In his inaugural column for the Times, Ross Douthat argues that Cheney should have run for president so that America could have had a stouter debate on torture during the campaign.  McCain couldn’t hold the pro-torture platform because he didn’t agree with the Bush/Cheney stand, and so the Bush/Cheney [...]]]>

Dick Cheney official photo

In his inaugural column for the Times, Ross Douthat argues that Cheney should have run for president so that America could have had a stouter debate on torture during the campaign.  McCain couldn’t hold the pro-torture platform because he didn’t agree with the Bush/Cheney stand, and so the Bush/Cheney stand and the viability of their brand of conservatism could really only have been tested with a Cheney run. He doesn’t argue that Cheney would have been good for the country, but that the debate would have been.

. . .and Obama didn’t see a percentage in harping on the topic.

He wasn’t alone. A large swath of the political class wants to avoid the torture debate. The Obama administration backed into it last week, and obviously wants to back right out again.

But the argument isn’t going away. It will be with us as long as the threat of terrorism endures. And where the Bush administration’s interrogation programs are concerned, we’ve heard too much to just “look forward,” as the president would have us do. We need to hear more: What was done and who approved it, and what intelligence we really gleaned from it. Not so that we can prosecute – unless the Democratic Party has taken leave of its senses – but so that we can learn, and pass judgment, and struggle toward consensus.

Here Dick Cheney, prodded by the ironies of history into demanding greater disclosure about programs he once sought to keep completely secret, has an important role to play. He wants to defend his record; let him defend it. And let the country judge.

It’s an intriguing argument, but I’m not sure I buy it. First, you have to assume that the kind of debate would only have happened during the election, and that people hadn’t made a decision about torture based on what we knew about Abu Ghraib and waterboarding beforehand. You could argue that if the American people didn’t care then, they weren’t going to care during the campaign, when their home and 401(K) values began plunging. Or you could argue that the debate did happen in people’s families, homes and communities, and the Bush/Cheney torture policy was soundly rejected when Barack Obama won in November. Obama didn’t bring out those horrible photos, but he often spoke about the threat to civil liberties and our American ideals under a policy that condoned such activites and wiretapped it’s civilians and had “federal agents poking around in our libraries.” The election wasn’t just a defeat of McCain, but an overall rejection of the Republican party and the last eight years. And, in case you didn’t know, the previous eight years were run by the Cheney administration.

Which makes this a perfect time to tell you to read Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, the book Barton Gellman published after he and Jo Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for their series about Cheney for the Washington Post. Even if you read the series, the book contains revelations so astounding that you wonder if you ever know what’s going on in this country at all.

On giving exclusive authority to the Pentagon to decide which suspected terrorists to try with military tribunals, for example, Cheney, who “liked to remind the White House staff that ‘the president’s most precious commodity is his time,’” arranged a meeting with former Attorney General John Ashcroft and overruled his objections to tell him John Yoo had already recommended the Pentagon could do it.

Three days later, Cheney brought the order to lunch with the president. No one told Colin Powell or Condi Rice. No one told their lawyers. . .

Cheney emerged from lunch with a thumbs-up from the president. . .

In less than an hour, the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review. Cheney’s days of ‘orderly paper flow,’ of shunning ‘by the way decisions,’ were long behind him.

After John Yoo, drafter of the executive authority and torture memos, quit the Office of Legal Counsel:

Jack Goldsmith, who now ran the Office of Legal Counsel, withdrew the second of Yoo’s main torture opinions in June. Repudiating a formal OLC ruling was akin to a reversal of precedent by the Supreme Court, except that the OLC had not done it before. Goldsmith was no liberal, and he was embarrassed, years later, when Bush administration critics adopted him as one of their own. . . .

And after the infamous visit to Ashcroft’s hospital bedside over the warrantless-wiretapping program, which his Deputy, James Comey, disagreed with, all hell began to break loose at the Justice Department, which was refusing to reauthorize it. Comey and several others threatened to resign, and Comey said in a letter that “I and the Department of Justice have been asked to be part of something that is fundamentally wrong.”

After a meeting, Bush pulled Comey aside.

Bush shifted direction, playing for time. Then he said something that floored Comey.

‘I just wish you weren’t raising this at the last minute.’

The last minute! He didn’t know.

The president said a few more words. Not the way it’s supposed to work, popping up with news like this. The day before a deadline?

Wednesday. He didn’t know until Wednesday. No wonder Card and Gonzales went to the hospital.

‘Oh, Mr. President, if you’ve been told that, you have been very poorly served by your advisors,’ Comey said. ‘We have been telling them for months we have a huge problem here that we can’t get past. We’ve been working this and working this, and here I am, and there’s no place else for me to go.’

‘I just need you to certify it. Give me six weeks. If we don’t have it fixed in six weeks, we’ll shut it down.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Comey said. ‘You do say what the law is in the executive branch, I believe that. And people’s job, if they’re going to stay in the executive branch, is to follow that. But I can’t agree, and I’m just sorry.’

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The New Yorker has, I assume for a limited time, put on its website a 2004 profile of a young African-American running to represent Illinois in the United States Senate.*

I can’t imagine it was more fun to read then than now. Among the highlights: the prescient sentiment of all who had [...]]]>

The New Yorker has, I assume for a limited time, put on its website a 2004 profile of a young African-American running to represent Illinois in the United States Senate.*

I can’t imagine it was more fun to read then than now. Among the highlights: the prescient sentiment of all who had met him that he was destined for great things, and his alarmingly remarkable consistency.

To an outsider with only the broadest idea of Chicago politics, Obama’s victory in the Democratic primary actually looked like a victory over cynicism. He had not slimed his opponents. Nor was he the candidate of the fabled local machine. . .

. . . Obama, meanwhile, attracted legions of fervent volunteers. “People call it drinking the juice,” Dan Shoman, the political director of Obama’s campaign, said. “People start drinking the Obama juice. You can’t find enough for them to do.”

And about the Bush tax cuts:

Ryan told me that he will also be watching closely for contradictions between Obama’s statements in the primary campaign and what he is saying now to the general electorate. “Voters, in my view, have a high antenna for inconsistency,” Ryan said. He had already heard about shifts, for instance, in Obama’s position on the Bush tax cuts. Back when Obama was speaking to Democrats alone, he had called for across-the-board repeals—now he was talking about repealing only the tax cuts of the wealthiest five per cent. (The Ryan campaign was unable to document this alleged discrepancy.)

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by hilzoy at Obsidian Wings. Cross-posted with permission.

Geraldine Ferraro wrote a horrible op-ed in the Boston Globe. She says a number of things about the effects of sexism on the Clinton campaign, which I do not propose to consider here. But she also claims that the concerns of Reagan Democrats have [...]]]>

by hilzoy at Obsidian Wings. Cross-posted with permission.

Geraldine Ferraro wrote a horrible op-ed in the Boston Globe. She says a number of things about the effects of sexism on the Clinton campaign, which I do not propose to consider here. But she also claims that the concerns of Reagan Democrats have not been heard:

“As for Reagan Democrats, how Clinton was treated is not their issue. They are more concerned with how they have been treated. Since March, when I was accused of being racist for a statement I made about the influence of blacks on Obama’s historic campaign, people have been stopping me to express a common sentiment: If you’re white you can’t open your mouth without being accused of being racist. They see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening. They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black; they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that is driving them, it’s racial resentment. And that is enforced because they don’t believe he understands them and their problems. That when he said in South Carolina after his victory “Our Time Has Come” they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.Whom he chooses for his vice president makes no difference to them. That he is pro-choice means little. Learning more about his bio doesn’t do it. They don’t identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate. His experience with an educated single mother and being raised by middle class grandparents is not something they can empathize with. They may lack a formal higher education, but they’re not stupid. What they’re waiting for is assurance that an Obama administration won’t leave them behind.”

I’m going to accept Ferraro’s claims about Reagan Democrats for the purposes of this post, not because I believe them to be true, but because I’m interested in the state of mind that would lead her to write this. I’m sure that some such people exist — when Ferraro says that they have stopped her on the street, I have no reason to doubt her. I am also sure that her all Reagan Democrats are not as she describes them, both because no such simple picture could cover such a diverse group of people, and because hers seems to me slanted in some specific ways. But leaving aside the accuracy of her sociology, and focussing on Reagan Democrats as she imagines them:

Reagan Democrats, Ferraro assures us, do not expect to be treated fairly by Obama. Why, exactly, is that? “Because they’re white” isn’t enough of an answer; they have to have some reason to expect that Obama, in particular, will treat whites unfairly. Why might they think this? Ferraro says it’s because they don’t think he understands them or their problems. His positions won’t help here, she says, which is a pity: one of the first places I’d look for reassurance is at a candidate’s positions, and the issues he has made a priority. Neither will his biography: also a pity, since a lot of it consists of sticking up for working men and women. They can’t empathize with his upbringing by middle-class whites, though Ferraro doesn’t tell us why not.

It’s odd that Reagan Democrats, as Ferraro describes them, are so uninterested in a candidate’s history and positions, and so curiously unable to empathize. Still, Ferraro tells us that there is one way to reach them: they are, she says, waiting for an assurance that he won’t leave them behind.

You’d think that this might have done the trick:

“Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.

Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.”

Though Ferraro says that Reagan Democrats want assurance that Obama understands their problems, apparently this isn’t enough. Nor is the fact that Obama has gone out of his way to have an inclusive message, to reach out to all kinds of people, and to try to treat everyone with respect.

But if neither his positions, the things he says, his biography, or quite explicit assurances can reach the Reagan Democrats Ferraro imagines, then what could reach them? Frankly, it’s hard to imagine.

And what is it about Obama that makes it impossible for him to reassure Reagan Democrats, whatever he says, whatever he does, and whatever positions he holds? Ferraro says this: “They don’t identify with someone who has gone to Columbia and Harvard Law School and is married to a Princeton-Harvard Law graduate.” But that can’t be right: surely Reagan Democrats don’t have such a finely-grained view of the distinctions* between Ivy League law schools that while Obama qualifies as an elitist, someone who went to Wellesley and Yale Law School and is married to a Georgetown-Yale Law grad counts as the salt of the earth.

It’s very hard to avoid the conclusion that Obama cannot reach the Reagan Democrats in Geraldine Ferraro’s head, that they don’t think he will treat them fairly or understand them or their problems, because he is black.

Consider this passage from her op-ed: “when he said in South Carolina after his victory “Our Time Has Come” they believe he is telling them that their time has passed.” I went back and looked at Obama’s South Carolina speech. Here’s the only place in which Obama said anything about our time coming:

“Over two weeks ago, we saw the people of Iowa proclaim that our time for change has come. But there were those who doubted this country’s desire for something new – who said Iowa was a fluke not to be repeated again.Well, tonight, the cynics who believed that what began in the snows of Iowa was just an illusion were told a different story by the good people of South Carolina.”

The “we” whose time for change has come is not blacks, in this speech. It’s all of Obama’s supporters, black and white. (It’s proclaimed by the people of Iowa, for heavens’ sake; not the people of East Saint Louis or Newark.) But for some reason, the Reagan Democrats in Ferraro’s head didn’t hear it that way. When Obama says “we”, he couldn’t possibly mean a “we” that includes them. He couldn’t mean “the people of this country”, or “the people who want change”, or even “my supporters”. They heard him say: our time — blacks’ time — has come. Your time — whites’ time — has passed.

And since that’s just self-evidently not what Obama said, I find it very hard to see how anyone could have interpreted it in that way if race was not already on his or her mind.

***

I do not, at this juncture, want to get into the question whether or not these Reagan Democrats are racist. For one thing, they exist in Geraldine Ferraro’s head, and there’s a limit to how much we can infer about them. For another, I think that the word “racism” has outlived its usefulness. Ta-Nehisi Coates explains why:

“There is peculiar bit of jujitsu that white public figures have employed recently whenever they’re called to account for saying something stupid about black people. When the hard questions start flying, said figure deflects them by claiming that any critical interrogation is tantamount to calling them a racist, which they most assuredly are not. [There follows a long list of people saying outrageous things and then reacting with horror at the thought that they might be racist.]All of this leaves me wondering, Who does a guy have to lynch around here to get called a racist? If twice claiming that a presidential candidate is only in the race because he’s black doesn’t make you racist; if shouting, “He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger” from stage doesn’t make you racist; if calling an accomplished black woman “the cleaning lady” doesn’t make you a racist, what does?”

Coates is right: this is just a game. And it’s a game I have no particular interest in playing. If people want to redefine the word “racist” so that only actual slaveholders count, let them. I’m more interested in the “critical reflection” Coates rightly says that the “I’m not a racist” move is designed to shut down; in asking: does race play a role in someone’s thought and action that it ought not to play? rather than in asking: does that role reach whatever bar of horrificness s/he wants to say it would have to meet to qualify as “racist”?

It seems obvious to me that race does play a role that it should not play in the thought and conduct of Ferraro’s imagined Reagan Democrats. It’s not just that they listen to speeches that have nothing to do with race and imagine that they do; that when they hear Obama say things like “our time for change has come”, they assume, on the basis of nothing whatsoever, and in flat contradiction to what Obama is actually talking about, that he is dissing whites. And it’s not just that they find themselves in the peculiar position of thinking that Obama’s Harvard Law degree makes him an elitist with whom they cannot identify, whereas Clinton’s Yale Law degree has no such unfortunate effects. It’s that race makes it impossible for them to seriously consider one of the two candidates for the Presidency of the United States.

This is an incredibly important election. Our country is facing unusually serious challenges. And the choice between the two candidates is unusually stark. Obama and McCain differ on almost everything: the conduct of the war, foreign policy, the economy, health care, the works. This is a choice we should take very seriously, and make on the best possible grounds, after thinking as clearly and carefully as we can.

Ferraro’s imagined Reagan Democrats cannot do that. Whatever Obama says, they will see him through the prism of their fears. There is no assurance he can give them, and nothing he can say that they will not be able to hear as threatening to leave them behind. (Really: anyone who can hear what Obama said in his South Carolina speech as “telling them that their time has passed” can project race onto anything.) There is nothing Obama can say that can reach them. And that is true just because he is black.

As I said, I have precisely no interest in debating whether or not this is racist. Personally, I think it is. But at this point, that question has become a distraction. Whether or not Reagan Democrats, as Ferraro imagines them, qualify as racists is, to my mind, much less important than convincing them that race is playing a role in their decisions that it ought not to play. Because the consequences of their decisions for all of us, black, white, Hispanic, Asian-American, native, whoever, could be enormous.

Ta-Nehisi again:

“Racism has tangible costs for blacks and whites. Deciding your president on something as stupid as race could mean (for instance) that you have less access to health care, that your children work in a stagnating economy, that your neighbors kids will die in a stupid war. Or maybe not. Maybe the white guy is completely right. But if you’re a racist, you will never know.Let me be utterly candid her and speak for myself. I grew up in de facto segregation. I didn’t have a white classmate until I was in high school. I didn’t have any deep relationships with anyone who wasn’t black until I was in my early 20s. I also had some very retrograde views about gays (I’m probably most ashamed of that). When I started working in Washington, I had some truly beautiful colleagues, many of whom I’m friends with today. But when I started the gig, I wouldn’t hang out with them after work; I thought something might happen if I got drunk around them. That didn’t change until my job hired another brother and he informed me of how ignorant I was. A short time later, I moved to New York, and was shocked to live in a place where the black/white dichotomy didn’t really exist. I mean it’s here, but not in the same way.

My point is this–it’s quite likely that had I not been shaken out of my ignorance, had I not let go of my prejudice, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. It was not simply ethical for me to become a more open person–it was to my advantage. I know that the math isn’t the same for white people, but the point, I think, still stands. Let me end with a nod to America’s greatest past time. The Boston Red Sox were the last team in pro baseball to integrate. And for their belief in the grand purity of the Great White Race, they sacrificed a shot at Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, and probably a World Series or two. White racism rewarded them with decades of heartbreak. Not saying racism was the only factor. But it didn’t help.”

If we elect McCain because a majority of Americans decide, on the merits, that he is the best candidate, well and good. I would disagree, but, well, that happens. But if we elect McCain because some Americans cannot see past race — if we allow ourselves to become the political equivalent of the 1940s-50s Boston Red Sox — that would be a terrible, terrible thing.

***

* Footnote: this phrasing (“surely Reagan Democrats don’t have such a finely-grained view of the distinctions* between Ivy League law schools …”) deliberately chosen because it does not make any claim about whether it would actually be right to put Harvard Law ahead of Yale; just that it would not make sense to attribute the view that it is, and therefore that Obama is an out of touch elitist while Clinton is not, to Reagan Democrats. I have no view on the comparative merits of Ivy law schools. (Just trying to avoid needless arguments here …)Similar Posts:

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By M. Leblanc over at Bitch. Ph.D. Cross-posted with permission.

By now, everyone’s already blogged about this horrible op-ed in the Boston Globe by Geraldine Ferraro (see, for example, Jill at Feministe, Ta-Nehisi at Matthew Yglesias, and Megan Carpentier at Jezebel). Most have zeroed in on the most ridiculous sentence in the [...]]]>

By M. Leblanc over at Bitch. Ph.D. Cross-posted with permission.

By now, everyone’s already blogged about this horrible op-ed in the Boston Globe by Geraldine Ferraro (see, for example, Jill at Feministe, Ta-Nehisi at Matthew Yglesias, and Megan Carpentier at Jezebel). Most have zeroed in on the most ridiculous sentence in the piece, where she says:

They’re not upset with Obama because he’s black; they’re upset because they don’t expect to be treated fairly because they’re white. It’s not racism that is driving them, it’s racial resentment.

Because obviously racism and racial resentment are totally different things, the latter of which being justified, and the former being A Very Bad Thing That We Can All Agree Is Evil. Her framing it this way demonstrates two things: that racists are trying valiantly to come up with new words to describe their feelings toward black people, and that the word ‘racism’ has lost much of its usefulness in public discourse.

But I want to go a little deeper. Like Geraldine Ferraro, I’m about to make comparisons between racism and sexism. Luckily, I’m not an idiot, and I’m not going to say which is worse (for the record, I think doing so is like trying to compare apples and oranges). Instead, I want to think about these two concepts as analytical constructs to describe the world around us. We use ‘racism’ and ’sexism’ to describe things as small as a single word (‘nigger’ or ‘bitch’) and as large as entire institutions, laws, governments, cultures, bodies of literature or eras of history. We might say that a joke is racist or a comment is sexist. Or we might just say that some particular individual (say, your old grandpa, your boss, or Geraldine Ferraro) is sexist/racist.

But when we use these words, we also make value judgments. Strong ones. You will find few people in the United States who will declare their belief that racism is a good thing or sexism is right. No, these concepts have become very heavily laden with condemnation. So people balk when you try to apply the concepts to anything they’ve done. “How dare you call me racist?” “I didn’t mean to be sexist, why do you have to go there?”

Bringing up sexism or racism has become, in the minds of those outraged by accusations that they might be sexist or racist, “playing the gender card” or “playing the race card.” Ferraro herself uses this formulation in her op-ed, although she fails to notice how the very same “card” rhetoric is used against her and her fellow feminists. Compare:

They see Obama’s playing the race card throughout the campaign and no one calling him for it as frightening.

The reaction to the questions being raised has been not to listen to the message and try to find out how to deal with the problem, but rather to denigrate the messenger. Sore loser, petty, silly, vengeful are words that have dominated the headlines.

Those very same people who brush off and dismiss complaints about sexism call what the Hillary campaign does “playing the gender card.” Yet Ferraro uses the very same rhetoric with respect to race.

I’ve been astonished at the degree to which “playing the race/gender” card has flourished as a phrase and concept in the conversation about this primary race. I’ve heard it from so many bloggers, pundits, straight-up newscasters, and even some of my personal friends. I want to be as absolutely clear as I can: it’s a bogus concept, and using it makes you part of the problem.

Race and gender are not “cards” that you play, like laying out trump in bridge and winning the hand. Because when you have to bring up racism or sexism to explain what is happening around you, that means you’re already losing. “Playing the _______ card” has become a way to refer to conversations about racism/sexism while not-so-subtly implying that whoever is playing the card is whiny, not playing by the rules, petulant and, ultimately way off-base.

But I’ve never understood what’s so unfair about bringing up race and gender. It’s like those who decry it as card-playing are annoyed by the fact that we all won’t play by their rules of pretending that everything is equal now, since we can all vote and everyone will pay lip service to racism and sexism being Bad. But now that we’ve placated you by agreeing that they’re Bad, how dare you accuse anyone of being racist or sexist? Especially someone who is supposed to be your political ally/friend/co-worker/acquaintance?

Racism and sexism have become far, far too loaded as concepts, and have come to be associated in the public consciousness only with Evil People. I think we need to take back those words, and own them, because denying that you think about men and women, white people and black people, in culturally-sanction insidious ways is doing no one any favors.

So I’m going to play cards against myself.

I’m racist. I’m not precisely sure why, since I grew up in an environment with virtually no black population, and I’ve never had any particularly negative experiences with any actual black people. But I know that I am fear black men more than I fear white men. I know that when someone I don’t know is mentioned to me, I automatically assume that person is white unless there are clues that the person might be black. If I find out that someone I’ve never seen who I believed to be white is actually black, I find it jarring. I have assumed things about black people that I am less likely to assume about white people, like that they have been arrested or have tried drugs. I privately apply unpleasant cultural assumptions to black women: I am surprised when I interview a black woman in her thirties who has no children, although I would not have the same surprise if the woman were white. I have considered whether people I went to school with got scholarships or special consideration because they were black. And I could go on. I have thought about all these things, wondered why I think this way, make these assumptions, and I can not answer. They trouble me deeply.

I’m sexist. On this one, I’m much more sure why. Because I’m a woman, I see all the sexism directed at me even as I’m directing it at others. So it’s easier to name. I prefer having male friends to having female friends. I enjoy being told that I’m like “one of the guys.” When people tell me that I have masculine qualities, I feel a sense of pride. I feel somewhat less pride when people tell me I am caring, emotionally open or self-sacrificing because I associate those qualities with femininity and they are thus denigrated. I have disdain for the idea of being a ’stay-at-home-mom’. I have privately assumed that women who have lots of sexual partners must have emotional issues. I internally criticize women for dressing too provocatively or not provocatively enough. I have been disdainful of movies and books that are associated with women. Like above, I could go on. These are only some of th things I have thought about, and am self-critical of.

I’m certain there’s a whole other list of things I think and feel that I haven’t even examined yet. At that’s why it’s important that we stop reserving “racist” and “sexist” only for the bad guys and start being able to applying it to anything that fits the bill.

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To be fair, every Clinton supporter isn’t getting their Ferraro on right now. But this is the narrative that seems to have become the dominant one among Hillary Clinton supporters in the blogosphere: that she is being denied the nomination by elites in the Democratic party.

Those murmurs became all-out hysterical hollering (see [...]]]> [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KACQuZVAE3s&hl=en]

To be fair, every Clinton supporter isn’t getting their Ferraro on right now. But this is the narrative that seems to have become the dominant one among Hillary Clinton supporters in the blogosphere: that she is being denied the nomination by elites in the Democratic party.

Those murmurs became all-out hysterical hollering (see above) after the Rules and Bylaws Committee decision on Sunday. They scream that Clinton should be the party nominee because she has the popular vote. Let us count the holes in this logic, shall we?

The big one, of course, is the most simple: the popular vote is not what matters in the Democratic Party’s nominating process. But let’s play along anyway. By any reasonable measure, the Clinton supporters’ argument only works if you get really, really fuzzy on the math. Clinton’s popular vote tally counts Michigan — which of course, you can’t, as every other candidate removed their name from the ballot there in accordance with party instructions. In this math, her die-hards are not counting the nearly forty percent of people who voted “uncommitted,” even though they were almost certainly Obama supporters. They’re just counting Clinton’s.

So fine, Obama gets zero votes there. But they also count Florida, another penalized state whose primary wasn’t supposed to count. Clinton ‘wins’ there by default, because no one else besides her did any campaigning in the state because they followed the rules.

And for good measure, they count Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington — all caucus states, with no formal popular vote count. (It’s worth noting that Obama won all of these but Nevada.) These last numbers are essentially made up out of thin air.

So, here we are. If you count a bunch of states that don’t count and don’t award Obama votes from these by-default victories in those states and then make up some numbers, Clinton is inarguably ahead in the popular vote.

These people are screaming it’s not fair and she’s the insurgent candidate being robbed by elites — even though the Clintons are the very definition of party insiders and she is the candidate who had every institutional and pecuniary advantage when the campaign began. The only way she wins the nomination now is by essentially destroying the party and (subsequently getting mollywhopped in November), but i get the impression, that this is what people like Harriet Christian really want.

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I’ve been meaning to shout-out last month’s Esquire for the cover story that perfectly encapsulates my feelings about the Obama campaign (cynicism via wounded idealism).

But also, check out the riveting and troubling profile of John Yoo by John H. Richardson. Yoo notoriously wrote the Bush administration’s torture memos, which put in [...]]]>

I’ve been meaning to shout-out last month’s Esquire for the cover story that perfectly encapsulates my feelings about the Obama campaign (cynicism via wounded idealism).

But also, check out the riveting and troubling profile of John Yoo by John H. Richardson. Yoo notoriously wrote the Bush administration’s torture memos, which put in play any interrogation techniques but those that “were equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” That Yoo is a war criminal is taken as a given by a lot of people, especially progressives. But in the piece, he proves himself to be smart, funny and very, very sharp. And some of the points he makes aren’t easily dismissed.

Richardson:

“But at the same time,” I say, “you know that by writing that opinion, by using those words, you’re opening the gates.”

“I agree,” he answers. “The language is not pleasing, it’s not politically savvy — I didn’t see that as my job.”

“And you didn’t have any moral qualms?”

He looks me right in the eye. “I think there are some moral questions. But the other side of the moral question is the lives you might save. I have a hard time believing any responsible American president would have said, ‘No, absolutely not, do not ask him any more questions, give him a lawyer.’ I don’t think Al Gore would have said that.”

But those harsh interrogation techniques migrated straight to Iraq. What about that?

“That was definitely not permitted under the decision-making level I was at,” Yoo says. “It was clearly not. The Geneva Conventions fully applied in Iraq.”

And the memo he wrote that was made public this spring, which justified harsh interrogation techniques for military interrogators?

That worried him, he says. But it only applied to interrogators of Al Qaeda prisoners in Guantánamo, and Yoo says that he expressed his concerns to officials “at high levels of the Department of Justice, the White House, and the Department of Defense.”

Is it possible that partisan loyalty blinded him to the dangers of putting all that power into the hands of a president so reckless and extreme, the worst combination of cowboy machismo with this radical theory of executive power?

“I can see why people have that view, but I just don’t think this is the product of people who have this radical worldview.”

“But Cheney was primed. He said we would have to go to the dark side.”

Yoo doesn’t say anything for a moment, then answers in his usual measured tone. “In World War II, we interned people, tens of thousands of citizens. We tried citizens who were enemy spies under military commissions which had no procedures at all. We let the Air Force kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in firebombing runs in Europe. We dropped a nuclear weapon on Japan. Waterboarding we think is torture, but it happened to three people. The scale of magnitude is different.”

“But if the war goes on forever, we’ve created a torture state.”

“We’ve done it three times,” he repeats.

“The White House launched an elective war against a country based on false premises.”

“They made a mistake.”

“But your theory puts the power in the hands of a person who then can invade the wrong country.”

“Who can make a mistake. The Constitution can’t protect against bad decisions,” he insists. “What the framers were really worried about was not that the president would make a mistake, but that the president would become a dictator, and I really don’t think Bush has become that.”

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Wow. We have no words right now.

From a column over on HuffPo:

The kids recently pulled my junior high school yearbooks off the book shelf. Ellis Junior High, 1974, was the kind of mixed-race, mixed-class public school I don’t think exists anymore. Hard by the crumble-down projects in Elgin, Illinois, [...]]]>

Wow. We have no words right now.

From a column over on HuffPo:

What does one even say to that? Tami somehow managed to muster a pretty thoughtful response to this dreck.

Does Nina Burleigh realize how ridiculously race biased it is to ask a candidate to weigh in on O.J. Simpson and decry hip hop simply because he is a black man.

Will Hillary Clinton be taking a stand against Susan Smith, the white woman who murdered her children a year after the Simpson-Goldman murders and blamed their disappearance on a mysterious black man? Should she be expected to? The idea is ludicrous and so is any notion that black people always need to answer for the behavior of people who share their skin color.

I don’t need Barack Obama to be the second coming of Andrea Dworkin or a Black Panther. As a black person and a woman, I need to know that, as president, he will move this country closer to equality for all people. That means helping to close the wage gap between women and men, and white women and women of color. It means ensuring committed gay couples have the same rights as committed heterosexual ones. It means ensuring that kids in poor inner-city and rural areas are guaranteed a good education just like rich kids in the suburbs. I’m not arrogant enough to think that I am the only person on earth to face inequality, and I am not entitled enough to think that a president’s work need be all about me. I wish some of my fellow American citizens felt the same way.

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Don’t let Hillary Clinton’s optimism following her West Virginia win fool you: she knows it’s over.

But do her supporters? If you’re riding for HRC, what you’re essentially hoping for is that the Democratic party elite install her as the nominee even though she trails by every conceivable metric. It’s a move [...]]]>

Don’t let Hillary Clinton’s optimism following her West Virginia win fool you: she knows it’s over.

But do her supporters? If you’re riding for HRC, what you’re essentially hoping for is that the Democratic party elite install her as the nominee even though she trails by every conceivable metric. It’s a move that would be so unpopular — even among fair-minded Clinton supporters — that it would fracture the party and guarantee she gets molly-whopped come November.

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Say word.

In the early, inchoate stages of PostBourgie’s existence, we used to do a lot more updating of the day-to-day goings-on in the presidential race. But, on the Democratic side, it’s been almost 16 months since Hillary Clinton formally began the presidential bid everyone expected since 1999 her conversation with America and [...]]]> [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j3lDXPsulg&hl=en]

Say word.

In the early, inchoate stages of PostBourgie’s existence, we used to do a lot more updating of the day-to-day goings-on in the presidential race. But, on the Democratic side, it’s been almost 16 months since Hillary Clinton formally began the presidential bid everyone expected since 1999 her conversation with America and just 15 months since Barack Obama started fanning the naiveté of young voters with silly slogans announced he was running. But keeping up at with the incremental developments in a race from more or less ideologically identical candidates for a year is mind-numbing, even for us political junkies and look forward to our weekly political round-ups on podcast every Friday.

This sucks more and more each day. Not just because of Wright and Bosnia and the campaign taking turns taking umbrage. But it’s just harder to like either of these people each day. Clinton’s stupid gas tax pandering (which doesn’t have support from any economist worth her salt and which she’s defended in eerily Bushian language) is so maddeningly calculated — does anyone think she really believes this? —- that it really makes you wonder what kind of president she would be. And just hearing Obama’s yeswecanchangebelieveinyouhope mantra during his post-primary speech in Pennsylvania made me want to throw something. Shut up, already. (This fight between the two of them is made even more annoying by the fact that it’s almost impossible for Clinton to win the nomination. It’s over, folks. Deal with it.*)

Oh, we’ll be watching Indiana and North Carolina tonight. But we can’t wait until this shit is over.

*If she were, by some miracle, to be the Democratic nominee, she would be piss off so many Democratic voters that she’d be crushed in November. A cynical-but-clever Slate piece suggested that Obama make sure this happens, by magnanimously drop out even though he’s in the lead — invoking the wrath of all his supporters and dooming Clinton and the Democrats in the fall. He would be the most powerful and popular Democrat in the country, which would give him the authority to appoint loyalists to key positions in the party and would be automatic in 2012. A lot of ifs there, but that’s what Clinton is aiming for, more or less.Similar Posts:

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dNa weighs in:

What people want is not for Obama to denounce Wright, but to denounce black people everywhere who have the gall to be angry at America for how they are and have been treated. What they wanted Obama to say was that racism is uneqivocally a black problem, that white [...]]]>

dNa weighs in:

What people want is not for Obama to denounce Wright, but to denounce black people everywhere who have the gall to be angry at America for how they are and have been treated. What they wanted Obama to say was that racism is uneqivocally a black problem, that white people have moved past it but that black people cling to greivances as an excuse for out of wedlock births, unemployment, or incarceration.

It doesn’t matter that rhetorically and policy-wise, Obama has struck the right balance between personal and governmental responsibility. It doesn’t matter that he’s confronted black anti-Semitism, black homophobia, black apathy. When Obama dared to mention that white people might harbor irrational prejudices of their own–he was pilloried by conservatives and liberals everywhere who don’t want to feel guilty suspecting every black teenager of being a drug dealer for “throwing his grandmother under the bus.”

They didn’t want him to condemn Wright, they wanted him to condemn black people. So of course they’re not satisfied. For all the talk of how white people are attracted to Obama and the alleged “absolution” he could offer them, what they really want is for him to publicly shift the blame for the racial divide squarely on the shoulders of the black community, so white people can stop thinking about it.

And he didn’t do that, so they’re not happy.

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Barack Obama’s angry denunciation of Rev. Jeremiah Wright yesterday caught a lot of people by surprise. But it hasn’t been as surprising as Wright’s Magical Media Tour (as Shani called it), which seemed to defy any sort of logic.

I asked someone who works for the Obama campaign what they thought Wright [...]]]>

Barack Obama’s angry denunciation of Rev. Jeremiah Wright yesterday caught a lot of people by surprise. But it hasn’t been as surprising as Wright’s Magical Media Tour (as Shani called it), which seemed to defy any sort of logic.

I asked someone who works for the Obama campaign what they thought Wright was trying to accomplish. “Clear his name?” she said. Uh, he’s taken a pretty interesting tack to that end.

The press is usually very slow to self-correct, so the idea that Wright is not an anti-white, anti-American nutjob — the popular narrative, even though there’s little evidence to support it and there’s plenty of evidence to the contrary — is gonna be one that’s hard for him to shake.

Ta-Nehisi:

That said, I want to be clear that I thought Wright acted a fool on Monday. There’s a lot of chatter out there claiming that Wright was trying to sabotage Obama. I don’t buy it. Like I said yesterday, I think Wright just wanted to say whatever he felt. But he made a few mistakes. Chief among them, as my friend Jelani Cobb has said, was not recognizing the difference between his pulpit and the lion’s den. This press lives to expose these sort of performances, and Wright just gave them low-hanging fruit.

Why he would do that, given what he’s been through the past few months, just boggles the mind. You can’t, on the one hand, attack the press for distorting you, and then go right to the press to communicate who you are to the American people. The saddest part of this to me, is that I don’t think Wright understood what was going on. There’s a lot of reporting now suggesting that Bill Clinton’s biggest problem is that he simply doesn’t understand how much media has changed since his White House days. His gaffes are not the product of a decline in skills, as I’ve written before, but the result of a fundamental misunderstanding of what the press has become–a gaggle of cynics who sit around waiting for people say something stupid. Gotcha journalism rules the day. Wright’s mistake was much the same–he simply had no understanding of the press.

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Bill Richardson tells GQ why he broke with the Clintons to endorse Obama.

I’ve heard and read everything you’ve said about why Obama. But why then? There must have been something that put you over, that made you pull the trigger. It was an accumulation of talks that I had with him.

But [...]]]>

Look what Sinbad started. That jolly spinner of irreverent yarns attended a trip overseas to Bosnia with then-First Lady Hillary Clinton (and Sheryl Crow) and challenged Clinton’s assertion that the trip was fraught with danger.  This led to a surreal moment where a Clinton spokesperson went hard after Sinbad. We’re still reeling.

But well, it turns out…Walter Oakes was in the right.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that she “misspoke” when she said last week that she ran from sniper fire when she landed in Bosnia in 1996.

Her comments, made to the Philadelphia Daily News, are her first since news organizations and others began questioning the degree of danger she faced on her trip, made when she was first lady.

In an effort to build up her foreign policy credentials as a presidential candidate, Mrs. Clinton had said last week, and earlier, that when she landed in Tuzla, she and others, including her daughter, “ran with our heads down” to avoid sniper fire. News organizations and others cast doubt on Mrs. Clinton’s description and raised questions about her credibility.

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Although, to be fair, this is consistent with his weird obsession with Hillary Clinton that compels him to knock her whenever he gets a chance. Also, bellowing.Similar Posts: Selling Ass. Is This a Realignment Moment? Becoming 'White'.