Politics

Commentary (and rants) on national and local politics.

Read more about the article Hope vs. Cynicism

Hope vs. Cynicism

I’m a pretty cynical person most days, but I have a couple of good friends who make me look like the love-child of Mother Theresa and Gandhi. One of them emailed me today asking me to convince him about Obama: “C’mon Guy, if anyone can sell me, it’s you….do your worse…..convince me why I’m not just settling for the candidate I dislike the least!”

What started out as a brief reply became a much longer one and I decided to post it here because I suspect there might be others who know my cynical side and are curious about how I fell for the “hope” candidate.

Short answer: Because cynicism enables the status quo.

Slightly longer answer with a dash of cynicism: To paraphrase John McCain’s take on global warming, “If we’re wrong, worst case scenario is we end the Clinton/Bush dynasty and still get a Democrat in the White House.”

Long answer, personal/persuasive essay style: For me, it’s not simply about how progressive Obama is or isn’t, because if it were about that, I’d still be in Kucinich’s corner, the only real progressive to run for President in the past 2-3 elections. Obama is a moderately progressive Democrat, but he doesn’t play the cynical us vs. them game which simply guarantees another 4-8 years of partisan gridlock, no matter which side wins.

What I like most about him is that he’s a realist — putting forth policy proposals that actually have a realistic chance of being passed instead of the pie in the sky shit everyone wants to hear but knows they’ll never see in their lifetime, ie: a Department of Peace —  but he has the heart of an idealist. Bill Clinton was right about the “roll of the dice” thing, but the gambler isn’t those voting for Obama it’s Obama himself, appealing to the idealist in all of us, daring people to not just hope for better but to get off their asses and help make things better; trusting that they are smart enough to look beyond the sound bites they hear on the evening news and look deeper themselves.

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Read more about the article Theme Song

Theme Song

Every superhero needs a theme song, and now Obama has one... [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHA_ZTvOgUM&NR=1] Yes We Can! (Via DipDive.com, with a hat tip to Andrew Sullivan. NOTE: YouTube link updated. Original link was taken down for some reason.) * Yes, that's Kate "Dr. Addison Montgomery-Shepherd" Walsh in there! :-)

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Read more about the article MoveOn Endorses Obama

MoveOn Endorses Obama

I honestly didn't think either of them would make the 66% threshold but Obama nailed it: In a resounding vote today, MoveOn.org Political Action's members nationwide voted to endorse Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for President. The group, with 3.2 million members nation-wide and over 1.7 million members in Super Tuesday states, will immediately begin to mobilize on behalf of Senator Obama. The vote favored Senator Obama to Senator Clinton by 70.4% to 29.6%. This is a pretty significant endorsement with Super Tuesday looming as it represents actual elbow grease as opposed to ephemeral influence. As OpenLeft's Matt…

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Read more about the article Hollywood Democratic Debate

Hollywood Democratic Debate

It was a surprisingly substantial, mature discussion of actual issues between two very Presidential candidates with minimal interference from the moderator, who turned out to be Wolf Blitzer, not Anderson Cooper as I’d thought it would be.

Highlights:

  1. Health Care: The difference between them seems subtle on the face of it but I think it ultimately comes down to a question of Clinton’s approach seems to assume significant compromise will be required so she padded her proposal a bit (the way I used to approach the first round of my marketing annual budget), while Obama wants to cut to the chase and put forward a plan that is palatable to all from the beginning and puts us on the quickest path to a health care plan that can eventually lead to true universal health care.
  2. Immigration: Obama took the high road, saying it’s wrong to scapegoat immigrants as the reason unemployment is so high amongst African-Americans, while Clinton, shockingly, implied it was okay to blame immigrants. It’ll be interesting to see if the California media picks up on that in tomorrow’s coverage and if it gets any play in the Latino or African-American community.
  3. Iraq: Obama’s “Ready on Day One vs. Right on Day One” was the closest thing to a clean shot to the chin either candidate landed tonight. Blitzer pushed a little too hard on questioning Clinton’s naivete over trusting Bush’s word by voting for the war resolution, to the point where the audience booed him, but it was a valid point. 

Both candidates avoided any major gaffes or faux pas, going out of their way to be as cordial and respectful as possible, to the point where I can almost see myself shifting back towards being relatively comfortable voting for Clinton in November if she ends up being the nominee.  I still don’t see an Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama ticket happening, though.

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Read more about the article McCain knocks out Giuliani AND Bloomberg!

McCain knocks out Giuliani AND Bloomberg!

John McCain apparently landed a devastating 1-2 punch with his victory in Florida Tuesday night, not only knocking the clueless Rudy Giuliani out of the race but also effectively knee-capping Michael Bloomberg’s oft-rumored, self-financed Independent run:

Senator Lieberman says the increasing likelihood that Senator McCain will win the Republican nomination could keep Mayor Bloomberg on the sidelines of the presidential race this fall.

“My feeling all along has been that if he ran, it would be because he had a real reason to run, and frankly, he and John McCain have a lot in common,” the Connecticut senator said in a telephone interview this afternoon. “So if John gets the nomination, I would guess it’s less likely the mayor will run for president.”

While I think there’s enough of a distinction between McCain and Bloomberg that a McCain/Clinton race would still make him a viable third candidate, I suspect the combination of [relative] moderates like Lieberman and Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsing McCain means he’d risk being cast as the Republican’s Ralph Nader and simply ensure an easier path to victory for Clinton. McCain/Obama would be even more problematic for him as Obama’s already secured the “change” mantle and offers a much starker contrast to the 71-year-old McCain than Bloomberg ever could.

Interestingly, one of the key figures behind the Draft Bloomberg effort here in NY, Karin Gallet (whom I interviewed for Spindle last year), has given up the cause:

“He’s not running. He’s convinced me… Even his good buddies are backing McCain. I think they would know if there was a reason to hold off on an endorsement. McCain is MB’s base, so the opportunity has faded. And besides, even with the best effort of the big bad unity 08 boys, we’ve not seen any significant pop support, none of that lefty groundswell ala Clark.”

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Read more about the article Processing South Carolina

Processing South Carolina

In my most optimistic guesses about tonight’s result, I wasn’t expecting anything close to the 2-1 thumping Obama gave Clinton tonight. The Clintons are already trying to characterize it as a black thing (Bill goes so far as to invoke Jesse Jackson) but it is so very clearly much more than that. To put it in perspective, Obama got more votes tonight than were cast for all of the candidates in the 2004 Democratic primary, and they weren’t all cast by black voters.

The best part about tonight was Obama’s victory speech, that didn’t quite hit the inspirational heights of his Iowa speech but delivered a clean gut punch to the Clinton’s strategy of “experience” and their embracing of typical Republican tactics, without ever mentioning them by name.

We are up against the idea that it’s acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election. We know that this is exactly what’s wrong with our politics; this is why people don’t believe what their leaders say anymore; this is why they tune out. And this election is our chance to give the American people a reason to believe again… 

The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white.

It’s about the past versus the future.

It’s about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today, or whether we reach for a politics of common sense, and innovation – a shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iVAPH_EcmQ]

If Iowa was the call, South Carolina was the response, and the next 10 days leading up to February 5th are going to be very, very interesting.

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Read more about the article Straight talk about the Clintons, the Media and South Carolina

Straight talk about the Clintons, the Media and South Carolina

Jack and Jill Politics has an excellent post entitled “The Clintons, Black Folk and America – A Reckoning” that takes the Clintons’ bait about how great the 90s were and feeds it back to them, barbed hook and all:

All folks, not just black, start to publicly dig into the past and challenge the assumptions of Bill’s blackness and his greatness.

Here’s what they find.

  • The mass incarceration of black men, due largely to a failed “War on Drugs”…
  • There was the deregulation of the banking industry…
  • There was the expansion of media consolidation…
  • There was the missed opportunity to set us on a path of a sane energy policy…
  • There was “welfare reform”…
  • There was the sitting by and watching millions of people get butchered in Rwanda
  • There was the set of trade deals that lowered our standards and helped gut America’s ability to provide for itself…

I’m glad the ugly has come out. I’m glad Bill Clinton’s face is glowing so brightly and so red; the better to see this campaign by. I’m glad Bill Clinton is getting down and dirty and using his considerable political capital to smear a great presidential candidate. I’m glad The Clintons are calling in favors from their black beholden elected officials and power brokers. Because every time they do, we get to dig up another little nugget which has us questioning the entire premise of “The Clinton Administration.”

And I’m glad Hillary keeps moving closer and closer to Bill, closer to that co-presidency. Keep running on “experience.” Just don’t get mad when we help remind people what that experience really was, and why many of us never want to see it return.

The whole post is worth reading, not just for black people who are on the fence about Obama, but for anyone who’s still falling for the okey-doke that Bill Clinton was a great president and that Hillary is a shoo-in in November.

ETA: TPM’s Josh Marshall, a self-professed Clinton fan, has an insightful post about his own concerns surrounding “Bill 2.0“.

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