McCain's got ballz Ill give him that! (Palin Pick) [Archive]

Mike Peterson

08-29-2008, 08:43 AM

McCain just gave his campaign for the White House a huge psychological boost. McCain isn't trailing Obama by much and this could give him victory. Many Clinton voters who were disappointed with Obama's victory in the primaries were already going to vote for McCain and this will draw in many more of those thousands or hundreds of thousands of voters to his candidacy in November. Maybe a million or more, which would hand McCain the Oval Office.

And the nasty attitudes virulently expressed by Obama supporters against Clinton supporters only succeeded in alienating and angering them, forcing the Clintons to make repeated pleas to Hillary's former base to vote for Obama. Meanwhile, those pleas are falling on the deaf ears of many Clinton voters who have been offended and insulted by the Obama electorate. Those are the folks that McCain is harvesting with Sarah Palin as his running mate. If McCain wins, that responsibility will fall squarely on the shoulders of Obama voters.

At the psychological level, McCain is saying, "Hey gang, here is the Republican Hillary. If you wanted a woman badly enough to be so high in public office then here's your chance. Just vote for me and you'll have the first woman VP in US history."

McCain just might clinch the presidency with this astute move, which simultaneously takes advantage of the internal rift within the Democratic electorate.

Mike

I think as of today Mcain has really made it a fare fight!

- John McCain tapped little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate on Friday in a startling selection on the eve of the Republican National Convention

https://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080829/ap_on_el_pr/cvn_veepstakes

MsTerry

08-29-2008, 08:54 AM

Good analysis, but will it be enough to fool the people?

McCain just gave his campaign for the White House a huge psychological boost. McCain isn't trailing Obama by much and this could give him victory. Many Clinton voters who were disappointed with Obama's victory in the primaries were already going to vote for McCain and this will draw in many more of those thousands or hundreds of thousands of voters to his candidacy in November. Maybe a million or more, which would hand McCain the Oval Office.

And the nasty attitudes virulently expressed by Obama supporters against Clinton supporters only succeeded in alienating and angering them, forcing the Clintons to make repeated pleas to Hillary's former base to vote for Obama. Meanwhile, those pleas are falling on the deaf ears of many Clinton voters who have been offended and insulted by the Obama electorate. Those are the folks that McCain is harvesting with Sarah Palin as his running mate. If McCain wins, that responsibility will fall squarely on the shoulders of Obama voters.

At the psychological level, McCain is saying, "Hey gang, here is the Republican Hillary. If you wanted a woman badly enough to be so high in public office then here's your chance. Just vote for me and you'll have the first woman VP in US history."

McCain just might clinch the presidency with this astute move, which simultaneously takes advantage of the internal rift within the Democratic electorate.

Mike

Mike Peterson

08-29-2008, 09:40 AM

That's the real question.

Yes, picking a woman is absolutely a trick to fool the people into voting for him by appealing to their sense of equality and ego and that the American Dream is for women, etc, etc. But it's still just a trick because McCain is simply using her to gain power.

Funny thing is that since McCain is so old (he would be 72 if sworn into office in January) he could actually die of old age while serving out his first or second term, something that has happened on more than one occasion with younger presidents, such as William Harrison who died of pneumonia at age 68 and was president for only one month.

If something like that happens then we will have the first woman president in one fowl swoop, and she's only 44 right now, which would also make her one of the youngest presidents in history, after Theodore Roosevelt (42) and JFK (43).

I would say that the 'exodus' of former Hillary voters to the McCain camp is composed of different kinds of folks. There are those who never liked Obama based on his individual appeal as a candidate, purely preference. There are those who are pissed off big time and totally offended by Obama voters' aggressive reproaches against Hillary's sticking it out till the bitter end. There are those who are downright racist and simply can't handle seeing a 'n----r' become president (my mother didn't vote for Gore in 2000 because Lieberman is Jewish). And now, there will be those who will switch sides (and also swing voters and undecideds) because they are motivated by a woman VP.

Oh, I almost forgot, there are those (don't know how many) who will vote for McCain because Sarah Palin is a hottie! It is strongly rumored that many women voted for JFK in 1960 because they found him to be young and attractive. And in a race as close as it was between Kennedy and Nixon, the "sex symbol factor" could very well have made the difference.

Mike

Good analysis, but will it be enough to fool the people?

theindependenteye

08-29-2008, 10:35 AM

If having balls is contingent on caving to the far-right Christians, making a bid for disgruntled Clintonians, contradicting your own campaign statements about experience, Alaska drilling, etc., then I guess he's got balls.

And indeed it's taking a chance on the notion that Clinton supporters are much more interested in whether the candidate has ovaries than what her politics are and how they remotely match women's key issues. I think many will find that pretty sexist.

And I guess her beauty-queen credit is intended to counter the Paris Hilton factor.

Not to take away from whatever good things she may have done, but just to say that it seems hardly to qualify as a ballsy choice — more like shooting yourself in the balls, which I guess maybe does qualify as ballsy.

Cheers—
Conrad

mykil

08-29-2008, 11:14 AM

McClain’s choice will be seen by all as a ballz ass move this goes without saying, yet it probably was a no brainier choice from his advisers! The Bible belt will still get his vote; I am betting they want a woman VP more than a black pres. This is for sure. Although they might be rolling their eyes they are still going to vote for the McClain. I am truly wondering if Hillary will vote for McClain at this point. No I know better and I hope you do too! I truly think we just lost the election!!!!

RichT

08-29-2008, 09:00 PM

MsTerry

08-30-2008, 10:31 AM

https://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/nws/p/politico_logo_108.jpg
6 things the Palin pick says about McCain

  Jim VandeHei, John F. HarrisSat Aug 30, 9:57 AM ET

The selection of a running mate is among the most consequential, most defining decisions a presidential nominee can make. John McCain’s pick of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says a lot about his decison-making — and some of it is downright breathtaking.

We knew McCain is a politician who relishes improvisation, and likes to go with his gut. But it is remarkable that someone who has repeatedly emphasized experience in this campaign named an inexperienced governor he barely knew to be his No. 2. Whatever you think of the pick, here are six things it tells us about McCain:

1. He’s desperate. Let’s stop pretending this race is as close as national polling suggests. The truth is McCain is essentially tied or trailing in every swing state that matters — and too close for comfort in several states like Indiana and Montana the GOP usually wins pretty easily in presidential races. On top of that, voters seem very inclined to elect Democrats in general this election — and very sick of the Bush years.

McCain could easily lose in an electoral landslide. That is the private view of Democrats and Republicans alike.
McCain’s pick shows he is not pretending. Politicians, even “mavericks” like McCain, play it safe when they think they are winning — or see an easy path to winning. They roll the dice only when they know that the risks of conventionality are greater than the risks of boldness.

The Republican brand is a mess. McCain is reasonably concluding that it won’t work to replicate George W. Bush and Karl Rove’s electoral formula, based around national security and a big advantage among Y chromosomes, from 2004.
“She’s a fresh new face in a party that’s dying for one — the antidote to boring white men,” a campaign official said.
Palin, the logic goes, will prompt voters to give him a second look — especially women who have watched Democrats reject Hillary Rodham Clinton for Barack Obama.

The risks of a backlash from choosing someone so unknown and so untested are obvious. In one swift stroke, McCain demolished what had been one of his main arguments against Obama.
“I think we’re going to have to examine our tag line, ‘dangerously inexperienced,’” a top McCain official said wryly.

2. He’s willing to gamble — bigtime. Let’s face it: This is not the pick of a self-confident candidate. It is the political equivalent of a trick play or, as some Democrats called it, a Hail Mary pass in football. McCain talks incessantly about experience, and then goes and selects a woman he hardly knows, who hardly knows foreign policy and who can hardly be seen as instantly ready for the presidency.

He is smart enough to know it could work, at least politically. Many Republicans see this pick as a brilliant stroke because it will be difficult for Democrats to run hard against a woman in the wake of the Hillary Clinton drama. Will this push those disgruntled Hillary voters McCain’s way? Perhaps. But this is hardly aimed at them: It is directed at the huge bloc of independent women — especially those who do not see abortion as a make-or-break issue — who could decide this election.

McCain has a history of taking dares. Palin represents his biggest one yet.

3. He’s worried about the political implications of his age. Like a driver overcorrecting out of a swerve, he chooses someone who is two years younger than the youthful Obama, and 28 years younger than he is. (He turned 72 Friday.) The father-daughter comparison was inevitable when they appeared next to each other.

4. He’s not worried about the actuarial implications of the age issue. He thinks he’s in fine fettle, and Palin wouldn’t be performing the only constitutional duty of a vice president, which is standing by in case a president dies or becomes incapacitated. If he was really concerned about an inexperienced person sitting in the Oval Office we would be writing about vice presidential nominee Mitt Romney or Tom Ridge or Condoleezza Rice.

There is no plausible way that McCain could say that he picked Palin, who was only elected governor in 2006 and whose most extended public service was as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 8,471), because she was ready to be president on Day One.

Nor can McCain argue that he was looking for someone he could trust as a close adviser. Most people know the staff at the local Starbucks better than McCain knows Palin. They met for the first time last February at a National Governors Association meeting in Washington. Then, they spoke again — by phone — on Sunday while she was at the Alaska state fair and he was at home in Arizona.

McCain has made a mockery out of his campaign's longtime contention that Barack Obama is too dangerously inexperienced to be commander in chief. Now, the Democratic ticket boasts 40 years of national experience (four years for Obama and 36 years for Joseph Biden of Delaware), while the Republican ticket has 26 (McCain’s four yeasr in the House and 22 in the Senate.)

The McCain campaign has made a calculation that most voters don’t really care about the national experience or credentials of a vice president, and that Palin’s ebullient personality and reputation as a refomer who took on cesspool politics in Alaska matters more.

5. He’s worried about his conservative base. If he had room to maneuver, there were lots of people McCain could have selected who would have represented a break from Washington politics as usual. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman comes to mind (and it certainly came to McCain’s throughout the process). He had no such room. GOP stalwarts were furious over trial balloons about the possibility of choosing a supporter of abortion rights, including the possibility that he would reach out to his friend.

Palin is an ardent opponent of abortion who was previously scheduled to keynote the Republican National Coalition for Life's "Life of the Party" event in the Twin Cities this week.

“She’s really a perfect selection,” said Darla St. Martin, the Co-Director of the National Right to Life Committee. It is no secret McCain wanted to shake things up in this race — and he realized he was limited to a shake-up conservatives could stomach.

6. At the end of the day, McCain is still McCain. People may find him a refreshing maverick, or an erratic egotist. In either event, he marches to his own beat.

On the upside, his team did manage to play to the media’s love of drama, fanning speculation about his possible choices and maximizing coverage of the decision.

On the potential downside, the drama was evidently entirely genuine. The fact that McCain only spoke with Palin about the vice presidency for the first time on Sunday, and that he was seriously considering Lieberman until days ago, suggests just how hectic and improvisational his process was.

In the end, this selection gives him a chance to reclaim the mantle of a different kind of politician intent on changing Washington. He once had a legitimate claim to this: after all, he took on his own party over campaign finance reform and immigration. He jeopardized this claim in recent months by embracing ideas he once opposed (Bush tax cuts) and ideas that appeared politically motivated (gas tax holiday).

Spontaneity, with a touch of impulsiveness, is one of the traits that attract some of McCain’s admirers. Whether it’s a good calling card for a potential president will depend on the reaction in coming days to what looks for the moment like the most daring vice presidential selection in generations.
Mike Allen contributed to this report.

Braggi

08-30-2008, 10:54 AM

This choice just proves how much influence Rush Limbaugh has over McCain.

Rush has been calling for her as VP choice for many weeks.

Maybe Rush will get his own bedroom in the White House.

-Jeff

MsTerry

08-30-2008, 12:34 PM

He Did? (how do you know? :hmmm:)
He must be chest pounding now.

This choice just proves how much influence Rush Limbaugh has over McCain.

Rush has been calling for her as VP choice for many weeks.

Maybe Rush will get his own bedroom in the White House.

-Jeff

Barry

08-30-2008, 05:13 PM

It's quite shocking! Regardless of all the inexperience & gender issues, to have made such a major decision after only meeting her once is totally frightening! This is the thoughtful and wise leader we want??? Another "Cowboy" who shoots from the hip? I suppose Reagan pulled that off (according to the Republicans) but at least he was a strong leader and communicator (even if in the wrong direction!). McCain is no Reagan!

Needless to say, I am delighted with his "selection"!

Obama '08!!
Barry

The A Team

08-31-2008, 09:09 AM

Huh?

Who is Sarah Palin? Here's some basic background:

She was elected Alaska's governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience.1
Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest.2
She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000. 3
Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.4
She's doesn't think humans are the cause of climate change.5
She's solidly in line with John McCain's "Big Oil first" energy policy. She's pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won't be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.6
How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.7

Oh yeah...sounds delightful

josan48

08-31-2008, 01:56 PM

The statement that McCain WILL win and that we lost the election is absurd and really negative thinking...we must keep oour positive thoughts and KNOW that OBAMA WILL WIN. He must. We need a clean-up time in our country. It is time for us to start thinking differently.
Josan

Neshamah

08-31-2008, 05:34 PM

Palin's mere 19 months as governor still gives her more executive experience than McCain, Biden, and Obama combined. She brings a great deal of expertise on energy, and given that McCain's mother is still alive and well at 96, Palin is no more likely than Biden to be President within the next 8 years anyway.

Diversity is more than just gender or skin color. Instead of picking a like-minded senator, Obama should have picked a moderate governor like Ted Strickland or Kathleen Sebelius. Doing so would have restricted McCain to a narrower field of more experienced and less groundbreaking possibilities. By instead picking the third most partisan Democrat in the Senate, Obama undermined his pledge to move past partisan politics and left McCain's field wide open.

McCain picked an ordinary woman who took on the Republican establishment in Alaska and won. By picking her, McCain has demonstrated once again that he does not just talk about bipartisanship, he has a record of doing it. I certainly wish he did it more, but at least he has done something.

All that said, experience, intelligence, and working well with others is really secondary when you consider how far apart the two tickets are on their positions. No Clinton Democrat will be swayed by Sarah Palin. McCain has made some reckless statements on Russia and Iran, and his gas tax holiday nonsense demonstrates his lack of expertise on energy policy. Obama is betting that the country is so fed up with Republican leadership in the last eight years that they will elect a Democrat, no matter how progressive. That is a big risk, at least as big as McCain picking the first-term governor of Alaska as VP.

~ Neshamah

Sonomamark

08-31-2008, 10:24 PM

Palin's mere 19 months as governor still gives her more executive experience than McCain, Biden, and Obama combined.

Actually, you're wrong about that. Executive experience is being an executive: the decision maker for a large enterprise. A national campaign is such an enterprise. Barack Obama has been the CEO of an enterprise with 500 employees and a budget of more than $100 million for the last year and a half. Before that, he did the same thing in running for Senate.

She brings a great deal of expertise on energy, and given that McCain's mother is still alive and well at 96, Palin is no more likely than Biden to be President within the next 8 years anyway.

Not really. Palin's only "expertise on energy" involves kissing the ring of the oil industry, which everyone in Alaskan politics does. There's no policy analysis or thought process involved.

Diversity is more than just gender or skin color. Instead of picking a like-minded senator, Obama should have picked a moderate governor like Ted Strickland or Kathleen Sebelius. Doing so would have restricted McCain to a narrower field of more experienced and less groundbreaking possibilities. By instead picking the third most partisan Democrat in the Senate, Obama undermined his pledge to move past partisan politics and left McCain's field wide open.

Nope. Both Strickland and Sibellius would have been loser picks: no national name recognition and in the latter case, the inability to bring a state (Kansas ain't goin' blue this year, you can bank on it). Biden locks in PA, is a terrific pick for winning both Ohio and Florida, helps with older women, white men, Jews and Catholics, and has such deep credentials in both foreign and domestic policy that even the Reps in the Senate have had to acknowledge them. His only challenge now is to win the VP debate on points instead of mopping the floor with Gidget the Governor, because it would look bad for him to be seen as beating up on a "girl". It isn't going to help, either, that she has a voice like furniture nails scraping down a marble column.

"Moving past partisan politics" doesn't mean acting like an idiot and appointing someone in immediate line for the most powerful position on Earth who is flatly unprepared for the job. Whatever the spinmeisters are saying, no one who knows anything about politics thinks McCain has helped himself here. HE'S the one who has proven his fealty to the hard right partisan base of HIS party by picking a running mate completely unsuited to be President, who is on tape from a couple of months ago saying she doesn't know what the VP does, on tape from 2006 saying she doesn't follow the Iraq War and doesn't know what's going on there, and has expressed her opinion that "under God" should remain in the Pledge of Allegiance "because that's the way the Founding Fathers wanted it".

The early polls on Palin show that women are more skeptical of the pick than are men. It's a complete disaster of a pick, and it reeks of desperation. And it's highly, highly partisan. It is downright bizarre to suggest that Biden was somehow a more partisan pick than Palin the right-wing Trophy Veep.

McCain picked an ordinary woman who took on the Republican establishment in Alaska and won. By picking her, McCain has demonstrated once again that he does not just talk about bipartisanship, he has a record of doing it. I certainly wish he did it more, but at least he has done something.

Palin was elected because she wasn't Frank Murkowski. That's it, and that's all. She is not unanimously supported even within her own party in Alaska, and has been described as "unqualified to be Governor of Alaska" by the leading Republican in the Alaskan State Senate. 18 months ago, she was the Mayor of a town of less than 10,000 people in the least densely populated state in the nation. She knows absolutely nothing about foreign policy, national economic policy, health care, or anything else that is decided at a scale beyond those she has experienced. She's bright, but not bright enough not to be a fundamentalist Christian.

And McCain didn't want her. He only met her once, and they didn't vet her much at all. He wanted Lieberman (there's your "bipartisan" choice, and wouldn't I have loved to see that). But his people convinced him that they had to reassure the Jesus nuts, and that they could get a slice of Hillary's votes if they went with a woman. Instead, he's got a credibility nightmare, the stink of desperation sweat coming on, his national security supporters are looking at this woman and trying to imagine her in charge of the armed forces of the United States, the woman gambit isn't working, and the party's only getting started.

All that said, experience, intelligence, and working well with others is really secondary when you consider how far apart the two tickets are on their positions. No Clinton Democrat will be swayed by Sarah Palin. McCain has made some reckless statements on Russia and Iran, and his gas tax holiday nonsense demonstrates his lack of expertise on energy policy. Obama is betting that the country is so fed up with Republican leadership in the last eight years that they will elect a Democrat, no matter how progressive. That is a big risk, at least as big as McCain picking the first-term governor of Alaska as VP.

~ Neshamah

I guess one out of four is...well, somewhat better. Here, you're right. But it gets better: there is a significant amount of grumbling coming from the Christian right about how Sarah Palin belongs in the home taking care of her children instead of being in office. And the idea of a woman being in charge gives a lot of them the willies.

What this comes down to is proof positive that John McCain is 1) an opportunist who will sacrifice any principle for political advantage; 2) convinced that, barring something dramatic, he's going to lose; and 3) so incompetent a manager and so poor of judgment that he shouldn't even be allowed into the White House on a guided tour. And that, by contrast, Barack Obama is a very strong strategist, has a deep analysis of the decisions he has to make before he makes them, understands the electoral map and the demographics he needs to reach in a way that McCain and his people clearly do not, and is the odds on favorite to win in November.

Mark

Sonomamark

08-31-2008, 10:39 PM

See my response to nurturetruth, below. This is NOT a help to McCain. In fact, it's probably the deathblow to his campaign, I'm happy to say.

This race is not close. If you're looking at national tracking polls, you're not seeing the real race, which is state by state, with the goal 270 electoral votes. Obama is well ahead when you look at it that way: check out the best polls analysis on the web, at www.fivethirtyeight.com (https://www.fivethirtyeight.com). When you look at the map and the key demographics in the battleground states, Barack Obama has done himself a world of good with the Biden pick, and McCain, pandering to the Christian right, has shot himself in the foot.

BTW: the gambit for women isn't working. The early polls on the Palin choice show women are more skeptical of it than are men. And did you really imagine that there is a big pile of Hillary voters out there who will support a woman who is anti-choice and anti-contraception? Why would they ever have supported Hillary?

Oh, and...what rift within the Democratic Party? Much as the media have tried to create this myth, the numbers don't bear it out: Obama is beating McCain among women by 12 points. People I know who were at the convention describe reporters desperately trying to find disgruntled Hillary supporters so they could do stories on "the rift", but there were only about a dozen such people at the whole convention.

McCain just gave his campaign for the White House a huge psychological boost. McCain isn't trailing Obama by much and this could give him victory. Many Clinton voters who were disappointed with Obama's victory in the primaries were already going to vote for McCain and this will draw in many more of those thousands or hundreds of thousands of voters to his candidacy in November. Maybe a million or more, which would hand McCain the Oval Office.

And the nasty attitudes virulently expressed by Obama supporters against Clinton supporters only succeeded in alienating and angering them, forcing the Clintons to make repeated pleas to Hillary's former base to vote for Obama. Meanwhile, those pleas are falling on the deaf ears of many Clinton voters who have been offended and insulted by the Obama electorate. Those are the folks that McCain is harvesting with Sarah Palin as his running mate. If McCain wins, that responsibility will fall squarely on the shoulders of Obama voters.

At the psychological level, McCain is saying, "Hey gang, here is the Republican Hillary. If you wanted a woman badly enough to be so high in public office then here's your chance. Just vote for me and you'll have the first woman VP in US history."

McCain just might clinch the presidency with this astute move, which simultaneously takes advantage of the internal rift within the Democratic electorate.

Mike

mykil

08-31-2008, 10:42 PM

Braggi

08-31-2008, 10:56 PM

I really hate to say this but… In the words of The Joker on the first of the BATMAN flicks “WEVE BEEN SET UP HERE BOYZ”. I new this from the get goes and is tired of keeping it in. A black man or a woman in our last hour and extreme time of need. ...

Mykil, what the Hel are you talking about?

-Jeff

Sonomamark

08-31-2008, 11:40 PM

What he appears to be saying, in his studiedly illiterate hipsterese, is what I was saying 18 months ago: given that this election is for all the marbles, and if we lose the Supreme Court flips and the US becomes a banana republic, how on earth is it that the Democratic Party's top candidates are a black man and one of the most hated women in the country?

Then, it was a fair question. But it isn't, any more. It turns out that Barack Obama is the kind of leader we haven't seen since the assassinations of the 1960s--I have never seen one with this combination of judgment, charisma, vision, depth of analysis, gravitas and ability to inspire people to believe. We're not used to that kind of leader, because we haven't had one in a generation. But now we do, and it trumps some of the usual considerations.

I have to say that in my opinion, the critique would have been valid if Clinton had secured the nomination. She STILL has 49% negatives. I don't think she could have beaten McCain.

Mykil, what the Hel are you talking about?

-Jeff

Dixon

09-01-2008, 12:22 AM

I don't understand all this talk about who will win the "election", as if people believe that something unusual like democracy will happen. Why in the world wouldn't the Repubs steal the "election" again like they did the last two Presidential "elections"? Those thefts benefited them immensely, and none of them had to go to jail or anything, in spite of the blatancy of the crimes. And "our" country has essentially ignored the issue, certainly not resolving the problems to any significant degree. Granted, the Demos took the Repubs by surprise and gained some ground in the last (non-Presidential) "election", but that presumably served as a wake-up call to the Repubs, who will take a Presidential "election" more seriously anyway. (And anyway, the Demos' gaining some ground has not stopped either the carnage or the corruption, of course).

So, my prediction: The Repubs will again "win" this one through the same blatant and widespread measures as the last two ripoffs.

Secondary prediction: If the Demos do win, we'll still be at war for as long as it remains more profitable than troublesome for our ruling class, and "our" government will still be fundamentally corrupt, and continue to pursue its blatant agenda of world domination at any cost.

Anyone wanna help polish up the guillotine blades?

Cheers!

Dixon

Sonomamark

09-01-2008, 12:58 AM

Dixon, my friend, it's all very hip and cool to be a cynic, but I don't see any indication that you're right about this.

On your first point, the way the elections were stolen the last (two, in my opinion) times can't really work this time. For one thing, Blackwell is gone in Ohio, and Jeb in Florida. For another, Obama's margins are going to be too large to disappear. They'll do everything they can, but I don't believe it will be enough.

Most importantly, they can't do it in enough places. In 2004, everyone knew that Ohio was going to be the key. This year, McCain is behind in formerly red states like Virginia, Montana, Colorado, Nevada and Indiana as well as in Ohio and Florida. If he can't hold most of those states, he can't win, and many of those states have Democratic officials overseeing the elections.

As to the Grand Conspiracy part of your post, I don't buy it. I believe the Democratic ticket genuinely wants to implement the policies they are talking about. Whether or not you believe it, a lot of people who run for office do so to make things better, and they will stand up to powerful interests on things they care enough about. I count several of these officials among my friends, and I'm telling you: it's true. Just because we've had 16 years of corporate-caving Clintons and kleptocratic Visigoths doesn't mean that that's the only way things can be. You think corporate interests liked it when Social Security was created, or the income tax, or the Clean Water Act? No, they didn't, but they were created anyway.

So enough with the hip cynicism already. It's tired, and it's not what our country needs now.

I don't understand all this talk about who will win the "election", as if people believe that something unusual like democracy will happen. Why in the world wouldn't the Repubs steal the "election" again like they did the last two Presidential "elections"? Those thefts benefited them immensely, and none of them had to go to jail or anything, in spite of the blatancy of the crimes. And "our" country has essentially ignored the issue, certainly not resolving the problems to any significant degree. Granted, the Demos took the Repubs by surprise and gained some ground in the last (non-Presidential) "election", but that presumably served as a wake-up call to the Repubs, who will take a Presidential "election" more seriously anyway. (And anyway, the Demos' gaining some ground has not stopped either the carnage or the corruption, of course).

So, my prediction: The Repubs will again "win" this one through the same blatant and widespread measures as the last two ripoffs.

Secondary prediction: If the Demos do win, we'll still be at war for as long as it remains more profitable than troublesome for our ruling class, and "our" government will still be fundamentally corrupt, and continue to pursue its blatant agenda of world domination at any cost.

Anyone wanna help polish up the guillotine blades?

Cheers!

Dixon

mykil

09-01-2008, 09:45 AM

Mike Peterson

09-01-2008, 10:25 AM

By golly, Mark, I certainly hope you're right. I would really feel a lot happier if I knew that Obama was going to win for sure (and I would still go to the polls to vote, of course). Maybe it's a strategy to get people's rear-ends in gear and get out the vote in November to avoid a McCain presidency, I don't know. But I certainly hope you're right about the polls and Obama being way ahead.

Regarding the internal rift within the Democratic Party electorate, it's definitely there and here is a quote from you earlier this year:

Yes, because he knows he's won, and she's keeping her powder dry for 2012 and doing her best to undermine his chances this year while trying to look like she's not doing so.

Hillary is NOT going to be the VP nominee. She brings far too many liabilities to Obama's campaign--she has the highest perceived negatives of any major candidate ever to do as well as she has in a primary. 48% of the country says it wouldn't vote for her in any circumstances--that's not fair, but it's a fact. Obama needs someone who will add military and foreign policy experience to the ticket, and/or someone who helps make a key swing state competitive (like, say, Gov. Ted Strickland of Ohio).

Hillary is staying in because she wants Obama to lose, so she can run in 2012. There is no other reason for her to be in. It's a stubborn, selfish, short-sighted thing to do, and it confirms everything I have previously believed about the Clintons' self-importance and their willingness to throw the values they claim to stand for under the bus to advance their personal ambitions. Remember welfare "reform"? Bill Clinton created more homelessness than any President since Reagan, all so he could steal an issue from the Republicans and make himself look good.

Hillary Clinton is a smart, capable, ruthless, self-involved woman who is about herself first and anything else second. She will never be President of the United States, and I'm happy for it.

Mark
See my response to nurturetruth, below. This is NOT a help to McCain. In fact, it's probably the deathblow to his campaign, I'm happy to say.

This race is not close. If you're looking at national tracking polls, you're not seeing the real race, which is state by state, with the goal 270 electoral votes. Obama is well ahead when you look at it that way: check out the best polls analysis on the web, at www.fivethirtyeight.com (https://www.fivethirtyeight.com). When you look at the map and the key demographics in the battleground states, Barack Obama has done himself a world of good with the Biden pick, and McCain, pandering to the Christian right, has shot himself in the foot.

BTW: the gambit for women isn't working. The early polls on the Palin choice show women are more skeptical of it than are men. And did you really imagine that there is a big pile of Hillary voters out there who will support a woman who is anti-choice and anti-contraception? Why would they ever have supported Hillary?

Oh, and...what rift within the Democratic Party? Much as the media have tried to create this myth, the numbers don't bear it out: Obama is beating McCain among women by 12 points. People I know who were at the convention describe reporters desperately trying to find disgruntled Hillary supporters so they could do stories on "the rift", but there were only about a dozen such people at the whole convention.

Sonomamark

09-01-2008, 11:57 AM

Mike, thanks for tracking my narrative!

That quote was from the time before Hillary faced reality (and took control of Mark Penn, who was all for going as nasty as possible). She now has done so, and all but a tiny group of her supporters who would otherwise have supported McCain anyway have gone to Obama. Remember, the Clintons are centrist Dems, they are not progressives, so some of their voters are pretty conservative. Remember welfare "reform"? To gain the upper hand on Gingrich, Bill basically threw the nation's poorest under the bus. Hillary ran more to the left because that's what you do in a Dem primary and especially in a year like this, but on issues like NAFTA and accepting PAC and lobbyist money, she remained firm in allegiance to the Beltway power structure.

Things are different now. Unless she and her husband go all out to get Obama elected, she'll never have standing to run again herself again. She's not going to torpedo him--it'll be the end of her political career. That was clearly signaled at the convention and the numbers appear to show that it has worked. Nothing ever works 100%, but when polls show that McCain's numbers are HURT with women by picking anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti equal-pay, anti-sex-education Palin (what a surprise), things are playing out nicely.

Honestly, it's so insulting to women, what they've done. Basically, they're betting that putting someone on the ticket who is hostile to women's issues will be trumped by her having two X chromosomes. It's a reflection of McCain's deep misogyny. He's been using women all his life, and he's doing it again.

I'm all for getting people activated, and maybe enough people will be worried by the Palin pick to energize Obama's volunteer base even further. But there are so many reasons this election MUST go Obama's way, I can hardly imagine anyone needs a reason at this point.

Mark

By golly, Mark, I certainly hope you're right. I would really feel a lot happier if I knew that Obama was going to win for sure (and I would still go to the polls to vote, of course). Maybe it's a strategy to get people's rear-ends in gear and get out the vote in November to avoid a McCain presidency, I don't know. But I certainly hope you're right about the polls and Obama being way ahead.

Regarding the internal rift within the Democratic Party electorate, it's definitely there and here is a quote from you earlier this year:

Sonomamark

09-01-2008, 12:14 PM

You know, this was my take, 20 months ago. I felt the same. But what I had not factored in was 1) that I'm just really pretty cynical about people in the conservative parts of this country; and 2) that it is possible to be a leader of such charisma, gravitas, vision and organizational skill that such prejudices can be overcome, in a moment when the issues facing the nation are so portentous that people have more important considerations than race.

Barack Obama wouldn't have beaten Hillary Clinton in IOWA--or be beating McCain in Iowa RIGHT NOW--if your model here wasn't inaccurate.

Things change. Progress can happen. Things that were unthinkable are now obvious. And Barack Obama is a very rare creature--because of his background, he's doesn't carry the prejudicial burden that most African-Americans do. He doesn't sound like he comes from the inner city. So much about his story triggers internal narratives about the rise of the disadvantaged through hard work, discipline, a solid family and personal merit that it outpoints the skin-color fear for many people. It's not fair, because there are thousands of AAs who are every bit as impressive but would not be considered for the vote of fearful whites. But someone has to open the door, and it's usually someone who is less like what is feared. It's Harvey Milk or Barney Frank, not Sister Boom Boom.

None of which is to in any way discount his extraordinary capacities. Because in my opinion--and I was very, very skeptical--this guy is the real deal. He's not in this for his ego or to shovel money at his cronies, but rather to try to heal the tremendous damage that has been done to this country, and he has the judgment, the toughness and the kindness of spirit to succeed in doing that.

So I AM keeping the faith, and will, because, well, what's my choice? If McCain wins, the last vestiges of Constitutional guarantees (other than owning guns) will go into the shredder, and we will become like a banana republic: a surveillance-and-informer-based police state with a small number of fabulously wealthy and everyone else a peasant. The United States of America will be over.

Thank the stars Stevens and Ginsburg held on through Bush's second term, or we'd be there already.

Mark

 Mark; I really wish you are right. I was reading your new post. I wish I was this delusional!!! I really wish the mid-west did not judge a man by the color of there skin [hell even a large majority of the folks around here for that matter]! Or that having a woman president was all that bad! But this is not the rest of the world reality. The fact is that even having a vice pres for woman will get way more of our votes than anyone is really willing to anticipate, in my opinion! Let’s see, you are raised in the mid-west. Predominantly white. You are raised to be a racist, you know like 99 percent of the folks around those areas. Southern boyz, you tell me they aren’t a little radical when it comes to this whole ordeal? Hell half of your 270 electors are card carrying… I won’t go that far but… Keep a stiff upper lip Mark, pray for a miracle, and keep the faith!

Mike Peterson

09-01-2008, 12:29 PM

We're on the same page, Mark. I just don't agree with your estimation of the content of Clinton's character, which is very negative. But that's OK because it's a moot point. What we need to do now is get Obama elected president. That's whats important. As a former Clinton supporter, I'm very happy to do this.

Just out of curiosity, if Clinton had won the primary against Obama, whom would have you supported?

Mike

Mike, thanks for tracking my narrative!

That quote was from the time before Hillary faced reality (and took control of Mark Penn, who was all for going as nasty as possible). She now has done so, and all but a tiny group of her supporters who would otherwise have supported McCain anyway have gone to Obama. Remember, the Clintons are centrist Dems, they are not progressives, so some of their voters are pretty conservative. Remember welfare "reform"? To gain the upper hand on Gingrich, Bill basically threw the nation's poorest under the bus. Hillary ran more to the left because that's what you do in a Dem primary and especially in a year like this, but on issues like NAFTA and accepting PAC and lobbyist money, she remained firm in allegiance to the Beltway power structure.

Things are different now. Unless she and her husband go all out to get Obama elected, she'll never have standing to run again herself again. She's not going to torpedo him--it'll be the end of her political career. That was clearly signaled at the convention and the numbers appear to show that it has worked. Nothing ever works 100%, but when polls show that McCain's numbers are HURT with women by picking anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti equal-pay, anti-sex-education Palin (what a surprise), things are playing out nicely.

Honestly, it's so insulting to women, what they've done. Basically, they're betting that putting someone on the ticket who is hostile to women's issues will be trumped by her having two X chromosomes. It's a reflection of McCain's deep misogyny. He's been using women all his life, and he's doing it again.

I'm all for getting people activated, and maybe enough people will be worried by the Palin pick to energize Obama's volunteer base even further. But there are so many reasons this election MUST go Obama's way, I can hardly imagine anyone needs a reason at this point.

Mark

Barry

09-01-2008, 12:47 PM

...kleptocratic Visigoths... I love it!

Sonomamark

09-01-2008, 01:14 PM

I would have supported her, of course. But I believe she would have lost.

If you read up on the Clintons, going all the way back to Arkansas, a common thread of what you will find there is simple ruthlessness--a commitment to political success first and policies as they fit. It isn't that they don't believe in the causes they articulate; it's that if necessary, they'll abandon them in order--as they would see it, I suspect--to be in position to fight another day. In other words, they conflate they advancement of themselves with the causes they associate themselves with, and will consistently choose the former over the latter.

I believe that Hillary Clinton believes she really stands for the things she talks about. But I think she's self-deluded to some degree, because of this upside-down prioritization. I don't have any confidence that she would really stand up to the insurance industry on health care, for instance, because the political cost to her would be too great. She can talk about it during a campaign, but once you've won, in the world of politicians like the Clintons, the top priority is winning the next campaign, and only secondarily doing what you said you would last time.

Now, that being said, the loathing that the right-wing media has inspired for her since the 1990s is undeserved. She is the victim of a hatchet job which has inflated kernels of disturbing truth into a caricature. It's not fair, but it's also deadly: with negatives steadily around 50%, she can't win a national election. That's the primary reason she couldn't be VP (the other one being the Bill Problem).

I was thoroughly offended, too, by the anointed quality of the Clinton campaign going into the Iowa caucuses. When she lost Iowa, the tone that came from her campaign read as annoyance at the impertinence of those who had challenged the throne. In her world, they had it sewn up: all the Beltway insiders and PACs had signed on, the state political structures likewise, more or less, and the idea that the little people had a different idea seemed offensive to them. I have to say that that really annoyed me.

Meanwhile, Obama's campaign was flying in the face of all conventional wisdom. They were campaigning in states which, in the eyes of Those Who Know, you're supposed to abandon to the Republicans. They were raising money from ordinary people using that InterTube thingy. They were refusing to rise to the bait of provocation, maintaining an adult and even-tempered tone, galvanizing young people in droves (people who "don't care and don't vote", if you'd ask Mark Penn), using new technological tools and strategies to stretch their campaign dollars in the early days before their fundraising machine caught fire, and going back to a person-to-person grassroots organizing model that has turned into the single greatest campaign machine this country has ever seen, drawing on the best of old and new technologies to touch voters personally, not just through 30-second spots.

All of that is close to my heart. I believe in grassroots organizing. Doing, strategizing and managing that kind of person-to-person voter mobilization was my work for 13 years of my life, both at the CA League of Conservation Voters and Sonoma County Conservation Action.

And the reaction of the political ruling class made it that much sweeter. How DARE this guy be winning when we're not only not supporting him, he won't even take our money?

So for me, it isn't just Obama, although I am deeply grateful that someone of his capacities came along, because John McCain would have been elected otherwise. It's about the model that Obama insisted on: we're going to compete everywhere, we're going to reengage ordinary people and register a lot of people to vote, we're going to take the high road and avoid drama, and we're going to do it in a way that feels good, that's fun for all involved and inspires, rather than provokes fear or division.

That's the American politics I've longed for all my life. It is the antithesis of Karl Rove's politics. Hillary's people stuck with conventional wisdom because it was what they knew, and it was safe. It was also stuck in a model that's just awful for our country. Obama's started with a blank sheet of paper, a vision, and a deep structural understanding of how the electoral system works, found people who knew how to adapt today's technology to that system, and using all that, turned the conventional politics of the day on its head.

Long answer, but: sure, I would have voted for Hillary. And then I would have had a long, miserable night on Nov. 4, watching my country drive into a ditch it would never get out of. Fortunately, now there is hope that that will be averted.

MG

We're on the same page, Mark. I just don't agree with your estimation of the content of Clinton's character, which is very negative. But that's OK because it's a moot point. What we need to do now is get Obama elected president. That's whats important. As a former Clinton supporter, I'm very happy to do this.

Just out of curiosity, if Clinton had won the primary against Obama, whom would have you supported?

Mike

Valley Oak

09-01-2008, 01:32 PM

Supercool response, Mark, as always.

So what do we do now? Are you involved with the local Democratic Party to campaign for Obama? Or do you have another strategy or are you involved at all with efforts to elect Obama? If so, I'm interested.

Please let me know,

Edward

I would have supported her, of course. But I believe she would have lost.

...Meanwhile, Obama's campaign was flying in the face of all conventional wisdom. They were campaigning in states which, in the eyes of Those Who Know, you're supposed to abandon to the Republicans. They were raising money from ordinary people using that InterTube thingy. They were refusing to rise to the bait of provocation, maintaining an adult and even-tempered tone, galvanizing young people in droves (people who "don't care and don't vote", if you'd ask Mark Penn), using new technological tools and strategies to stretch their campaign dollars in the early days before their fundraising machine caught fire, and going back to a person-to-person grassroots organizing model that has turned into the single greatest campaign machine this country has ever seen, drawing on the best of old and new technologies to touch voters personally, not just through 30-second spots.

All of that is close to my heart. I believe in grassroots organizing. Doing, strategizing and managing that kind of person-to-person voter mobilization was my work for 13 years of my life, both at the CA League of Conservation Voters and Sonoma County Conservation Action.

...So for me, it isn't just Obama, although I am deeply grateful that someone of his capacities came along, because John McCain would have been elected otherwise. It's about the model that Obama insisted on: we're going to compete everywhere, we're going to reengage ordinary people and register a lot of people to vote, we're going to take the high road and avoid drama, and we're going to do it in a way that feels good, that's fun for all involved and inspires, rather than provokes fear or division.

That's the American politics I've longed for all my life. It is the antithesis of Karl Rove's politics. Hillary's people stuck with conventional wisdom because it was what they knew, and it was safe. It was also stuck in a model that's just awful for our country. Obama's started with a blank sheet of paper, a vision, and a deep structural understanding of how the electoral system works, found people who knew how to adapt today's technology to that system, and using all that, turned the conventional politics of the day on its head.

Long answer, but: sure, I would have voted for Hillary. And then I would have had a long, miserable night on Nov. 4, watching my country drive into a ditch it would never get out of. Fortunately, now there is hope that that will be averted.

MG

Sonomamark

09-01-2008, 01:45 PM

Hey, Edward!

Actually, I'm putting what little time I have this fall into helping with some local races (right now, my brain is being eaten by organizing the Laguna Foundation's big annual fundraiser, the Laguna Art and Garden Gala, on Sept. 14. Best party of the year! Tickets at www.lagunafoundation.org (https://www.lagunafoundation.org)).

But my advice is: call the Obama campaign and see what you can do to help. He's going to carry California, no problem, so the best way to help--other than to give money, of course--is by phonebanking. One of the Obama campaign innovations--especially early on, when they didn't have much money--was in recognizing many of their volunteers have national cell phone plans (a lot of them with unlimited minutes). So they set up ways for people to use their own phones to call targeted undecided voters in other states.

Call 'em and find out what they need. They'll find a use for you, I'm sure.

M

Supercool response, Mark, as always.

So what do we do now? Are you involved with the local Democratic Party to campaign for Obama? Or do you have another strategy or are you involved at all involved with efforts to elect Obama? If so, I'm interested.

Please let me know,

Edward

Neshamah

09-01-2008, 03:51 PM

Mark,

Attacks on McCain/Palin need to focus on positions. Palin in particular often wins by being underestimated.

All candidates run campaigns. In terms of relevant executive experience, Palin's still trumps the three senators. She resigned as chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in protest over unethical behavior by fellow Republicans. As governor (she beat four Republicans, not just Murkowski,) she helped raise taxes on oil companies. A lot of Republicans in Alaska don't like her exactly because she took on the Republican leadership. Whether it be attacks from party leadership (against Palin) or just a general lack of rank and file enthusiasm (for McCain,) there are political costs for opposing your party's establishment. That is a good sign for the country.

A vice presidential pick is not about name recognition or celebrity. Strickland and Sibellius are moderate executives who can reach out to the center. Biden brings foreign policy experience but no executive experience besides running campaigns, and he is a virtual clone of Obama on the positions. Obama is depending on liberal Democrats with only his charisma to bridge the gap. This ought to be a Democratic landslide, but the Democratic party seems to be taking victory for granted.

McCain on the other hand has established his (barely) moderate credentials and must instead reach out to the Republican base. Palin is radically conservative, but aside from the far left and the far right, a candidate's position on abortion or gay marriage is not going to decide votes. (I like Joe Lieberman, but to most Democrats he might as well be Dick Cheney. He would lose McCain his Republican support which is already unenthusiastic as it is due to McCain's repeated (and correct) departures from GOP leadership.)

The McCain campaign knows what it is doing by picking Palin. Her insufficient experience highlight's Obama's (except that she is not at the top of the ticket,) and her ordinary background contrasts with the perceived elitism of the three senators.

~ Neshamah

theindependenteye

09-01-2008, 04:04 PM

Several thoughts—

>>Palin's mere 19 months as governor still gives her more executive experience than McCain, Biden, and Obama combined.

I believe Mark addressed this effectively. Obama's campaign has been a model of skill and efficiency. If this is entirely due to the people he appointed, then that attests to a vital executive ability. I would add that the governorship of Alaska probably offers no more challenging executive responsibilities than does running a US Senate office.

>>She brings a great deal of expertise on energy.

This is news to me. Other than listening to energy lobbyists, what are her claims to expertise?

>>Diversity is more than just gender or skin color. Instead of picking a like-minded senator, Obama should have picked a moderate governor like Ted Strickland or Kathleen Sebelius.

Personally, I don't see that "diversity" in the Pres/VP duo has anything to do with the quality of the team. The JFK/Lyndon Johnson team would certainly qualify as diverse, but it hardly improved JFK's performance as President. It did, however, help him get elected.

>>McCain picked an ordinary woman who took on the Republican establishment in Alaska and won.

I shake my head in wonder that the Republicans trumpet her maverick independence for doing what her job on the ethics board was intended to do: enforce ethics. Has it become such an anomaly in Republican politics that one of their crowd does at least *one* ethical act that it thereby qualifies as evidence of her courageous, selfless patriotism?

Cheers—
Conrad

Mike Peterson

09-01-2008, 04:41 PM

Uh, excuse me, Neshamah, but could you please re-think this statement of yours, below? Abortion is a major issue. Are you trying to say something along the lines that swing voters don't care about something as serious as abortion? Or...?

Just one of the things I see, for example, is that it is suicidal for a Democratic candidate to not support a woman's right to have an abortion. But how about McCain? Are you saying that McCain's position on abortion is irrelevant to his victory or defeat? Please explain.

Thanks,

Mike

...Palin is radically conservative, but aside from the far left and the far right, a candidate's position on abortion or gay marriage is not going to decide votes.

~ Neshamah

Barry

09-01-2008, 08:16 PM

I think it's just great that pro-life is a (so-far) required position for the right, since they have cultured the evangelical and other far right aspects of their party, being that I'm pretty sure its a non-starter for the electorate in general. I see it as a right suicide-pill! I can't wait for McCain to clearly embrace pro-life!

Mike Peterson

09-01-2008, 08:44 PM

Astute observation. The abortion issue could become a permanent poison pill within the Republican Party, escorting consecutive Democratic candidates to the presidency for decades to come. Although this is a best case scenario, it would be interesting to see how the abortion issue begins to pay huge dividends to the party that has always defended a woman's right to have an abortion.

Republican presidents since Nixon have enjoyed a luxury they don't deserve by getting away with skirting the abortion debate and being on the wrong side of it, essentially prostituting themselves to the Christian right for their votes (without which there is no way they can reach the White House) but taking their wives and daughters secretly to get abortions (e.g. representative Bob Barr, etc, etc, etc).

This kind of gross hypocrisy is typical of Republicans, Libertarians, and other reactionaries in general. They put on a public face to play whatever game necessary to clinch wealth and power at any cost and at anyone's expense. The anti-abortion position will leave the Republican party divided and small. We will see the wealthy conservatives alone with a large number of Christian demagogues with whom no one wants to associate with, much less vote into power. The only group willing to stick it out with those two are the extreme right wing ultra patriots/nationalists.

Perhaps, from now, the Republicans will be haunted with the same choice every four years between swallowing the bitter pill of supporting abortions rights (which will leave the party split down the middle and unable to reach power) or the poison pill of maintaining an anti-abortion stance and never winning the presidency because of a lack of majority votes from the greater electorate.

Mike

I think it's just great that pro-life is a (so-far) required position for the right, since they have cultured the evangelical and other far right aspects of their party, being that I'm pretty sure its a non-starter for the electorate in general. I see it as a right suicide-pill! I can't wait for McCain to clearly embrace pro-life!

Zeno Swijtink

09-01-2008, 08:51 PM

Mike Peterson

09-01-2008, 09:00 PM

It is impossible to reach the Green Party idea of politics beyond left/right without the concept of proportional representation and a multi-party system that Valley Oak has been harping on since I came onto this board.

Mike

What happened with the Green Party idea of a politics beyond left/right??

Barry

09-01-2008, 09:23 PM

What happened with the Green Party idea of a politics beyond left/right??I think there is always going to be a difference. My sense is the end points of the rift zone are, in the most fundamental/base form Anal vs Oral ,and in the more subtle realms, form vs freedom.

Dixon

09-02-2008, 12:22 AM

Dixon, my friend, it's all very hip and cool to be a cynic...

Aren't perspectives funny? Apparently, vis-a-vis this issue anyway, my realism is your cynicism, and your realism is my naivete.

On your first point, the way the elections were stolen the last (two, in my opinion) times can't really work this time. For one thing, Blackwell is gone in Ohio, and Jeb in Florida...Most importantly, they can't do it in enough places...

I certainly hope you're right (though I'm not as optimistic re: how much lesser an evil the Demos would be than the Repubs), but I think you underestimate the number and variety of election-subversion tactics and the wide geographical range wherein they were/will be employed. A detailed perusal of https://www.blackboxvoting.org/ would be a good start by way of reality orientation.

As to the Grand Conspiracy part of your post, I don't buy it.

I'm not sure I'm talking about a Grand Conspiracy (to use your sarcastic term) so much as a looser "community of common (self-)interest".

I believe the Democratic ticket genuinely wants to implement the policies they are talking about.

If so, the two men who make up the Democratic ticket must be waaaay different than most of their fellow Dems, who got elected 2 years ago based largely on their talk about ending the wars and addressing government corruption, and since then have steadfastly refused to implement either to any substantial degree.

Whether or not you believe it, a lot of people who run for office do so to make things better, and they will stand up to powerful interests on things they care enough about...

I do believe that; folks like Barbara Lee, Cynthia McKinney and Dennis Kucinich come to mind. But mostly the progressives are at local levels in demographically progressive areas. Nationally, where power is magnified and trillions of dollars are at stake, we, like most countries, are fundamentally corrupt. Our society is structured so that those rare progressives who make it to the halls of Congress are hamstrung, and anyone selected by "the process" to have a real crack at the Presidency is "progressive" only in comparison to the gibbering, slime-dripping norm that most citizens have become inured to.

Because of that, I can't claim much specific knowledge re: the purported policies of the candidates, as following the cynical dog-and-pony shows called "elections" (at the national level, at least) makes about as much sense to me as getting all excited about the prospect of getting ass-raped by a syphilitic donkey as opposed to a demented elephant, and comparing the corporate-approved candidates (including your faves) is as thrilling as perusing the color plates in a medical book and choosing between leprosy and jungle rot.

So I must plead near-total ignorance re: the specifics of these guys, but I know Biden voted for the Iraq War, which in and of itself renders him inacceptable for any position of responsibility. Re: Obama--I've heard him praising "the troops" (i.e., those war criminals who are, even as we speak, committing mass murder for corporate profit and political advantage). And I've heard him using the term "terrorists" in the corporately-approved, nationalistic manner (i.e., the term can only refer to those who oppose the US government, and never to the horrible things the US does). Admittedly, those are very small behavioral samples, but I hope you can get a sense of why I'm "cynical".

It will be really, really nice, Mark, if Obama pleasantly surprises me, but I'm continually reminded of the starry-eyed optimism of my liberal friends who rhapsodized about how great things would be under Clinton and then conveniently ignored most of his (and Hilary's) corruption and planet-rape.

Just because we've had 16 years of corporate-caving Clintons and kleptocratic Visigoths...

Gee, Mark, if you're trying to shrink down USAmerican corruption to the last 16 years, you're more starry-eyed than I thought. Try 500 years or so. From Columbus's torture, rape, enslaving and murder of the Indians, through genocide and slavery and lynchings to the wars of aggression and the idolatry of greed and global antidemocracy and support of friendly murdering dictators for profit and rampant wild-eyed grasping drooling planet-raping consumerism of today, what we're facing (what we ARE) is waaaay too deep and dark to be effectively addressed by electing one corporate-approved "good cop" after another. Remember, if voting could change the system, it would be illegal.

...doesn't mean that that's the only way things can be.

Yeah, I'm holding out hope for more radical change than could be expected from electing either Tweedledum or Tweedledee yet again, but it will likely take a looooong time. People tend to forget that real social change often takes centuries and, our human nature being what it is, there will probably always be plenty of corruption and brutality. I'm just hoping for less of it than either the Dems or Repubs are likely to give.

You think corporate interests liked it when Social Security was created, or the income tax, or the Clean Water Act? No, they didn't, but they were created anyway.

Yeah, yeah, we're not the worst of all possible worlds; you can always find some good things to point out. I've never said otherwise.

So enough with the hip cynicism already. It's tired, and it's not what our country needs now.

Mark, this is the second time in one email you've made needlessly negative assumptions about my motivation for being "cynical". I thought you knew me well enough to know that I'm not immature enough to base a social/political stance on what's "hip" or "cool"--in fact, I've never been that shallow. Do I really deserve to be insulted by your snide remarks? I know that my insistence on pointing out our national darkness can be disturbing--I'm plenty disturbed by this shit myself--but if your response to my arguments is a thinly veiled ad hominem attack, perhaps you oughta take a look at your emotional response.

But don't worry; I still love you. That's just the kinda hip, cool cynic I am.

:^) Dixon

Dixon

09-02-2008, 12:25 AM

...My sense is the end points of the rift zone are, in the most fundamental/base form Anal vs Oral ,and in the more subtle realms, form vs freedom.

Gawd, I LOVE it when you talk like that!

Dixon

Dixon

09-02-2008, 01:01 AM

...I just don't agree with your estimation of the content of Clinton's character, which is very negative...

I wish people who are progressive, or at least liberal, would get it through their heads what a cynical political hack Hillary is. Her foreign policy positions are closer to George Bush than nearly any leading Democrat's--maybe even worse in some ways. Check this out (and notice the reference to Joe Biden in the last sentence of the article!):

Issue Date: March 3, 2007

Hillary Clinton's Hawkish Record

By STEPHEN ZUNES

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has already assumed front-runner status for the Democratic Party nomination for president despite a foreign policy agenda that closely parallels that of the Bush administration.

Since most of the public criticism of the former first lady has been based
on false and exaggerated charges from the right wing, often with a fair dose of sexism, many Democrats have become defensive and reluctant to criticize her. Some liberals end up believing conservative charges that she is on the left wing of the Democratic Party when in reality her foreign policy positions are far closer to Ronald Reagan than George McGovern.

For example, she opposes the international treaty to ban land mines.

She voted against the Feinstein-Leahy amendment last September restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas.

She opposes restrictions on U.S. arms transfers and police training to governments that engage in gross and systematic human rights abuses, such as Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Israel, Pakistan, Cameroon and Chad, to name only a few.

She insists upon continuing unconditional funding for the Iraq war and has called for dramatic increases in Bush's already bloated military budget.

She has challenged the credibility of Amnesty International and other human rights groups that criticize policies of the United States and its
allies.

Mrs. Clinton has been one of the Senate's most outspoken critics of the United Nations, even serving as the featured speaker at rallies outside U.N. headquarters in July 2004 and last summer to denounce the world body.

She voted to authorize the U.S. invasion of Iraq despite its being a clear
violation of the U.N. Charter and in July 2004 falsely accused the United
Nations of not taking a stand against terrorism when it has opposed U.S.
policy.

She was one of the most prominent critics of the International Court of Justice for its landmark 2004 advisory ruling that the Fourth Geneva
Convention on the Laws of War is legally binding on all signatory nations.

She condemned the United Nations' judicial arm for challenging the legality
of Israel's separation barrier in the occupied West Bank and sponsored a
Senate resolution "urging no further action by the United Nations to delay
or prevent the construction of the security fence."

Mrs. Clinton has shown little regard for the danger from proliferation of
nuclear weapons, not only opposing the enforcement of U.N. Security Council resolutions challenging Pakistan, Israel and India's nuclear weapons
programs but supporting the delivery of nuclear-capable missiles and jet
fighters to these countries. This past fall she voted to suspend important
restrictions on U.S. nuclear cooperation with countries that violate the
Non-Proliferation Treaty.

At the same time, she insists that the prospect of Iran's developing nuclear
weapons "must be unacceptable to the entire world," since challenging the
nuclear monopoly of the United States and its allies in the region would
somehow "shake the foundation of global security to its very core." Last
year, she accused the Bush administration of not taking the threat of a
nuclear Iran seriously enough, criticized the administration for allowing
European nations to take the lead in pursuing a diplomatic solution and
insisted that the United States should make it clear that military options
were still being actively considered.

Meanwhile, she insists that the United States should maintain the right to
use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries.

Mrs. Clinton was an outspoken supporter of Israel's massive military assault on the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip last summer, which took the lives of over 1,000 civilians. She justified it by claiming it would "send a message to Hamas, Hezbollah, to the Syrians [and] to the Iranians" because they opposed the United States and Israel's commitment to "life and freedom."

There are questions regarding her integrity.
Long after credible, well-documented published reports by American and
Israeli newspapers and research institutes had refuted it, Sen. Clinton
continued to cite a right-wing group's 1999 report claiming the Palestinian Authority was publishing anti-Semitic textbooks. Like President Bush, she is more prone to believe ideologically driven propaganda than independent investigative reporting or scholarly research.

Similarly, ignoring substantial evidence that Iraq had already rid itself of
its chemical and biological weapons and no longer had a nuclear program,
Mrs. Clinton justified her calls for a U.S. invasion of Iraq on the grounds
that "if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to
develop nuclear weapons." Even after it was discovered that Iraq no longer
had "weapons of mass destruction," Mrs. Clinton acknowledged last year that she would have voted to authorize the invasion anyway.

Should Hillary Clinton become the Democratic presidential nominee, we can expect to find little difference between her and her Republican rival.
Except for long shots Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Sen. Mike Gravel, none of the Democratic candidates have taken consistent positions supporting peace, human rights and international law. But with the possible exception of Sen. Joe Biden, Mrs. Clinton is the most hawkish Democrat in the presidential race.

Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics at the
University of San Francisco.

National Catholic Reporter, March 3, 2007

Sonomamark

09-02-2008, 07:30 PM

Aren't perspectives funny? Apparently, vis-a-vis this issue anyway, my realism is your cynicism, and your realism is my naivete.

Yeah, yeah. Cynics always call themselves "realists". What else can they do?

You know, you're a smart guy. But the analysis in this post is as thin as Sarah Palin's resume, and then you go and accuse me of ad hominem attack at the end...which is, itself, an ad hominem attack, when it's not deserved. Which, here, it isn't.

Your "evidence" that nothing will change? The 2006 election, in which Democrats took over Congress by exactly one vote. And who is that vote?

Joe Lieberman.

So, big surprise that there have been no radical changes, especially when the Executive Branch is pushing a legal theory that Congress doesn't have any power, anyway--it takes a long time to fight that fight, again and again, through the courts.

Broad-brush characterizations aside, if you actually look at what has happened since then, I'll agree that the Democrats could have been tougher, but they are not as lockstep as Reps are. In fact, most of the ones who have been there longest are so acclimated to the Beltway that they aren't as willing to stand up for any significant change.

But some interesting things happened. A new wave of progressives started getting elected, and they're not the same as the old guard. In fact, they're standing up to the milquetoast Dems like Pelosi. They don't have a majority of the party yet, by a long shot, and they sure don't have any seniority, but their voices are definitely being heard. They are changing and revitalizing the Democratic Party.

Oh, and you're wrong about the corruption issue. The ethics reform bill got passed--not perfect, but much better than before--and Conyers and Schumer have both been on multiple scandals, resulting in a lot of stonewalling and court fights over subpoenas, thus far.

The primary job of Democrats from the time of that election until now has been to tee up reasons for voters to toss the Reps, and they've done a lot of that. They've forced Republicans to do ugly things like kill SCHIP. And they've gotten the first minimum wage hike through in ten years, as well as the New GI Bill. They've stopped the authorization to drill in ANWR, too. That's not bad, given the jerk in the Oval Office.

Frankly, I'm not so impressed with the likes of Barbara Lee and certainly not Dennis Kucinich, who I find laughable. I'm more impressed with the new crew of practical progressives coming up, people like Jon Tester and Brian Schweitzer and Scott Kleeb and Darcy Burner. They're not preach-to-the-choir types, they're get-it-done types.

After this year, instead of a bare minimum control of Congress with a nakedly fascistic executive and his pet monkey running the country, there will be not only a capable and well-intentioned leader, but a national mandate for the kinds of changes he is promoting and the votes in Congress to get them approved. The Republicans will howl, but the bottom line is that after November, many of them will know that their political lives are over if they stand in the way of some of these things. Like health care reform. If you expect instant gratification in politics, you don't know the game very well.

So, yes, Dixon, because you are a smart guy who has the capacity to understand the political situation in a less cartoonish and black-and-white analysis, I call you a cynic. There is more reason to have hope going into this election than there has been since 1976. If you choose to ignore that, it's not for lack of available evidence.

And please, don't give me "500 years of awful". That's a non-sequitur. We're talking about now. And the evidence over that time, if you really want to go there, is that despite many hideous crimes, this country has nonetheless been able to advance--to expand the rights it provides its citizens, to expand its franchise, and to move toward a more enlightened view from a lesser one. This is a time when that can happen, and your post's core message was that it can't, and won't. Cynical, and unproductive.

Mark

Dixon

09-02-2008, 11:47 PM

Yeah, yeah. Cynics always call themselves "realists". What else can they do?

Well, duh--EVERYONE thinks of him/herself as a realist, LOL!

You know, you're a smart guy.

Why thank you. So are you.

But the analysis in this post is as thin as Sarah Palin's resume...

I plead guilty to that charge. My analysis is thin in the sense that it's very short on detail. It's more of an explication of my general impression of how society works, and of what that means for our near future. This lack of detail is partly due to reasons I mentioned, and also due to one of my many failings: my tendency to generalize on the basis of very little research, because I'm too lazy to do boring stuff like research.

Having copped to that particular type of "thinness" (i.e., generality instead of specificity), I must add that my analysis is no thinner than, for example, your facile dismissal of my concerns re: the breadth and depth of electoral fraud in this country. I'll cop to my thinness if you'll cop to yours.

Scanning again your argument, I'm impressed with your specific knowledge about politics. You certainly have me outclassed in that area. More importantly: I REALLY REALLY HOPE THAT YOU'RE RIGHT AND I'M WRONG ABOUT THIS STUFF! I WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO BE SHOWN WRONG ABOUT THIS! We should discuss this stuff again in about 5 years to see if the intervening events have made me more "starry-eyed" or you more "cynical". Perhaps we will meet in the middle, LOL!

...and then you go and accuse me of ad hominem attack at the end...which is, itself, an ad hominem attack, when it's not deserved. Which, here, it isn't.

I've saved this part for last, in case some Wacco readers don't care to see us thrash out a personal issue.

Mark, I don't understand how you can see publicly FALSELY accusing someone of shallow, adolescent behavior (i.e., embracing cynicism because it's "hip and cool"), based on no evidence other than your jump to needlessly negative assumptions about their internal motivations, as mature, constructive discourse.

Regardless of what you think about my cynicism (and I wouldn't necessarily dispute that label), can you concede that there's no reason in the world to believe that it's motivated by some stupid desire to be "hip" or "cool"? Taking that suspicion of yours as a hypothesis and ASKING me about my motivation for cynicism would have been fine, but publicly so labeling me on the basis of nothing more than a needlessly negative assumption is, in fact, an ad hominem attack.

Mark, you're one of my favorite people around here, and that ain't gonna change just because of a bit of insensitivity from you, but such an episode detracts a little from your otherwise stellar image as a good and articulate reasoner. Do you remember our conversation at a party about a year ago, wherein you characterized both of us as arrogant? I objected, feeling that I'm not arrogant, and being skeptical about whether you are. But, if you're one of those who has trouble saying "Oooops, I was wrong; I'm sorry", I may have to concede your point.

Dixon

Neshamah

09-03-2008, 06:29 PM

The experience bar has been set pretty low this election cycle. On experience I wish we could pick between a pair of two-term governors who also have real foreign policy experience. I am not saying Sarah Palin is even in the top 100 people in the U.S. best prepared to be President, but neither is Obama. Positions aside, Sarah Palin's qualifications are at least equivalent to Barack Obama's, and attacking her for lack of experience will backfire.

Abortion is a major issue, but it is not the only issue, and some pro-choice voters who like the McCain and Palin records of going against their own party will overlook their positions on abortion, just as many pro-life Catholics will overlook Obama's.

Rather than call attention to the experience issue, focus on her positions. She considers the rights of an unborn child with no self-awareness to be equal to that of the mother and therefore opposes abortion even in cases of rape. She is opposed to gay marriage and only allowed state benefits to gay partners because it was the law. She says creationism can be discussed in schools, and has fought to prevent polar bears from being treated as endangered, not on scientific grounds, but because such a status would interfere with oil drilling. Better yet, focus on McCain because most people don't pick Presidents based on their Vice Presidents.

~ Neshamah

Mike Peterson

09-03-2008, 06:53 PM

What happened? You used to be a staunch supporter of Ron Paul. He's still in the race, you know? Although he is feeling a little lonely right now. Are you going to turn your back on an old friend in need?

Mike

The experience bar has been set pretty low this election cycle. On experience I wish we could pick between a pair of two-term governors who also have real foreign policy experience. I am not saying Sarah Palin is even in the top 100 people in the U.S. best prepared to be President, but neither is Obama. Positions aside, Sarah Palin's qualifications are at least equivalent to Barack Obama's, and attacking her for lack of experience will backfire.

Abortion is a major issue, but it is not the only issue, and some pro-choice voters who like the McCain and Palin records of going against their own party will overlook their positions on abortion, just as many pro-life Catholics will overlook Obama's.

Rather than call attention to the experience issue, focus on her positions. She considers the rights of an unborn child with no self-awareness to be equal to that of the mother and therefore opposes abortion even in cases of rape. She is opposed to gay marriage and only allowed state benefits to gay partners because it was the law. She says creationism can be discussed in schools, and has fought to prevent polar bears from being treated as endangered, not on scientific grounds, but because such a status would interfere with oil drilling. Better yet, focus on McCain because most people don't pick Presidents based on their Vice Presidents.

~ Neshamah

Braggi

09-03-2008, 09:15 PM

The experience bar has been set pretty low this election cycle. ...

Neshamah, your posts in this thread read to me as though you are a plant from the McCain camp sneaking quotes from McCain talking points into your posts that pretend to be pro Obama. You are, intentionally or not (giving you the benefit of some doubt), illuminating weaknesses in the Obama camp by "damning with faint praise."

... Abortion is a major issue, but it is not the only issue ...

For many people it is a litmus test issue. For many on the far left for sure, but for almost everyone on the far right, so you're wrong for a major slice of the electorate.

... some pro-choice voters who like the McCain and Palin records of going against their own party will overlook their positions on abortion, just as many pro-life Catholics will overlook Obama's. ...

You are equating a hardcore, draconian issue of the far right with an open minded, freedom based, liberal position of Obama. There is no comparison. It is prison vs. freedom for those who need or perform an abortion. This is a huge difference and there is no comparison between the positions.

You also quote the lie that McCain and Palin have "records of going against their own party" when nothing could be further from the truth. Neither is a "maverick." Where are there examples of either of them going against their own party where it was not in their own self interest or unless they knew damn well it was a temporary position because no lasting change would come of it (i.e., campaign finance reform). This is called posturing. Politicians do it all the time. McCain is a hard core conservative and so is Palin. Neither goes against the hard core agendas of the far right. You are kidding yourself if you think differently.

... Better yet, focus on McCain because most people don't pick Presidents based on their Vice Presidents.

You give a few valid reasons why Palin shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House and then suggest we never mind because it doesn't matter anyway. Incongruous but not inconsistent when read in the context of your other posts here.

You're actually for McCain, or so it appears from my reading. You are slipping McCain talking points into posts that read as though the author is slightly, but only slightly supporting Obama. I have to wonder where you're getting your material.

-Jeff

Zeno Swijtink

09-03-2008, 09:50 PM

September 2, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
What the Palin Pick Says (https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02brooks.html)
By DAVID BROOKS

ST. PAUL

John McCain is not a normal conservative. He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government. He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda. As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

So my worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience. She seems like a marvelous person. She is a dazzling political performer. And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent. On Monday, an ugly feeding frenzy surrounded her daughter’s pregnancy. But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

McCain is certainly capable of practicing the politics of compromise and coalition-building. He engineered a complex immigration bill with Ted Kennedy and global warming legislation with Joe Lieberman. But if you are going to lead a vast administration as president, it really helps to have a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn’t do, a set of communicable priorities.

If McCain is elected, he will face conditions tailor-made to foster disorder. He will be leading a divided and philosophically exhausted party. There simply aren’t enough Republican experts left to staff an administration, so he will have to throw together a hodgepodge with independents and Democrats. He will confront Democratic majorities that will be enraged and recriminatory.

On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

Braggi

09-03-2008, 10:11 PM

... As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration. ...

Zeno, where did you get this inaccurate crap? McCain's policies are identical to Bush's but he would probably have more clout. He would only continue the disasters of Baby Bush.

... Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.
...

Garbage. McCain is the darling of "corrupt Pentagon contractors" and McCain benefitted from Jack Abramoff's largess. Certainly McCain's friends and advisers did. The big money donors are still donating big money and still getting big military (and other) contracts as a result. McCain has been ineffective in these areas unless his desire was to funnel increasing amounts of taxpayer billions into the pockets of the Military Industrial Political Complex. (Oh, that was his intention.)

... [Palin] seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens. ...

Oh what crap! Palin hired an attorney to lobby for $25 million in federal money for her little town (smaller than Healdsburg) when she was mayor. She was a promoter of the $400 million "bridge to nowhere." She is pro offshore and ANWR oil drilling despite the fact the only real beneficiaries are the big oil companies - oh, and the great state of Alaska.

Well, the rest of this article is based on these fallacies so I won't comment further.

Obama for president. Biden for vice president. That's the only choice in November.

If McCain somehow steals this one, we're in big trouble.

-Jeff

PS. Did you read that before posting it Zeno?

Sonomamark

09-03-2008, 10:51 PM

Okay.

I apologize: I can't speak to your motivation for being a cynic. I don't think your analysis holds up, but I can't legitimately speak to why you choose it. Point to you.

MG

Regardless of what you think about my cynicism (and I wouldn't necessarily dispute that label), can you concede that there's no reason in the world to believe that it's motivated by some stupid desire to be "hip" or "cool"? Taking that suspicion of yours as a hypothesis and ASKING me about my motivation for cynicism would have been fine, but publicly so labeling me on the basis of nothing more than a needlessly negative assumption is, in fact, an ad hominem attack.

Mark, you're one of my favorite people around here, and that ain't gonna change just because of a bit of insensitivity from you, but such an episode detracts a little from your otherwise stellar image as a good and articulate reasoner. Do you remember our conversation at a party about a year ago, wherein you characterized both of us as arrogant? I objected, feeling that I'm not arrogant, and being skeptical about whether you are. But, if you're one of those who has trouble saying "Oooops, I was wrong; I'm sorry", I may have to concede your point.

Dixon

Sonomamark

09-03-2008, 10:57 PM

Zeno, you do understand that David Brooks is a professional Republican apologist, right?

These are just talking points. The man would say that the sky is orange if he thought it would elect a Republican. There's nothing here but pandering.

McCain has proven over the past two years that there is no policy position he won't reverse to advance his ambition. Brooks says he's "not a normal conservative", but the fact is that if he thought it would get him the White House, he'd come out pro-choice and for nationalization of the oil industry tomorrow. He caved to his handlers and picked Palin, even though she wasn't the VP he wanted, because he was told that the evangelicals--the people like Falwell, who he trashed a couple of years ago--wouldn't back him.

He's a morally bankrupt climber. And Brooks is a sycophant.

Move on. Nothing to see here.

MG

September 2, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
What the Palin Pick Says (https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02brooks.html)
By DAVID BROOKS

ST. PAUL

John McCain is not a normal conservative. He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government. He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda. As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

So my worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience. She seems like a marvelous person. She is a dazzling political performer. And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent. On Monday, an ugly feeding frenzy surrounded her daughter’s pregnancy. But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

McCain is certainly capable of practicing the politics of compromise and coalition-building. He engineered a complex immigration bill with Ted Kennedy and global warming legislation with Joe Lieberman. But if you are going to lead a vast administration as president, it really helps to have a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn’t do, a set of communicable priorities.

If McCain is elected, he will face conditions tailor-made to foster disorder. He will be leading a divided and philosophically exhausted party. There simply aren’t enough Republican experts left to staff an administration, so he will have to throw together a hodgepodge with independents and Democrats. He will confront Democratic majorities that will be enraged and recriminatory.

On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

Sonomamark

09-03-2008, 11:20 PM

Neshamah, there is nothing in this post that is even marginally legitimate.

The "experience" meme in this election as expressed by Republicans has been made so generalized as to be meaningless. Republicans argue that a man who has worked for a couple of decades in public policy, at various levels both inside and outside of government and in complex contexts involving diverse constituencies and interests ranging from the City of Chicago to the Illinois State Legislature to the United States Senate has less experience than a woman who was mayor in a town smaller than Sebastopol, then Governor--for 18 months--in a state with a smaller population than Sacramento. It's nonsense. There's no contest: Barack Obama has many times as much experience as does Sarah Palin.

Experience DOES matter. And in this election, the experience criterion leans Democratic, as do the issues. I have no idea why you think it's inappropriate to point out that Palin is a neophyte in a pro's game, but it's a nonsense argument. The false claim of "experience" appears to be the Republicans' last lifeline, since their policies are demonstrably failures and are generally opposed by the public, and this points to the core Rep strategy: fear. "Be afraid of having the inexperienced man at the helm. Be very afraid."

Except that we've already seen what incompetence looks like, and Bush supposed had "experience". Of course, everything the man has touched in his life has turned to garbage, and he's really only a hand-puppet for Cheney and the interests he serves, but hey...he had experience!

Enough of this nonsense. By any measure, John McCain is unworthy of the Presidency and his VP pick is a trifling right-wing afterthought. The contrast with the gravitas, seriousness, depth of analysis, courage and genuine devotion to public service of Barack Obama (as opposed to McCain's decades of self-promotion, causes be damned) could not be more stark. If by "experience" you mean longevity as a self-promoting blowhard whose positions change as he thinks it will suit his ambitions, fine, vote for John McCain.

Otherwise, think about things like character and integrity, not to mention political positions that are far more rational and respectable, and vote for Obama.

MG

The experience bar has been set pretty low this election cycle. On experience I wish we could pick between a pair of two-term governors who also have real foreign policy experience. I am not saying Sarah Palin is even in the top 100 people in the U.S. best prepared to be President, but neither is Obama. Positions aside, Sarah Palin's qualifications are at least equivalent to Barack Obama's, and attacking her for lack of experience will backfire.

Abortion is a major issue, but it is not the only issue, and some pro-choice voters who like the McCain and Palin records of going against their own party will overlook their positions on abortion, just as many pro-life Catholics will overlook Obama's.

Rather than call attention to the experience issue, focus on her positions. She considers the rights of an unborn child with no self-awareness to be equal to that of the mother and therefore opposes abortion even in cases of rape. She is opposed to gay marriage and only allowed state benefits to gay partners because it was the law. She says creationism can be discussed in schools, and has fought to prevent polar bears from being treated as endangered, not on scientific grounds, but because such a status would interfere with oil drilling. Better yet, focus on McCain because most people don't pick Presidents based on their Vice Presidents.

~ Neshamah

Valley Oak

09-03-2008, 11:38 PM

Dear Dr. Swijtink, Ph.D.

An Op-ed by Mr. Brooks is not exactly a "peer reviewed article" that would pass academic mustard as a serious source of research data. Is this the kind of material that you give your students at Sonoma State University, as an instructor with a Ph.D. in Philosophy?

Edward

September 2, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
What the Palin Pick Says (https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02brooks.html)
By DAVID BROOKS

ST. PAUL

John McCain is not a normal conservative. He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government. He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda. As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

So my worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience. She seems like a marvelous person. She is a dazzling political performer. And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent. On Monday, an ugly feeding frenzy surrounded her daughter’s pregnancy. But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

McCain is certainly capable of practicing the politics of compromise and coalition-building. He engineered a complex immigration bill with Ted Kennedy and global warming legislation with Joe Lieberman. But if you are going to lead a vast administration as president, it really helps to have a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn’t do, a set of communicable priorities.

If McCain is elected, he will face conditions tailor-made to foster disorder. He will be leading a divided and philosophically exhausted party. There simply aren’t enough Republican experts left to staff an administration, so he will have to throw together a hodgepodge with independents and Democrats. He will confront Democratic majorities that will be enraged and recriminatory.

On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

Dixon

09-04-2008, 12:09 AM

This webpage is worth checking out just for the hilarious movie poster satire featuring John McCain and the pregnant Palin girl in "Juneau":

https://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-does-sarah-palins-selection-tell.html

AAAAAAAA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!!!!!

Dixon

Zeno Swijtink

09-04-2008, 03:37 AM

Zeno Swijtink

09-04-2008, 03:45 AM

It's always interesting to see how much aggression Brooks evokes among progressives. If I had posted a piece by Limbaugh no one would have mistaken the messenger for the message. Is it because Brooks make just enough sense to make them uncomfortable?

Brooks tries to understand the Palin pick, and explains why it is a bad choice for the Republicans. The fact that the evangelicals rejected Lieberman in itself does not explain the Palin choice.

Zeno, you do understand that David Brooks is a professional Republican apologist, right?

These are just talking points. The man would say that the sky is orange if he thought it would elect a Republican. There's nothing here but pandering.

McCain has proven over the past two years that there is no policy position he won't reverse to advance his ambition. Brooks says he's "not a normal conservative", but the fact is that if he thought it would get him the White House, he'd come out pro-choice and for nationalization of the oil industry tomorrow. He caved to his handlers and picked Palin, even though she wasn't the VP he wanted, because he was told that the evangelicals--the people like Falwell, who he trashed a couple of years ago--wouldn't back him.

He's a morally bankrupt climber. And Brooks is a sycophant.

Move on. Nothing to see here.

MG

Valley Oak

09-04-2008, 08:07 AM

Forgive me, Zeno. The caricature I created of a scholar distributing yellow journalism in an institution of higher learning was too funny to resist. I hope I haven't ruffled your feathers.

And yes, Brooks is reviewed by a lot of his reactionary peers. But how about Brooks' toilet paper being refereed by a scholarly body for academic scrutiny of its research methods?

Edward

Funny, Ed, real funny. Brooks is in fact highly "peer" reviewed, but not by your or my peers.

Neshamah

09-04-2008, 10:55 AM

Mike,

I never thought of myself as a staunch Ron Paul supporter, more like a lukewarm supporter. He is no longer seeking the Presidency and many of his supporters have flocked to Bob Barr. Ron Paul welcomed support from opposite ends of the political spectrum, but Bob Barr strikes me as much more polarizing. He retains many of Ron Paul's disadvantages with much less emphasis on his advantages. I do think he and other third party candidates should be included in the debates, so that voters and not the media can decide the merits of their positions.

~ Neshamah

What happened? You used to be a staunch supporter of Ron Paul. He's still in the race, you know? Although he is feeling a little lonely right now. Are you going to turn your back on an old friend in need?

Mike

Neshamah

09-04-2008, 11:35 AM

Jeff,

Wow! I did not mean to upset everyone; I just hate to see a case overstated. People vote primarily on the issues, and that is where Obama can win. Obama is one of the most if not the most intelligent person to run for President in my short lifetime, and he knows how to campaign. However, his experience, and what he has done with that experience is limited, and we've already had an inexperienced President with an experienced Vice President for the last eight years. Attacking Palin on her experience illuminates Obama's weakness, which I suspect is part of why she was picked. So don't fall for it.

On issues, we are not going to change hearts and minds by questioning the intelligence of our opponents. To me, the idea that a victim of rape could be forced to give birth to her attacker's child is reprehensible. To many on the other side, that unborn child has the same right to life as the mother and the issue is not one of prison versus freedom, but one of life versus death. I disagree, but I will not pretend their view is totally unreasonable.

We are also not going to change minds by slandering the motives of our opponents. Getting anywhere in politics requires compromise, and getting on the wrong side of someone in power can end a career in a heartbeat. That is why inexperienced politicians that come from relative obscurity (like Obama and Palin) are popular, and it is why many will overlook their lack of experience.

I am not very enthusiastic about Obama, especially since he picked Biden. (I was not enthusiastic about Gore or Kerry either but voted for them anyway.) My state (Delaware) is going to go overwhelmingly for Obama anyway, so the rational thing for me to do is vote for one of the third party candidates this year and maybe bring us a tiny step closer to breaking the two party duopoly.

~ Neshamah

Neshamah, your posts in this thread read to me as though you are a plant from the McCain camp...

-Jeff

Barry

09-04-2008, 11:47 AM

I just want to chime in that while I don't always agree with you, Neshamah/Jessie, I always appreciate your level headed take on things, which is often refreshingly non-partisan! Thanks for your participation!

Barry

Jeff,

Wow! I did not mean to upset everyone; I just hate to see a case overstated. ...

Dixon

09-04-2008, 02:42 PM

My state (Delaware) is going to go overwhelmingly for Obama anyway, so the rational thing for me to do is vote for one of the third party candidates this year and maybe bring us a tiny step closer to breaking the two party duopoly.

I see it as more of a one-party monopoly masquerading as a duopoly, but otherwise I'm with you. I'm proud to say I voted for Leonard Peltier last time and Nader the time before. Like you, I'm going for substantive change over the long haul rather than being suckered into the cynical Mutt-and-Jeff scam election after election.

Dixon

Mike Peterson

09-04-2008, 03:17 PM

Dixon, what's your opinion of having a multi-party system instead of the one-party monopoly masquerading as a duopoly?

What better alternative is there to the system we have now and also, what is the best way to achieve it? Do you believe that simply voting for a third party is going to accomplish this?

Mike

I see it as more of a one-party monopoly masquerading as a duopoly, but otherwise I'm with you. I'm proud to say I voted for Leonard Peltier last time and Nader the time before. Like you, I'm going for substantive change over the long haul rather than being suckered into the cynical Mutt-and-Jeff scam election after election.

Dixon

Zeno Swijtink

09-04-2008, 04:31 PM

The New York Times
September 3, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist

And Then There Was One (https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/opinion/03friedman.html)
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

As we emerge from Labor Day, college students are gathering back on campuses not only to start the fall semester, but also, in some cases, to vote for the first time in a presidential election. There is no bigger issue on campuses these days than environment/energy. Going into this election, I thought that — for the first time — we would have a choice between two “green” candidates. That view is no longer operative — and college students (and everyone else) need to understand that.

With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.

Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy — in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today — McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.

So please, students, when McCain comes to your campus and flashes a few posters of wind turbines and solar panels, ask him why he has been AWOL when it came to Congress supporting these new technologies.

“Back in June, the Republican Party had a round-up,” said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “One of the unbranded cattle — a wizened old maverick name John McCain — finally got roped. Then they branded him with a big ‘Lazy O’ — George Bush’s brand, where the O stands for oil. No more maverick.

“One of McCain’s last independent policies putting him at odds with Bush was his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” added Pope, “yet he has now picked a running mate who has opposed holding big oil accountable and been dismissive of alternative energy while focusing her work on more oil drilling in a wildlife refuge and off of our coasts. While the northern edge of her state literally falls into the rising Arctic Ocean, Sarah Palin says, ‘The jury is still out on global warming.’ She’s the one hanging the jury — and John McCain is going to let her.”

Indeed, Palin’s much ballyhooed confrontations with the oil industry have all been about who should get more of the windfall profits, not how to end our addiction.

Barack Obama should be doing more to promote his green agenda, but at least he had the courage, in the heat of a Democratic primary, not to pander to voters by calling for a lifting of the gasoline tax. And while he has come out for a limited expansion of offshore drilling, he has refrained from misleading voters that this is in any way a solution to our energy problems.

I am not against a limited expansion of off-shore drilling now. But it is a complete sideshow. By constantly pounding into voters that his energy focus is to “drill, drill, drill,” McCain is diverting attention from what should be one of the central issues in this election: who has the better plan to promote massive innovation around clean power technologies and energy efficiency.

Why? Because renewable energy technologies — what I call “E.T.” — are going to constitute the next great global industry. They will rival and probably surpass “I.T.” — information technology. The country that spawns the most E.T. companies will enjoy more economic power, strategic advantage and rising standards of living. We need to make sure that is America. Big oil and OPEC want to make sure it is not.

Palin’s nomination for vice president and her desire to allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness “reminded me of a lunch I had three and half years ago with one of the Russian trade attachés,” global trade consultant Edward Goldberg said to me. “After much wine, this gentleman told me that his country was very pleased that the Bush administration wanted to drill in the Alaskan wilderness. In his opinion, the amount of product one could actually derive from there was negligible in terms of needs. However, it signified that the Bush administration was not planning to do anything to create alternative energy, which of course would threaten the economic growth of Russia.”

So, college students, don’t let anyone tell you that on the issue of green, this election is not important. It is vitally important, and the alternatives could not be more black and white.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Zeno Swijtink

09-04-2008, 04:34 PM

But how about Brooks' toilet paper being refereed by a scholarly body for academic scrutiny of its research methods?

Edward

Go ahead, Edward, I'm listening.

theindependenteye

09-04-2008, 05:55 PM

Dixon

09-04-2008, 06:56 PM

Mike, thanks for asking a couple of intelligent questions.

Dixon, what's your opinion of having a multi-party system instead of the one-party monopoly masquerading as a duopoly?
What better alternative is there to the system we have now and also, what is the best way to achieve it?

I'm not very conversant with the various proposed options (my laziness preventing much research again), but I think a multi-party system with proportional representation is the way to go. Of course, that will never happen as long as we continue to invest the Demopublican Party with the power to block it.

Of course, the concept of a functional democracy is a sham as long as people are purposely raised to be irrational, so that they can't make reasonable choices and are easier to manipulate, and as long as nearly everyone bases his/her choices on nothing but censored distorted propaganda, spoon-fed them by corporations which have a huge financial interest in maintaining the corrupt status quo, in lieu of news.

For that first problem, I prescribe mandatory education in critical thinking from K-12 and beyond. It's surely one of the most important subjects of all. We need to explicitly work on changing our societal values such that critical thinking is valued and things like "faith" (which usually means believing what meets your needs regardless of logic), and other appeals to emotion (flag-waving, etc.) are appropriately devalued and ridiculed. When most people start to understand that war, injustice and environmental rape are largely caused by irrationality, we can start to have a rational electorate that will vote for reasonable solutions to our problems (and against wars of aggression, etc.).

For that second problem, I prescribe a government office, independent of party affiliation, which monitors news from all media, using experts to vet various claims. News sources found to be irresponsible in their reports will be required to broadcast/publish corrections at least as prominently as the original story. If there is good evidence that a news company is purposely distorting or lying, the responsible parties should receive a fair trial and, if found guilty, should receive capital punishment. This would include government bureaucrats who censor politically inexpedient scientific findings, for instance, as well as the many journalists who have been paid by the CIA to disseminate false stories and the government spooks who pay them to do that. There should also be a tax-supported news agency which covers important issues largely ignored by corporate media, such as the real environmental impacts of corporate depredations, corporate and government corruption, war crimes, possible coverups (9-11, etc.), with convictions and capital punishment arising from such information as appropriate. When truth (or at least an honest attempt at it) is reinforced and lies are consistently punished, we will have true enough data to vote intelligently.

Without serious attention to critical thinking and to enforcing truth over lies, democracy is pretty much of a sham.

Do you believe that simply voting for a third party is going to accomplish this?

Of course not; it's far from that simple. But I know that as long as we continue to elect the lesser of the evils, we assure that evil will always be in command.

Having said that, I must also say that I can respect people's choice to vote for the lesser evil. I don't think that's a crazy approach. But it's kind of a band-aid. My choice to vote for 3rd-party candidates who haven't a snowball's chance in the short run is for 3 reasons: 1) They bring up some of the important issues, which would otherwise be ignored, 2) Their influence can pull the major parties, especially the Dems, in a more progressive direction, and 3) If we can get the percentages for the Green party, for instance, to creep up year by year into double digits, their progressive agendas can eventually have more influence on the national agenda, and eventually they could hold major national offices, even the Presidency!

I think instant-runoff voting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
would help resolve the issue of whether to vote our hopes (the truly progressive candidates) or our fears (the lesser evil among the front-runners). Perhaps someone better educated than I can recommend a voting system that's even better.

(Please note that those last 3 paragraphs were also an attempt to answer the question Conrad put to me in his post #66).

Blessings;

Dixon

Mike Peterson

09-04-2008, 09:01 PM

Dixon, I like your ideas. The bit about the death penalty for mass misinformation is a tiny bit harder for me to stomach. I can see the logic because the consequences of manipulating the media is two wars with not only +4k dead Americans but I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dead men, women, and children in both of those countries.

Instant Run-off Voting is the best possible voting method for single member districts. A single member district means, for example, the congressional voting district here in Sonoma County (Lynn Woolsey's seat) is only ONE seat, hence, a single member district.

If there were two, or three, or four, etc, seats up for grabs in this district, then that would be a multi-member district and the voting method of Proportional Representation might be used.

There would automatically be issues such as the logical need to vastly increase the territorial size of multi-member congressional districts. The redistricting would cover either several counties or could even go as far as to make the entire state of California a single voting district. All of California's congressional candidates would be voted on proportionally, according to political party.

Resolving one issue would lead to needing to resolve another issue. For example, electing representatives, either to the US House or the California Assembly or the State Senate, would lose their individuality and be replaced by people voting for their preferred party instead. This leads to a traditional, cultural conflict that perhaps most voters would reject. The only way to skirt this voter rejection would be to combine only two or three districts now so that there are two or three or four candidates per congressional district or for either state senate or assembly. And this could still maintain the cult of the individual that Americans prefer, so that they still feel that they are voting for specific persons, like Woolsey, instead of an institution called a political party.

Essentially, the entire system would have to be revamped, risking public rejection of such extensive political reform but baby steps could be taken, such as using IRV in single member districts or clustering only a handful of districts to get more than one seat up for election.

Change, especially big change, is not easy, but it can be done. I don't think, for example, that Americans will take to voting for a party instead of an individual very well, at least not all at once. This kind of reform has to be gradual.

There are political reform organizations that have successfully achieved Instant Run-off Voting in places such as San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Davis, etc. A couple of these nonprofits are The Center for Voting and Democracy and Californians for Electoral Reform.

These are the kinds of reforms that our political institutions and practices need. Without them, we are condemned to the 'plurality voting system' of old, of today, which will continue to usher in the same status quo as always. By the way, with 'First-Past-the-Post (FPTP),' which inevitably creates the two-party system, we cannot possibly achieve the kind of reform, or change, or alternative that you are hoping to gain, and I quote you:

...But I know that as long as we continue to elect the lesser of the evils, we assure that evil will always be in command.

Having said that, I must also say that I can respect people's choice to vote for the lesser evil. I don't think that's a crazy approach. But it's kind of a band-aid. My choice to vote for 3rd-party candidates who haven't a snowball's chance in the short run is for 3 reasons: 1) They bring up some of the important issues, which would otherwise be ignored, 2) Their influence can pull the major parties, especially the Dems, in a more progressive direction, and 3) If we can get the percentages for the Green party, for instance, to creep up year by year into double digits, their progressive agendas can eventually have more influence on the national agenda, and eventually they could hold major national offices, even the Presidency!...You have to be able to see that as long as we have FPTP, we cannot achieve what you are saying. That is the logical riddle that most people don't see. At best, a new political party will replace one of the two major ones, such as when the Republican Party replaced the Whig Party and when the Progressive Party was beginning to replace the Republican Party (under Theodore Roosevelt). The idea that we can change the system by electing a third party to power to offset or sway the other two, major parties (Demopublican, etc) is an inescapable illusion that very few people are able to see through.

With FPTP, there will always be only two parties, pushed together ideologically, to a dumbed down 'center' from which they cannot afford to risk drifting away from (because fewer people will vote for them and they will lose power). Catch my meaning? This is called 'Duverger's Law,' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law. Notice that this is not called a theory, such as Marx's theory of surplus value, etc. It is a generally accepted law among political scientists. And most Americans are completely unaware of this fundamentally crippling weakness in their 'democracy.'

In a multi-member district, if 15% of voters vote for the Green Party, then 15% of the seats will be Green. If 35% of the voters vote for the Republican Party then 35% of the seats will be Republican, and so on. This is the kind of electoral reform that America must have. But it has to start locally, not nationally and not even state-wide, because it will be rejected, especially by conservative and moneyed interests that cannot afford to see such radical reform take away their choke-hold political power.

Any thoughts?

Mike

Valley Oak

09-05-2008, 08:23 AM

Well, I don't have a Ph.D. and I probably never will get one. But I'm still working on my Masters degree.

Nonetheless, I can offer my opinion just like anyone else. Not that I care to waste my time opining on Brooks' toilet paper, because I don't.

Edward

Go ahead, Edward, I'm listening.

MsTerry

09-05-2008, 09:34 AM

.

Dixon, this is a serious question, not a put-down: How do you feel your vote for these candidates has promoted substantive change over the long haul? is it in the virtue of what Christians call "witnessing," or something more concrete in terms of effect? And do you have any sense of what constitutes "the long haul"?

-Conrad

That is a serious question Conrad. LOL
Should one vote with one's conscience, and achieve nothing in the short run or choose between two evils to maintain a sense of accomplishment?

handy

09-05-2008, 10:14 AM

>>I'm proud to say I voted for Leonard Peltier last time and Nader the time before. Like you, I'm going for substantive change over the long haul rather than being suckered into the cynical Mutt-and-Jeff scam election after election.

Dixon, this is a serious question, not a put-down: How do you feel your vote for these candidates has promoted substantive change over the long haul? is it in the virtue of what Christians call "witnessing," or something more concrete in terms of effect? And do you have any sense of what constitutes "the long haul"?

-Conrad

Hi all,
been gone a while, but back and ready to participate.

I too, have voted third party ever since voting for Ron Paul as a Libertarian in 1988. I have always been registered as "decline to state". I registered as a Republican this year only to be able to nominate Dr. Paul. I'll re-register as "dts" again now.

I think Ron Paul's campaign has set some "long haul" change in motion. Have you watched the vids on c-span or youtube of his alternate convention in Minnesota? He has a LOT of people thinking about government in a different way. I think it is healthy for society, even if he can't win.

Can't say I see a third party vote as "witnessing" in the Evangelical sense, at all. I see it more as the ability to sleep with a clear conscience through the Next four years of republicrat butchery, theft and Imperialism, knowing that I voted against both of the 'evils'.

Neshamah

09-05-2008, 02:49 PM

Delaware currently offers fusion tickets which allows one candidate to run under more than one party. This allows third parties to garner more votes because voters can vote for someone likely to win and promote the smaller party at the same time. The Libertarian and Working Familes parties are both using this to their advantage. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party in Delaware does not allow Democrats to run as fusion candidates because they feel threatened by, in particular, the Working Families party.

Delaware also does not count write-in votes, so it's not all rosy.

~ Neshamah

RichT

09-05-2008, 06:56 PM

Mark Fiore puts it in simple terms so average Joe can understand.

https://www.sfgate.com/comics/fiore/

Dixon

09-05-2008, 10:27 PM

Dixon, I like your ideas. The bit about the death penalty for mass misinformation is a tiny bit harder for me to stomach. I can see the logic because the consequences of manipulating the media is two wars with not only +4k dead Americans but I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of dead men, women, and children in both of those countries.

Ooooops! My bad--I didn't realize until I read your comment and looked up "capital punishment" in my dictionary that the term was synonymous with "death penalty". I had thought that "capital punishment" could also refer to life imprisonment. Anyway, you get the idea of how seriously I take truth versus manipulating people with lies.

As for the rest of your rap, call me dense, but I don't understand why creating larger territorial districts and voting for parties rather than individuals would be necessitated. Am I the only one who doesn't "get" these two points?

Dixon

Instant Run-off Voting is the best possible voting method for single member districts. A single member district means, for example, the congressional voting district here in Sonoma County (Lynn Woolsey's seat) is only ONE seat, hence, a single member district.

If there were two, or three, or four, etc, seats up for grabs in this district, then that would be a multi-member district and the voting method of Proportional Representation might be used.

There would automatically be issues such as the logical need to vastly increase the territorial size of multi-member congressional districts. The redistricting would cover either several counties or could even go as far as to make the entire state of California a single voting district. All of California's congressional candidates would be voted on proportionally, according to political party.

Resolving one issue would lead to needing to resolve another issue. For example, electing representatives, either to the US House or the California Assembly or the State Senate, would lose their individuality and be replaced by people voting for their preferred party instead. This leads to a traditional, cultural conflict that perhaps most voters would reject. The only way to skirt this voter rejection would be to combine only two or three districts now so that there are two or three or four candidates per congressional district or for either state senate or assembly. And this could still maintain the cult of the individual that Americans prefer, so that they still feel that they are voting for specific persons, like Woolsey, instead of an institution called a political party.

Essentially, the entire system would have to be revamped, risking public rejection of such extensive political reform but baby steps could be taken, such as using IRV in single member districts or clustering only a handful of districts to get more than one seat up for election.

Change, especially big change, is not easy, but it can be done. I don't think, for example, that Americans will take to voting for a party instead of an individual very well, at least not all at once. This kind of reform has to be gradual.

There are political reform organizations that have successfully achieved Instant Run-off Voting in places such as San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Davis, etc. A couple of these nonprofits are The Center for Voting and Democracy and Californians for Electoral Reform.

These are the kinds of reforms that our political institutions and practices need. Without them, we are condemned to the 'plurality voting system' of old, of today, which will continue to usher in the same status quo as always. By the way, with 'First-Past-the-Post (FPTP),' which inevitably creates the two-party system, we cannot possibly achieve the kind of reform, or change, or alternative that you are hoping to gain, and I quote you:

You have to be able to see that as long as we have FPTP, we cannot achieve what you are saying. That is the logical riddle that most people don't see. At best, a new political party will replace one of the two major ones, such as when the Republican Party replaced the Whig Party and when the Progressive Party was beginning to replace the Republican Party (under Theodore Roosevelt). The idea that we can change the system by electing a third party to power to offset or sway the other two, major parties (Demopublican, etc) is an inescapable illusion that very few people are able to see through.

With FPTP, there will always be only two parties, pushed together ideologically, to a dumbed down 'center' from which they cannot afford to risk drifting away from (because fewer people will vote for them and they will lose power). Catch my meaning? This is called 'Duverger's Law,' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law. Notice that this is not called a theory, such as Marx's theory of surplus value, etc. It is a generally accepted law among political scientists. And most Americans are completely unaware of this fundamentally crippling weakness in their 'democracy.'

In a multi-member district, if 15% of voters vote for the Green Party, then 15% of the seats will be Green. If 35% of the voters vote for the Republican Party then 35% of the seats will be Republican, and so on. This is the kind of electoral reform that America must have. But it has to start locally, not nationally and not even state-wide, because it will be rejected, especially by conservative and moneyed interests that cannot afford to see such radical reform take away their choke-hold political power.

Any thoughts?

Mike

Braggi

09-05-2008, 11:11 PM

... He has a LOT of people thinking about government in a different way. I think it is healthy for society, even if he can't win.

Can't say I see a third party vote as "witnessing" in the Evangelical sense, at all. ...

I've voted third party in every election where I know the outcome ahead of time and I know my vote wouldn't matter. Been either a Libertarian or a Green for about 30 years.

Yeah, I know both of those parties are made up of mostly unrealistic kooks, but probably some of the founding families of this country were comprised of such people. Gotta have a vision if there's going to be any conscious change. Third parties can provide that.

-Jeff

Mike Peterson

09-06-2008, 05:03 AM

You're not dense at all. As a matter of fact, you're one of the smartest people on this list. The concepts of FPTP, plurality voting, single member districts, two-party system, electoral college, etc, are unfamiliar to almost all Americans, even though these methods are the way we elect our leaders (who tell us how to live our lives, start wars, and manage the economy). Apparently, we don't teach these basic concepts in school because we see them as 'natural,' kind of like that's the way things are and therefore there is no need to go into boring details like that and there is nothing else different out there anyway.

Furthermore, concepts like proportional representation, multi-party systems, etc, are quite literally 'foreign' in the dictionary definition of the word. When something is foreign then it is something that Americans don't take to very easily at the get go. Americans like tradition and don't like those weird foreign practices because everything here in the states is better, of course, even when it stinks like hell.

The best strategy to use for now for political and electoral reform is Instant Run-off Voting, just as you've mentioned yourself in an earlier post. This would at least provide the best possible method (the most democratic) for electing public officials in single member districts.

IRV (Instant Run-off Voting) would be a great leap forward and the quality of our democracy would be greatly improved because our representatives would reflect much more accurately who and what we are and what our needs and demands are. Our representatives would make laws and govern us in ways that would meet our needs far more effectively than now.

PR (Proportional Representation) would take this effective and accurate representation of our needs to a much higher level; that's why I support it. But in the meantime, IRV is a necessary, intermediate step. Even if we don't go any further than IRV, we will have progressed greatly.

However, if we ever do introduce PR, then creating larger voting districts and voting for the party (at least more so than for the individual), will be necessary. Some reasons why include the need for more accuracy in representation than what IRV can offer, which can only elect one person. Only one party, even if it represents only 35% of voters in that district, can win that seat. In PR, the more seats are available for election, the more accurate will be the representation of the voters in that district. With PR, the public can have in its legislature, let's say California, distribute seats in the following way (to give an example): 5% of legislative seats to party A, 15% of party B, 25% of party C, 35% of party D, and 20% of party E (all adding up to 100% of the seats in that legislature, such as the state senate or the state assembly). If the entire state were treated as one large voting district, then this would give the most accurate representation of the voters throughout all of California.

The scenario described above represents the constituencies of at least five different social groups (in reality, many more groups are represented because all parties address the issues of several groups). Also, this distribution of seats and representation of different constituencies is in stark contrast to forcing 100% of the public to be represented by only two parties. Or, as in IRV, forcing 100% of the public, in a given voting district, to be represented by only one elected official, despite the affiliation of the officeholder. That's why PR is desirable over IRV and why voting districts would have to increase in size (or add more seats to each district), and why voting for party would have to increase at the expense of voting for the individual.

With PR practices in Europe, there have been innovations such as creating what they define as 'open lists.' This means that when you pick up a party ballot, with all of the names of the party members who would be seated after the election, the voter has the option of marking a check box next to the name of each party member, indicating the voter's choice of whether or not to seat that individual party member. This greatly increases public participation as opposed to 'closed party lists.' There are other innovations such as requiring that some party list members come from determined geographical areas for balance. This would help to introduce some of what we have here in the states, where elected officeholders live in the area they represent, which only makes sense.

PR and party voting will get a knee-jerk reaction from Americans partly because of a historical precedent here in the US called the Progressive Movement, which lasted roughly from the 1880s through the 1920s. The Progressive Movement (which distrusted party politics with good reason) accomplished many good political and social reforms such as using the popular vote to elect US senators instead of state legislatures and taking religion out of public education (to some degree). But their noble and otherwise successful efforts also had some consequences as well, such as political party reform and the fight against 'party machines.' The Progressive Movement sought to eliminate corruption from politics (how naive) by destroying internal party control and putting it into the hands of the people. One huge result, the primaries system, was created so that ordinary citizens elected the party leader and the candidate to public office of that party. This was done with the idea in mind that all internal corruptive influences would be dismantled. One of the other many goals was to take money out of politics (extremely naive).

Our primaries system creates the 'movie star' syndrome that we get so often here in the states, a kind of cult of personality, which is inevitable to some degree in any system because someone at some level has to be the 'boss.' If you can think of something better, please say so. Also, people such as 'W' get into power because of money, family ties and influences, etc. People like Schwarzneggar get into power because of their popularity as actors. In the party structures in Europe, including the UK, it would have been 100% impossible for 'W' or Schwarzneggar to have ever become the leading candidate for their party for their respective offices. They would have had to have been elected internally by their parties, such as were Francios Mitterand, Olof Palme, Wily Brandt, Helmut Kohl, etc. And only the most competent and intelligent members of the party have a chance of winning leadership.

Another reason why a European model would have serious trouble gaining traction here in the states (aside from Americans being completely unfamiliar with it) is that US voters would have to trade voting for specific personalities, such as Reagan, Woolsey, etc, for voting for the political party. Quite frankly, I think this would just rub directly against the grain of most Americans.

Anymore thoughts? It would be my pleasure to elaborate, if you wish.

Mike

Ooooops! My bad--I didn't realize until I read your comment and looked up "capital punishment" in my dictionary that the term was synonymous with "death penalty". I had thought that "capital punishment" could also refer to life imprisonment. Anyway, you get the idea of how seriously I take truth versus manipulating people with lies.

As for the rest of your rap, call me dense, but I don't understand why creating larger territorial districts and voting for parties rather than individuals would be necessitated. Am I the only one who doesn't "get" these two points?

Dixon

Sonomamark

09-06-2008, 11:14 PM

See, here's where we diverge again, Dixon. I don't see how anyone with two neurons to string together can cling to that line about the Dems and Reps being "the same" after nearly 8 years of the Bush/Cheney axis.

Anyone here could provide an arm-long list of crimes, acts dismantling our civil liberties and Constitution, destruction of our national standing in the world, torture, war, and regulatory decisions that are in essence acts of war against the poor and the environment, none of which would have occurred if the 2000 election hadn't been thrown by the stacked Supreme Court.

Claiming that the parties are the same when the Republicans have turned into a psychotic cult of delusional religious zealots, kleptocrats and pathological liars, and purged everyone from their party who doesn't fit that description, is oversimplification to the point of laziness. Evidence is overwhelming that this is not the case.

Will economic interests have influence in an Obama administration? Of course. The difference is that ONLY economic interests and religious nuts have influence in a Republican administration. In a Dem administration, public interest organizations, ordinary people, unions and the disadvantaged also count and have a voice. That's a pretty big difference.

Voting for Nader, Peltier, Snoopy or Santa Claus isn't playing for the long term. It's just throwing away an opportunity to be a part of what really happens in the future...and relying on the rest of Californian voters to be more sensible than you are.

SM

I see it as more of a one-party monopoly masquerading as a duopoly, but otherwise I'm with you. I'm proud to say I voted for Leonard Peltier last time and Nader the time before. Like you, I'm going for substantive change over the long haul rather than being suckered into the cynical Mutt-and-Jeff scam election after election.

Dixon

Dixon

09-06-2008, 11:52 PM

See, here's where we diverge again, Dixon. I don't see how anyone with two neurons to string together can cling to that line about the Dems and Reps being "the same" after nearly 8 years of the Bush/Cheney axis.

Mark, this issue must really be a button-pusher for you, as you keep blurting things that are not well-considered. In this case, you commit the "straw man" fallacy (though I prefer the gender-neutral term "straw figure") by distorting my position into something less reasonable and then attacking it. You say I'm claiming the Dems and Reps are "the same" (even putting the term in quotes, though I never said it!), but that's not my position.

In fact, I've strongly implied that the Dems and Reps are NOT the same by referring to their shtick as the "Mutt-and-Jeff" or "good cop/bad cop" game. Note that that game REQUIRES that Mutt be a bit different than Jeff or, in other words, that the "good cop" be a bit better than the "bad cop". Even referring to them as "one party", which I have done, doesn't imply that they're the same, any more than the different factions in the Dem or Rep parties are the same. Furthermore, I've also said that the Dems are the lesser of the evils, again clearly indicating that they're not the same. So, Mark, do you see that you distort my position by saying that I'm claiming they're the same?

Our difference on this issue is essentially quantitative rather than qualitative; I think the Dems and Reps are way more similar than you do. You emphasize the differences, while I can't help but notice, for instance, that nearly all the Dems voted for the illegal invasion of Iraq, that neither party wants to impeach the most blatantly corrupt administration in history, that neither party wants to significantly address the electoral fraud issue, and that both parties receive much (most?) of their support from the same corporate interests.

I wish I could see things as optimistically as you do, but having been burned time and time again, my optimism has largely been burned away. Scratch a cynic and you'll find a wounded idealist underneath every damn time.

Voting for Nader, Peltier, Snoopy or Santa Claus isn't playing for the long term. It's just throwing away an opportunity to be a part of what really happens in the future...and relying on the rest of Californian voters to be more sensible than you are.

I continue to stand by my choice for the reasons I gave in a previous post. I conceded that there is also some plausibility to your strategy of voting for the lesser of two evils. I'm sorry that you apparently can't see any value in my strategy, but you're entitled to your opinion. I'll say this again: Let's get together in about 5 years and see how things have turned out and what we each have learned about the wisdom/folly of our positions. Meanwhile, all love and respect to you.

Dixon