educate themselves, there's also the odds stacked against them.)

I came to these ideas in part because it also explains the PUMA phenomenon, that is, those that identified Hillary's struggles with their own and thus continue, or continued to support her, despite the fact that their background is as similar to hers as Bush's is. What they shared was a sense of aggrievement -- and it seems to have clearly (from non-PUMA's perspectives) overshadowed all of their goddamned sense, since the last thing a Clinton stood for was real change. (Implicit in all this is my belief that Obama won't, alas, bring real change either, but at this point, it is refreshing to hear someone voice true ideals I believe in, even if I am extremely skeptical they'll follow them.)

Of course, this strain of discourse flows from, I believe, a deeply cynical place, a place right at our founding where, Howard Zinn convincingly argues, there was not the same strain of deep racism, as class lines held people together more closely. He gives evidence in his fascinating (if hard to slog through sometimes) People's History of the United States that the Color Lines separating the interests of poor whites and poor blacks were not only not preexisting, but consciously constructed, rather than the result of some kind of natural racial antipathy.* This is, interestingly, possibly the same font as the invention of "White Trash," a construction I read about briefly from a book on the floor of J-Friend Lindsay's place, left there by one of her roommates. Knowledge comes from the darndest places -- it argued essentially that White Trash was a consciously employed derogatory term to further separate White and Black class interests in common. But... digress.

So I can understand the impulse to have someone "just like you," rather than an elite who will preserve elite interests, as they always have. And I understand the willfull self-delusion to construe political figures as being normal folks, rather than believing the alternative -- that they're deeply cynical, self-serving elites deploying cultural signals to appear like you, though they are not you. It's hard to admit that, and not forget that -- because doing so gives up the last vestiges of easy control over a system gone awry, and few wish to look into that abyss...

And seriously, PUMAs? If Dems can convince themselves that the real sexism Hillary faced means her elite background has something in common with the trials of everyday women/folks, then I can have some sympathy for the delusions necessary to believe Palin's moose-skinning is pertinent to the dream of having someone who knows your troubles be in charge. (Even if I believe in the end that it is deeply, deeply... wrong.)




* From Zinn's People's History, Chapter 2:

In spite of such preconceptions about blackness, in spite of special subordination of blacks in the Americas in the seventeenth century, there is evidence that where whites and blacks found themselves with common problems, common work, common enemy in their master, they behaved toward one another as equals. As one scholar of slavery, Kenneth Stampp, has put it, Negro and white servants of the seventeenth century were "remarkably unconcerned about the visible physical differences."...

...[Historian Edmund] Morgan concludes: "Once the small planter felt less exploited by taxation and began to prosper a little, he became less turbulent, less dangerous, more respectable. He could begin to see his big neighbor not as an extortionist but as a powerful protector of their common interests."
We see now a complex web of historical threads to ensnare blacks for slavery in America: the desperation of starving settlers, the special helplessness of the displaced African, the powerful incentive of profit for slave trader and planter, the temptation of superior status for poor whites, the elaborate controls against escape and rebellion, the legal and social punishment of black and white collaboration.
The point is that the elements of this web are historical, not "natural." This does not mean that they are easily disentangled, dismantled. It means only that there is a possibility for something else, under historical conditions not yet realized. And one of these conditions would be the elimination of that class exploitation which has made poor whites desperate for small gifts of status, and has prevented that unity of black and white necessary for joint rebellion and reconstruction.

Love Pita Update: Feministing On Palin

I'm sorry, I can't resist referring to Samantha Bee's brilliant Daily Show segment on voting-with-your-vagina again, aka How Gullible Do They Think Women Are? At least, that's the subtext I read into it.

Anyway. The usual brilliant analysis from Feministing on Republican VP Nominee Sarah Palin.

And by the by, PhysioProf has finally managed to make even me flinch with his hate-laden assessment of Palin, but as I told J-Friend Becky, it's also (usually) reassuring to have someone not afraid to show righteous indignation over things that deserve it. People who sort of nod sagely and say ponderous things about Iraq, for example, or admit freely admit they spend more time being concerned with political horserace than substance do make me want to puke my fucking guts out. So I feel PhysioProf has his place, even if he does verge too far -- in my mind, better too far that way than not outraged enough. (And there does seem to be a gendered aspect to it, that is, more women seem to find PP's tone worrisome/too much/vile than men, on average. I think this has to do with the almost universally bad part unrestrained aggressive male aggressive power has played in our society, especially vis-a-vis feminism, or, say, war, and also the cultural imperatives for women to exactly NOT be like this, lest they be "shrill" or a bitch, making PP's tone beyond the pale for, well, any polite discourse, but especially a woman's. That is, a man could feasibly talk like this to another man without being perceived as being a horrible person; such a display from a woman would go so against gender norms it'd be hard to deal with, no matter what the context. An interesting topic, pursued somewhat in the comments during PhysioProf's Guest blogging on Feministe. But I -- that's right kids -- I digress.)

Oracular? Obscurantism! This ain't Delphi, mother fucker.

A response to an article by Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, here, essentially arguing how much journalism should penetrate the façade of the Supreme Court's inscrutable wisdomness. [bleeargh]
--------
The idea that we must maintain a layer of inscrutability in order to maintain the respect for the court is, in a word, anti-democratic. The Enlightenment values upon which our country is based (as much if not more so than the specifically Judeo-Christian values) emphasized comprehensibility and rationality. The fulfillment of the dream of the US' founding requires not ceremony and respect for ceremony and respect's own sake, but rather knowledge, and as a stance towards our government equal parts questioning and deferential.

It *is* important to maintain a respect for government -- something that has been undermined as much or more by the Republican's efforts to portray government as inherently incompetent, inefficient, and vaguely menacing as it has been by de-mystification -- but respect is earned, not given by virtue of an institution.

Perhaps my history is off, but my impression is that oracular prognostications were as often as not used to justify decisions of an imperial or royal ruler, rather than true statements from on high -- unless we're going to believe in Jupiter, Juno, and their lot now. The Godliness of the sovereign, and his/her right to proclaim what was right for the people was another iteration of this same theme; the idea that this kind of oracular, priestly deference is due automatically to the Supreme Court, or even desirable is a dubious one, indeed, and truly, deeply repugnant to democracy (and to me).

Watching the sausage get made can be an unsettling process, but when there's a problem, a contaminant, an error, we damn well better see how it gets made -- the world is better for Upton Sinclair, not worse. And any plain knowledge we gain of the court that detracts from their Wise and Wizened Aura is the fault of those who hold the office, and not of the knowledge itself -- are we to view them as Oracles and simply hope we're right, with continued obscurantism to preserve our cherished illusion, or should we have all the facts possible in order to know, as best as possible, if they deserve the deference we give them?

I understand the desire to maintain some things in a special place, a superior place, and ideal -- but with government as with a parent, spouse, or child, these things most coexist when looking at government with an eye to reality, lest we be a permissive parent, a battered spouse, an abused child. And above all, do not confuse respect and deference due the institution and office with what is due to to those who happen to hold said office at this point in history. Anything less is an infeebilization, an infantilization of the American people, and a betrayal of all we hold dear, if what we hold dear are the ideals of Constitutional government.

In a phrase: don't treat us like f*cking kids.

-HopefulCynic

(see also: The Case for Full Disclosure, by James Poniewozik)

No Surrender, No Retreat

I've been thinking this morning about my friends and colleagues who (correctly) point out that politics is all about compromise (this is usually when they're telling me I can't reasonably expect a President to not, apparently, compromise and at least partly support American empire, meaning partly supporting thousands of deaths of foreign nationals from US interventionism, subverting foreign democracies, abetting persecution of their own people, and to compromise, apparently, on the environment and, instead of putting us on a path to sustainability, put us on a path to a compromise on sustainability, which of course means support of unsustainability, since half a failure is still a failure when dramatic ecosocial collapse is concerned.

This is why, incidentally, I think a break with the two-party system is absolutely necessary as a prerequisite to a sustainable future, but something else occurred to me (that really could act independently of my "two party" assertion). I was thinking: what's the one thing people accept with little or no political compromise?

It is, of course, war. We're spending scads on Iraq, despite relatively equivocal support by the US public, because the Democrats, among others, are afraid of being responsible for "the next terrorist attack," or the "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud." For reasons I can't quite consciously enunciate, somehow that overblown rhetoric gets by (with much criticism from certain sectors, to be sure) but overblown environmental rhetoric is sort of universally agreed to be dangerous (i.e. it's one of those things even environmentalists are supposed to say "Well, I agree in spirit but s/he went too far", sort of like everyone has to say, "Israel has a right to defend itself," before they can even make reasonable criticisms of Israel's treatment of Palestine). I guess it's a case of "whose ox is being gored," since there are criticisms from both sides in either case -- but because of the immediacy of war and villainous characters like Saddam Hussein, the charge of being unpatriotic or risking Americans' lives sticks much more easily when you have a practically real-life mustache-twirling villain.

But my point is, how do we make the environment and issue like the defeat of a foreign aggressor? People are very susceptible to the argument "We must stay until the job is done" (though it's also true that they get anxious for the job to GET done); can we use that same rhetoric for the environment?

Thinking about all this, I suppose probably not. That is to say, the reason the military-industrial complex gets pretty much all the money it wants is NOT because of popular support, but rather support from... the military-industrial complex. It's a back-scratching circle of government toadyism and industrial profit, while the actual public relatively consistently ranks military spending pretty far down on the spending-preference food chain (my reading of the data from a very established social polling group, having taken data since 1976, is that defense spending has never been higher than the #8 overall priority by their methodology -- which ranks priorities by subtracting the %age of people who think we're spending "too much" on a given item from the %age of people who think we spend "too little" in an area). So I guess it's not as if the problem is the public concerns per se but is indeed what Eisenhower was originally going to call the military-industrial-congressional complex in his Farewell Address to the Nation in 1961.

So that brings us back to a government that doesn't actually serve the priorities of the majority of the population (which, for example, ranks health as #1 priority in the GSS data mentioned above quite often, and consistently ranks the environment and education in the top five priorities, much above defense spending -- yet defense spending is said to be over half the annual US federal budget). And that brings me back to my theory that we simply cannot break out of this without breaking out of two parties... so I guess I still think I'm right, after all.

Ok, never mind...

Becky, Nader, Politics, and I should soooooooooo be in bed

A hasty posting for you.

Further debates with J-friend Becky on the presidential election, electoral politics, and history.

It's late (or early). Read. J go sleep.

>>I concede that every US president, Democrat or Republican, has continued the imperialist trend. I do not disagree that all have done a lot to cause harm across the world.<<
This is a bit of an understatement. And as I said, and you didn't address, as much or more of this was under the Dems as the Reps. And it's not just "harm"; it's thousands, if not millions, of deaths at the hands of our military or our proxies. This is hardly something to be brushed past.

>>I certainly agree that the Dems in Congress often seem to be spineless creeps who can't vote against anything, but I also must recognize that even if they had all moved to stop the Prez at any stage, they did/do not have the votes to override a veto.<<
True, but it's a non sequitir to maintain that they should therefore pass bills that are likely to be signed by the President because they give him everything he wants. The fact that he can veto bills, but that Congress controls spending, should make a Democratic-controlled Congress highly effective actually, being that they can cut off funding for any number of things -- it doesn't have to be funding for troops directly that they cut off. Or they could even be clever and transfer huge sums from the "emergency" bills put at the Admin's discretion and then spend it on the VA or research programs for the wounded vets. The fact that they can't override a veto doesn't mean that they're powerless, but that's how they seem to interpret it.

>>I do hold it against them that they voted for the Iraq war and the PATRIOT Act, but at least some of them didn't and some of them are now trying to do damage control on these issues and others.<<
Not to the extent that they've taken any political risks on it. You realize that the US public is more progresive on the war than the US Dem-controlled Congress? Surely, there's a better way to use that than to play out the clock and damage control until the elections. They've done precious little of substance to stop PATRIOT from continuing -- i.e. they renewed the warrantless wiretapping in FISA before they recessed last time! That was purely unacceptable and indefensible -- yet they've done it.

>>I'd like to note that there are few issues that the Democrats so shiningly do differ from Republicans on. Most obvious first: One is equal rights for all Americans, including homosexuals.<<
While this might actually appear blindingly obvious, I'd argue that as a party they're ineffective at the national level, and at the local level there are conservative libertarians who are just as fine with homosexual rights as liberals (with a variety of differences that vary from important to mundane, true). But a Dem congress that gives lipservice to gay rights but does little isn't particularly helpful. And as hateful as Scalia is, he did join the majority in striking down the anti-sodomy laws of (Texas?) last year.

>>Another is abortion rights (which may matter more to me, as a female, than you).<<
That's a bit condescending. It does matter to me as a progressive and a believer in women's right to control their own body. Of course, one must weigh various aspects here. Clarence Thomas, a reliable vote against women's rights if there ever was one, was appointed under a 57-43 Dem majority Senate, with 11 Dems voting to confirm (and the Dem-controlled committee not willing to stop his nomination from going to the floor despite the huge Anita Hill sexual harassment allegation, and being one of the few, if not only, Supreme Court nominees to have been not endorsed as "Qualified" by the American Bar Association). 2 Republicans, of of the 43, also voted against him.

>>A third is actually doing something about GCC.<<
Again, it depends on your perspective. I would maintain that given the fact the latest science alleges we have to make drastic changes in the next 5-10 years, and that the probability of drastic changes under an Administration of Dem or Rep. is approximately zero (and one must give McCain credit as being occassionally sensible about Global Climate Change), it seems to me that failing to stop a catastrophe through half-measures is not meaningfully discernible in outcome from failing through complete inaction. I'm willing to debate this point -- but that's my problem. Dem supporters never positively assert how we'll get from here to there under the "we've got to support person X" plan. And almost all agree that Obama is possibly the best Dem of a generation to get a chance at the presidency; yet he quite simply is not proposing the necessary measures to avoid catastrophe. (Not to mention that he has: said he's open to the possibility of bombing Iran, and Pakistan; said he's not for gay marriage but perhaps civil unions during his Senate election campaign where *he could not have lost if he wanted to against Alan Keyes* -- and if a politician can't speak for full-throated gay rights then, when running against someone polling like 4% of the vote, frankly, fuck them.) It may be "better" to fail through half-measures, but there really is a relatively firm estimate of what we absolutely need to go below in order to avoid a qualitatively different worsening of GCC; not reaching it is not reaching it, despite "good intentions." I frankly see no possible way to address this under a two-party system. Zero way.

>>A fourth is health care and a fifth is cutting taxes for the wealthy vs. giving services to the poor (you're likely to throw Welfare Reform in my face, right now, but if I remember correctly, most Dems were against it and the bill that passed came out of a Republican-majority Congress).<<
Well, health care seems likely to improve in the near future, but that remains to be seen (though it is true it is a primarily Dem issue, but again, if the results aren't seen on the ground, then clearly it's a waste). Cutting taxes/services etc etc they are quantitatively different, but not shiningly -- the poorest of Americans do pretty poorly under both parties. Granted that the poorest are the ones actually suffering and dying -- poverty has nominally decreased, but the "poverty line" is a ridiculous one so one needs to dig for the numbers, but they don't much change (I think) -- then the fact that those who are just getting by get by better or worse is far less important to me that the eventual addressing of the poorest. Welfare Reform was indeed passed in a Rep-controlled Congress, though it looks to me like more Senate Dems voted for it than against it, though "only" 15% of the House Dems did. (I would also point to the sad spectacle of disenfranchisement seen in Fahrenheit 9/11 when all that was needed as one senator to support the House procedures to stop the coronation of Bush and properly investigate, and not one of either party came forward.)

>>sanctions must be preferable to bombing the s*&t out of a country (or two) and then occupying it<<
I would tend to agree, but again, I feel things must be judged by results. Estimates imply something near 1/2 million child deaths due to the sanctions under conservative estimates; that would put total "excess" deaths likely in the 500 or 600,000 - 1,000,000 area (with some estimates around 1.5 million). While this is similar to the estimated "excess" deaths in Iraq right now, and Iraq's suffered huge infrastructure losses as well as life, the direct casualties are at least comparable -- something beyond unacceptable in my book for sanctions, which were about pride and exerting power, for which a million Iraqis had to die. The fact that bombs were not involved does somewhat little to move me.

>>I agree that it would be nice to have a leader who is not involved in any of the deplorable actions that our nation has undertaken in the last 100 years and one who is actually interested in solving some of the real problems in America today. However, I don't think Nadar is the guy to do it.<<
Well, I think Katha does make some fundamental errors, but I can see her points. (No one has any proof it is "vanity" -- that would require seeing inside his head -- and like I said, from all reports, he is just stubborn as a mother-fucker. Impugning his motives does little to advance the debate and expresses instead an understandable frustration. But it is a needless ad hominem.) There's a reason to documentary about was called "An Unreasonable Man." And of course, his net effects on electoral politics could be debated, since he has started several ground-based groups, Public Citizen chief among them, that have taken on some of these issues that he doesn't.

But in the end this is distracting from the point. He was and is right not to campaign in primaries with Kucinich because, as I've written in my blog before, Kucinich serves in the long-term to marginalize the left-prog arm of the Democrats. He gets their/our support, and then invariably throws his full support to the Dem. nominee without even publicly asking for concessions for the few delegates he gathers every 4 years. I love DK's policies and the voice he brings to primaries, but I've realized he's utterly ineffective -- moreso, actively damaging -- to progressive causes when he goes with the Dems, no matter who they support.

Which brings me to the last bits: one, I still have yet to see from anyone, including you, how voting for the Dems works to form any kind of long-term change. As I may have said, my analysis of history is that things change dramatically either a) after disaster or b) after a powerful ground movement takes off or c) both. The critiques of Nader on ground movements both hit and miss -- he, after all, didn't leave the Greens so much as they left him, and then worked hard on imploding; he became the Independent Party candidate, the party that brought for example Ventura to Minnesota (I may not've really agreed with "The Body", but he was different, I'll give him that). So Nader worked with and within parties -- but as the Greens have now realized, running *no* national candidate actually hurts their local efforts for a variety of reasons I won't go into here (not to mention their fucked up decision to run a candidate who more or less encouraged people to vote for someone else in 2004 and ended up looking like ineffectual fools). So Nader should be building, but it's not as if he hasn't tried recently, only to be rebuffed by people whose strategies were worse than his.

In any case, a ground-based movement on issues is not an apparent goal of the Dems -- indeed, I could name you 50 examples of them quashing real grassroots participation in the party. The Dems are active opponents of changing the status quo. One can debate about individuals, but stated plainly, as an institution the Dems will naturally block electoral reform (they just want to, *and have*, preferred re-rigging the system in their favor) just as much as Reps, and they will continue to ignore the base, blunting grassroots movements. Now, I am willing to listen to historically-grounded theories as to how supporting the Dems will get us past the impasses of the status quo, but it rather seems to me that supporters of the Dems are NOT thinking strategically, because they have never enunciated to me a plan of how this achieves long-term change, such that we don't keep killing foreigners and continue to dawdle about GCC. Nader may not be the answer (I don't support him so much because he's "the" answer but because I don't believe that one should vote for the Dems regardless of whether they end up supporting the policies they were elected to support, and I believe we need 3rd parties). Voting for Nader may not be the way to bring in 3rd parties. But, I think it's a start. Feel free to disagree -- but arguments with facts, evidence, and analysis are important parts of strategies, and I don't see it from Dem supporters. After all, is there *any* case you can imagine not voting for the Dem? If the answer is "probably not, barring something ridiculous and unforeseen" then voting is not an exercise in democracy because there is no real choice -- and Dems will use that to continue to not respond to the progressives, to "support" but not enact policies they were elected to support, until gays and lesbians still don't have equal rights, the environment is crap, and the other countries have enough of our shit and overrun us.

I really think that a widespread, and possibly, if unfortunately, violent global revolt against us is going to happen in the end anyway; I'druther try and change things for the better before then (and maybe even avoid it).

Why, MSM, that's the nicest thing you've ever said!

Timothy Noah of Slate.com writes Lay off Ralph Nader in yesterday's Slate. In what is likely to be the nicest MainStream Media article about him for the next decade or so, Noah acknowledges that while he doesn't believe there are no pertinent differences between the two parties, he does believe that Nader believes it (and thus the talk about ego trips and vanity in terms of his presidential bids are a bit off). I agree with Noah, and I'm glad someone else has said it.

There are two things I don't think people understand about Nader (that I'm presuming I do):
a) if you do believe there isn't an important difference as I mostly do and he almost certainly does, then it isn't egomaniacal to keep running; it is more like Rudyard Kipling's poem "If": "If you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you... [you'll be a man, my son]." I guess I'm sensitive to this charge because I've been on the business end of it a couple times, just for believing in what I believed in despite the opinions of others around me. While it does take a certain amount of ego to believe you're right despite many, many detractors, it isn't about your ego. Egomania and vanity are about loving yourself excessively -- this is too often confused, I feel, with the passion and genuine belief and conviction in ideals that we praise in legend and song but seem to punish in real life.
b) If you believe in the evils of American Empire, including numerous deaths abroad (i.e., one million Vietnamese soldiers and 2-5 million civilian casualties compared to 60,000 US dead, courtesy largely of JFK and LBJ -- as I've said and presented evidence for before, Democrats have caused an equal or greater number of deaths from imperial ambitions in the past decades as have Republicans), and you believe the science on the environment (especially Global Warming), it is morally unconscionable to continue or compromise with the program of empire that has killed so many for less-than-noble reasons, and simply unwise and not in anyone's best interest to compromise on the environment, which simply put will not compromise with us -- we'll do what's right, in time, or we won't, and we'll make it worse for everyone. Of course, in case of increased environmental degradation the rich will still survive -- it's the poor who will suffer.

So Noah doesn't believe in Nader's uncompromising stance because it is simply not a politically realistic one. The question that I think is more pertinent though is, are politically realistic stances enough to stave off environmental and imperial catastrophe? I think the answer is no...

Side note: I had an extensive argument, well, with numerous people over this, but memorably with J-colleague EON. EON called my views that under a Dem OR Republican, environmental disaster seemed unavoidable and deaths from imperial efforts would continue practically unabated cynical. She also viewed as cynical (but didn't disagree with) my observation that the poorest and most discriminated-against Americans are among the groups who, for the most part, don't vote, likely because of the realistic analysis that the poorest's fortunes have changed little under whichever party. Both parties target the middle-class, with the poorest rarely seeing substantive help. Her response was whether I thought the comparatively small number of middle-class people who would be helped in a marginally better Democratic administration were unimportant -- I replied that they weren't unimportant, just not more important or even as important as the larger number of people who don't see material changes in their welfare under either party. I.e., the fore-mentioned poor and foreign nationals who, for example, starve to death under Democrat-imposed sanctions that do nothing to weaken their dictator. She continuously challenged my interpretation of history (i.e. that any President will do what they have to in order to stay in office, i.e. FDR & the New Deal occurring only with the genuine threat of rebellion by the poor and socialist upsurges in the 20s and 30s, and that political movements were more powerful, important, and largely independent of party, i.e. Nixon and Ford's civil rights work that they were forced to do and their arguably much better record on civil rights than JFK, etc.), without offering a competing interpretation. So, the question is, as I asked my dad the other day, why is it cynical to believe that the "Best of Two Evils/Obama's Not Evil" Plan will not work, and that the only morally and environmentally correct choice is to generate an alternative system -- that no two-party system is ever going to stave off environmental collapse or empire? I believe breaking the US' two-party system is doable, and real change within it is not. *I'm* cynical because I believe your method will fail but *my* approach that *you* don't believe in has a chance? What kind of weirdworld logic is that?

The Audacity to Agree with This Guy

It's useful that "The Audacity of... [blank]" can be used as a shorthand for talking about (satirizing) Barack Obama.

Rather than belabor the point that I'm not the possible 2009 president's biggest fan, I'm just going to link to a guy that summed up how I feel about Obama pretty succinctly.

Of course, many have pointed out that I'm a radical and so a mainstream candidate (i.e. anyone with any chance whatsoever of winning) is plainly never going to appeal to me. Be that as it may, the point of Professor Marc Lamont Hill still stands: Obama himself is packaging himself as the great bringer of change. He clearly doesn't represent a radical break from the status quo -- and if he's not a radical break (in the general, not necessarily progressive sense) then he can't represent fundamental change, hmm, ahh? It's sort of a logical impossibility. Of course, the continued argument is that one must kowtow to the status quo to be elected, and that the people aren't ready for a radical change -- and more pertinently, that presidents are not usually the instigators of radical change. Which simply makes me think, then:

a) change agents rarely kowtow to the status quo -- as I believe Frederick Douglas said (to paraphrase) -- "You cannot expect to applauded by the same system you are trying to oppose";
b) "the people" are never "ready" for change -- change agents build the movements that create this change that lurches society forward faster than it thought it could go (take your pick -- MLK Jr., Gandhi, Mandela, Castro, Guevara, and any number of other revolutionaries and visionaries you might name);
c) if presidents aren't instigators of radical change, then I can't really get all that excited about Obama -- keeping in mind that getting back to "normal" is still a world where Democrats have been as responsible for US foreign aggression, military intervention, deaths of foreign nationals, and maintaining US imperialism as Republicans -- I'm going to get excited about the next MLK, not JFK (i.e. the same JFK that brought us Vietnam and nearly WW III with the Bay of Pigs, for starters).

This attitude is perhaps that "negative attitude" I was accused of at my old job, when I felt I'd proved that the bodywash we wanted to design was chemically and kinetically impossible. I was told not to be such a pessimist -- but really, is pessimism the best way to describe "I think we're going to hit that mountain if we don't pull up?" Or is the optimism of "Pshaw, all we have to do is slow down a little bit and we'll be fine" really preferable?

The Clinton Family Fun-Time Minstrel Show

This is my fawning response to a great Slate article here by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton. The title is "The Clinton Fallacy: Black Americans' love for Bill Clinton is built on a fallacy -- Did blacks really make big economic gains during the '90s?" (The answer is not really.)

A money quote:

In many ways, the scandal-marred, deeply partisan years of the Clinton administration proved disappointing in the face of such early optimism. Welfare reform, the growth of black imprisonment, and the public abandonment of progressive African-Americans like Lani Guinier are some of the most memorable racial disappointments of those years... But there is evidence that Clinton's unmatched popularity among blacks confused many about the true economic impact of his presidency. In a 2005 article I co-authored in the Journal of Black Studies, I analyzed five national surveys from 1984 through 2000. The data show that nearly a third of black Americans held false understandings of black economic conditions during the Clinton years. By the time Clinton left office, many African-Americans incorrectly believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. In the '80s, barely 5 percent of blacks believed blacks were economically better off than whites. By 2000, nearly 30 percent of African-American respondents believed that blacks were doing better economically than whites. This belief is simply wrong. There is no evidence to suggest that African-Americans were in a better economic position than whites at any time in American history, including during Clinton's presidency.

Damn straight. I was young during the Clinton presidency -- but even when I liked him, I never got why he was "the first black president" -- other than that he possibly did the best job of pretending/showing that he cared about black people than any other president. JFK's "Boston Brahminism" was never the personal touch that Clinton brought, plus his sax-playing and modest beginnings showed a president a little less... Upper-class white (despite that being what he is now) than we'd seen in a while.

Said another way: Clinton was probably the President least like Richard Pryor's impersonations of white people, which can't but have helped his popularity.

This is my slightly less informal response to the article on Slate's Fray:

It was over-time to start discussing Clinton's honorary "blackness" and what he did to deserve it. Identity politics are misunderstood, misused, and unjustly maligned in today's United States, where there are real and profound racial disparities stemming from past and present circumstances. Beyond the inherited disadvantages of lesser wealth and savings from the African-American slave and then underclass, blacks in the US suffer from a system that's convinced itself it's fair when Jim Crow is still in living memory. Many people are alive today who lived under segregation, yet we pretend that it's a past and best-forgotten phase in the US at that.

All this is to say that there are real disparities between races, and adoration of Clinton, who did nothing real to change this, and abandoned black progressives like Gunier and Elders, is as misplaced as the belief that blacks are equal to or better off than whites -- a perception too common among whites, as well, breeding some of the dissatisfaction with affirmative action and related programs. (After all, if black people are equal or better off, why should they get the breaks?) Eric Alterman rightly pointed this out as, in part, a failing of the media to accurately portray reality in the US, dividing blacks on TV news into criminals and stars. Clinton's stardom is part of this syndrome, and he of course has done nothing to correct it.

One can argue about Clinton v. Obama v. abstention or a third party, but one must do it from the knowledge that neither Clinton can lay claim to honorary blackness outside a bubble of hype and misperception -- they stood for business as usual. Indeed, sadly, these misperceptions are what led people like JFK to be revered, when Nixon and Ford did more substantively for civil rights. They were forced to do it politically, but did it all the same -- while people like the Clintons and JFK and perhaps even Obama get a free pass.

Clinton wasn't the first black president. He was the first BLACKFACE president.

Obama's Deep Gooey Substance

I've got your audacity, right here.

A GREAT article by Slate's John Dickerson, on Barack Obama: "A Few Inconvenient Truths. Is Obama as much of a straight talker as he claims?"

Another election year must-read, in my humble opinion.

(Deep gooey substance? What the Eff? This the Eff. Though I'm toying with the alternative descriptive phrase for Obama and (to a lesser extent) Edwards, as having the politics of the "gooey nougat center". Opinions?)

Courage, Audacity -- and the vain hope that the candidates will read this Time article

This is awesome.

I'm quite sure I don't agree with Joe Klein on everything, and indeed, I don't agree with his whole Time article, but I'd so I'm on board for most of it.

Frankly, it's the most intelligent center-progressive agenda I've seen from anyone in the US that I can think of. Maybe I'm just overwhelmed by someone, somewhere, writing something sensical about the election, but there you have it.

Go, read.

...a Presidential election would seem a perfect moment for laying out an ambitious new goal or two, especially at a moment when 70% of the public thinks the country is moving in the wrong direction. The problem is, politicians hate having to talk about anything remotely adventurous in the midst of an campaign. They prefer safe recitations of conventional wisdom... The candidates owe us answers, whether they want to give them or not... you can learn a lot from the character of their evasions—how their minds work, how much they know, what their basic principles are. Occasionally, they might even say something courageous. And very occasionally, there comes an election where the ability to be courageous, to tell the public things it may not want to hear, is the most important quality we need in a leader. I suspect 2008 will be that sort of election. [Ok, good luck with that one, Joe-boy -- J] The public has come to understand what market-tested political blather sounds like, and it may be ready to reward a politician who tells some inconvenient truths, to coin a phrase, who asks for the sort of sacrifices, in pursuit of specific goals, that President Bush refused to do. But which sacrifices, which goals?

Energy independence.
Universal health insurance.
Education reform.
Mandatory national service.

Solutions are possible, but they will require drastic changes in the way we go to school, get our health care, serve our country, live our lives. No politician with any sense would attempt to join all these battles, all at once, in the midst of a presidential campaign. But in 2008 a candidate who refuses to show some courage on at least one of these issues probably lacks the character to be President.

True enough, man.

Go, please, read this.