The Dead End Coalition

I was struck by this passage in Thomas Edsall's New York Times piece on the "Obama Coalition":

As a practical matter, the Obama campaign and, for the present, the Democratic Party, have laid to rest all consideration of reviving the coalition nurtured and cultivated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. The New Deal Coalition — which included unions, city machines, blue-collar workers, farmers, blacks, people on relief, and generally non-affluent progressive intellectuals — had the advantage of economic coherence. It received support across the board from voters of all races and religions in the bottom half of the income distribution, the very coherence the current Democratic coalition lacks.

A top priority of the less affluent wing of today’s left alliance is the strengthening of the safety net, including health care, food stamps, infant nutrition and unemployment compensation. These voters generally take the brunt of recessions and are most in need of government assistance to survive. According to recent data from the Department of Agriculture, 45.8 million people, nearly 15 percent of the population, depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to meet their needs for food.

The better-off wing, in contrast, puts at the top of its political agenda a cluster of rights related to self-expression, the environment, demilitarization, and, importantly, freedom from repressive norms — governing both sexual behavior and women’s role in society — that are promoted by the conservative movement.

This reminds me very much of the 1937 movie "Dead End," in which the urban poor live across the street from the very rich, with nothing in between. This "coalition" combines people who want to kill the golden goose (that is, the productive private sector of the economy) for welfare benefits with those who want to strangle the golden goose to eliminate its carbon footprint.

I'm guessing that the party that supports the aspirations of white working-class people for economic advancement will end up appealing to minority working-class people who want the opportunity to earn their way toward the same aspirational goals. That really does mean that the "Obama Coalition" is a dead end for the Democrats.

Of stories and narratives, mice and men

James Taranto in Best of the Web notes:

Drew Westen is back. He's the psychologist and political consultant who wrote a ridiculous but revealing New York Times op-ed back in August faulting President Obama for failing to tell "a story" that would comfort "scared and angry" Americans by assuring them that the president would heroically vanquish "bad guys."

It's taken me a while, but I finally realized what story it is that Westen wanted Obama to tell us:

George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. "Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to."

Lennie was delighted. "That's it - that's it. Now tell how it is with us."

George went on. " With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us. We don't have to sit in no bar room blowin' in our jack jus' because we got no place else to go. If them other guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not us."

Lennie broke in. "But not us! An' why? Because .... because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why." He laughed delightedly. "Go on now, George."

"You got it by heart. You can do it yourself."

"No, you. I forget some a' the things. Tell about how it's gonna be."

"O.K. Some day - we're gonna get the jack together and we're gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs and ---"

"An' live off the fatta the lan'," Lennie shouted. "An' have rabbits. Go on, George! Tell about what we're gonna have in the garden and about the rabbits in the cages and about the rain in the winter and the stove, and how thick the cream is on the milk like you can hardly cut it. Tell about that, George."

"Why'n't you do it yourself. You know all of it."

"No.... you tell it. It ain't the same if I tell it. Go on..... George. How I get to tend the rabbits."

"Well," said George. "We'll have a big vegetable patch and a rabbit-hutch and chickens. And when it rains in the winter, we'll just say the hell with goin' to work, and we'll build up a fire in the stove and set around it an' listen to the rain comin' down on the roof...."

The problem is that Westen and the Democrats forgot that Lennie could tell the story as good as George could, so when they heard Obama telling it back in 2004 at the DNC, they thought that Obama was George. What they are just now realizing is that THEY are George, and Obama is Lennie. See if this doesn't sound like the Democrats' current lament about their President:

"There's enough beans for four men," George said.

Lennie watched him from over the fire. He said patiently, "I like 'em with ketchup."

"Well, we ain't got any," George exploded. "Whatever we ain't got, that's what you want. God a'mighty, if I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an' work an' no trouble. No mess at all, and when the end of the month come I could take my fifty bucks and go into town and get whatever I want. Why, I could stay in a cat house all night, I could eat any damn place I want, hotel or any place, and order any damn thing I could think of. An' I could do all that every damn month.. Get a gallon of whisky, or set in a pool room and play cards or shoot pool." Lennie knelt and looked over the fire at the angry George. And Lennie's face was drawn with terror. "An' whatta I got?" George went on furiously. " I got you! You can't keep a job and you lose me ever' job I get. Jus' keep me shovin' all over the country all the time. An' that ain't the worst. You get in trouble. You do bad things and I got to get you out." His voice rose nearly to a shout. "You crazy son-of-a-bitch. You keep me in hot water all the time." He took on the elaborate manner of little girls when they are mimicking one another. "Jus' wanted to feel that little girl's dress - jus' wanted to pet it like it was a mouse -- Well, how the hell did she know you jus' wanted to feel her dress? She jerks back and you hold on like it was a mouse. She yells and we got to hide in a irrigation ditch all day with guys lookin' for us, and we got to sneak out in the dark and get outta the country. All the time somethin' like that - all the time. I wisht I could put you in a cage with about a million mice and let you have fun."

But the Democrats can no more walk away from their Lennie than George could from his. In the end, George showed Lennie mercy, but the Democrats can't even do that, though in their case they'd only need to remove Obama's name from nomination rather than use George's drastic measure.

The Golem

One of the strangest legends of Jewish mystical folklore is the story of the Golem. The best-known example is the story of the Golem of Prague, made by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel to protect the Jews of Prague from Christians incited by sermons at Eastertime. Eventually, after performing its defensive duty, the Golem stopped obeying Rabbi Judah Loew's orders and the Rabbi was forced to destroy it.

From the Hebrew word for "formless mass," golem refers to the product of a mystical procedure that turns a shapeless lump of clay or mud into a living being, capable of performing service for its maker. The procedure relies on the power of words to create and destroy: the maker imbues the golem with life by speaking or writing words related to the names of God into the formless mass, and it takes shape and gains the power of movement -- but not of speech. When its usefulness is at an end (or when it develops a dangerous will of its own), the golem's maker can destroy it by repeating the words in the reverse order or erasing their written form.

In 2006, columnist Froma Harrop noted that Barack Obama described himself in his second autobiography, The Audacity of Hope: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views... my treatment of the issues is often partial and incomplete."

Today, in August 2011, Froma Harrop has made some interesting headlines by calling TEA Party movement members "terrorists" -- this while heading a project called Restoring Civility for the National Conference of Editorial Writers. But what's been overlooked in the kerfuffle over her name-calling is the topic of the column in which the name-calling appeared: Democrats Also Need a Presidential Primary in 2012. It concludes:

But Democrats would do themselves a huge favor if they had a living, breathing leader as their presidential candidate in 2012. Won't someone step up?

And she's hardly the only Progressive lamenting the failure of Obama to fulfill their ambitions. On Slate, Jacob Weisberg paints a lurid image of Obama as passive and ineffectual:

It has been astonishing to watch Obama's sheer unwillingness to give up on his opponents after their refusal to work with him on the stimulus package, health care reform, or the extension of the Bush tax cuts last fall. A Congress dominated by mindless cannibals is now feasting on a supine president. But surely even he now realizes there's no middle ground with antagonists whose only interest is in seeing him humiliated.

And in the New York Times, Drew Westen, professor of psychology at Emory University, writes that Obama seems passionless and even rudderless:

A somewhat less charitable explanation is that we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election. Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in “Dreams From My Father” appended a chapter at the end that wasn’t there — the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.

It seems clear that Obama was flattering himself when he described himself as a blank screen. He is a golem: a shapeless mass of unformed political opinions and feel-good slogans who animated himself into national political life with the power of words. He began with his speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, then followed with The Audacity of Hope (mirroring the way he used Dreams From My Father to become a statewide politician in Illinois), and finally with his campaign speeches in 2007-2008. And along the way, his formlessness allowed both Progressives and more moderate voters to believe that he was assuming the form of their faithful servant, a being that would do the heavy lifting of fixing a broken nation and creating a cross-party coalition behind his preferred solutions.

But having spoken himself into being, President Obama had no idea what he existed for. He assumed that slogans, pronouncements and speeches would be as effective in creating public policy from his shapeless mass of ideas as it was in turning him into a President-like figure. Amazingly, in thirty months in office, he hasn't learned that incantations are not sufficient to the task of negotiating policy decisions with Congress. Even very recently, his press secretary Jay Carney expressed exasperation on Obama's behalf at press suggestions that the President might be expected in the course of his job to write down comprehensive proposals to implement his policy positions.

The final evidence that Obama is no blank screen but an animated being is that the Progressives now realize that they can't change him merely by changing a channel or projecting a different image onto him. In fact, they can't control him at all -- and the fact that they are so outraged to realize that fact indicates that they indeed saw themselves, not him, as the makers of the Golem. They believed that they called him into being and thus should be able to uncreate him, but they are learning that they were merely swept along in his process of self-creation and that they are now powerless to stop him from lumbering aimlessly, crushing their Progressive ideals.

The story of the Golem was made into a so-so Roddy McDowall movie in 1967. But that was a masterpiece compared to the Obama version.

Credence Calamity Survival

This is the video message that President Obama sent to the Democratic Caucus meeting:

I keep the tax rates from risin'.
I see the Democrats get mad.
I see the Progressives fightin'.
I see the optics going bad.
Don't look with crossed eyes
At historic compromise,
There's some tax rates on the rise.

I hear tax deadlines a-nearin',
'Cause New year's Day is coming soon.
I fear jobs a-dissapearin'.
My Presidency gone to ruin.
Don't look with crossed eyes
At historic compromise,
There's some tax rates on the rise.

For Twenty-Twelve let's stick together,
I know this vote will be a bitch.
Help me ride out this nasty weather:
Next term, I'll help you screw the rich.
Don't look with crossed eyes
At historic compromise,
There's some tax rates on the rise.

The Waldorf Salad Effect

Remember the 'Waldorf Salad' episode [edited: not the last episode as I originally posted] of Fawlty Towers? A hard-ass American and his English wife arrive at the hotel late, and Basil is too cheap to bribe his chef to stay and cook their dinner. It's not a hard order: screwdrivers to drink, steaks, and a Waldorf salad. Needless to say, Basil screws everything up and makes it worse by trying to make it look like someone else's fault, and the American tells his wife to get her bags -- they're leaving.

As the American gives Basil what for in the lobby, all the resident guests of the hotel line up to watch. The American tells Basil that his is the worst excuse for a hotel that he's ever had the misfortune to set foot in, and Basil asks his resident guests if they're satisfied. None say a word, and Basil starts to offer the American a refund with a supercilious sneer -- and then a voice pipes up, "I'm not satisfied."

And one by one each of the guests pours out a litany of complaints about the hotel's lousy service and shabby accommodations. The American's assessment of Fawlty Towers and its proprietor are fully vindicated.

This is what we are seeing in the American political landscape today. It's the end of what rdbrewer at Ace of Spades HQ called the Abilene Paradox: because a few individuals were pushed past their limit and spoke up about how crappy the ruling regime is, the people at large have now discovered that everyone else around them is as unhappy and fed up as they are.

The polls bear this out:

Tilted toward the GOP from the start of the year, the political environment has grown even more favorable for Republicans and rockier for President Barack Obama and his Democrats over the long primary season that just ended with a bang.

With November's matchups set and the general election campaign beginning in earnest Wednesday, an Associated Press-GfK poll found that more Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction than did before the nomination contests got under way in February. Also, more now disapprove of the job Obama is doing. And more now want to see Republicans in control of Congress rather than the Democrats who now run the House and Senate...

"I'm going to do everything in my power to make sure that they're out of office," said independent voter Robbin Payton of Newport News, Va., reflecting just how toxic the environment is for the party in power.

This is why we get such perverse pleasure out of watching the floundering and flopping of Gibbs and Pelosi and Reid and Obama: they're playing the comic role of Basil Fawlty, insisting against all objective evidence that everything is fine and that any problems that might exist are definitely someone else's fault. What made Basil such an enduring character was his obvious knowledge that everything was on the verge of total collapse and only his desperate machinations could keep his entire life from falling down around his ears -- and that's what makes today's Democrat leaders and Obama Administration officials just as funny as he was.

From Bee Lo Obama's new CD, "The Economy-Killer"

At Ace of Spades HQ, Ace notes that the Democrats are losing the "millennial generation" of voters. This prompted me to consider how the White House might try to counter that trend -- and, combining that with the likely result of the mid-term elections, I envisioned this Presidential Address from the Oval Office:

I see you swept into office by the voters I love
And I'm like, FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooo!
I guess the change and the hope just weren't enough
And I'm like, FUCK YOU
And FUCK THEM, too!
I guess you would be richer
if your job was still wit'cha
Now, ain't that some shit?
And now Pelosi is out I just stand here and shout,
Hey, voters! FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooh

I was only too willin to spend eight hundred billion
But that didn't seem to make a dent
You love the Tea Party but I'm more of a soiree
A Kobe-eating President

I pity the fool who gets elected by you
(Oh shit they're spoiled brats)
Well
(Gave up on the Democrats)
Ooo
I got some news for you
Yeah run and tell your Sarah and Glenn

I see you swept into office by the voters I love
And I'm like, FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooo!
I guess the change and the hope just weren't enough
And I'm like, FUCK YOU
And FUCK THEM, too!
I guess you would be richer
if your job was still wit'cha
Now, ain't that some shit?
And now Pelosi is out I just stand here and shout,
Hey, voters! FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooh

Now I know that I had to borrow
From China and your grandchildren
Trying to keep ya, trying to please ya
But unemployment is still pushing ten

I pity the fool who gets elected by you
(Oh shit they're spoiled brats)
Well
(Gave up on the Democrats)
Ooo
I got some news for you
Yeah run and tell your Sarah and Glenn

Now all you little voters, why you wanna hurt me so bad?
(So bad, so bad, so bad)
I thought you were sick and tired of W and his dad
(His dad, his dad, his dad)
Uh! Whyyyy? Uh! Whyyy?!?
Uh! Whyyyy, people?!?!?
Ooo, I'm the one -- oh! -- you waited for!!!
OOOOO!

I see you swept into office by the voters I love
And I'm like, FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooo!
I guess the change and the hope just weren't enough
And I'm like, FUCK YOU
And FUCK THEM, too!
I guess you would be richer
if your job was still wit'cha
Now, ain't that some shit?
And now Pelosi is out I just stand here and shout,
Hey, voters! FUCK YOU!
Oo, oo, ooh

Will Bill Clinton drive Barack Obama to forgo re-election?

This could be the event that drives Obama not to seek a second term: Barack Obama and Bill Clinton back different Colorado candidates.

Barack Obama's influence over the Democrat party is under threat after Bill Clinton backed a rival candidate to that favoured by the President in a key US Senate seat.

The former president recorded a telephone message for voters backing Andrew Romanoff, who is hoping to be the Democrat senator for Colorado, a key state in the forthcoming midterm elections.

The intervention of Mr Clinton threatens to undermine Mr Obama, who has been a prominent support of Michael Bennet, the incumbent Democrat senator who is also fighting to contest the seat.

Obama has already had to turn to Bill Clinton for political help, both in the 2008 campaign and in office. If this midterm election demonstrates that the past President and not the sitting one has the most influence in the Democratic Party, Obama may decide that living as a past President is a pretty sweet deal compared to the meat grinder he'd face in his re-election campaign... especially if Bill manages to persuade Hillary to run again.

UPDATE: Bennet wins with 60% of the primary vote, allowing the Democrat Party establishment to claim that Obama is still politically relevant.

Ode to Barry O

It was 09 September in the House of Representatives
They had invited the Senate and everybody said, "What gives?
Barack Obama's coming and I want to know what he will say,
And will his hundredth speech on health care matter anyway?"
I was about to go and grab a cold one from out the fridge
When I heard Obama talk about the man from Chappaquiddick Bridge.

Barry said to the Congress, "You know, it don't seem right;
Ted was working four decades and he never once gave up the fight.
He could get McCain and Hatch and Grassley lined up on his side,
But he couldn't get health care reform through Congress before he died.
None of his passion and conviction made the cause advance a single smidge,
Not since the day that Teddy Kennedy drove off the Chappaquiddick Bridge."

Now the hours have come and gone since Obama made that fateful speech:
The Congress members from the GOP made fun of him for overreach,
While Democrats cheered on his call to get his healthcare plan passed right now --
Though none of them could even tell you what was in it anyhow.
The hopes for Barry-pleasin' health reform from Hawaii to the Blue Ridge
Have fallen in to the muddy water off the Chappaquiddick Bridge.

The rare but (not endangered) Alaskan Black Swan

Great book: The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Among other things, he mentions that no one builds monuments to the leaders who prevent terror attacks, because we forget that those attacks were probable in the absence of that leadership.

The title of the book comes from the syllogism, "All swans are white. This bird is a swan. Therefore, this bird is white." That was irrefutably true for Europeans... right up until the time of Captain Cook's voyage to Australia. Australia has a native species of swan that is jet black. Taleb's point is that, just because you've never seen something, you can't assume it doesn't exist.

While Taleb is concerned mostly with rare economic events and rare political events, his admonition applies to Sarah Palin. No one had ever seen a strong, common-sense, good-looking female politician who rose from the middle middle class before. Many people who were locked into the "all swans are white" old reality therefore tried to dismiss black swan Sarah Palin as not real, not genuine, an impostor, a white swan painted black.

That explains why in the run-up to his health care address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama released talking points that mentioned Sarah Palin (and no other Republican) by name. Palin had pre-empted Obama's speech with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal addressing the foreseeable failures of government bureaucratic control of America's health care.

On Gov. Palin's Attacks

Every non-partisan organization that has looked at her claims say they are false. And the ideas in her op-ed are both scary and risky. Eliminating Medicare and giving our seniors vouchers instead is a bad idea that we shouldn't adopt.

The wonderful thing is that Liberals (up to and including Obama) and faux Conservatives are locked in a futile effort to find the white down under Sarah's black feathers, and as a consequence their attention is drawn away from the efforts of others to expose the Red underbelly of the Liberal/Progressive/Democrat enterprise.

Another candidate voice

A commenter at Ace of Spades blog says:

My husband does voice-over work. He's got a really good ear. He says it's Anne Gartlan. Differences in signal compression explain some slight differences, but both ads are the same woman. She pitches up, she slightly alters her accent across all her work, but the core of her voice is the same. A resonance and timbre that is clear in everyone of her spots, and you can pick her out.

Posted by: SarahW at September 22, 2008 06:57 PM

Listen to her political demo reel (QuickTime download). Sure sounds like her, and the political client list is solidly Democratic.

From a June 2006 article in Campaigns & Elections:

An accomplished voiceover artist, Gartlan has done work for many Democratic candidates including Al Gore, Jon Corzine, Leonard Boswell and a number of New York state candidates. Gartlan's non-political work includes a commercial for a laxative (which is among her favorite commercials because of the tone of voice she uses in it). She said the voice she uses in this commercial is a party hit. One of the most challenging projects she has ever done was an audio book that required her to voice five different Southern women of the same age from the same town.

Is this the voice?

So, McCain DID pitch a curveball -- and what a curveball! Sarah Palin has the Democrats tying themselves in knots, and resorting to slimy tactics that make me want to gag.

As a sidelight on the story at The Jawa Report about how David Axelrod seems to be 'astroturfing' smears of Sarah Palin all over the Internet, I was curious to see if one could find the name of the announcer Obama uses for his regular video ads. I think it's Cedering Fox.

Cedering Fox was the voice actor who did the in-hall announcing at the Pepsi Center during the DNC Convention this year. She's also a longtime voice-over talent on Democratic Party and candidate spots through her affiliation with Greer, Margolis, Mitchell, Burns and Associates (GMMB), a political consulting and advocacy advertising agency.

Listen to her voice demo and then listen to the Palin smear video. Note in both cases the deep timbre of the voice, the sibilant 's' sounds, and how on the demo reel she varies her voice characterization just as the actor on the Palin video uses a different voice for the Alaskan Independence quote compared to the rest of the ad.

Promo Reel

Not that this is Earth-shattering, just interesting.

Why didn't I see it before? It's BRILLIANT!

The Democrats' war strategy, that is. From the AP: Democratic leaders wrote to President Bush on Friday that it's not too late to change course in Iraq and pleaded with him not to hand the war off to the next president.

Democrats signaled on Friday that they don't see much hope in ending the Iraq war this year so long as President Bush insists U.S. troops remain committed there in large numbers.

But party leaders wrote to Bush on Friday anyhow, telling him it's not too late to change course and pleading with him not to leave the war for the next president to handle.

"We are deeply concerned that you and the congressional Republican leadership are intent on staying the current course throughout your administration and then handing the Iraq war off to future presidents," the Democrats wrote.

They have a much better plan than the one the military has been floundering under.

Democrats are engaged in a full-court press against Bush's Iraq policy in advance of next week's testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador there. Petraeus and Crocker are expected to say the recent buildup in troops has succeeded in improving security. But, they also will say that a period of assessment is needed this summer before officials can decide whether troop withdrawals can continue.

Democrats called this approach unacceptable and said they would pursue an alternative policy through legislation. They said their focus will be on restoring the strength of the Army and Marines and refocusing the nation's resources on fighting terrorists in Afghanistan.

The Democrats propose a strategy that is brilliant on two levels. First, consistent with their own experience as legislators, they have hit on the simple idea that we can end the conflict in Iraq simply by picking up all of our marbles and going home. The Bush Administration, the Maliki government in Iraq, and most Republicans are mired in the paradigm that leaving a battlefield during a war means that the enemy wins, dismissing the Democrats' bold and innovative reframing of that tactic and deriding it as "retreat," "surrender," or even "defeat." But the Democrats understand that we wouldn't be surrendering or losing, provided they don't ask the enemy for any input into the decision. By focusing solely on President Bush, they can't be accused of offering the enemy anything.

They take their strategic brilliance to a new and higher plane by redefining America's mission as going after the terrorists in Afghanistan. Once the U.S. has fully withdrawn its forces from Iraq, the terrorists now in Afghanistan will face little opposition in relocating to Iraq. Thus, Afghanistan will be free of terrorists and the Democrats will be able to claim success for their strategy. Of course, the terrorists will quickly assume control of Iraq, its oilfields, and their vast revenues, but the Democrats will be able to blame that on the Bush Administration's failure to fulfill a flawed mission in Iraq.

With such brilliant thinking on display, it's no wonder the Democrat Party is now enjoying the exquisite agony of choosing between the two Smartest People In The World(tm) for its Presidential candidate. But really, with those two on tap to become the next President, why worry about whether one or the other inherits the Iraq war? It's a cinch that either one of them could solve it as one of their six impossible thoughts before breakfast on Inauguration Day.

Here, he says it better

George Neumayr writes in The American Spectator:

Left-wing paternalists regard themselves as architects of racial progress, guarding and guiding blacks along the path of success -- a role in which they assume to stand forever at the head of the march. But what happens when blacks overtake their enlightened white helpers? All hell breaks loose and the mask of progress drops to reveal the stricken faces of the white avant-garde .

Geraldine Ferraro's remarks confirm that beneath left-wing paternalism lurks considerable racism. "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she said to the Daily Breeze. "He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

Since liberalism is not based upon natural justice but willfulness, it never fails to devour its supposed beneficiaries. Ferraro's condescension captures the tone of paternalistic liberalism perfectly. Its "victims" should know their place and plot their ascent according to the progressive charts set up by the white liberal establishment.

The rest of the article goes on to give a much better illustration of the poison with which affirmative action has permeated our society than I was able to give in my previous post (The Affirmative Action Candidate).

The Affirmative Action Candidate

No, not Barack Obama.

Geraldine Ferraro.

Let's look at what she said, to Jim Farber of the Torrance (Calif.) Daily Breeze:

"I think what America feels about a woman becoming president takes a very secondary place to Obama's campaign - to a kind of campaign that it would be hard for anyone to run against," she said. "For one thing, you have the press, which has been uniquely hard on her. It's been a very sexist media. Some just don't like her. The others have gotten caught up in the Obama campaign.

"If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," she continued. "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

That's pretty specific. She's saying that Barack Obama is where he is because he's a Black man.

In other words, he's the beneficiary of affirmative action.

Not the affirmative action that may or may not have had anything to do with his opportunities for education or employment -- Ferraro is postulating that the Democrat Party electorate is weighing Obama's race as a specific factor in evaluating him as a candidate. By inference, then, they are both forgiving his lack of objective qualifications for the office of the President, and overlooking Hillary Clinton's obviously superior qualifications for the office.

It's bunk.

Let's be clear: affirmative action is how you pick a running mate. A Mondale picks a Ferraro not because a Ferraro has any clue how to take over the top job if the Mondale keels over, but because by picking her the Mondale shows how enlightened he is, and creates through the choice itself the sort of excitement his corpse-like appearance and demeanor could never muster.

How you get to the top of the ticket relies on a more objective process. Set aside the question of objective qualifications for the Presidency -- the "who do you want taking the 3 AM phone call?" or the "great speeches are wonderful, but it takes spade work to pass legislation" (and let's also set aside the Clinton campaign's choice of the metaphor "spade work"). Let's focus on the process of choosing a candidate.

Candidates and their campaign operations present an image and message to the electorate. The electorate turns these into subjective assessments of whether they want that candidate to be the nominee. And then the electorate provides the sole form of objective evidence about the candidate's qualifications for the party's nomination: votes.

It doesn't matter whether Barack Obama would, in fact, crumple into a quivering mass of jelly if Hezbollah terrorists detonated an atomic weapon in Houston, leading to the collapse of American power in the world and relegating the USA to second-world status. One could make a very good argument that such an eventuality is possible or even probable -- but it's still a conjecture, a forecast, and therefore subjective.

But a tally of state contests won and delegates pledged is an observable, measurable and concrete fact. It is objective evidence -- in fact, the only objective evidence that counts for anything in this process -- that a candidate is more qualified to be his or her party's nominee than the rival candidates.

If any other objective criteria about experience, temperament, gravitas, and all the qualities a President should have made a dime's difference in this process, Bill Richardson would have won the nomination handily. But for whatever reason, he did not, and for whatever reason, Barack Obama has amassed a lead in pledged delegates, states won, and even the popular vote. That makes him inarguably the most qualified of the Democrat candidates in the same sense that Chauncey Fauntleroy is the most qualified pitcher on the sandlot if he's the only kid who owns a ball and bat: whatever you think of his ability to do the job once he has it, he's got an inarguable claim to the job based on the relevant selection process.

There is, of course, a delicious irony to Ferraro's comment. A Black man couldn't possibly have achieved the front-runner position in the Democrat Party's nominating process on merit -- no, he must have been given a leg up unfairly just because of his color. The affirmative action mentality taints any success on the part of a minority member with a whiff of suspicion that the success was not so much earned as bestowed by the white male establishment under duress from the enlightened (also mostly white) liberal establishment. As political conservatives and a certain segment of Black social commentators have observed, this is perhaps the most insidious poison of affirmative action.

Triangulating McCain

John Bicknell at Congressional Quarterly hits the nail squarely on the head: The Real Conservative Conundrum: A President McCain Working With a Democratic Congress.

Conservatives who have opposed McCain during the campaign have cited his positions on a range of issues — immigration, campaign finance, climate change, tax cuts, legal rights for detainees — where he has sided with Democrats.

But the positions McCain has taken are only part of the problem for conservatives.

As president, with a Democratic Congress, it is the other part — the stylistic part — that will prove to be a much greater problem for conservatives.

When McCain has been on the conservative side, as he has been on the vast majority of issues, he gives it full-throated support. He is not afraid of giving offense to appropriators when he sticks up for cutting spending, and he has not been shy about deriding Democrats who oppose the war in Iraq, to cite two potent examples.

But when he is with the Democrats, he is really with them. McCain is not someone who simply reaches across the aisle to form coalitions with the other side. He walks across the aisle, puts on the other team’s uniform and sings the other team’s fight song.

If he wants to accomplish things — and every president wants to accomplish things — he will have to do so on the Democrats’ terms.

That means his agenda will include those things on which he agrees with the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate:

• A cap and trade regime for climate change.

• Expansion of McCain-Feingold regulations for campaign finance.

• Expanded legal rights for enemy combatants, and probably the closing of Guantanamo.

• Comprehensive immigration overhaul, with a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country.

This will not be a “reaching across the aisle.” This will be a full partnership of the president and the Congress, who just happen to be of different parties. The shrunken GOP minority in the Senate might serve as a brake, especially on immigration. But it will be only a brake, not a standing astride history yelling “stop!”

Compare and contrast (excerpt from same article):

In his victory speech on Super Tuesday, McCain laid out his GOP credentials.

“I am a Republican because, like you, I want to relieve the American people of the heavy hand of a government,” he said. “I am a Republican because, like you, I believe government must defend our nation’s security wisely and effectively,” he said. “I am a Republican because I believe, like you, that government should tax us no more than necessary, spend no more than necessary,” he promised.

And, he said, “I am a Republican because I believe the judges we appoint to the federal bench must understand that enforcing our laws, not making them, is their only responsibility.”

Except that he's likely to be so busy selling out conservatives on the things the Democrats want that he's unlikely to be able to push back on those same Democrats for the conservative values (lower taxation, less government, non-activist judges and strong defense) that he claims he wants too. The Democrats are willing to accept compromise from opponents but never offer it in return (unless their re-election prospects are on the line): they're funny that way.

Suicidal tendencies

A strange suicidal madness is spreading: FOX News Poll: Nearly 1 in 5 Democrats Say World Will Be Better Off if U.S. Loses War.

Nearly one out of every five Democrats thinks the world will be better off if America loses the war in Iraq, according to the FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll released Thursday.

The percentage of Democrats (19 percent) who believe that is nearly four times the number of Republicans (5 percent) who gave the same answer. Seven percent of independents said the world would be better off if the U.S. lost the war.

Click here for results of the poll.(pdf)

Overall, 11 percent of Americans think the world would be "better off" if the U.S. lost the war, and 73 percent disagree.

Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from Sept. 25 to Sept. 26. The poll has a 3-point margin of error.

My question for those affirmative respondents is, better off how, exactly?

Congressional water torture

Not that there is any credible evidence that the Bush Administration has authorized torture, but key Democrats in Congress are demanding that the Bush Administration turn over "alleged" directives authorizing torture.

House Democrats demanded Thursday that the Justice Department turn over two secret memos that reportedly authorize painful interrogation tactics against terror suspects — despite the Bush administration's insistence that it has not violated U.S. anti-torture laws.

Spokespeople for the White House and the Justice Department said a memo written in February 2005 on this subject did not change an administration policy issued in 2004 that publicly renounced torture as "abhorrent."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., promised a congressional inquiry into the two Justice Department legal opinions that reportedly "explicitly authorized the use of painful and psychological tactics on terrorism suspects."

"Both the alleged content of these opinions and the fact that they have been kept secret from Congress are extremely troubling, especially in light of the department's 2004 withdrawal of an earlier opinion similarly approving such methods," Conyers, D-Mich., and fellow House Judiciary member Nadler wrote in a letter Thursday to Acting Attorney General Peter D. Keisler.

It's wonderful to see that Democrats have their priorities straight. No matter what the threat to the lives and safety of Americans, the real thing they keep first and foremost in their minds is not being unduly mean to terror suspects.

"The secret authorization of brutal interrogations is an outrageous betrayal of our core values, and a grave danger to our security," Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said in a statement. "We must do whatever it takes to track down and capture or kill terrorists, but torture is not a part of the answer — it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration's approach."

Here's the fundamental question for Obama, Nadler and Conyers: how many Americans are you willing to let die to keep to your anti-torture principles? If "torture is not part of the answer," excluded from "whatever it takes" to defend America from terror attacks, then you must state explicitly that America must never torture any terror suspect, no matter how many American lives are lost by foregoing the information that suspect has. Tell us that you truly believe that the human rights of the terror suspect to be exempted from torture outweigh the rights of American civilians to be exempted from being murdered.

Sadly, this probably gets him a lot of Democrat votes

Dennis Kucinich is in the category of "useful idiot" for the enemies of America -- it might be worse than that, actually, in that he may really favor the defeat of America by its enemies as a necessary purgative of reactionary ideas like capitalism, private property, patriotism, religious belief... but in any event, he's willing to use his political capital to whitewash some of the most evil dictators and terror supporters in the world. The latest is Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

Kucinich's own campaign trumpets his visit to Syria with fulsome praise for the boy dictator as a visionary man of peace:

DAMASCUS, Syria, Sept. 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a meeting today with Dennis Kucinich, US Democratic Presidential candidate, Syrian President Bashar Assad said that Syria would be willing to participate in a multinational conference and peacekeeping force to help Iraq to manage its transition from occupied country to sovereign nation.

Assad made these assurances and other observations in a two-hour meeting with Kucinich, who traveled to Syria to discuss a peace initiative which has arisen out of his anti-war work in the House of Representatives. President Assad agreed with Kucinich that various US demands for the privatization of Iraq's oil and partition of Iraq would mean a continuation of war.

"We must stand for strength through peace, for a sovereign and unified Iraq. President Assad is willing for Syria to play a significant role in assisting in the stabilization of Iraq," said Kucinich. "President Assad knows that an international peace keeping and security force must be organized and ready to deploy in order to facilitate the end of the occupation. He understands that the US cannot leave a vacuum in Iraq, but that at the present time the US occupation is fueling the insurgency. He is recommending a parallel political process involving an Iraqi national conference, the disarming of militias, and the building up of an Iraqi army which would eventually takeover from international peace keepers."

Kucinich said the fact that Syria, a nation of just 20 million people, has both welcomed and is providing free health care and education to the million and a half Iraqi refugees is evidence of Syria's vital role in the region. "The international community must recognize and appreciate that Syria has at its own great cost provided a lifeboat to millions who suffer from the humanitarian crisis which the war in Iraq has created."

Late last night Kucinich and his wife Elizabeth visited a neighborhood of Damascus which was teeming with Iraqi refugees. "People are desperate. They have lost loved ones in the war. They have nothing but the clothes on their back, but they have their lives, thanks to President Assad's willingness to open Syria to the Iraqi refugees. This is a profound humanitarian gesture, since it has significantly increased the population of Syria. Now we must help Syria provide for these refugees," Kucinich said.

Kucinich told President Assad that he will take up the refugee matter with the UN Secretary General and the US Congress.

Kucinich and Assad discussed a wide range of other matters including building relations between Syria and the United States, the role of the European community in negotiations between Syria and Israel, hopes for a national unity government in Lebanon, conditions affecting Pakistan and Assad's desire for a peace agreement with Israel hinging on resolution of matters relating to Golan.

After the meeting Mrs. Kucinich met with British born Mrs. Assad to discuss their mutual interests and work in community economic development, education and the welfare of refugees.

Kucinich and his wife Elizabeth visited the ancient holy site of Notre Dame de Saydanaya, where today fully veiled Muslim women worship together with Christians. "This is the one of the few places in the world that I have witnessed such profound coexistence, and harmony," Mrs. Kucinich said. "In this time of religious strife it is important to bear witness to places which show the way of peace."

This evening Kucinich spoke to over 150 academicians, journalists and politicians in Damascus where he presented his new security doctrine. "Strength through Peace turns the neoconservative doctrine of Peace through Strength on its head. The neo-cons' Peace through Strength, has led to unilateralism, military build up and illegal war." Kucinich told the packed audience, "Strength through Peace favors the upholding of international law, treaties and direct engagement, which is why I am here" Kucinich added.

"I believe that through direct communication there is new hope for peace," he said. "The world is ready to fall in love with America again. It is important that America reaches out to show our true values, our compassion and our willingness to work for peace."

The trip is continuing with a visit to Lebanon.

SOURCE Kucinich for President 2008

Kucinich politely doesn't mention that the reason Assad was able to open his country to so many Iraqi refugees is because he's opened his country to terrorists who infiltrated into Iraq and committed horrific acts that created the refugee crisis.

Kucinich is continuing his trip into Lebanon. One wonders what his Lebanese hosts will say to him about Syria's helpfulness in their country. If Kucinich talks to the Lebanese president, he'll get the pure pro-Syrian, pro-Hezbollah line; if he bothers to speak with the Lebansese prime minister, he may get an earful about the real intentions and actions of Syria.

Amazingly, even the People's Daily of Communist China has a more balanced report of the Syrian-Lebanese situation than Kucinich's press release:

Visiting U.S. Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich on Sunday underlined the important role of Syria in boosting security and stability in the region, the official SANA news agency said.

"My visit to Syria comes from my conviction that it plays an important and constructive role in the region," Kucinich was quoted as saying in a lecture at the al-Assad library in the Syrian capital.

"I believe in the necessity of holding direct contacts with Syria in order to realize peace," he added.

Kucinich, a U.S. presidential candidate, praised Syria's role to host more than 1.5 million Iraqi refugees, calling upon the UN to help it in bearing part of the burdens resulted from such a situation.

Kucinich, currently on a fact-finding tour in the region, held talks earlier in the day with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said SANA.

U.S.-Syrian relations, strained since 2003 as the Arab country strongly opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, witnessed a remarkable tension after the assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri in Feb. 2005.

Washington has been accusing Damascus of doing little to stop alleged anti-U.S. militants and weapons from crossing into Iraq and of being involved in Hariri's killing, both of which are denied by Syria.

The United States, unilaterally imposing economic sanctions against Syria in 2004, withdrew its ambassador to Syria right after Hariri was killed, but still maintains a lower-level diplomatic mission in the Syrian capital.

The People's Daily story is confirmation that Kucinich believes that assassinations play an important and constructive role in the Middle East.

Democrats want to protect America from the War on Terror

The Washington Post has a remarkably candid news story on the deep divisions in the Democratic Party between those who see terrorists as a threat to America and those who think that measures to oppose terrorism are an even greater and more pernicious threat: Terrorism Policies Split Democrats -- Anger Mounts Within Party Over Inaction on Bush Tactics.

The American Civil Liberties Union is running Internet advertisements depicting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) as sheep.

"Bush wanted more power to eavesdrop on ordinary Americans, and we just followed along. I guess that's why they call us the Democratic leadersheep," say the two farm animals in the ad, referring to Congress's passage of legislation granting Bush a six-month extension and expansion of his warrantless wiretapping program.

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), who leads a newly created House select intelligence oversight panel, lamented, "Democrats have been slow to recognize they are in the majority now and can go back to really examine the fundamentals of what we should be doing to protect democracy."

Actually, maybe the division isn't between those who think the terrorists are our biggest enemy versus those who think George W. Bush is, but rather those who think that standing up for terrorists just to oppose Bush is political suicide versus those who don't care so long as they take out the Bush War on Terror:

Reid and Pelosi promised last week that they would at least confront the president next month over his wiretapping program, with Pelosi taking an uncompromising stand in a private conference call with House Democrats. When lawmakers return in September, Democrats will also push legislation to restore habeas corpus rights for terrorism suspects and may resume an effort to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But conservative Democrats and some party leaders continue to worry that taking on those issues would expose them to Republican charges that they are weak on terrorism. And advocates of a strong push on the terrorism issues are increasingly skeptical that they can prevail...

"The most controversial matters are the ones that people use to form their opinions on their members of Congress," said Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn.), who voted for the administration's bill. "I do know within our caucus, and justifiably so, there are members who have a real distaste for some of the things the president has done. But to let that be the driving force for our actions to block the surveillance of someone and perhaps stop another attack like 9/11 would be unwise."...

"If you just say you're standing up for civil liberties, the American people are with you, but if you say terrorism suspects should have civil liberties, it stretches Americans' tolerance," said Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who along with [Florida Democratic Rep. Alcee] Hastings represents Congress on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a human rights monitor. "It's a tough issue for us."

One of the most interesting things about this article is that it quotes and names so many Democrats (and one Republican, if in name only) as favoring habeas corpus rights for terrorists, shutting Guantanamo Bay, and restricting the ability of intelligence services to monitor international communications of terror suspects:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)

Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.)

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.)

Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.)

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (Va.)

Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.)

Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.)

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee

Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.)

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (Tex.), chairman of the House intelligence committee

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus

And it closes with the most telling quote of all:

"We can do this, but you have to keep in mind Republicans care more about catching Democrats than catching terrorists," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "They have spent years taking Roosevelt's notion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and given us nothing but fear."

John Lewis marched to be counted -- now his party's disenfranchising a whole state

See with what passion Rep. John Lewis (D.-GA) wrote in Newsweek of the 2000 elections and how the U.S. Supreme Court "disenfranchised" Black voters in Florida: We Marched to Be Counted:

As we crossed the Pettus Bridge, we saw a line of lawmen. "We should kneel and pray," I said to Hosea, but we didn't have time. "Troopers," barked an officer, "advance!" They came at us like a human wave, a blur of blue uniforms, billy clubs, bullwhips and tear gas; one had a piece of rubber hose wrapped in barbed wire. Televised images of that day—on ABC, they broke into the network premiere of "Judgment at Nuremberg"—led President Johnson to declare, "At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama."

As I watched election night 2000 turn into this controversy over counts and recounts, my mind went back to that day on the bridge. What's happening in Florida and in Washington is more than a game for pundits. The whole mess reminds African-Americans of an era when we had to pass literacy tests, pay poll taxes and cross every t and dot every i to get to be able to vote. You had black men and women, graduates of the best universities in the country, failing literacy tests. A man was once asked how many bubbles were in a bar of soap. For all the political maneuvering and legal wrangling, many people have missed an important point: the story of the 2000 election is about more than George W. Bush and Al Gore. It's about the right to vote. And you cannot understand the true implications of this campaign and the subsequent litigation without grasping how deeply many minorities feel about the seemingly simple matter of the sanctity of the ballot box.

Pretty stirring stuff. I wonder what Rep. Lewis has to say about his party's decision to disenfranchise all of the Democratic voters of Florida in the 2008 primary elections:

Florida party officials said they originally opposed the early primary date, which covers both the Democratic and Republican primaries. The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the change and the GOP governor signed it into law in an effort to give the state a more prominent voice in national politics.

But Florida Democratic leaders now are committed to the state-run election because voter participation would drop drastically if Democrats held an alternative contest after Jan. 29.

Members of the Democratic National Committee's rules panel expressed skepticism that Florida Democrats did enough to stop the change and they approved the harshest penalty. Every member voted against Florida except for the state's representative on the panel, Allan Katz.

Refusing to seat the delegates would set a "terrible situation for Florida and a very bad situation for the Democratic Party," Katz said.

Party rules say states cannot hold their 2008 primary contests before Feb. 5, except for Iowa on Jan. 14, Nevada on Jan. 19, New Hampshire on Jan. 22 and South Carolina on Jan. 29.

The calendar was designed to preserve the traditional role that Iowa and New Hampshire have played in selecting the nominee, while adding two states with more racial and geographic diversity to influential early slots.

Several DNC officials said before the vote that they wanted to take the strong action against Florida to discourage Michigan, New Hampshire and other states that were considering advancing their contests in violation of party rules.

Garry Shay, a rules committee member from California, said allowing Florida to move forward "would open the door to chaos."

DNC committee member Donna Brazile also argued for a strong penalty, saying, "I hesitate to see what happens if we show somehow some wiggle room in our process."

Somehow, I doubt we'll see any impassioned analogies between the DNC and Bull Connor:

Terrie Brady, a DNC member who helped present Florida's case, said the party's denial of delegates disenfranchises Florida voters. Rules committee members objected to the term, saying Florida's votes would be counted if they followed the rules.

"I find your use of the word disenfranchisement to be an overstatement," said committee member David McDonald, who is from Washington state.

Apparently the word "disenfranchisement" rankles DNC members when it's applied literally and properly.