April 22, 2008
While scanning today’s headlines, two op/eds jumped out at me; seemingly unrelated, they say exactly the same thing: We — The Left — have lost control of the Democratic Party to the “liberal elites,” the rich, triangulating Third Way DLCers who talk a great talk, but have never walked the walk — and really don’t give a damn about your walk.
The first piece, by Dana Milbank at WaPo, profiles an impoverished Pennsylvania couple who are voting for Hillary Clinton today, and — despite the silly notion that they may not “even think [Barack Obama is] American,” and the extremely disturbing racism prevalent among a few other vocal locals) — their practical, economically-based reasons for refusing to vote for Obama, even if he gets the Democratic nomination (and this couple are Democrats).
The second piece is by Chris Hedges, about whom I’ve written before in these pages; Hedges is the author of one of my favorite and most dog-eared books, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America, which explains in clear, if excruciating, detail just how the Radical Religious Right has managed to embed itself into U.S. politics — and, most importantly, why religious fundamentalists of all stripes believe what they believe, and do what they do.
Make no mistake: Hedges is not the radical leftist secularist of the Right’s worst nightmares. The son of a minister and seminary graduate himself, Hedges is equally critical of atheists as he is of religionists; in his newest book, I Don’t Believe in Atheists, he makes it clear that his belief in God and conviction that sin is real, and the barometer of morality, is steadfast:
We have nothing to fear from those who do or do not believe in God; we have much to fear from those who do not believe in sin. The concept of sin is a stark acknowledgment that we can never be omnipotent, that we are bound and limited by human flaws and self-interest. The concept of sin is a check on the utopian dreams of a perfect world. It prevents us from believing in our own perfectibility or the illusion that the material advances of science and technology equal an intrinsic moral improvement in our species. To turn away from God is harmless. Saints have been trying to do it for centuries. To turn away from sin is catastrophic. …
We discard the wisdom of sin at our peril. …
The question is not whether God exists. It is whether we contemplate or are utterly indifferent to the transcendent, that which cannot be measured or quantified, that which lies beyond the reach of rational deduction.
Hedges’ credibility established, let’s turn our attention to the first op/ed that caught my eye today, by Dana Milbank:
In This Forgotten Town, Obama Can Forget About It
The Monongahela River Valley lost its steel mills in the ’80s and, a quarter-century later, this sad town in the heart of the Mon Valley still hasn’t recovered. Its downtown is a collage of crumbling buildings, and its once-proud landmark, the 102-year-old People’s Union Bank Building, has signs in the window: “Bank Repo Sale. Excellent Deal. Eight stories. Priced to sell!”
It is, in short, just the sort of place Barack Obama was talking about when he said he wasn’t getting the support of blue-collar workers of the industrial heartland because they “cling” to guns and religion out of economic bitterness. It is also the place Obama chose to visit on Monday night, on the eve of Tuesday’s primary — and the reception here explains why Obama, the national front-runner, is expected to lose Pennsylvania. …
The Norgrens, who backed Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, will vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. And if Obama wins the nomination, these Democrats say they’ll vote for Republican John McCain, even though they want an end to the war in Iraq, where their soldier-son is about to start his third tour.
If Hillary Clinton wins Tuesday’s Democratic presidential primary — and polls forecast that she will do just that — it will be because of white, working-class voters like the Norgrens. Yet the blue-collar voters poised to keep Clinton’s candidacy alive are also the reason she is losing the national race to Obama: Though still in charge here, they have lost control of the Democratic Party to the wealthy and better-educated. …
The average household in McKeesport earns less than $30,000 a year, barely half the U.S. average. Its population has shrunk and aged with the loss of the mills, and the average home here sells for a mere $45,000. …
The antipathy toward Obama isn’t necessarily logical. Outside the Giant Eagle … Edward Norgren listed his reasons: Clinton’s ad accusing Obama of taking oil-company money; Michelle Obama’s suggestion that she hadn’t been “proud” of her country; Obama’s provocative former preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, of course, there was the “bitter” remark. …
Now, on to Chris Hedges:
The left has lost its nerve and its direction
The failure of the American left is a failure of nerve. It has been neutralized and rendered ineffectual as a political force because of its refusal to hold fast on core issues, from universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans, to the steadfast protection of workers’ rights, to an immediate withdrawal from the failed occupation of Iraq to a fight against a militarized economy that is hollowing the country out from the inside.
Let the politicians compromise. This is their job. It is not ours. If the left wants to regain influence in the nation’s political life, it must be willing to walk away from the Democratic Party, even if Barack Obama is the nominee, and back progressive, third-party candidates until the Democrats feel enough heat to adopt our agenda. We must be willing to say no. If not, we become slaves. …
The object of a movement is not to achieve political power at any price. It is to create pressure and mobilize citizens around core issues of justice. It is to force politicians and parties to respond to our demands. It is about rewarding, through support and votes, those who champion progressive ideals and punishing those who refuse. And the current Democratic Party, as any worker in a former manufacturing town in Pennsylvania can tell you, has betrayed us. …
The working class has every right to be, to steal a line from Obama, bitter with liberal elites. … Human beings are not, despite what the well-heeled Democratic and Republican apologists for the free market tell you, commodities. They are not goods. They grieve, and suffer and feel despair. They raise children and struggle to maintain communities. The growing class divide is not understood, despite the glibness of many in the media, by complicated sets of statistics or the absurd, utopian faith in unregulated globalization and complicated trade deals. It is understood in the eyes of a man or woman who is no longer making enough money to live with dignity and hope. …
The failure of the left is the failure of well-meaning people who kept compromising and compromising in the name of effectiveness and a few scraps of influence until they had neither. … The left has been transformed into anguished apologists for corporate greed. They have become hypocrites. …
Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain the way they are. We stand at the verge of a massive economic dislocation, one forcing millions of families from their homes and into severe financial distress, one that threatens to rend the fabric of our society. If we do not become angry, if we do not muster within us the courage to challenge the corporate state that is destroying our nation, we will have squandered our credibility and integrity at the moment we need it most.
The message is the same — the Democratic Party has forgotten its core values, and we, the left wing of the (formerly-)left wing, have let the party get away with it. Of course, they’ve got the money — but we have the votes. The party can spend all the money in the world trying to schmooze us, but at the end of the day, when it’s your job that’s disappeared, and your kid who goes to school without breakfast, you have to decide what your loyalty to the party has gotten you.
The answer lies within the Democratic Party itself, in both its official platform (for which DNC has deemed the top three “key Democratic Party ideals” as prosperity, peace, and progress), and, more telling, in its simple, clear mission statement, “The Democratic Vision“:
The Democratic Party is committed to keeping our nation safe and expanding opportunity for every American. That commitment is reflected in an agenda that emphasizes the security of our nation, strong economic growth, affordable health care for all Americans, retirement security, honest government, and civil rights.
What’s telling is that, in this statement, national security comes first — and is the first issue mentioned, again, at the beginning of the second sentence — and civil rights comes last, with the economy and vague, imprecise language about “expanding opportunity for every American” and “strong economic growth” jammed in between.
But you have to ask: What do those things mean? What do they mean, in practical terms, to you and your family?
If you take the time to read the full Democratic Party platform, you’ll see that “prosperity, peace, and progress” still take a backseat to more than 18 pages’ worth of discussion about defeating terrorism and strengthening our military.
As essential as it is to prevent another 9/11, the fact remains: If you’re hungry or homeless, you’re not going to give a damn about anything except food and shelter. That’s why the economy is the number-one issue on voters’ minds: We’re talking survival. And a whole lot of us aren’t surviving.
The latest Hightower Lowdown arrived in my mailbox yesterday; the entire issue is dedicated to spelling out, in many simple but terrifying tables, “What 8 years of BushCheney have done to our economy.” I won’t get into the whole thing here; it deserves to be read, and digested, in full. Suffice to say, if you’re not rich, you’re in trouble.
Nevertheless, you may be surprised to learn that economic fears are apparently not affecting votes:
With growing layoffs, tight credit and an ailing housing market, 67 percent say the economy is an extremely important issue, up from 46 percent in November. Gasoline prices follow close behind at 59 percent.
The war in Iraq — the dominant issue for several years — stands at 48 percent. …
Yet those who have become extremely concerned about the economy since last fall show no significant difference from everyone else in backing a presidential candidate. Both groups divide about evenly between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, and between McCain and the other Democrat, Hillary Rodham Clinton. …
People calling the economy extremely important lean toward the two Democratic presidential contenders, while those less concerned prefer McCain. The partisan divide helps explain that, as does income. Of those most worried about the economy, people earning under $50,000 a year prefer the two Democrats over McCain, middle-income earners are divided evenly, and McCain wins the most affluent.
Democrats divide between Obama and Clinton about the same whether or not they are extremely concerned about the economy.
While I’ve long believed (and still do) that a Hillary Clinton administration stands a far greater chance of restoring economic health in the U.S., it appears that voters see so little difference between A) the two Democratic candidates, and/or B) the two parties, that the most pressing issue — the economy — isn’t having much effect on voters who were going to vote Democratic (or Republican) anyway.
And that begs the question: Is there any longer a truly significant difference between the parties, on this or any other urgent issue on which the very survival of our people, and thus our nation, hinges?
Not that I’m advocating anyone vote Republican, mind you — that would be utter insanity. No; what I’m asking you to think about is just how far to the right the Democratic Party has shifted (on every issue, not just the economy), and, more importantly, what you are going to do about it.
Can the Democratic Party be fixed from within? That’s one option. But that’s what we’ve been trying to do all along, isn’t it? We’ve been holding our noses and voting a straight Democratic ticket, because we have no other choice — or so we’ve been told. And while we’ve been gritting our teeth and waiting for our party to return to the core values that made this country great, the big-money types keep dragging the party further and further to the right — and us along with it.
You know the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results every time.
I just can’t do the insanity thing anymore. Where I go from here, I don’t know. The Greens, God love ‘em, cling too stubbornly to the idea that they can run a presidential candidate every term before building the party from the local and state level up (like the Republicans did — quite successfully, if you’ve noticed). I’m not a Libertarian (although, honestly, if Mike Gravel wins the LP nomination, I will be voting Libertarian for the first time in my life). What about the Socialist Party? As noble as Socialist goals are, no, I’m not so idealistic as to believe society can be rebuilt from scratch.
All I know is that I never left the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party left me.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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April 21, 2008
Obama Addresses Crowd In Berks County
. . .
The senator also addressed several topics on Sunday including a local issue he has so far been reluctant to take on, legislation pending in Harrisburg that would ban gay marriage in the commonwealth.
“If I were in the state legislature, I would oppose it,” Obama said.
OK. So far, so good.
Obama’s silence on the proposed amendment to the state’s constitution has proven worrisome to local gay rights groups who have largely thrown their support behind Hillary Clinton and just two days before the primary he made his position clear.
It would have been better for Obama if he’d stayed silent, because he does make his stubborn opposition to marriage equality quite clear — and then in the same breath utters an idea we can’t make heads nor tails of:
“I’m not in favor of gay marriage but I certainly don’t want to see a court suggesting that somehow we can’t pass laws that say gays and lesbians aren’t being discriminated against,” Obama said.
“I’m not in favor of gay marriage” is clear — and certainly consistent; Obama has never wavered on the idea that our unions aren’t as good and worthy as his and Michelle’s, and we don’t deserve the same rights he has — but what in blazes is the rest of that confounded sentence supposed to mean?
“…I certainly don’t want to see a court suggesting that somehow we can’t pass laws that say gays and lesbians aren’t being discriminated against.”
Uh, m’kay, Barry. But — Mr. Consitutional Lawyer — is there such a thing as a “law” that says gays and lesbians aren’t being discriminated against? Maybe a resolution or two (or a hundred), but a law? And when did any court ever “suggest” anything (courts make rulings, not “suggestions”), much less rule that “we can’t pass laws that say gays and lesbians aren’t being discriminated against”?
What the hell are you talking about, Barry? Do you even know?
If we parse that sentence (and we’re trying!), it sounds like you’re saying you do want to see courts free to rule that gay and lesbian Americans do not face discrimination, thus clearing the way to discriminate against us — or to block legislation that would protect us against discrimination.
I’ll tell you what else it sounds like, Barry: It sounds like you agree with Greg Brophy!
In the end, only one thing is clear, Barry: You are opposed to my equality. Period.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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April 20, 2008
How broke was he?
He was so broke, his credit card was declined when he tried to rent a car at LAX in 2000.
Broke Barry? More like Bullshit Barry.
From yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, “How broke were Obamas? Hard to tell“:
The Obamas often say they would still be in debt if not for his best-selling books, which began to swell the couple’s bank account in 2005. In fact, for some period of time, Michelle Obama tells audiences, the couple’s college loan payments cost them more than their monthly mortgage. …
Still, it’s hard to tell just how broke they were, when and for how long.
Public records paint only part of the financial picture. In 1993 they bought a condominium in Hyde Park for $277,500, paying about $111,000 as a down payment, according to county real estate records.
As for income, they earned a combined household total of slightly more than $240,000 in 2000, according to tax records they have since made public. (Their income fluctuated in that range until 2005, when they reported earning $1.6 million.)
But it’s unclear how much their college loan debts were, and aides to the Obama campaign said last week that they could not immediately provide records to clarify. …
Somehow, a $240,000 income doesn’t quite compute as “broke,” does it?
If Barry’s credit card was declined (maxed out, perhaps?) the year his household income was $240,000, that’s not “broke” — that’s an indication he wasn’t managing his money very well. In fact, that sounds like mismanaging his money, very, very badly.
That, or his memory is just terrible. 
And as for those student loans Michelle keeps whining about, she graduated from Harvard in 1988 and Barack graduated in 1991. If they could afford to put a $111,000 down payment on a $277,500 Hyde Park condo in 1993, then why weren’t they paying off those student loans before 2005?
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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April 17, 2008
…you have to provide a valid email address. We get a LOT of crank/hate mail, and some of what we’ve been getting lately has been downright… weird.
It’s simple: If there’s something we want to clarify with you, and we can’t reach you, that’s the end of the one-sided conversation.
And we don’t publish every comment we get, especially when it sounds threatening, looks like it’s been scratched out by a drunken chicken, or is suspiciously similar to the last three comments that have arrived from different email addresses (all of which bounce when we try to reply to them).
So if you’re going to comment, and you want a reply, or any hope of seeing your comment published (which we are under no obligation to publish at all), you have to supply a valid email address. Purty simple!
We now return you to your regular programming…
I hate to waste space with this kind of administrivia, so I’ll add: Hey, Obama supporters! Stop blaming ABC, George Stephanopolous, Charles Gibson, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Socks Clinton, God, Satan, or John Foster Dulles. Your guy bombed last night. He screws up every time he has to wing it without a script, but last night was absolutely pathetic. The only thing Gibson and Steph did was ask him the same questions the public has been talking about for months — and your guy couldn’t handle it. So suck it up, quit your whining, and think about how crummy you feel after you’ve spent all these months gloating about your Messiah.
(Yeah, I’ll have more to say about the debate later.)
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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Well, now you know why Obama insists on “reaching out” to rabidly homophobic conservative churches, while refusing to grant a real, no-fluff interview with local gay media.
In Obama’s eyes, it all depends on who’s legitimate, and who’s not.
I keep saying there’s a larger pattern to everything Barack Obama says and does, and — while most people out there really don’t give a rip about our piddly little civil rights struggle — we can begin to see where Obama’s bullheadedness and tunnel vision come from, by looking at the big picture, in this case, Obama’s perspective on one of the most volatile, sensitive areas any U.S. president will ever face… and one in which the wrong decision could kill us all.
(Relax, he’s not president, and he hasn’t decided to nuke Iran or invade Pakistan. Yet.)
Let’s review:
• Barack Obama agrees that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is a terrorist organization.
• But Barack Obama is willing to meet — “without precondition” — with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran (as well as with the leaders of “Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea”).
• Barack Obama criticizes former President Jimmy Carter — the guy who brokered the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty — for meeting with Hamas, because “Hamas is a terrorist organization.”
In detail:
April 24, 2007
Obama co-sponsors S.970, the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007, Section 16(d) of which designates the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (a branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran military, of which current Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a member, during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war) as a terrorist organization:
(d) List of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations- Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury shall report to the appropriate congressional committees on the efforts of the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury to place the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the list of designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1189) and the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists under Executive Order 13224 (66 Fed. Reg. 186; relating to blocking property and prohibiting transactions with persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism).
July 23, 2007
At the YouTube debate, in answer to the question, “[W]ould you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?” Obama replies:
I would. And the reason is this, that the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them — which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration — is ridiculous.
November 11, 2007
Obama reiterates to Tim Russert on “Meet the Press”:
I have said, unlike Senator Clinton, that I would meet directly with the leadership in Iran. I believe that we have not exhausted the diplomatic efforts that could be required to resolve some of these problems — them developing nuclear weapons, them supporting terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas. … That has not been tried. Not only has it not been tried, but reports indicate that it has been explicitly rejected by the Bush administration. That is a policy that I intend to change as president of the United States.
March 3, 2008:
Obama supports George W. Bush’s stubborn refusal to so much as talk to Hamas:
Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday backed the Bush administration’s policy of shunning contact with the Islamic militants of Hamas in its Middle East peace diplomacy.
The Illinois senator has said he would break with President George W. Bush’s stance of declining to talk to some other international adversaries but that stance does not apply to Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and is committed to the destruction of Israel.
April 16, 2008:
Obama jumps on Jimmy Carter for talking to Hamas:
Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Wednesday disagreed with former President Jimmy Carter’s overtures toward Hamas, saying he would not talk to the Islamist group until it recognized Israel and renounced terrorism.
The Illinois senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania which holds the next presidential voting contest on Tuesday, told a group of Jewish leaders he has an “unshakable commitment” to help protect Israel from its “bitter enemies.”
“That’s why I have a fundamental difference with President Carter and disagree with his decision to meet with Hamas,” Obama said. “We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction. We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist and abide by past agreements.”
“Hamas is not a state. Hamas is a terrorist organization,” he said.
Ohhhh! I see now! Obama will meet with the leaders of all sorts of states (even rogue states, like North Korea), because they’re states, and Hamas is not a state.
In Obama’s eyes, one is legitimate, and the other is not.
Never mind that Iran’s “Ahmadinejad has clearly stated his intent to annihilate the State of Israel and also provides generous funding, advanced training, equipment, weapons and other support to Hamas, Hizbullah, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations that attack Israeli citizens daily.”
Don’t even whisper that, or you might send Barry into an unstoppable fit of the ums and uhs and y’knows that always tumble out of his mouth when he’s caught off-guard, and off-script.
Nope, never mind that Iran is a sworn enemy of the State of Israel — one of its “bitter enemies” Obama has an “unshakable commitment” to help protect it from — and yet he wants to have a coffee klatch with that punk Ahmadinejad? But… Never mind that. Right, Barry? Barry…?
And never mind that Obama insisted, while talking to a group of Jewish voters in Pennsylvania:
“We must not negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction. We should only sit down with Hamas if they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements.”
Barry might go absolutely catatonic if he has to explain why it’s a bad thing to “negotiate with a terrorist group intent on Israel’s destruction,” while it’s a good thing to negotiate with a terrorist state intent on Israel’s destruction.
It’s not a black-and-white issue, not a one’s-a-state-and-the-other’s-not proposition. Unfortunately — and very unfortunately for the rest of us, should he actually get into the White House (shudder) — Barry doesn’t do “shades of gray” very well at all.
As Matt Schofield at the KC Star put it:
But isn’t Obama all about getting to the table with these people [Hamas], no matter how distasteful? We can be as offended as we like by the tactics of Hamas. But they’ve got a very real, and very political backing in the Palestinian territories. True, they are not a state actor. But it is hard to imagine a lasting peace agreement that ignores them. they simply have too much support in the region.
It’s not a one-off situaiton [sic], either: A study out this week notes that Nasrallah, the head of Lebanese Hezbollah, is the most respected Arab leader on Earth at this moment. Hezbollah and Hamas are not that far apart, and are frequently linked, at least by Israel. Can the continuing Israel/Hezbollah animosity be solved without the invovlement of Hezbollah? No.
I’m not saying they’re not both terrorist groups. From our perspective, and Israel’s perspective, certainly they are. Now, does this mean that Obama as a US president should sit down with them? No. Not sure that should be done.
But should he necessarily be critical of a former president who does? …
As Obama has noted, diplomacy can insist on an American leader sitting down with folks seen as strong enemies of the US. That is no reason not to meet with them. In fact, it’s an argument for why we should meet with them. …
[I]n a sense, Carter’s meeting serves this country, and the region. It’s a way to get to the table with people we can’t really otherwise talk with.
But if that’s not the case, if meeting with such folks is simply wrong, bad, and betrayal of trust, then isn’t Obama’s whole view of diplomacy a bit naive?
Easy answer: No — it’s a lot naïve.
I tell you, folks, if Barry — in all his naïveté, in all his black-and-white thinking — ends up being the one with his finger on the button, we’d all better start thinking about building bomb shelters in our backyards.
Posted by: Sapphocrat
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