No to Republicans, Too

First, thank you to the many people who have commented recently. I enjoy reading your stories and thoughts. For those who are new to the blog, please be aware that I almost never respond directly to anything in comments. To a few questions about linking or quoting:

• Link away. Try to use the permanent link if directing readers to a specific post.
• Quote in context and provide a link back

You don't have to agree with me, but use a link so your readers can make up their own minds.

Topic of the day - friends don't let friends vote Republican.

The Republicans are leading the charge against progressive politics, wanting to reduce this nation to late 19th-century conditions. They are clearly supporting Obama in the primaries to try to take out Hillary, as anyone who has been paying attention well knows. It tickles me pink that we are beginning to see rank and file Republican defections to Hillary in the primaries as, unlike the Dem for a Day crapola (and there is a post brewing on that topic), these appear to be good old Rockafeller Republicans, fiscal conservatives but socially liberal. A rare breed, these days, and clearly people we want to bringinto the Democratic fold.

There is no reason for any thinking citizen to vote for this band of thugs and criminals. NONE. Hillary herself tells you do not vote Republican. Ever.

The difficulty here is that Obama has run a shitty, nasty, fuck-the-bitch-over campaign, actively trading in elite pundit hatred (It's not just for wingnuts anymore!) and demonization of the Clintons to curry favor with the MSM. His delegate count overrepresents his actual support, particularly as his less than illustrious Chicago connections are exposed to the light of day. He has treated Hillary and the majority of Democratic voters who support her as beneath contmept, impediments to be swept away, rather than valid opposition deserving of respect. For crying out loud, the guy ran oppo research on Paul Krugman.

So, what's a good loyal Dem to do?

First and foremost, I do not give up, anymore than Hillary does. She can win this because no one has done so yet. The longer the campaign goes on, the more likely it is that she can pull it out. I talk about polls, perspectives, and political legitimacy to make clear to prospective voters what is at stake in this primary contest and to keep past voters engaged. If it can influence a super delegate or two, all to the good.

Second, should the nomination go to Obama through anything less than full representation of all the states and clear voting (hint - not under death threats) by the super delegates, you can cast a protest vote in November by writing in HRC. Some states do not have the ability to do this on touch screen machines, so be sure to talk to your country registrar of voters NOW and figure out how it can be done.

Finally, if Obama can clean up his sewer of a campaign, apologize for and retract all accusations of racism against the Clintons, fire every person from his campaign who has spoken derogatorily of Hillary and her supporters, unequivocally state that he will whole-heartedly support Hillary should she be the nominee, adopt a clear Democratic platform, present himself for full and fair primary revotes in FL and MI, win a clear majority of Democratic voters, and participate honorably in a clean convention, then I will do as Hillary asks and vote for the Democratic nominee. In short, Obama has to be no less dedicated and honorable a Democrat than Hillary herself if he wants to earn my vote.

Under no circumstances will I cast a vote for John McCain or any other Republican. Period.

So, Dr. Dean, how much of a game of chicken do you want to play with the general election? You need my vote. Earn it.

Anglachel

A Gathering Storm

My post yesterday called out the degree of violence, particularly misogynistic violence, present in the current Democratic contest. However, the characterization of Democrats who would not support the Democratic nominee in the general as "infantile" has stuck with me. I'm dropping the snark for a post and really looking at what blind spots are demonstrated through this stance. My point is not to criticize a particular blogger (richly though he may deserve it), but to get into the center of some profound self-deceptions going on with people all over the Left over the nature of political legitimacy.

Declaring people unwilling to support the nominee "infantile" is a very poor way of looking at the emerging dynamic of the race, though it would have been an appropriate chastisement prior to any of the caucuses or primaries. At that time, both Edwards and Obama publically refused to commit to supporting Hillary (which equates to telling their supporters not to vote for her) should she be the nominee. That was the point at which a slap should have been administered and not to HRC. I do not remember the Blogger Boyz complaining about this language when it was assumed the person being penalized by such threats was Hillary.

The fundamental problem with categorically labeling Hillary voters as infantile is that it takes as true the elite pundit meme that she and her supporters are illegitimate participants in the process, the equivalent of Ralph Nader and his adherents. This initial error is further compounded by assuming that those who will refuse to vote for Obama are simply a small group of delusional HRC supporters, though the vehemence with which the prospect of voter defections is being met belies that public stance. There are two increasingly overlapping groups of voters who are likely to defect from the Democratic column in November, and they illustrate two ways in which Obama has lost political legitimacy.

Taking up the first issue, the presumption of the punditocracy that we all know that a Hillary victory cannot be for real, has ironically enough become the foundation of Obama’s lack of legitimacy, but has expanded to include the Democratic Party itself. This crisis brewed for some time, but took form when HRC was not permitted a level playing field in the campaign. The refusal to grant her equal footing may have begun with the MSM, which has always hated her, but they were soon joined by progressive blogs and the other campaigns, producing a phalanx of elite opinion trying to delegitimize her at every step. The signature moment was the Drexel debate where Obama and Edwards took up Russert’s invitation to batter her in front of the cameras and then played the victims afterwards by claiming that Hillary was playing a “gender card”.

To those several million people who support Hillary or who at least regarded her favorably, this pointed attack upon her as a person as well as a candidate, coupled with the relatively gentle treatment granted the other candidates, had the effect of solidifying a great deal of our support. To declare her unworthy of participating, a monster who would “do anything to win,” was seen for what it was, straightforward demonization of a perfectly acceptable candidate, one with a deep well of support and an enviable record of public service. We simply don’t accept the elite framing of our candidate.

When A-list bloggers begin to lecture HRC supporters about having to grow up and not be infantile, they just dig themselves into a deeper hole, because they trivialize and mock our considered support for her. The arguments they offer up about her – duplicitous, hateful, cold, power-mad, disliked, criminal – are straight out of the Rightwing sewer, do little save undermine the validity of their own stances.

Then, there was the comment from Obama that he knew all the Hillary supporters would vote for him, but he didn’t think she could get his. What incredible offensiveness, to claim that he could take my vote for granted. It dismissed the fact that, were he to become the nominee, he would then have to ask for the support of those who had not selected him the first time around, and thus put in a position of providing reasons to vote for him to the people he casually dismissed.

Thus, among HRC supporters, the effect of this particular campaign has been to erode the legitimacy not of our candidate but of Obama. As polling shows, his presumption that he automatically inherited her supporters has been proved untrue, in great part because he assumed that no one could really support that “monster”.

The second issue, which is interwoven with the first and is, in my opinion, a far greater problem for the party as such, has to do with the treatment of rank and file Democrats who vote for Hillary. As shown in exit polls, these voters are the bulk of the Democrats who voted (as opposed to all who participate), people for whom being a Democrat is a part of their personal as well as political identity. Falling support for Obama among this group is a more recent phenomenon, one that he might have been reversing in mid-February but which is trending down with every poll. There is some anger here over the treatment of Hillary, but even more it is rejection of Obama himself as a candidate due to his own actions and statements. At a slightly deeper level, it is an upsurge of the latent resentment and distrust between the so-called “tracks” in the party – beer and wine – the shorthand way of identifying the significant social and economic and increasingly gender stratification of the Democratic Party.

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post (can’t remember which one), the sour note that Obama has struck with this constituency is the sore spot of anti-Americanism, the constant attack point of Republicans on the Democrats, and the way in which Obama simply is not able to credibly counter that threat. It is also the case after the Wright disaster that these Democrats don’t believe that Obama is patriotic enough. It wasn’t Wright’s racism but his cursing of the nation that has gone down sideways. On top of this is the perception that he does not care much for “the little guy” (the NAFTA waffling, the lack of serious legislative achievements), and the foundation for his own legitimacy becomes narrow and unstable.

There is a deep irony here. In Obama’s set piece speeches he excels at tapping into the leftwing version of the patriotic narrative, about equality, justice and opportunity. This was the power of his keynote speech in 2004. But the promise of that speech has not been present in the candidate. The spousal unit sums it up in a single sentence – he ran too soon. He did not give himself the time to distance himself from the Chicago mess (political, financial, religious) and put some substantive national level public service under his belt. In some ways, the Chicago power base has insulated Obama from the conundrums of running a Democratic campaign in a centrist nation.

This is a lesson both Bill and Hillary Clinton have learned. Big Dog got his ass handed to him his first reelection bid in Arkansas because he came across as too elite and alien to the population, too eager to push his agenda and not inclined to listen to what people told him. In a word, arrogance. You don’t run as a member of the liberal elite in middle America. You cannot be perceived as having contempt for the people whose votes you need. Hillary faced this in upstate New York, plus even more baggage – carpetbagger, outsider, Billary monster, favorite punching bag of the right – and some real Republican opponents. She did it the hard way, by demonstrating her work for the voters of the state, won the first election, then busted her chops for her constituents, and had a blow-out reelection. She certainly has legitimacy in New York.

Back to the race. The rank and file Democrats who have favorable attitudes towards the Clintons and also for McCain look at Obama and see someone running a negative campaign and who appears to disdain the nation. The mix of pocketbook issues with a straightforward and direct love of country is not favoring him with these voters. The more they hear, the less they are inclined to support.

Then we get into the recent events of the campaign. Florida and Michigan are the contests where actual legitimacy for the candidates and thus the eventual nominee will be founded. A 48 state strategy is not viable if those two are not part of the 48. In these places, Hillary voters are being written off, dismissed as illegitimate voices in the process. The insistence on only one aspect of the rules, the penalty, while ignoring the full set of rules that could be used to manage the situation is eroding Obama’s claims to legitimacy because people don’t care about arcane party rules. They want their votes to count. The acts by Obama to prevent a revote have done nothing to increase his standing with ordinary voters, let alone strong Clinton partisans. This does not make him attractive to people who will have to switch their allegiance should Hillary not be the nominee. Conversely, her insistence on having votes counted will earn her greater legitimacy as well as benefit her with extra delegates.

In Ohio and Texas, the lack of respect for the opposition combined with a lack of legislative track record has cost Obama the victories he needed to shore up his legitimacy as a credible general election candidate and to counterbalance the problems raised by not counting Florida and Michigan. The sneer about Ohio voters who failed to vote for him as “Archie Bunkers” was a slur that every solid Democrat understands. He was calling those voters stupid racist bigots. Then we got the Wright controversy, which has simply added more fuel to the perception of Obama as an elitist liberal who does not honor his country or respect his countrymen.

Obama has rudely lost the good regard of Democrats like me. The hysteria and hate of the elite punditocracy who have declared me and my candidate to be illegitimate in an attempt to bully her supporters, while giving him a free ride, cannot be rewarded. The Democratic Party is choosing to declare Hillary voters to be expendable (can’t count your vote if it would change the outcome of the race) and of lesser worth than Obama supporters. And all of this is being viewed with increasing disgust by a growing number of Democratic voters.

The candidate with the legitimacy problem in this campaign is Obama, not Hillary.

Domestic Violence

Courtesy of Chinaberry Turtle in a comment on an earlier post, I found out that one of the Blogger Boyz whose site I no longer visit characterized the battle between the Hillary and Barry factions of the party as some kind of "lover's quarrel", where, once the Hillary side realizes it can't win, they will kiss and make up with the winner. We wimminz (because we all know Hillary supporters are just typical old white wimmin) will come around and vote for The Precious and if we don't, well then we're infantile.

I hardly know where to start with this alleged analysis.

What gets described in popular culture as lover's quarrels has a more clinical name - domestic violence. It is the use of physical force and/or psychological manipulation against an intimate partner, most often done for the sake of exercizing power over that person. While mostly a behavior performed by males upon females, it can be the other way around and it occurs in same-sex relationships as well. Regardless of the actual genders of the people involved, the person inflicting the harm is in the masculinized position and the recipeint of the violence in the feminized stance, reflecting the society's gendered psychology of domination.

To describe the unrelentingly savage and misogynistic assaults on Hillary Clinton over the course of this campaign as some kind of lover's quarrel that her (feminized) supporters will "get over" is deliberately overlooking the strand of violence that has been present in this campaign season in a way that I have not seen since the bourgeois "riot" at the Florida recount. Domestic violence is a better description. Gang rape begins to come close, too. I have already deemed the attack on Hillary herself an honor killing. Hillary must surrender, and her supporters had best learn to lean back and enjoy it, or else we just can't tell what these wild young 'uns might take it into their heads to do.

Death threats called in to Black super delegates. Caucus goers threatend and forcibly blocked from entering the caucus location. Encouragement on major blogs to find out real life information about Hillary supporters and harras them in their place of work and in their homes. Threats of riots at the Denver convention If delegates fail to vote for The Golden One. Under the veneer of Hope and Change, this is a campaign that traffics in intimidation. You better do what we say... or else.

If this blogger actually used the term "infantile," then there is another level of offensiveness to the characterization, but the greater problem is an inability to truly grasp the gathering political storm. First off, to name principled opposition to the tactics of the Obama campaign "infantile" is simply an attempt to delegitimize the grounds of the opposition, much in the way women's protests against male privilege or minority opposition to white privilege is declared inconsequential, childish, irrational, overly personal, emotional, and other descriptors intended to demean and disempower. This is a time honored (if moronic) way to try to discredit an opponent, but the difficulty here is that it is candidate-centric (You silly Hillary supporters saying you don't like Barack!) and overlooks the legitimacy crisis that is driving the increasing rejection of Golden Boy Barry by party loyalists.

I think it is hardly infantile that people are upset the party is disenfranchising voters in two major states. It is not infantile to require the nominee to have been judged by all 50 states. It is not infantile that candidates' poor performance and questionable judgement be a matter of debate in an election. It is not infantile to be dismayed by reports of voting fraud and voter intimidation in caucuses. It is not infantile to say that the current electoral cycle has been manipulated by the main stream media and by the Republicans (forcing early voting, cross over voting in open primaries, interfering with the attmepts to revote MI and FL), and that the DNC itself has been putting its hand on the scale in favor of one candidate for reasons that have little to do with policy, legislation or even winning in November.

With the refusal to allow a revote in Florida and Michigan and to clarify the will of the voters in those two states, what could once have been characterized as the contest between partisans has moved into a whole new level of political upheaval, one where the party itself is at risk.

The blithe dismissal by a major blogger of the disenfranchisement of millions of voters as the voters having taken "one for the team" is seriously, deeply disturbed. Taking one for the team means being killed to prevent more harm to your fellows, like the Marine recently written up in the news who threw himself on a grenade to save the lives of his squad members. This blogger has characterized a candidate loved by millions, a public servant of the highest caliber, as nothing more than an enemy. He has decided that it is right and just that millions of voters will die politically (not have their votes counted or thir voices heard) to prevent his enemy from winning. He arrogantly sweeps those voters into his army, front rank privates to be sacrificed for the sake of his candidate's victory.

Another top name is currently being lambasted for his anger at Hillary for not getting out of the way of Golden Boy Barry's cakewalk to the nomination. He doesn't seem to notice that it is not, in fact Hillary who is preventing Barry from sweeping up the delegates, but the voters who are registering their lack of faith in The Precious at the ballot box. He imperiously demands that Hillary just stop all this nonsense, dismissing not just the candidate herself but the millions who have made their will known. All of those millions of voices are worth nothing to the media star, opinions that he can dismiss because they are simply delusional votes for Her, the enemy, silly little voters who should know to suck it up and let fate - or force - take its course.

There is throughout this campaign season a disturbing comfort with violence (verbal and physical) to force opponents to acquiesce to a candidate who does not hold a commanding lead in anything, only a marginal one obtained under questionable circumstances. It is domestic violence in a political realm.

How can legitimacy and authority be found under such circumstances?

Anglachel

Hillary Reads Her Krugman

Paul Krugman's article today takes all the Presidential candidates to task for not being both aggressive and inventive enough about the huge and grim economic crisis staring us all in the face:

We’re now in the midst of an epic financial crisis, which ought to be at the center of the election debate. But it isn’t.

Now, I don’t expect presidential campaigns to have all the answers to our current crisis — even financial experts are scrambling to keep up with events. But I do think we’re entitled to more answers, and in particular a clearer commitment to financial reform, than we’re getting so far.

Taming the Beast

This article follows up on Krugman's series of blog posts on the weird behavior of the market and the increasingly limited options the Federal Reserve has to address the matter. (Oh, just go read him. If you aren't, you should.) In Weird Interest Rates, he specifically notes the way in which manipulation of interest rates is coming to an end in its effect on the crisis.

Building off that post and citing a Vlog by Prof. Brad DeLong, the Orange County economics blogger Calculated Risk (And you should just go read him and his co-blogger, Tanta, too, to keep up with housing markt news.) notes that with standard market manipulation mechanisms (try saying that five times fast) losing their effective power, the federal government needs to be ready to step in with something more substantive and radical, DeLong Sounds the Alarm. CR notes:

I do not believe we've reached what Professor DeLong calls Stage III of a financial crisis - and I don't think the Fed is out of ammunition - but I think DeLong is correct that we should be planning ahead. The Fed can only do so much, and DeLong is arguing we should be prepared if it becomes clear the Fed is ineffective.

So, Krugman, DeLong and Calculated Risk are all noting that we need someone to offer up some leadership on the ecopnomic front.

Hillary made a major economic speech today in Philadelphia, tying preserving housing with stabilizing the economy. As much as I dislike the outrageous housing bubble, especially as it drove up house prices in San Diego to the point where it was only two financial accidents that I could buy my current house, the abrupt deflation of that bubble is what is driving the economic crisis. There needs to be a way to temper the downturn, keep the prices deflating in a controllable way, keep people in homes where possible to prevent other market dislocations, and manage to do so in a way that is not yet another taxpayer bailout of Wall Street speculators.

Hillary's on top of it:

"Over the past week, we’ve seen unprecedented action to maintain confidence in our credit markets and head off a crisis for Wall Street Banks. It’s now time for equally aggressive action to help families avoid foreclosure and keep communities across this country from spiraling into recession," said Clinton. "The solution I’ve proposed is a sensible way for everyone - lenders, investors, mortgage companies and borrowers - to share responsibility, keep families in their homes, and stabilize our communities and our economy."

Hillary Clinton believes that immediate, bold action is required to unfreeze our mortgage markets and help keep millions of families in their homes. The four-part plan to protect American homeowners and address the housing crisis is as follows:

• New Action to Help Millions of At-Risk Homeowners Restructure their Mortgages and Stay in Their Homes. Senator Clinton believes we should extend the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) capacity to guarantee restructured mortgages as proposed by Rep. Frank and Sen. Dodd. She believes that using an FHA guarantee to encourage private sector auctions of large mortgage pools is the preferable way of unfreezing our struggling mortgage market. However, she announced today that the government should stand ready to play a more proactive role in purchasing, restructuring, and reselling underwater mortgages.
• A High-Level Emergency Working Group on Foreclosures to Investigate How to Achieve Broad Restructuring of At-Risk Mortgages. Hillary believes we cannot afford to wait until Congress passes legislation to determine the viability of the Dodd/Frank auction mechanism, or whether it will be necessary for the FHA or a similar entity to act as a temporary intermediary purchaser of mortgages. Therefore, she is calling on President Bush to appoint an Emergency Working Group on Foreclosures to address this question within the next three weeks. The group could be headed by eminent leaders like Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, and Bob Rubin - each of whom supports one of the remaining candidates in the Presidential race.
• Clarifying Legal Liability for Mortgage Servicers to Help Unfreeze the Mortgage Market. Many mortgage servicers who want to work with families are deterred out of fear of litigation. Senator Clinton is introducing legislation to provide them with legal protection when they act to help struggling homeowners to modify mortgages.
• A New Housing Stimulus Package With at Least $30 Billion for States and Localities to Fight Concentrated Foreclosures. After passing a $168 billion stimulus package with virtually no action to address the housing crisis that is driving down our economy, Senator Clinton is calling for a second, housing-focused stimulus package. She believes that if we can extend a $30 billion lifeline to avoid a crisis for Wall Street banks, we should extend at least $30 billion to help states and localities fight foreclosures in their communities.

Now, you can be cynical about what this will accomplish, or you can acknowledge that this is more than we've heard from anyone else on the campaign trail and pretty much anyone in Congress. Hillary is working with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd (Gracious as always, she does not hold Dodd's support of Obama against him when the people's business needs attention) on mortgage restructuring, advocates a high-level working group to figure out how to use existing federal agencies to take on at-risk mortgages, preferably in a self-financing way, removes liability excuses (and the blackmail potential for Wall Street) from large serviciers who are trying to avoid sensible loan restructuring, and finishes up with ways to ameliorate the effect of te inevitable wave of foreclosures on municipalities to help them shore up tax bases (which they need after Republican mismangement. San Diego is a poster child for this.) and prevent urban and suburban blight. Thsi will encourage a faster recovery.

This is what being Presidential looks like. It is going out and making major speeches on wonkish topics in a way that is accessbile to ordinary people and shows that you have a freaking clue of what it means to be working class and over-extended. It is proposing new ideas and strategies when the old measures aren't working.

This is why I support Hillary for President. She's talking about things that will materially affect MY life. I may have a good mortgage and not be in any danger of being upsidedown, but my house is already valued at less than the purchase price. I can see houses in my neighborhood going into foreclosure. I can see the way in which tight credit and economic inflexibility will impact the business improvements in my area - the business district has lost all of the funding it used to get from the City and is having to ask for assessments from local businesses and homeowners.

I support the person who studies Krugman to find out his ideas on economics and finance in order to improve her domestic policies, not the one who digs up dirt on the professor to run self-serving smear campaigns.

Anglachel

When Wishes Come True

The DNC leadership has put itself into a jam. After fighting tooth and nail to defeat the most popular candidate running, Hillary Clinton, it has found that it has only succeeded in delegitimizing itself and its preferred candidate with a growing number of Hillary supporters.

Unlike the Obamacans, these voters are lifelong Democratic stalwarts, like me. I'm willing to bet that the majority of us were very favorably disposed to The Precious a little over a year ago, and looked forward to a contest of great ideas on progressive programs for the next President. (Hell, I wrote several blog posts defending the guy from attacks on MyDD and FDL (among many places), back when Left Blogistan said Obama was a "DLC shill".) Then we hit primary season, which has become open season on Hillary. I said long before the Iowa caucuses that Hillary was running for president and all the others were running tro beat her. We watched, slack-jawed as Golden Boy Barry and Mr. Goodhair joined forces with Tim Russert and Chris Matthews to trash her with right-wing talking points, as the A-List Blogger Boyz cheered from the peanut gallery.

The decision to disenfranchise Michigan and Florida in favor of Iowa should have set off more warning bells. The Precious has nothing to stand on from a policy perspective, having stolen it all from Hillary and Edwards, only the argument that he is the white knight (ahem) to defend us agains the evil Hillary Mommy Monster. His gutter tactics are justified because "we all know" she'll do anything to be elected, including getting the votes, that bitch! How dare she win New Hampshire and upset the coronation! Time to take her out. When Barry's campaign, with the tacit approval of the DNC, went out in force trashing the Clintons as racists to drive up margins in southern states, HRC supporters knew the fix was in.

A funny thing happend on the way to the honor killing, though. Hillary kept winning the big states and kept garnering the majority of Democratic votes. The Democrats for Life are strongly behind her, and she is drawing an increasing number of Republicans and Independents who appear to actually be voting for her, rather than voting against an opponent. In contrast, the Democrats for a Day ^TM tactic was never anything other than Vote Your Hillary Hatred, and has done nothing to build the party. It was purely strategic and it has run out of steam.

The interesting number to me is the steady increase in the number of Hillary Democrats who are taking the brutal treatment of their preferred candidate and the deliberate and cynical disenfranchisement of Michigan and Florida very seriously, enough that they will not vote Democrat in November. It is the combination of the two that has created the backlash conditions, I think. If The Golden One was simply getting more votes in the same contests, then, yeah, sucks to be on the losing team, but the votes are the votes. However, the fact that the inclusion of these two states changes the math completely and that the votes are being blocked by Obama and that the press is brutalizing Hillary and making shit up and that we need both those states in our column come November and, well, yeah, we're getting pissed.

As I have also said time and again, it all comes down to political legitimacy. A nominee who will not willingly face the voters in all 50 states is not considered the legitimate nominee by a substantial (and growing) portion of the party. As long as The Golden One prevents the revotes, he is the one responsible for delegitimizing the process and will not win in the GE, even if he can bully his way to the nomination.

Thus, Dean has painted himself and the party into a corner. The only solution that will be seen as legitimate is a revote of Michigan and Florida, and Dean is allowing his preferred candidate to block that option. As I've said before (dang, but I'm prescient...) if Obama has popular support, he would welcome the revotes. The fact that he is fighting hammer and tongs to prevent this from happening, despite the support of the party leaders, the pundits, the MSM and an alleged huge advantage in cash, tells me that he knows he will bomb. The frontrunner is on his way to being a has been.

To keep from losing everything in November (and I'm beginning to think we may lose control of the Seante at our current rate), Dean and the DNC leadership are trying to beg/cajole/threaten Hillary into conceding the nomination before she becomes any stronger.

Somehow, I don't think she will.

I want her to make The Precious fight every step of the way in order to teach Howard Dean that a 50 state strategy includes all the voters of all the states, not just those who support Howie's favorite. I want her to continue to stand up for the millions of voters Golden Boy Barry has declared to be untrustworthy and undeserving of a vote because they may not vote for him. And, after Obama's forces descend on the Denver convention in buses chartered by Obama to haul half of Chicago accross the plains, and hold a made-for-the-media "riot" (kind of like 1968 crossed with the Florida recount), and threaten the super delegates into voting for The Precious, I will grimly watch the crushing defeat of Obama, Dean, Pelosi, Brazile, Richardson and all the other idiots who succumbed to Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

This is what the DNC deserves for having turned a campaign to promote our party into a witch hunt to politically murder the person most popular with the Democratic rank and file and the most qualified to lead the nation in a time of growing crisis.

Be careful what you wish for. You may just get it.

Anglachel

Real 'bots

Enough with politics, this site is FUN!

BotJunkie

Look for the tennis ball throwing machine and for "BigDog".

Note to Commenters

A few people aren't reading very carefully.

1. I have no idea if Obama is racist. That's not my claim and, at some level, I really don't give a shit what he thinks. He claims as mentor and advisor a person whose public statements and acts meet my criteria for being racist, but who offends me far more for being dismissive of four decades of social, economic and poilitical work done by the Left. This is Obama's problem, not mine. I look at observable events and draw political conclusions.
2. His campaign is deliberately using false and incendiary accusations of racism as a campaign strategy. This is proved by the campaign memo he confirmed was true (Nevada debate) directing his staff to try to cast everything possible as racist attacks and smears. There is also the fact that he and his campaign are doing just that. Obamacan refusal to acknowledge facts is not the same as refuting them.
3. Obama's deliberate deployment of false claims of racism is going to affect politics long after the campaign is over, no matter the outcome. My arguments are about the tactic, the effect it is having on this specific campaign and what the longer term effects of instrumentalizing race will be on the Democratic Party. It is part of my long term interest in analyzing and theorizing progressive/Left politics in America.
4. I apply Hillary rules to Obama. Anything controversial said by anyone in his campaign at any level is as good as said by him unless followed immediately by a swift and unequivocal firing. Any tactics used by the campaign are authorized by him. Any lie that comes out of his campaign was concocted by him. Anything any of his surrogates says (however unconnected that "surrogate" to the campaign) is something they were directed to say by him. It's his campaign. He sets chooses the tactics and sets the tone. Sauce, goose, gander.
5. Whatever strategy Obama uses, this does not justify criticism of AA votes for him. As I keep repeating, I see nothing wrong or even unusual in strong turn-out by African Americans for a competitive black candidate. I compare it directly to the strong turnout of women voters for Hillary because it is done for much the same reason - a constructive, party-strengthening, joyful identification with an historic candidate. I see the massive turnout in the primaries as a completely salutory phenomenon for the Democratic Party and for the nation. People who want to criticize AAs for voting for Obama can keep their opinions to themselves. I am not a sympathetic audience. I am looking at the effect of the campaign on voting patterns, and have no interest in condemning voters. Party leaders are whole 'nuther kettle of fish...
6. Nothing personal, but don't assume I am on your side or agree with you because I say something you want to hear. This is my jaundiced opinion of the world and the current campaign. People who think I'm great right now will probably be upset with things I say down the road. People offended by what I am saying may find themselves in agreement at another time.

Anglachel

Back to 1968

The more I think on the Obama campaign, the less I think of my preferred candidate and the more I think about the party and the course of American politics in my life. My intended post on "the South" in the liberal political imagination is changing on an almost daily basis as a result of this electoral season. What I had once seen as a mostly academic argument between two sets of political thinkers and strategists has taken on a life within the primaries. Knowing I am being too reductionistic here, the anti-Southern faction regards the legacy of slavery and racism an intolerable stain upon the nation, one that prevents progressive governance, and so must be spurned as irredeemable. "F*ck the South!" you can read in blog after blog when the topic comes up. With this primary campaign, I think we are getting a picture o what that stance concretely means when used as political strategy. It means campaigning on racism.

With every electoral victory of his opponent, Obama has intensified his cries of racism and increased his own overtly racialized claims. Casting common phrases, such as a roll of the dice, as racist code. Claiming that his opponent did not shed a tear for the black victims of Hurricane Katrina. Sneering that his opponents supports were Archie Bunkers. Sampling Malcolm X's anti-white rhetoric in Mississippi. The more he is challenged on basic issues such as economic policy and electability, the more he escalates his rhetoric of race.

His speech the other day had a peculiar theme: America's racist past can only be laid to rest by voting for Obama, which would prove that his accusations aren't true. What Obama does with his rhetorical strategy is turn something salutary - a proud vote by the African American population for a competitive AA candidate - into something corrupting - that a failure to vote for him is nothing less than an expression of (white) racism. The fundamental reason you typical white folks aren't voting for me is because you are driven by racism. He presented a peculiarly bastardized version of John Edwards' Two Americas; the enlightened one who will vote for him and the retrograde one which will not. And, by virtue of this speech being made in a primary campaign, the division is one that runs through the Democratic Party, not a marker of distinction between Democrats and Republicans.

This argument reversese forty years of principled, painful, exhausting battles done by the Left to overcome the crippling bigotry that once was ubiquitous. These very battles are the ones he disdainfully dismissed in his interview with the Republican paper in Reno. He returns the Democratic Party to the state it was after LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, as though nothing had happened in the party or in Democratic politics since 1968.

Why is his rhetoric so corrosive to the Democratic Party? He has crossed the line from condemning racism as such to declaring individual Democrats to be racists, making this the core of his campaign strategy. Rather than praise the successes of the party in combatting bigotry, he flings reckless smears that his opponent is nothing but a racist, foregrounding that as the common ground for AA support of him and deliberately fanning the flames by casting a possible defeat as white machinations to deny the just rewards of a black candidate. As I said in my earlier post about his legitimacy problem, Obama won't admit that there is any legitimate way to defeat him (perhaps because he himself does not utilize legitimate means and thus projects his own questionable tactics onto others) and, thus, any defeat must have been a dirty trick engineered by the racists in the party.

It is an incredibly incendiary assault. To fail to vote for him is to be racist, an "Archie Bunker." That image is invoked not because Archie was dumb but because he is the American cultural icon of racial bigotry. The growing fury at Obama for placing the party in this position gets turned again as racist backlash, deliberately using the fear of AA anger instrumentally for his own gain - gimme the nomination or your convention will be 1968 combined with the Rodney King riots. The MSM, bless their evil little hearts, are salivating at the thought.

This corrosive narrative is a cold and brutal campaign calculation in accord with Obama's continually demonstrated contempt for anything or anyone who denies him what he wants. He has accomplished what the Republicans alone could not do, split the party itself on race. The Republicans peeled away those who were racist - read your Krugman - and Obama has declared any who oppose him to also be part of that group, rejecting the innocence of any act (she'll do anything to get elected, it's all calculation) that can be twisted into a racialized mode.

Looking at this from a party standpoint, there is political need for acknowledging foolish but not ill-intentioned trespasses, such as Obama's own moronic words about his grandmother, so that errors may be forgiven and cooperation secured. Such a space must also be established so that we can clearly identify what is too much, too far, too destructive, too deliberate, to be forgiven. Finally, there has to be political room in which there can be legitimate disagreement about policies and approaches. If your opponent is not simply someone who holds a different opinion or who has come to an incorrect stance, but is in truth a "monster," beyond the pale of the civic community, then there are no grounds upon which you can cooperate. There is only capitulation. You make enemies of people who should be allies.

Political judgment is missing from the Obama campaign (and the DNC stance) in their calculation that "we" all know the rhetoric and strategy is "just politics," except that you have just declared that I am the moral equivalent of George Wallace in 1968.

The Democrats have already fought those battles and have nothing left to prove.

Anglachel

No Relation

Rev. Wright is not like some crazy uncle that eveyone in the family tolerates with a wince and a "What can you do about him?" shrug. This isn't Obama's grandmother to whom he is tied by blood and long years of dependence, where he had to come to terms with her very human failings and take lessons from her very human successes. Oddly enough, I am not as offended by his bumbling description of her as a typical white person as others are. She does strike me as a type of person, a white, midwestern woman of a certain era, a type I know pretty well because I have so many in my family.

I understand what he means about Grandma. Both of my grandmothers were dear, frustrating, hateful, generous, racist, liberal, totally maddening and utterly indespensible participants in my youth. It is mostly with a backwards glance that I can appreciate their better qualities and not turn away from their less pleasant aspects. As I get older and grumpier, I find myself saying and doing things that echo them. [And, it's official, I have become my mother...] I cannot disavow these women, or my other relatives, even as I wish that they could somehow have been more perfect versions of themselves. I want for them to not have been so petty or to have held needless fears, as much for my own selfish reasons as for their sake. I can be kind of petty, too, having learned it from them.

But Rev. Wright is a different matter. You can't call upon family ties to excuse a relationship established with a mentor after you have reached adulthood. This isn't a childhood pastor or family friend. This was a relationship chosen by an adult for intellectual and political as well as spiritual reasons. You can and must disavow a person when he says something beyond the pale of civil discourse in such a public manner, and you must do so for the sake of our common world. Anyone can shoot their mouth off in private, or say something untoward in a public venue, but someone who proudly promulgates an entire philosophy of a people divided into the saved and the damned based upon biological characteristics over which they have no control has placed himself outside the civil polity. This is not about manners or being nice-nice. It is about the substance of the arguments themselves. They are powerful words and such words, like acts, have consequences. This is why I shun the Republican Party, for it has allied itself with purveyors of hate, absorbing that creed deep into its damaged heart.

Someone who deliberately joins an organization whose leader and members celebrate their own superiority and scorn their fellow citizens as less than fully human has no relation to me.

Anglachel

The Rulz and the Rules

From a link on Riverdaughter which she got from Jawbone, here is a fascinating article about the origin of Democratic Super Delegates. Be still my little poli sci heart!

What I find most fascinating are the excerpts of the reasons presented by the Hunt Commission on why the party should have super delegates:

“We must also give our convention more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances and, in cases where the voters’ mandate is less than clear, to make a reasoned choice. One step in this direction would be to loosen the much-disputed “binding” Rule 11 (H) as it applies to all delegates. An equally important step would be to permit a substantial number of party leader and elected official delegates to be selected without requiring a prior declaration of preference. We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party and increase the incentive it has to offer elected officials for serious involvement.” (Remarks of Governor Jim Hunt, Institute of Politics, JFK School of Government, December 15, 1981)

Changing circumstances. Where the voters' mandate is less than clear. Hmm, these don't sound like Blogger Boyz Rulz at all.

The purpose of the super delegates is to be free to act in the party's best interests when there is no unequivocal decision from the primary voters. They must be free to respond to changing circumstances where a decision made four months ago may no longer reflect the will of the voters.

The changing circumstances here are first Hillary's clear support by the majority of Democrats voting in the primaries. Next, it is her clear dominance of swing states that the Democrats must win in November, most especially Florida. Third is Obama's refusal to put himself up for an unequivocal vote by Democrats in Florida and Michigan so that the will of the voters can be known. Fourth, Obama's dirty laundry and the Republicans' glee over what they can do with it seriously damages any claims he can make to being a "media darling" or being innoculated from rightwing smears. Finally and most telling, the opposition to the front-runner-by-an-eyelash within the party itselof is growing in size and determination with every smear, attack and lie he spews about his opponent.

The role of the super delegates is to prevent Howard Dean and Donna Brazile from taking the entire party over the cliff with them in their insane quest to defeat Hillary Clinton. These two pretty obviously don't give a damn about the party or rank and file Democrats, and it now appears that they really aren't that concerned with taking back the White House or even getting other Democrats elected. It's all about beating HER, and the Devil take the hindmost.

The super delegates arose, as Elaine Karmack writes in the article linked above, because of Teddy Kennedy's arrogant campaign against a sitting president and the way he relentlessly hounded and pursued delegates to get them to vote for him rather than Carter. It is very liekly that Carter lost to Reagan (the election was that close) because of Kennedy's nasty campaign. Ironically enough, Kennedy's battle was against a rule that bound delegates to the candidate, and tried create a situation where all delegates are up for grabs. Rule 11 (H) was changed to make the pledge of the pledged delegates a little less strict, providing wiggle-room to deviate from the votes that selected the delegate: "Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”

Kennedy, who is now arguing for strict adherence to the voters' sentiments, was for allowing the delegates to vote as they pleased. Wouldn't Teddy rules be fun today? Geraldine Ferraro created the compromise that allowed for the acceptance of unpledged super delegates. I find this all deeply ironic.

The bottom line is that the Obama rulz that all delegates pledged to him must vote for him and that all super delegates from states that he won must vote for him, and that no super delegate from a state Hillary won is required to vote for her (cough - KennedyKerryRichardson cough), and that all other super delegates should also vote for him because he has won the popular vote (not counting MI, FL and the states yet to vote), are in violation of the actual party rules about how delegates - super and otherwise - should exercize their convention vote.

Anglachel

It's Not About Race- It's About Judgment

I have sat and thought for some time about my own reaction to Rev. Wright and the larger controversy. It is mixed. I had heard about Wright before, when wingnuts tried to make hay out of an award the newsletter from Wright’s church had bestowed upon Louis Farrakhan. I did not poke very deeply into it, considering it nothing more than rightwing racist demagoguery. Farrakhan is a revolting person in many ways, but he is also a commanding one and is not to be dismissed out of hand. Giving him an award is not ipso facto agreement with everything he’s ever said. I condemned the smears and thought no more about them. With the videos that have come out, however, I have reconsidered that initial dismissal. An email exchange with another blogger and several conversations with the spousal unit have helped me sharpen my thought.

While the main focus in the MSM and most blogs has been on the race angle, this has served more to deflect attention away from more substantive issues, much in the way Obama has used race throughout his campaign, casting opponents, critics and even the voters as racists should they fail to capitulate to him. Obama, on paper, is little different than any of the other Democratic candidates, but his public acts continuously demonstrate the gap between his words and his deeds. With his months’ long accusations of racism upended by the incendiary bombast of his self-described father figure, we begin to see it is a tactic to deflect criticism about his lack of judgment. Not experience – judgment. His big speech about racism is another attempt by Obama to create a moral onus and place it upon those who call him into question. This time, it’s not working so well.

It simply is not the case that suddenly America, and particularly the Left, has turned into Trent Lott because Obama is running, nor is it the case that his poll numbers are dropping because the voters woke up and realized, by gosh, Martha, the guy’s black! People who would not have voted for him for President due to race have always held that position, and are far more likely to be found among the Republican “Democrats for a Day” crossovers than among rank and file Democrats.

Yes, there is a legacy of racial crime in the nation, starting well before slavery was enforced in the Constitution and continuing to this day. Bill Clinton made the case well when he spoke of Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March:

The rift we see before us that is tearing at the heart of America exists in spite of the remarkable progress black Americans have made in the last generation, since Martin Luther King swept America up in his dream, and President Johnson spoke so powerfully for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy in demanding that Congress guarantee full voting rights to blacks. The rift between blacks and whites exists still in a very special way in America, in spite of the fact that we have become much more racially and ethnically diverse, and that Hispanic Americans -- themselves no strangers to discrimination -- are now almost 10 percent of our national population.

The reasons for this divide are many. Some are rooted in the awful history and stubborn persistence of racism. Some are rooted in the different ways we experience the threats of modern life to personal security, family values, and strong communities. Some are rooted in the fact that we still haven't learned to talk frankly, to listen carefully, and to work together across racial lines.

…

The two worlds we see now each contain both truth and distortion. Both black and white Americans must face this, for honesty is the only gateway to the many acts of reconciliation that will unite our worlds at last into one America.

White America must understand and acknowledge the roots of black pain. It began with unequal treatment first in law and later in fact. African Americans indeed have lived too long with a justice system that in too many cases has been and continues to be less than just. The record of abuses extends from lynchings and trumped up charges to false arrests and police brutality. The tragedies of Emmett Till and Rodney King are bloody markers on the very same road.

Still today too many of our police officers play by the rules of the bad old days. It is beyond wrong when law-abiding black parents have to tell their law-abiding children to fear the police whose salaries are paid by their own taxes.

And blacks are right to think something is terribly wrong when African American men are many times more likely to be victims of homicide than any other group in this country; when there are more African American men in our corrections system than in our colleges; when almost one in three African American men in their 20s are either in jail, on parole or otherwise under the supervision of the criminal justice system -- nearly one in three. And that is a disproportionate percentage in comparison to the percentage of blacks who use drugs in our society. Now, I would like every white person here and in America to take a moment to think how he or she would feel if one in three white men were in similar circumstances.

And there is still unacceptable economic disparity between blacks and whites. It is so fashionable to talk today about African Americans as if they have been some sort of protected class. Many whites think blacks are getting more than their fair share in terms of jobs and promotions. That is not true. That is not true.

The truth is that African Americans still make on average about 60 percent of what white people do; that more than half of African American children live in poverty. And at the very time our young Americans need access to college more than ever before, black college enrollment is dropping in America.

One of the examples cited by Rev. Wright in the videos, the Tuskegee Experiment, is nothing less than a crime against humanity. I believe it to be as foul and inhumane as any war crime perpetuated in the 20th – or 21st – century. That it was done in a time of peace upon our own citizens should make all Americans hang their heads in shame. As Bill Clinton said in his formal apology on behalf of the nation for the wrongs inflicted upon these men:

The eight men who are survivors of the syphilis study at Tuskegee are a living link to a time not so very long ago that many Americans would prefer not to remember, but we dare not forget. It was a time when our nation failed to live up to its ideals, when our nation broke the trust with our people that is the very foundation of our democracy. It is not only in remembering that shameful past that we can make amends and repair our nation, but it is in remembering that past that we can build a better present and a better future. And without remembering it, we cannot make amends and we cannot go forward.

So today America does remember the hundreds of men used in research without their knowledge and consent. We remember them and their family members. Men who were poor and African American, without resources and with few alternatives, they believed they had found hope when they were offered free medical care by the United States Public Health Service. They were betrayed.

…

The United States government did something that was wrong -- deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens.

To the survivors, to the wives and family members, the children and the grandchildren, I say what you know: No power on Earth can give you back the lives lost, the pain suffered, the years of internal torment and anguish. What was done cannot be undone. But we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry.

The American people are sorry -- for the loss, for the years of hurt. You did nothing wrong, but you were grievously wronged. I apologize and I am sorry that this apology has been so long in coming.

To Macon County, to Tuskegee, to the doctors who have been wrongly associated with the events there, you have our apology, as well. To our African American citizens, I am sorry that your federal government orchestrated a study so clearly racist. That can never be allowed to happen again. It is against everything our country stands for and what we must stand against is what it was.

So let us resolve to hold forever in our hearts and minds the memory of a time not long ago in Macon County, Alabama, so that we can always see how adrift we can become when the rights of any citizens are neglected, ignored and betrayed. And let us resolve here and now to move forward together.

The legacy of the study at Tuskegee has reached far and deep, in ways that hurt our progress and divide our nation. We cannot be one America when a whole segment of our nation has no trust in America. An apology is the first step, and we take it with a commitment to rebuild that broken trust. We can begin by making sure there is never again another episode like this one. We need to do more to ensure that medical research practices are sound and ethical, and that researchers work more closely with communities.

…

The people who ran the study at Tuskegee diminished the stature of man by abandoning the most basic ethical precepts. They forgot their pledge to heal and repair. They had the power to heal the survivors and all the others and they did not. Today, all we can do is apologize. But you have the power, for only you -- Mr. Shaw, the others who are here, the family members who are with us in Tuskegee -- only you have the power to forgive. Your presence here shows us that you have chosen a better path than your government did so long ago. You have not withheld the power to forgive. I hope today and tomorrow every American will remember your lesson and live by it.

I provided the long quotes from Bill Clinton both to present what the man has actually said and done on the matter of racism in America, and also to make clear from the start how Democrats have spoken about race in the recent past and what the tenor of that conversation has been.

Rev. Wright’s preaching on race is not wrong, for it is grounded in the reality of our nation’s acts towards the black population. It is harshly, unrelentingly right on the way in which racial privilege corrupts and destroys. It also is, however, profoundly lacking in judgment and moral suasion for those outside of Wright’s beloved community. It is adolescent in its resentment against the nation and spiteful in its refusal to admit of the complexity in the relations between races, classes and sexes. It lacks the basic insight (however stupidly put) of Obama’s attempt to explain his maternal grandmother’s thoughts and acts – that the world does not divide so neatly into the saved and the damned.

But it is not race that has so many people inflamed about the preacher’s words. Grant us the sense that God gave geese that most Democrats can see and understand the pernicious and unacceptable effects of racism. Most people I know acknowledge the validity of anger over the racist crimes of this nation, and show a willingness to accept some pretty inflammatory rhetoric on that subject.

What Wright said that has people like me angry is his radical and categorical condemnation of America as such and his hatefully personal derogation of the Clintons.

This man of God called upon his deity to damn the nation. This is what I condemn in the demagogic preachers of the Right, the arrogance and ruthlessness to use the name of God in vain, playing the bully to attract other bullies and cow their opponents. Then there is Wright’s glee in saying how 9/11 is God’s punishment upon the nation – chickens coming home to roost, which is what Malcolm X said upon the news of JFK’s assassination. How is this different than Falwell and Robertson? Wright, as with his like-minded counterparts on the Right, has reduced God to a thuggish enforcer. It is the voice of arrogance, too eager to dole out death and destruction upon his foes, as though God’s judgment is his to proclaim.

This isn’t a religious argument. It is a political one about legitimacy and the rule of law. Wright’s argument is that the nation has no claim upon him and those who follow him, it can place no boundaries that he will acknowledge as just, that its entire existence is illegitimate, and that there is nothing in it worth redemption. Even Lincoln’s terrifying invocation of a blow by the sword for every one inflicted by the lash found an end and a point at which the nation could redeem itself from its crimes. But, in Wright’s vision, the nation as such is damned and thus can be treated with contempt and scorn.

This is a position most of us wine track liberals (even those of us smart enough to eschew the kool-aide and stick with a nice vino verde) know very well, one of the hangovers from our Marxist infatuation days and dorm rooms plastered with posters of Che Guevara. It was so hip and cool (not to mention it pissed off our parents) to be moralistic about America, that terrible place of racist imperialism and oppression of the workers. We hung out in coffee shops and spouted off like Ward Churchill wannabes. We were the Jacobins all over again, except cooler.

It’s the voice of someone who has the same answer, no matter the question. It’s the voice of someone who has found their unified theory of life, the universe and everything, and they dare not relinquish it lest they lose themselves to the ambiguity of compassion – the willingness to put yourself in the place of another and allow your being to be changed. This is what offends me most deeply about Rev. Wright.

On a more practical level, it is also simple minded straight up anti-Americanism, and it’s going over like, if you will, a fart in church. It raises questions for me about Obama’s association with the former Weather Underground people who are unrepentant for murdering their countrymen. It makes me think that the refusal to wear a flag pin (something Bill Moyers has discussed in great detail) or to place a hand over his heart has less charitable explanations than I had heretofore allowed. It makes me think twice about the arrogance of the man, the way in which he publically disdains his opponent and thinks nothing of spreading calumny by calling the Clintons racists. It makes me wonder how he judges and where exactly his moral compass points.

Others on the Left are swift to assure us that they don’t think Obama subscribes to his pastor’s views. Me, I think he would not have remained in that congregation, especially given his political ambitions, had he not found Wright’s thought congenial and believed the words preached under that roof.

Anglachel

Fun With the Electoral College

I've found a site which is loads of fun for the whole politically divided family - 270 to Win. It has a lot of fun and informative (OK, fun if you're a political science major...) maps, charts, and displays. The most fun is a clickable national map where you can play what-if scenarios on the upcoming election.

Remember my post from a few days back? I gave a short-hand explanation of the importance of four states in the general election: Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Have fun with the map trying to construct a win for the Democrats that has only two of those states in the blue column. If the two you pick are Ohio and Florida, the win is pretty easy. Take one of those two away, and the win gets harder. You have to win Pennsylvania if you lose Florida, and you are going to risk it if you lose Pennsylvania and Ohio, but manage to hold Florida and Michigan.

What is important is what other states you have to line up if you lose Florida. Even with Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, it is possible to lose the national election. And those scenarios presume you hold the west coast and every New England state, plus West Virginia and most of the upper midwest. Dems have to hold all of the upper midwest and win New Mexico if they don't get Florida.

With the news today, it sounds like Obama has lost Florida for the Democrats in the general. Battling against seating the delegation was going to be hard to overcome, but the deliberate interference with conducting a new vote combined with the Wright mess will cost the Dems the margin of victory there. The state overwhelmingly supported Hillary, even when Obama had been running his Democrat for a Day operation since last summer and despite his heavy cable ad buys. Had he agreed to allow Florida to be seated (and fought Michigan on the basis of an incomplete ballot), the antipathy would not be so much. You win some, you lose some. Badly.

OK, now go pull up a window with that electoral map and play along. Set it to the default which shows strong Dem/Rep states in blue/red and the swing states in tan. Take a look at the Obama primary states which are firmly red: AK, ID, WY, UT, NE, KS, LA, MS, AL, GA, SC. These are not up for grabs in this electoral round. There simply aren't enough Democratic voters in those states to overcome the Republican dominance, especially as McCain is recovering from his primary battles. Hillary won the popular vote in TX, so I am counting it in her column, OK and AZ. She will not win Arizona from McCain, and she can contest Texas, which does have a sizeable Democratic population, but it is really, really unlikely she can win it. Oklahoma? Fuhgeddaboudit...

As for the Democratic states, she won CA, NY, RI, MI and MA for 119 electoral votes, and Obama won WA, MN, DC, MD, DE, HI, VT and ME for 44. Added together (and tossing in OR), either of them has a good starting point of 174 votes. I do not think it reasonable to say that either of them would lose the core Dem states, though it is possible that Maine and Michigan could defect, given that Maine ahs some strong Republican ties, and that Michigan voted Republican through Reagan and Romney might end up on the Republican ticket. With Obama at the top of the ticket, especially if Romney is the Rep VP, we could lose Michigan.

OK, now we get to do electoral math.

Illinois will go Democrat, regardless of the nominee. If Obama is the nominee, we lose Florida. Period. If Hillary is the nominee, it is possibly in our column. With a Florida win, Dems are over 200. With a Florida loss, we're two ahead. Let's stick with a Florida loss as that is the most statistically likely, regardless of Dem nominee. That means we must win Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Colorado is going to go McCain. Let's give him NH, too, given its voting history. It's now 195/189, D/R.

NV to McCain and NM to Dem., for no added advantage to either side, 200/194. The Dems hold a slim, 6 vote lead.

WI, NJ and CT go blue. It's now 232/194.

At this point, there are 59 winning vote combinations for the Dems and 36 winning combinations for the Reps. Also, at this point, we have almost run out of states where Obama did well. He has Iowa, where his "blowout" in the caucuses needs to be taken with a big grain of salt due to the nature of caucuses, and Virginia, where heavy black turnout gave him a big win, but where he lost the western counties. Remember me telling you that geography is important? We'll be getting to that.

McCain will win Virginia and North Carolina regardless of the Dem nominee. We are now 232/222.

Iowa will go Dem, regardless of nominee. Hillary is stronger there than you think. 239/222.

This leaves MO, AR, OH, PA, KY and TN. There's also WV, which really should be considered a swing state.

Hillary could win them all, and will win OH, PA and AR, and will flip WV back to the Dem column. 291/247 and the Dems win. If she takes back Tennessee and Kentucky, last won by Bill, it's 310/228. Hillary is immensely popular with white, working class voters in both those states. If she takes Missouri, also last won by Bill, we are at a Dem victory of 321/217. Given the way voters, especially white, female working class voters, turned out in these states for her, I think her chances are very, very good. If she squeaks out Florida, and I think her unwavering committment to the Dem voters there is going to give her a boost, we're talking 348/190. Almost a repeat of Bill Clinton in 1996, and for pretty much the same reasons.

On the other hand, Obama might win PA. 260/278 and the Dems lose. I personally think he won't hold Pennsylvania, and the electoral outcome will be 239/299. Toss in a Michigan loss due to Romney on the Rep ticket and it is 222/316.

Why do I think he loses the states above that Hillary wins? Look at the counties he loses in those states (use the NYTimes site, good county maps). Put the maps togther and you see that he loses the Appalachian counties and the rural white vote. These states, the border swing states, are where he is weakest, weaker than either Hillary or McCain. He was not popular in the Ohio counties where Kerry lost the last election and where Bill and Hillary are popular. He lost the rural white vote in Missouri to Hillary and would lose it again to McCain. Ditto Tennessee. Kentucky will be like Tennessee and southern Ohio. West Virginia is smack dab in the center of that region that isn't that into him - if he isn't popular in Ohio, western Virgina and Tennessee, he won't have any strength in WV.

In short, Obama wins the same states as John Kerry in 2004, plus New Mexico, while Hillary wins all of those states, plus most of what Bill won in his two elections.

That is how the electoral math works out. A super-double-plus-bad economy knocks the wind out of St. John's sails, and people tune out the right wing noise machine on Hillary because yadda-yadda, they've heard it all before. If anything, they get offended on her behalf. No new dirt, no claims of anti-Americanism, no questioning of her loyalty to the nation, plus she will pull the Hispanic vote in, plus she stands to bring out a lot of cross-over female Republican votes. The Democratic core has already voted to support her, even in the contests she has lost.

Obama gets bupkiss outside of the die-hard party loyalists, plus he has to deal with significant defections from angry Hillary voters who will not regard his nomination as legitimate, plus he has to deal with the specter of Rev. Wright (and now we know why the Republicans have been pushing his nomination so hard, don't we?). Hillary supporter protest voters could be as high as 15%, well over the margin of victory in swing states where the bulk of them are located.

In a one-day, 50-state election, Hillary wins all the Dem base and expands it back into Clinton territory. And that's a good thing.

Anglachel

Oh, Yeah, the Economy, Stupid...

While Obama is doing damage control by trying to smear the Clinton's with false charges of funny financial dealings, Hillary is addressing the impending financial melt-down of the country:

This is a moment of great unique uncertainty in our financial markets. The crisis that began in the subprime mortgage market has spilled over and now poses a broader threat. I am following the developments in our markets closely. This morning I spoke with Secretary Paulson and New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner. They both outlined the actions that were taken yesterday to ensure liquidity and restore confidence in the market. I relayed to them my thoughts and concerns. I will continue to monitor the situation closely throughout the day and will seek advice and counsel from a broad range of economic advisors.

As a senator from New York, I am keenly focused on the impact of these market developments on the lives and livelihoods of thousands of New Yorkers and on the New York economy as a whole. I am also reminded everyday as I meet with families and listen to their stories that the effective function of our market isn’t just about Wall Street, it is about Main Street. It’s about the families I meet that are struggling to fend off foreclosures and stay in their homes. It’s about construction workers who used to build houses and are now out of work. It’s about the college student who has good credit but is struggling to get a loan. What is happening on Wall Street may well affect the lives and fortunes of tens of millions of Americans who work hard everyday. They’ve done nothing wrong, but they will be impacted.

In these times of stress and uncertainty, we need to be vigilant, to do everything in our power to maintain confidence in our financial system. I feel very strongly that in every way we’ve got to have more urgency to continue the action that was started yesterday. In my conversations earlier this morning, I raised my concern about the continuing numbers of foreclosures and my very strong belief that in the absence of addressing that aspect of this subprime mortgage credit crisis, we will not be able to make the progress that we have to make. I will follow this closely and as I said, I am particularly concerned about the many employees of Bear Stearns and their families and the ripple through the economy that this is going to cause.

Statement from Hillary Clinton

This is the difference between someone running to defeat Hillary and someone running to be President. The focus of the two campaigns is dramatic. Obama is all about The Precious and just how precious he is. Hillary is all about the growing insecurity of the lives of ordinary people and just how destructive that is to wide sectors of the society. Many links and videos in this post "Hillary Clinton on Financial Market Crisis" by Susan UnPC on No Quarter.

The news of financial market melt down in the last few days should be shaking the nation to its foundations. We should not have to deal with sophistry over the odious words of a power-hungry preacher (Is Wright a racist asshat? You betcha! Is Obama lying through his teeth about not knowin' nuthin' 'bout a trash talkin' preacher? Oh, my, yes! Is this an insult to the nation that bloggers like Josh Marshall are actually trying to defend that crap? No doubt about it!) when we are looking at the worst economic crisis to face the nation since the Great Depression.

Let's all return to fundamentals and read Krugman:

Four years ago, an academic economist named Ben Bernanke co-authored a technical paper that could have been titled “Things the Federal Reserve Might Try if It’s Desperate” — although that may not have been obvious from its actual title, “Monetary Policy Alternatives at the Zero Bound: An Empirical Investigation.”

Today, the Fed is indeed desperate, and Mr. Bernanke, as its chairman, is putting some of the paper’s suggestions into effect. Unfortunately, however, the Bernanke Fed’s actions — even though they’re unprecedented in their scope — probably won’t be enough to halt the economy’s downward spiral.

And if I’m right about that, there’s another implication: the ugly economics of the financial crisis will soon create some ugly politics, too.

...

These days, it’s rare to get through a week without hearing about another financial disaster. Some of this is unavoidable: there’s nothing Mr. Bernanke can or should do to prevent people who bet on ever-rising house prices from losing money. But the Fed is trying to contain the damage from the collapse of the housing bubble, keeping it from causing a deep recession or wrecking financial markets that had nothing to do with housing.

What if this initiative fails? I’m sure that Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues are frantically considering other actions that they can take, but there’s only so much the Fed — whose resources are limited, and whose mandate doesn’t extend to rescuing the whole financial system — can do when faced with what looks increasingly like one of history’s great financial crises.

The next steps will be up to the politicians.

I used to think that the major issues facing the next president would be how to get out of Iraq and what to do about health care. At this point, however, I suspect that the biggest problem for the next administration will be figuring out which parts of the financial system to bail out, how to pay the cleanup bills and how to explain what it’s doing to an angry public.

Betting the Bank

And who are these potential presidents? We have a Republican candidate who freely admits he knows squat about the economy and who has been involved in a financial scam (remember the Keating 5?). We have an Obamacan who is up to his ears in deals with a financial flim-flam artist and who doesn't do much on the trail but bleat about his opponent's alleged racism and wave his hands in the direction of "cleaning up Washington". And we have a Democrat who understands national and international finance inside and out, who has been a close observer of national economic conditions and policies, and who can speak extemporaneously and with confidence about the complex interconnections of trade, local and regional economies, intenational financial markets and the difference between liquidity and solvency.

Gee, I wonder why Krugman is worried about presidents and how the economic crises will be handled?

Anglachel

No Money for You, Dr. Dean

The day after Super Tuesday, a DNC phone bank caller reached us and asked for a pledge, which the spousal unit said we'd send. It was a substantial pledge.

Then came the Dean & Brazile Show downplaying Hillary's wins and trying to make Obama's thuggish caucus wins seem like democracy. We did not send in the money.

We have received our third "C'mon, pay up!" letter from the DNC. I sent it back with the pledge letter inside and wrote on the back that unless Michigan and Florida are seated at the convention (with or without a revote), the DNC will not get a penny from us. I said that I could not view Obama's nomination as legitimate unless the full delegations of all the states were present and voting, and would not provide funds to an organization that deliberately disenfranchises states for the benefit of one candidate and the detriment of another.

And then I sent the amount of that pledge to Hillary.

Anglachel

The Bad Mother

I've spoken before about the murderous misogyny of the A-List Blogger Boyz and their grad school mentality, as well as hinting at the ways in which the up is down, right is wrong, truthiness over truth feel of the current campaign cycle is something they encourage, but the spousal unit brought up an aspect of the "We Hate HER!" bash-fest that I had overlooked. Here it is.

It's all about Iraq and their own guilty consciences.

Josh Marshall, Matt Yglesias, Mark Kleiman, Kevin Drum, and any number of other high profile bloggers were all rah-rah war supporters when it first began. They had no real reason to support it besides wanting to kill people and get some revenge. They were reading the New York Times and Judith Miller and gulping the White House kool-aide as avidly as they gulp Obama's kool-aide today. C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, we gotta get Saddam! They swore by Colin Powell. If Powell said there was proof, well, by golly, that was good enough for them.

At the same time, Congress was actually having to make a decision about authorizing use of force. The weapons inspectors wanted back in, and Hans Blix approved of the maneuver to show Saddam Hussein the West meant business, that we weren't tied down in Afghanistan too much to give him trouble.

I didn't trust Bush a second on this, but I could also see that there were legitimate reasons to get inspectors into the country, not the least of which was to make Saddam look weak to his own population. There was also a principle about the balance of power between the Congress and the President - the President must ask for military powers and, when justified, the Congress will grant them. These are powers that a Democratic president is going to want as well. This was the power that Bill Clinton needed to intervene in the Balkans and would have needed for Rwanda. He asked. The Republicans in Congress told him to fuck off.

Part of Hillary's calculation to authorize the use of force (nor was she alone in this calculation) was forward looking to when Bush is not in power and when there is a Democratic Congress. The crude power grabs for imperial power we see from the Bush White House, fully backed by the Movement Conservative dominated Republican Party have illegitimately expanded presidential powers and in ways that cannot be ignored. The formal exercise of power must be defended; the bounding and limiting, but also structuring and supporting, insitutions of liberal democracy are refounded every day in the proper exercise thereof. You can't just make it up as you go along. (That's why "hope" and "audacity" are not governing principles, let alone an operational plan.) You have to insist on the rules, even when the other person is trying to cheat - or demolish the rules entirely.

The greatest weakness of the Democrats in Congress, in my opinion, is that they are not "working to rule" like any good union boss knows you should do.

Anyway, Hillary acts with others to authorize force if Saddam does not comply with the terms of the UN deal for reasons that have to do with politics, rule of law, and trying to put limits on Bush, as well as being under enormous public pressure to kill some towel heads as revenge for 9/11. Like pressure from the Blogger Boyz, who were slobbering and bouncing up and down in anticipation of a glorious little war, bitching about the UN's attempt to slow things down, and really wanting to go get Saddam. Bush thumbs his nose at the COngress and the UN and orders an invasion anyway. The boyz all cheer.

Then the war goes tits over teakettle and they realize that they are on the losing side of the argument. They are guilty as hell for having brought their considerable intellectual talents to bear on promoting an unjustified war and they want to blame someone else for their bad judgment. I know, Hillary made me do it! She should have been a better mommy and kept me from indulging in my murderous desires! Bad Mommy! Bad!

The fact that she will not join in their villification of her, refusing to be badgered into admitting that she made her decisions on the same basis as they did (reasons they project onto her), saying clearly that she made what she thought was the right decision at the time, drives them even more batshit insane. They want Mommy to kiss it and make it better and she said tough luck, kiddos, learn to live with your mistakes. They want someone else to take on their guilt, to relieve them of their sins against the body politic, and she is not going to let them off the hook. Their fanatical identification with Obama in no small part is because of their wishful thinking that if they glom onto someone who denounced the war when they were beating the war drums, this someway, somehow, will absolve them of their trangressions.

Um, no, it won't. I was opposed from the start, I know what you guys said and what a bunch of blood-thisty little bastards you were, and how your desire for war had no political or ethical foundations that could bear up under scrutiny. I know HRC made a bad decision for perfectly sound reasons, and I have heard enough from her to know that she herself is not going to do such a thing. Quit projecting your own moral relativity and temptation to use violence to get your way - well on display in your attacks on her and in the behavior of the campaign you are supporting - and face up to the fact that your judgment was fucked up then and it is fucked up now.

There is only one person responsible for invading Iraq and his name is George W. Bush.

Anglachel