DISQUS

What a great piece. Especially that your spelling is British. I was trying to read it with an accent ;)

It was Howard Dean who woke me up in 2004 when he reminded us that there's a Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. It's not Barack Obama's party. It's OUR party. And it's OUR nation. Let's bring it on back.

Re: NYT photos -- This is turning out to be the year of the Angry White Woman. Fear Her!

There's a bigger issue here that speaks not just to oil but overall inflation -- and especially its relationship to domestic and international poverty.


We are seeing big-time inflation (dare I say stagflation) in part because we can no longer export our problems to the world like we used to.



Cheap prices -- starting with energy, but also including labor -- fueled a false sense of American prosperity over the last few decades. The housing bubble only exacerbated it, but maybe in retrospect we'll be thankful that it also revealed the other bubble we were living in, the one in which the US could live beyond its means both at the environmental and ethical level.



Cheap food from: cheap labor, horrible agricultural practices in other countries



Likewise with cheap clothing, toys, etc.



It wasn't sustainable, and now prices are returning to some correlation with fundamentals



As nations become somewhat wealthier, human rights abuses somewhat subside... and prices readjust for what you might call post-slavery conditions



Ironic that those who will be hurt most by the uplifting of people elsewhere in the world will be our own poor.



I've never understood how an economy can function with so much disconnect from fundamentals (food, clothing, shelter). Turns out it can't. We're going back to basics. It's the end of "the new luxury."

Also, Craig, thanks for sharing your personal story -- it is so powerful and it captures that weird and ephemeral sense of hope that I have that we can acknowledge racism AND still believe that something better can happen.

Craig Hickman writes: "Wright, for all of his intellectual brilliance, clearly doesn't have the spiritual clarity to see what's happening right in front of his eyes, and if by chance he does, then he doesn't have the courage to put down his armor and let the past go."


Amen! And the same thing is happening across white evangelical America. If McCain thinks that Hagee can deliver those precious votes, he should take a look at Christians on college campuses today. Many of them would easily end up Barack supporters.



It's been a long time coming, but a change is gonna come.

It's savagely ironic that Barack spent so much brilliant effort trying to give his elders their proper credit and then to be sabatoged by, of all people, his own pastor.


Barack Obama at Selma, March 4 2007:



"… I got a letter from a friend of some of yours named Reverend Otis Moss Jr. in Cleveland, and his son, Otis Moss III is the Pastor at my church and I must send greetings from Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. but I got a letter giving me encouragement and saying how proud he was that I had announced and encouraging me to stay true to my ideals and my values and not to be fearful.

"And he said, if there's some folks out there who are questioning whether or not you should run, just tell them to look at the story of Joshua because you're part of the Joshua generation.

"So I just want to talk a little about Moses and Aaron and Joshua, because we are in the presence today of a lot of Moseses. We're in the presence today of giants whose shoulders we stand on, people who battled, not just on behalf of African Americans but on behalf of all of America; that battled for America's soul, that shed blood , that endured taunts and formant and in some cases gave -- torment and in some cases gave the full measure of their devotion."

...

"I'm here because somebody marched. I'm here because you all sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants. I thank the Moses generation; but we've got to remember, now, that Joshua still had a job to do. As great as Moses was, despite all that he did, leading a people out of bondage, he didn't cross over the river to see the Promised Land. God told him your job is done. You'll see it. You'll be at the mountain top and you can see what I've promised. What I've promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. You will see that I've fulfilled that promise but you won't go there."

---



What if Moses wouldn't let Joshua get something that he'd worked so hard for but wouldn't get to see the fruits of? That's how I feel a lot of Baby Boomers seem to be treating this election. When I hear older Hillary supporters say that they want to see a woman President in their own lifetimes, it strikes me as fundamentally selfish -- about their own ambitions, not what's good for the nation. I haven't heard that same feeling from the Black community. Strangely, Wright seems to prefer the exact inverse: no one should see a black President in any lifetime…

I'm really curious what results you get when you try the Police Officer's Dilemma "game". My own results are posted, and, yup, it shows racial bias.

Hey Baratunde, stay positive man, it was a real honor and privilege to walk the streets of SW Philly with you last Sunday. I'm pretty sure you're sick because I made you skip all those meals. (But it could also be allergies, those trees went ballistic this past week).


We did good work, met a lot of people, and helped a lot of people be part of democracy again. Not just Hope, but Faith, Hope, and Love. Let's have Faith that the American people will do the right thing. Let's keep showing Americans Love to get them there. I know we can.

It was a real privilege to hit the pavement for Obama with Baratunde last Sunday. For anyone interested in my writeup about the experience:


http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/2008/04/20/obama-pa08-canvassing-sw-philly/



http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/2008/04/22/obama-pa08-the-projects-of-n-philly/



http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/anderkoo/2008/04/23/obama-pa08-what-happened-and-what-didnt-in-north-philly/

My wife's organization, Boston Faith + Justice Network, is encouraging its members to either (a) use the check to pay off debts, or (b) donate the check to charity. Her organization's been hosting Bible studies to examine the meaning of money and consumption, especially in light of global poverty (as an earlier post pointed out, 1/5 of the world live on $2 a day when food prices are going through the roof). An upshot of these Bible studies is a commitment to give to charity (as well as to spend money more justly, e.g. on fair trade items). And when they've worked with poorer folks, they find that the goal of giving to charity is a powerful incentive to get out of debt.


(We'll be donating our check)



I do hope every Americans who gets a check will meditate or pray (as your wont) on the blessings we still have as the richest nation in the world -- as unequal as some of those riches may be distributed -- and consider the billions of people poorer than themselves before they decide what to do with that bounty.

Speaking as an Asian (Chinese) American who grew up in a heavily white Jewish / Catholic neighborhood, I do understand the concept of "acting white," which is perhaps quite different, maybe even opposite, of what that might mean for a black person. After all, the stereotype of Asians include being book-smart (but not street-smart), nerdy, demure, quiet, and also "exotic." These stereotypes also play out differently for different genders (as they do for other ethnic stereotypes). These characteristics don't match up with the American male identity, so I feel the two (race, gender) have always been intertwined for me.


So growing up this has always been a matter less of "acting white" than trying to "fit in" when my friends and schoolmates were all white.



All the same, I also consciously rejected the militant Asian-American identity people in college. I'd like to see myself not just as my phenotype, nor just the genetic and cultural heritage of my parents, but also embrace the other aspects -- "white," Jewish, Long Island, etc -- that also compose my identity. I'd like to be able to be AND and not just be stuck between two places.



This is what I've valued about Barack Obama's approach to race and what I heard in his "race speech" -- an effort to make the conversation about the "and" rather than the "or." After all, my kids, if we have any, will be "bi-racial" and facing the same questions he did. I'd like to think that they can value all of what make them special, which isn't just the accident of birth but the circumstances of their surroundings.

I'm curious about not just the black-white gap here, but whether there's a divide among religious Americans in general. Standing by your church -- whatever its racial makeup, whatever its politics -- has got to mean a lot to a lot of Republicans in this country, too.


Then again, Bush doesn't really go to church yet still gets a pass on his "Christianity."

I've been posting Ferraro-related comments over in the Mississippi thread, sorry. The woman is angry, resentful, but not senile and not addled by medication. She's carrying out the campaign's Ickes/Rove micro-strategy perfectly. She's still sucking the "present" vote pipe. That alone should prove that she's part of the strategy, not a "maverick." (I love how Bill got treated as some kind of "loose cannon" in SC. The man is still Hillary's husband. Talk about "free pass")

And sorry, back to that radio interview: if anyone has any doubt that Ferraro is carrying water for Hillary through her racist dogwhistle BS, listen carefully towards the end of the discussion: not once but TWICE she delivers two very carefully micro-crafted attacks from NH regarding Obama's "present" votes on abortion. What's brilliant about playing Ferraro and Bill is that they're "crazy" and the media treat them that way -- letting Hillary "distance" herself from them, without "denouncing." It's sick, it's cynical, and it's happening.


Jack, Jill -- time for a full story on this????

My point re: Limbaugh effect is that it's a big reason why whites have been "turning away" from Obama -- these were the same folks who were (and will) vote for the Republicans, now showing up in the other column. That part of the story needs to be corrected.

On Mississippi, see potential "Limbaugh effect" : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-k-wilson/mis... (also on DKos).


Geraldine Ferraro strikes me as an angry, angry woman. There's a very insightful conversation with her here:



http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2008/02/20080226_a_main.asp (30:20 onwards).



At one point she attacks a female caller for not being thankful enough for feminism.



This is the same crap that Obama had to deal with early on from the black establishment. But he managed to find a way through it (the "Joshua Generation" idea). Hillary, being of that generation, is still in the battle, not of it.

The NAFTA attack is a distortion (look it up on factchecker), and I'm not going to make excuses for it. I'd rather not go down the "she's done more of it than he has" route either. All in all, though, Obama has run a remarkably clean campaign -- most importantly on the financing side.


btw, it amuses me that on the NYTimes.com site (which leans Hillary), "Obama" is consistently in the top 3 search terms, while "Hillary Clinton" is near the bottom or sometimes not even on the Top 10 list.

@ ndn5898: I'm sure the Clinton campaign well understands the TX system. She's trying to downplay expectations (again). Of course, so does the Obama campaign, though even they may be internally underestimating their wins (an internal memo that was accidentally cc'ed to the press indicated that they expected to win WI by 7%, and I'm pretty sure they underestimated SC as well).


The Frank Rich article hits where it hurts: Hillary's military(ish) credentials. Nice PR spin, Frank.



To be fair, a lot of campaign skills don't necessarily correlate actual leadership. But IMHO high-level stuff like planning and strategic thinking does, so I do think this article is a fair critique.

It's a small misstep, but not a major gaffe. It'll be interesting whether, after decades of carefully-scripted, totally soulless campaigning where every word is carefully combed over until all the life is beaten out of it, whether Americans are actually kind of excited about people who will speak their minds (or at least sound like it). Perhaps reality TV and YouTube has immunized at least the under 65 crowd to this kind of nitpicking.

The war is actually not one of my major issues in this election, and if it were, I might even vote for McCain. Personally, while I recall thinking in 2002 that the Saddam threat was bogus, I also entertained -- much as Hillary now claims -- the possibility that Bush knew something that he couldn't tell us, and that he needed a credible threat to force whatever change he wanted out of the regime. Of course, in retrospect this all turned out to be a pack of lies, much as many of us suspected, but the truth for me is that I didn't and couldn't have known. Should a sitting US Senator have known? As Donald Rumsfeld later said, there are known unknowns, and there are unknown unknowns. Perhaps it's a bad way to manage your foreign policy, but perhaps in 2002 Bush had not expended all of his trust with Congress, either.


I am an Obama supporter, but I do find the concern with consistency or lack thereof around the war rather odd. After all, isn't our criticism of President Bush precisely around his stubborn inability to change direction despite ample facts to the contrary? (It's Hillary's inability to call her support of the war a mistake -- what critics, I'm sure, would call a "flip flop" -- that, for me, undermines her credibility on that issue).

The Democratic Party is reaping what it is sowing. The superdelegates were set up precisely as a firewall against insurgent candidates -- the question will be whether (a) Obama racks up the popular vote by the election, and (b) he will still be perceived as the "insurgent" by then. This is why the campaign is shifting gears into frontrunner position -- premature in NH, but not now. In any event, you can't call it "stealing" the election when that's the way the system was set up. My beef is with the Party for setting up a system that's so easily gamed.


As to all the commenters who note that Obama is allegedly the most "liberal" Senator -- so what? Is it conceivable that America is ready to embrace a new view of itself as a nation that cares for its most vulnerable, that uses military force carefully and in balance with diplomacy, that sees capital markets as a means to an end -- the enrichment of all of society -- rather than an end in itself? I would argue yes.



And I find it strange that critics can, in the same breath, call Obama both an "empty suit" and also "most liberal." Either he's got substance or not. Make up your mind!

@ anonymous #1: The majority of Americans are not far-right, but Reagan sure made it seem that way. There's a big-strategy decision that the Obama campaign made that interest-based politics can only take us so far -- that it can play within the margins of what's been set, but that Reagan set the margins so that certain things, like universal health care, would be forever off the table. We need to speak to people's fundamental values (that we as a society care for each other, etc) and reshape the debate before we'll make any big changes.


I do take seriously the possibility that incremental changes can get us there too, and the fact that Bill couldn't do it last time doesn't mean we're forever tied to history. I happen to think it's a riskier strategy, though.



IMHO, what we need is a JFK (Obama) BEFORE a LBJ (Clinton). Clinton wasn't wrong to point out that it was LBJ who got so much legislation passed. But she failed to acknowledge that Nixon also passed a lot of progressive laws -- because MLK, JFK, and RFK all reset American politics in a path that LBJ pounded home and Nixon couldn't diverge from (just as Clinton couldn't shed the Reagan legacy).



In the bigger picture I think we're due for a realignment of what "left" and "right" means. I suspect if Obama is chosen many libertarians may flee his more communitarian mindset, but that many Christians -- non-rabid Huckabee supporters -- will find his spiritual voice and call for community (rather than individualism) inspiring. But that analysis is driven as much by hope as facts... we'll see if/when it comes to pass.

Two responses, g.d., to your well-founded questions.


First is that all political campaigns, and to an even greater extent insurgent ones, depend on a fuel more important than cash: enthusiasm. I've just spent the last three weeks volunteering, giving up a vacation and 9 straight days (and 30 hours of driving) to put time into the campaign in SC, and then back to MA to do it all again except in my after-work hours. It's really hard to do this kind of work if you're not totally (maybe even insanely) enthusiastic. So part of what you're seeing in terms of partisan flag-waving is a bit of artificial pumping-up just to have the energy to do this kind of thing. What you're asking for is a bit like asking the Red Sox to play the game in a nonpartisan way. Look what response Manny got when he suggested, "It's only a game."



And the reason why all political campaigns, and especially insurgent ones, depend on this enthusiasm is that social change depends on people coming together as communities to take action. The media's self-serving obsession with poll numbers and advertising misses what's happening on the grassroots level, most of which depends on someone somewhere doing work for absolutely no pay. Maybe you do it because your union bosses tell you it's the thing that will best advance your union's interests; maybe you do it because your friends are all cajoling you to go canvassing with them next weekend. But volunteer work that's not harnessed and focused (and therefore appears, to outsiders, to share characteristics with cults) is totally useless. Witness the anarchistic Ron Paul supporters who basically do stuff to amuse themselves without advancing their candidate's chances at all. Only people working in concert can make real change.



For me, I know that when all of this is over, if Hillary is selected, I'll be sure to support her as best I can (even if I'm not half as enthusiastic about her).

@ g.d. -- I agree with you that there are definitely Obama supporters who can turn on the negativity. Which, honestly, the campaign has worked very hard to suppress, because as you say, it turns off would-be supporters and runs against the entire message that Obama is trying to convey. At our staging location in SC, we couldn't really stop college students from removing Hillary signs, and I saw similar folks removing Republican signs in NH. (I suppose you can chalk a lot of that up to typical college behavior).


It's equally difficult to parse the difference between Hillary-bashing and honest dislike of Hillary. I think part of the problem is the unique nature of the American presidency: you're not choosing a prime minister or head of the party, but rather someone who (a) runs a large bureaucracy and (b) provides moral leadership for the country. (b) is not really in the Constitution, but has clearly become the most important factor in the election. (Otherwise, why wouldn't Mitt Romney be the ideal President?) So, for better or for worse (I say worse), character matters.



The problem for Krugman is that's he's clearly entering territory he frankly has no business marching into. He's an economist whose views on the media and electorate are, at best, naive. So he's crossing the line from legitimate analysis (Obama's healthcare not as good as Hillary's) to personal attacks on Obama supporters whom he has no qualifications to assess or address. I think the problem is even deeper: MSM should get out of "opinion journalism" altogether. But that's another matter.



My point in that piece is that the blogosphere ain't the best place for reasoned, nonpartisan dialogue.