I have thought to myself on occasion over the course of this long campaign that someone could really write a full-time blog that consisted of nothing but corrections of misrepresentations of Hillary Clinton's positions and history, as some tried to do for Howard Dean back in the Dean days. Her campaign seems to have finally come to the same realization, and also now understands that in the contemporary media environment it needs a way to communicate with the many people who are going to write about Clinton without ever contacting the campaign or getting on its press lists. And so it has launched a new fact-checking blog, The Fact Hub.
It's not an entirely novel idea. Back in 2003 Howard Dean's supporters created something similar in the DDF -- the Dean Defense Forces -- though that was an organically-occurring grassroots project fueled by the passions of its unpaid supporters rather than a coordinated, top-down, well-financed and orderly effort by the campaign. The DFF also encouraged letter writing campaigns, with mixed consequences, which the Clinton camp has yet to do, and the DDF never became a formal part of the Dean campaign.
Fun campaign trivia fact: The DDF was started by Joe Rospars, now new media director for Barack Obama, and Matt Singer, now of Left in the West and Forward Montana. Pioneers, both.
The state director of the Ohio branch of the national Christian Coalition of America has released a statement distancing himself from the Rev. Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani, as well. As in Iowa, the Ohio Christian Coalition broke with the national organization in 2006, changing its name and re-organizing as the non-profit Ohio Christian Alliance. That Richard Vara, the Ohio state director for the still-surviving though much diminished national group, should come out so strongly against the former New York mayor is more surprising than the Iowa rebuke, because he represents the more establishmentarian Christian Coalition, rather than one of the new independent upstart Christian Alliances, which might be expected to stand up to national figures like Robertson:
As the newly appointed state director of the Ohio Christian Coalition, I wish to announce that Mr. Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani, is to be regarded as Pat's personal choice for president and does not reflect the views of the Ohio Christian Coalition. It is in my humble opinion and
based on conversations with both individuals and leaders of the conservative Christian community's around the state, Giuliani, will not receive significant support from Ohio's value voters.
Ohio value voters can be expected to act with discretion and vigilance in voting for candidates' strong on conviction and a willingness to fulfill campaign promises. For this reason the Christian vote must not be assumed by any one candidate or party. The social issues of value voters are viewed as being to crucial too risk in the hands of a candidate's who minimize their importance.
Overall members of the value voter community are reserving their pledge of support for candidate's who will acknowledge and take-up their issues.
And don't feel bad if you missed the story of how the national Christian Coalition suffered major defections by its Iowa, Georgia, Alabama, and Ohio branches last year, and how those new groups banded together into a rival coalition that now includes Michigan and Pennsylvania chapters, as well. It doesn't seem to have gotten all that much play.
Aaron Schock, Illinois Republican and candidate for the seat of retiring Congressman Ray LaHood, deserves credit for coming up with an even crazier policy proposal than the ones embraced by even Rudy Giuliani's foreign policy team. Some choice quotes from Schock's policy manifesto (PDF) which, in style, tortured syntax, and overheated nuttiness resembles nothing so much as the poorly photocopied manifesto of some four-member revolutionary Trotskyite party (all emphasis in the original):
If I am elected I will propose a bill that will use the CIA estimate of how much Iran gives Hezbollah each year, to spend the same amount from us to fund freedom fighters inside Iran who want to overthrow Ahmedinejad and the Ayatollahs.
Oh, and then he's going to double the amount the following year and then triple it and so on... No mention is made of who these freedom fighters are, where they come from, or what effect the perception of U.S. support will have on them. But wait, it get's crazier:
Lest anyone reading my earlier item think I believe Jeff Dinelli's "preposterous conspiracy theory" that Joe Trippi is some kind of Barack Obama plant inside the John Edwards campaign working to take Hillary Clinton out, I'd like to make clear that I believe nothing of the sort. What I do know, however, is that Trippi is by nature and experience drawn, in presidential politics at least, to outsiders and underdogs and reformers, and so, unsurprisingly, has much more of an organic affinity with the reformist Obama campaign than the establishmentarian Hillary Clinton one.
Following up on my post, Noam Scheiber shakes out his notebook and reveals that Trippi got back into the game of presidential politics this cycle because of Obama, not Edwards, and that he has a great deal of affection and respect for Obama. Says Trippi:
What happened was, I really like David Axelrod a lot. And so when Obama got in, I had this feeling almost instantaneous like, "Shoot, you know, maybe I should do this again." It’s amazing. I mean, Obama gets part of the credit. That was the first time I started feeling like, "Wait a minute, maybe we can do something different here."...
Frankly if I wasn’t working for Edwards, I would probably have given $500 to Obama and $500 to Edwards.
Also, there's nothing conspiratorial about campaigns deciding to go easy on each other while they gang up on the front-runner, or emphasize each other's messages. That's just politics -- the art of alliances. Right now it's in the interests of both the Edwards and Obama campaigns to train their fire on Clinton, as both campaigns might find it easier to beat the other in a one-on-one contest than it would be for either to beat Clinton in a three-way match. Should Edwards and Obama come in first and second in Iowa and find themselves battling each other instead of Clinton, however, you may be sure the gloves will come off.
All of which leads me to a question I haven't spent much time thinking through: How do people think an Edwards-Obama ticket would do in a general election? (I'd expect Obama to pick someone other than Edwards as a V.P., should he win the nomination -- and Edwards to bow out of a second go at the vice presidency -- making the question of an Obama-Edwards ticket moot.) And also a question I've considered a great deal: What happens to the person who comes in third in Iowa? Can any of the Democrats survive a third-place finish in the state?
I know, it's not surprising that Richardson has the largest percentage of Latino staffers, and Obama has the largest percentage of black staffers -- just as it wasn't a shock to learn that the Clinton campaign employs the most women. But nevertheless, it's interesting to see it all laid out in a convenient graph format.
Just in case you weren't convinced, he refused to say yesterday whether he'd pardon Bernard Kerik, his mobbed-up and now freshly indicted former police commissioner. This is not only crazy on a policy level (what possible justification could there be for a pardon?), it's crazy on a political level, too -- for obvious reasons. It underscores, once again, just how delusional and egocentric he is. His egomania is one major reason why he'd almost certainly be our worst president ever, and one reason why I don't think he'd be as formidable a candidate as some people think. He's just too out of touch with reality to be an effective candidate much of the time.
Fun fact learned while researching this post: Giuliani's campaign has recruited his law partner Marc Mukasey, son of our shiny new Attorney GeneralMichael Mukasey, to prevent Kerik's defense team from interviewing witnesses that might hurt his campaign.
Putting aside Andrew Sullivan's bizarre attempts to write Hillary Clinton out of feminism, the furious anti-Clinton manifesto he published today has a distinctly mafioso-like tone to it. After hundreds of words in which he warns darkly about the "constant beat of marital-political intrigue that we endured in the 1990s," bemoans "the depth of Bill Clinton's needs and compulsions and Hillary Clinton's life-long enabling of them," and calls them "a co-dependent, scandal-drawn power-couple with almost no accountability within their marriage, let alone outside it," he ends with, "I just want this on the record, ok? If you want to pick them again, do so with your eyes open."
In other words: Do you want to relive the political environment of the 90s? If so, vote Clinton. Because this is what it'll be like. This post, that I just wrote, here on my blog.
Of course, the political environment of the 90s was, in no small part the creation of a scandal-obsessed media. Was Clinton any more sexually compulsive than JFK, or Bob Livingston, or the thrice-married Newt Gingrich, or the thrice-married Rudy Giuliani? Hell, was the Clinton's relationship any more, or any less, fraught than the stange filial dramas between George W. Bush and his father? Of course not. The media just lost its mind for eight years, went crazy with class hatred and status envy and groupthink and scandal-mongering (remember Whitewater? Where the investigation found, after $25 million in costs, no wrongdoing?). The Clintons had their problems then and they have them now. An apparent willingness to bomb Iran strikes me as an issue. But they weren't the ones Sally Quinn was writing about, or that Andrew Sullivan is lambasting. Those problems are the ones the media created for them.
What Sullivan is demonstrating here is that, if Clinton is elected, he will do his steady best to bring that back. He will use his platform, his dozens of posts a day, his megaphone into the elite, to bring back the constant psychosexual speculation, the bizarre paranoia about the "true" nature of their marriage, the constant questioning of Hillary's feminist credentials, etc, etc. Phrased another way, Sullivan is saying, "nice press corps you have here. Shame if something should happen to it." That's the deal he, and some others in the media, are offering: Don't vote for Clinton, and we won't descend into hysterical Clinton-hatred again. As he writes at the end of his post, "I just want this on the record, ok?" And so it is.
An article in today's LA Times provides some much needed (and sadly rare) skepticism about the government's recent chest-pounding about rising cocaine prices:
Price bumps in U.S. street cocaine prices have occurred before, touted by U.S. law enforcement officials each time as evidence that counter-narcotics policies were working. But the increases often proved temporary and were followed by supply adjustments by drug dealers and a settling back of cocaine prices.[...]
Others, such as Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York-based organization advocating alternatives to the administration's drug policy, said higher prices inevitably cause dealers to boost supply.
"Assuming that high cocaine prices are hurting cartels is like assuming high gasoline prices are hurting oil companies," Piper said.
Others say the decreased supply may just reflect the fact that more Colombian cocaine is being shipped to Europe, where it can fetch even higher prices.
Meanwhile, Congress is considering another five billion dollars for Plan Colombia, our ongoing effort to combat coca cultivation in that country (and that's just a fraction of the approximately 100 billion spent each year around the world combating drug use). The continuing fiasco that is our nations' drug policy unfortunately shows no signs of getting better any time soon, and Democrats, though they are insisting on some improvements in treatment of small farmers in Columbia, aren't challenging the basic assumptions behind the way we've conducted drug policy. Even considering a more reasonable policy would be instantly declared political suicide by the Tim Russerts and David Broders of the world even though, for example, 40 percent of Americans support legalization of marijuana. For much much more see Foreign Policy's excellent coverage.
Although the outcome was no longer in doubt after the craven actions of Feinstein and Schumer at the Judiciary Committee, Michael Mukasey was officially confirmed as Attorney General. Granting that there were no good options, I'm still inclined to believe that -- barring better answers on torture or arbitrary executive power -- rejecting his nomination was the least bad option. Although Mukasey might have been an acceptable compromise at an earlier date, precisely because nobody is likely to be a good Attorney General under this administration given what it's already done and committed itself to, drawing a line the sand was more important. Repairing the DOJ is going to have to wait for a Democratic administration in any case.
Alex Kelloggnotes that, for most of the history of American cinema, the black bad guy has been a caricature, not a sophisticated villain. Denzel Washington is changing that.
But Gangster is more than a critical and commercial success. It’s a sign of an important progression in American cinema. There is, of course, nothing new about gangster movies with Oscar aspirations. But a gangster film starring an emotionally complex, flawed but redeemable, African American character? That's almost unheard of. By taking on such a role, Washington is reinventing the conventional villain, and the black villain in particular. The traditional one -- wide-eyed, wild, and inherently evil -- is so common in American cinema that he’s hard to ignore, yet he’s rarely recognized as part and parcel of what got the medium itself off the ground. In fact, just about every black actor has played such a villain (with the notable exceptions of Washington and his forbearer, Sidney Poitier). And the back-story to this stereotypical character offers a rare opportunity to reveal a long list of forgotten movie history.
Note to Andrew Sullivan: Hillary Clinton's feminism -- or lack of it -- has absolutely nothing to do with her husband, their marriage, or their political partnership. Feminism is not about passing judgment on women's choices about how to deal with infidelity in marriage -- especially when the woman in question is a public figure whose true personal life we can only guess at. Sullivan writes:
His wife wants to use him as a weapon in the campaign, but still insist that it is she who is running, and not him. She wants to appeal to a return to his policies, but still insists that she does not represent a third term for the 42d president. She wants him on her resume until it's not convenient. Then she pretends to be a feminist. ... She wants credit for being a feminist, while still running in part on her husband's record - both claiming credit for the good parts and disowning the bad parts. They will keep playing this game - arguing every which way, passing the buck from one to the other, never accepting responsibility, for as long as it gets them past the latest news cycle. ... Another term of the two of them could well lead to the same kind of sexual scandals that distracted and near-paralyzed affairs of state in the 1990s.
Since time immemorial, male politicians have used their wives to promote a certain image of themselves (see Edwards, John and Elizabeth). John's recent Iowa TV ad revolves around Elizabeth's breast cancer. And the wives have constantly been used as a dodge when it comes to gay rights. Sullivan's beloved Barack Obama said in a debate that he hadn't talked to his children about same-sex marriage, but "my wife has." When John Edwards wanted to appeal to both swing voters and the Democratic left, he noted that he is personally opposed to gay marriage because of his religious beliefs, but Elizabeth supports marriage equality and often tries to win him over to her position.
Most professional political consultants become hyper-partisan on behalf of their candidate once they lock down a job. John Edwards campaign strategist Joe Trippi, though, is different, and has remained a member of the Facebook group "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)" since the spring, according to current and historic screencaptures of Trippi's Facebook Groups page. "Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)," with close to 400,000 members, is one of the main independent online efforts to show support for electing Obama president.
In some ways, Trippi's membership in the online group isn't that surprising. In a little-noticed passage in Noam Scheiber's recent TNR profile of Trippi, he revealed that Trippi had previously discussed joining the Obama campaign with Obama's chief strategist. Writes Noam:
Trippi guest-lectured at Northwestern for a class taught by Obama strategist David Axelrod, and the two men briefly discussed how he might join the campaign. Several weeks later, Trippi met with Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson to discuss a possible role in Hillaryland. When neither option panned out, an acquaintance put Trippi in touch with John and Elizabeth Edwards. He flew down to North Carolina for a three-hour conversation and accepted a job with Edwards a few weeks later.
Trippi was quite solicitous of various Obama staffers early on and until it was clear that he wouldn't be brought into the campaign. His discussions with the Obama and Hillary Clinton campaigns before joining Edwards have led some in-the-know political insiders to view Trippi as more of a free-agent than a partisan in the current race. As Noam writes, he's in it "For Love of the Game."
Here's a screencapture of Trippi's Facebook Groups page, taken this morning.
This is indeed depressing. In the debates, it was possible if one was inclined to excuse Obama's comments because he disavowed the fake "crisis" before spouting nonsense on Social Security. But he's now repeating it and explicitly using the crisis language. Ugh. There's no way around it --and I say this as someone who's leaned towards him from the start of the campaign -- but he's been a serious disappointment on the ground, and if he keeps this up it's nearly a deal-breaker.
Bob Somerby recently pointed out that "it’s fairly clear that the press corps loathes Clinton and Edwards -- but not Obama." Although I wouldn't necessarily bet on this continuing if he actually wins the primary, this remains one of his strongest selling points: better uncertainty than someone who we know will mean a full-bore return to Dowdite lunacy. But if he's going to cultivate the press by actually adopting the Millionaire Pundit Values of the WaPo editorial board, that's useless.
Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb have an op-ed in today's Times pushing for a new G.I. Bill to help Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. This comes at the heels of yesterday's report about how quickly these veterans are turning up homeless. One in four homeless people in the United States is a veteran, and according to the Veterans Affairs Department, more than 400 vets from the current wars are already homeless. In addition to providing better medical and mental health services for soldiers when they return, providing more support for education is the pathway to a better life post-war. Right now, all vets have is the paltry Montgomery G.I. Bill, which requires that service members pay $100 a month into for the first year of enlistment in order to receive about $800 a month for college later on. That isn't even enough to attend most community colleges these days. Supporting a new G.I. Bill seems like a pretty easy case to make.
Since Julian's terrific article -- and seriously, I can't recommend enough that you all read it -- allows me to talk about comics on Tapped today, let's have at it. In his piece Julian mentions Ultimates 2, in which American overreach leads to Chalmers Johnson's much talked about "Blowback" in the form of an international consortium that develops a team of superheroes, including a Captain America analogue, to swoop in and essentially decapitate the USA, on grounds that we've grown too dangerous. This works for awhile, then the Hulk rips somebody's arms off.
But in some ways, the more interesting one was Secret War, which essentially used comic heroes as stand-ins for a CIA regime change plot during the 80s. The beginning of the book even includes an anonymous forward from an intelligence officer who claims he told the author this story and, save for the characters and repulsor beams, it's all pretty much true. Like in Ultimates 2, this overreach ends with a massive counterstrike that does enormous damage to relevant heroes, but, in the end, good prevails, and the assembled individuals end the series a bit more cynical about the US government, but basically okay.
Which gets to one of the failures of comic books as vehicles for political commentary: They focus on the powerful. And the powerful are generally fine. It's like looking at the consequences of the War in Iraq through the experiences of George W. Bush. His popularity may go down, he may even have a few long nights of the soul, but at the end of the day, he's got a pretty sweet job, huge earning potential, endless individuals willing to fete him, and so forth. He'll be fine. So will the heroes, who need to remain in the picture in order to sell more comics. The temporary anguish and unrest these events create for the empowered are nothing compared to what they do to the disempowered. The powerful, basically, get pissed off. The powerless are serving multiple tours in Iraq, or losing their homes after American bombings, or raging ineffectually at the graves of their loved ones. They don't need to stay in the picture for future speeches or comic series. In fact, they never enter the frame at all. Unless, that is, they decide to seek revenge.
As the Bush administration’s saber rattling toward Iran grows louder, a handful of congressional Democrats are figuring out how to disarm the White House. Brian Beutlertakes a look at who’s leading the charge and what, if anything they can do.
In the past month, President Bush and his allies in the Congress have set Washington once again buzzing with speculation about the administration’s end game for Iran -- having accused the Iranians of stoking a third world war and dubbed the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. But as everyone from antiwar activists to military insiders wring their hands over the White House’s intentions, a lonely handful of Democratic legislators are working to wedge Congress between the administration and Tehran.
Massachusetts Rep. John Tierney and Virginia Sen. Jim Webb have emerged as early leaders. With a few exceptions, their efforts have drawn tepid support from their colleagues, in both parties. But Tierney points to hopeful signs of a groundswell—and sources say influential Democratic donors have begun demanding that party leaders match Bush’s saber rattling with an equally vocal chorus of caution.
Julian Sanchez on how comic book heroes are taking on preemptive war, torture, warrantless spying, and George W. himself:
In one sense, this is nothing new. The very first issue of Captain America (1941) showed the star-spangled super-soldier punching out Adolf Hitler, prompting criticism from both Nazi sympathizers and those who considered der Führer Europe's problem. Superman and Batman hawked war bonds while facing down monstrous racist caricatures of buck-toothed Japs. Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen -- works that transformed comics in 1986 by proving that illustrated tales of men in tights could be serious, adult art -- were both steeped in their Cold War milieu. (Moore took his title from the Roman poet Juvenal's famous query about political power: "Who watches the watchmen?")
Nevertheless, the politically inspired stories of the "War on Terror" era have been remarkable not only for their ubiquity and sophistication, but also in the way they have exposed -- and sometimes exploded -- the political ideas embedded in the superhero genre itself. A famous 2002 cover of the German news magazine Der Spiegel depicted members of the Bush cabinet dressed as Rambo, Batman, Conan the Barbarian, and the "warrior princess" Xena, suggesting that neoconservatism is just comic-book logic applied to international affairs. But the efforts of comics writers to grapple with current events raise a corollary question: Is the superhero a natural neocon?
Obama claims, ''What is clear to me is that the legislation that has been proposed places a significant burden on the mining industry and could have a significant impact on jobs." This is hogwash. Obama is simply repeating typical industry anti-tax propaganda. So long as the minerals are there, people are going to mine them. Paying a 4 to 8% surtax is not going to make much of a difference.
Obama is showing a marked lack of principle here. The 1872 Mining Act is one of the nation's worst laws. Environmentalists have been fighting it for decades. It allows mining companies to rape the land and pay next to nothing to the government. When mining companies stake a claim, they have to pay about $5 an acre to the government. It doesn't matter how much gold, uranium, silver, or whatever is underneath. $5 an acre. It amounts to the nation giving away its minerals to private companies for free.
Indeed. It's awful public policy, and I'm not even sure that it's good politics. It may play decently in Nevada, but a lot of folks in the Pacific coast states know what the 1872 Mining Act is (Oregon, Washington, and California all have substantial interiors, after all), and properly oppose it. Obama's position won't be popular among those voters, and trading Nevada for Oregon, Washington, or California seems like a poor exchange.
The Financial Times, which I've started reading for its international coverage now that it's free and all, has a whole piece today on Joe Lieberman's continuing belligerent-guy-at-the-end-of-the-bar routine. I'd, of course, been aware of it for a while, but I was still taken aback by how he is finding new ways to out-neocon the necons and also just how transparently ridiculous his "I didn't leave my party, my party left me" routine is:
The 2008 Democratic candidates are beholden to a “hyper-partisan, politically paranoid” liberal base that could endanger the final nominee’s chances of winning next year’s presidential election, Joe Lieberman, the former vice-presidential Democratic candidate, said on Thursday.
In his most outspoken attack on fellow Democrats since he was unsuccessfully challenged last year by Ned Lamont, a liberal Democrat, for his Senate seat in Connecticut, Mr Lieberman on Thursday said he may not vote for the Democratic presidential nominee next year.
He argued that George W. Bush and the Republican presidential candidates remained truer than the Democratic party to its tradition of a “moral, internationalist, liberal and hawkish” foreign policy that was established by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.
This would all be kinda amusing if it was written by Jamie Kirchick but since the man is a sitting United States Senator (and a deciding vote in the Senate at that) it's scary as hell. Also I thought this was pretty amusing:
“The Democratic party I grew up in was unafraid to make moral judgments about the world beyond our borders,” he said.
Ah yes, because Americans today have so much trouble judging other people. That's what we need to do more of. I mean really, can an appearance with David Horowitz be far away? More seriously, this is yet another example of the twisted logic that Lieberman and people like Kirchick employ--the facile argument that your either with Norman Podhoretz or Noam Chomsky.
Politico has a piece about the generational gap that's forming among conservatives around climate change. Young, potential Republican voters who have come of age in a world where the global warming is an undeniable, human-caused problem are finding themselves at odds with the old-guard that still sees climate change as a political issue. A refusal to accept scientific consensus on climate change and begin doing something to stop it is becoming more and more politically dangerous for Republicans. The Republican base doesn't seem to care much whether or not their elected officials act on climate change, but younger voters, independents, and swing voters are making it more of a priority that the candidates they elect both acknowledge the reality of climate change and begin working on doing something about it.
Change is underway, as we see with people like John Warner of Virginia, cosponsor of the America's Climate Security Act, and Rep. Bob Inglis, the congressman the Politico piece uses to illustrate the generational divide. There's a lot of skepticism about whether anything will pass through Congress this year, since there's contention about this particular bill on both the left and the right. Either nothing will happen, or Congress will pass something notably week, so a more important question is probably what will happen with voters in '08. The article is skeptical as to whether they'll support the Democrats' ambitious plans, even if they think climate change is a problem:
Politics aside, it is not clear whether the public is ready to stomach the pocketbook costs of curtailing greenhouse gas emissions.
People want cleaner air, but are they willing to pay 30 percent more for natural gas to heat their home, or higher energy bills overall? Will they drive smaller cars or pay more to gas up their Durango? Probably not.
Putting the conflict between what people "want" and what the science says we need aside, the question that remains for me after reading this is what this means in the presidential race. Some voters may very well think the Dem plans are too expensive or too ambitious, but for the most part, the Republican candidates don't offer any plans on climate and energy. McCain has been somewhat of an environmental champion among Republicans, but he hasn't come out with much in the way of a solid plan for what he'd do as president. Giuliani wants an "intense focus" on energy independence and acknowledges that climate change is a problem, but opposes an emissions cap and doesn't offer anything more than lip service. Romney's been similarly noncommittal on what he'd do, while stressing the need for energy independence. Huckabee layers his discussion of climate change in "creation care" rhetoric and isn't quite sure humans are causing it, but he supports a mandatory, economy-wide cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Fred Thompson, in his miniscule issues statement on energy security, says "we don’t know for certain how or why climate change is occurring" but we should "take reasonable steps to reduce CO2 emissions without harming our economy," and doesn't begin to outline what those steps might be.
This divide between the public's desire to confront climate change and the general unwillingness in the GOP to do that can only help Democrats. It's not a very complex choice: elect a Democrat and get action on climate change, or elect one of the Republicans and get another 4-8 years of stagnation.
Looking at the transcript, Russert does deserve some credit for reading the support for the Human Life Amendment in the GOP platform. If taken seriously, the HLA would not merely ban abortion in all 50 states but make abortion first degree murder in all 50 states. And yet, this view -- not only awful on the merits but exceptionally unpopular -- is rarely mentioned. Democrats, as I suggested earlier today, deserve a lot of the blame for not emphasizing the unpopular GOP positions on the issue.
On Thompson's comments, though, I would be less charitable than Kate. After all, it's hardly unusual for Republicans to say that women shouldn't be punished for obtaining abortions; indeed, to compound the lunacy the very platform plank that equates abortion with murder would also exempt women entirely from punishment. (The Novak column goes on to assert that no "serious antiabortion legislation ever has included criminal penalties against women who have abortions;" apparently being "serious" means treating women like children.) To take Thompson's position, I think, is not to face up to the fact that criminalization doesn't work, but is simply evidence of someone who doesn't take his alleged "pro-life" premises seriously. (Thompson never said that doctors shouldn't be punished for performing abortions.) Thompson does say something about "young women in extreme situations," which would be more defensible than a blanket exemption from legal sanctions, but he doesn't make clear what he's advocating.
At any rate, I think there's a big difference between recognizing that criminalization is ineffective even on its own terms and simply exempting women from punishment based on whatever combination of pure expedience and 18th century conceptions of women. Thompson seems as incoherent and unprincipled as most Republican anti-choicers to me.
Marc Ambinderreported this morning that Iowa Christian Alliance president Steve Scheffler is not going to follow Christian Coalition co-founder Pat Robertson's lead and support Rudy Giuliani. That's not too much of a surprise, as the Iowa branch of once-vigorous Christian Coalition was so disgusted by the scandals of the national group that it broke with the Coalition and changed its name to the Christian Alliance in March 2006, saying "the Board... would rather function as an independent organization than as an organization shrouded with perceptions contrary to its Christian commitments."
Now the Iowa Right to Life Committee's president, Kim Lehman, says she won't be following in the footsteps of her former favorite candidate, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, either. Brownback yesterday endorsed Arizona Sen. John McCain, who has a 74 percent pro-life voting record according to the Iowa group, and Lehman had previously endorsed Brownback, in January, and then served on his Iowans for Brownback Leadership Committee.
"I'm not following Sen. Brownback on what he does. I supported him personally back in January because of his commitment and his activism on the issue and his consistency, and what he does is his personal decision," Lehman told The Prospect this afternoon. That said, "I think if Sen. McCain were to win the nomination for the country, I think everyone will get behind him, including myself."
A major factor keeping Lehman from lining up behind McCain right now is that there are only three viable candidates left in Iowa, she says -- and he's not one of them. And between Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Fred Thompson, only the latter two have the pro-life bona fides she seeks. "It’s a dead tie between Huckabee and Thompson," she explained. "Thompson has a 100 percent pro-life voting record, and Huckabee has never waved or had to go back and forth. He's just been pro-life." Her group has not yet made a formal endorsement, but will probably do so eventually in order to stave off what she sees as an even greater threat than flip-flopping.
Like Scheffler, Lehman, whose group boasts 20,000 members, is a major Giuliani skeptic. "We certainly would not like Giuliani to win because he's anti-life and he's a sure loser for the Republican Party," she said. In fact, should the national party pick Giuliani as its standard-bearer, Lehman predicted a blow-out for the Democrat nationwide and a sure Democratic win in Iowa.
"I hate to be the reminder to the Republican Party at the national level, but a lot of their base is staunch pro-life Christians and they're not going to come out to vote for Giuliani," she said. "They might as well just save themselves the money and hand it over to the Democrats."
"Giuliani will not be getting the votes -- I don’t care who the other candidate is," she warned. "It's a prediction you can take to the bank."
Fred Thompson appeared on Meet the Press last weekend and said, of abortion, "I do not think it is a wise thing to criminalize young girls and perhaps their parents as aiders and abettors" and "You can't have a [federal] law" that "would take young, young girls … and say, basically, we're going to put them in jail." Bob Novak has decided that Thompson's comments reveal "an astounding lack of sensitivity about abortion."
Well, it does seem to show a lack of sensitivity about the anti-abortion movement's rhetoric, which holds that making abortion illegal would simply make it stop happening. But Thompson's statements actually betray a better understanding about why arguments for making abortion illegal just don't hold any water. While the pro-life camp wants to make abortion illegal, they haven't given much thought to what the punishment should be for women who break the law, as this video so aptly illustrates.
Either Thompson's supporters have been deceived about his stance on abortion, or Thompson himself doesn't really know what he thinks. Then again, perhaps he does, and he just forgot to get his thoughts approved by party minders before going on Meet the Press.
Ezrasays we need to start asking the Democratic candidates that question, and not letting them wriggle out of answering it.
But here's another question every campaign should have to answer, and that none of them have: Will you attack Iran in order to prevent their construction of a nuclear weapon?
That is, after all, the defining foreign policy question of the race. Iraq is a more acute concern, but so much of the damage there has already been done, and we are so hostage to the facts on the ground, that the differences and distinctions between the candidates are, in some ways, of relatively uncertain importance. Once in office, their actions on Iraq will be governed by the realities of the war and the domestic polls.
Not so with a nuclear Iran, where the executive really will be allowed to make the decision as to whether we launch air strikes, or whether we seek a policy of deterrence, negotiation, and engagement. Yet till now, the candidates have largely been allowed to divert such questions, and all have done so in the same way. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, John Edwards said that, "to ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table." Asked by 60 Minutes where he would use military force to disrupt the Iranian weapon program, Barack Obama said, "I think we should keep all options on the table." And Hillary Clinton, speaking to AIPAC, said, "We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table."
Dana, I don't think this is an either/or. It's true that voters are "looking for a president who can protect them from 'the terrorists' -- and end the Iraq war, and create jobs, and restore respect for America on the world stage." But that doesn't mean that voters -- particularly primary voters -- aren't "looking for a president who can protect them from the Right." Democratic voters believe that in order to end the Iraq War, in order to create jobs, in order to change our foreign policy, in order to achieve universal health care, that they need a Democrat who can take on, and beat, the Right Wing. And the Democratic candidates know this. That's why Clinton makes such a big deal out of her years of experience battling the Republicans. The capacity to take on the noise machine and win is critical to every other element of our agenda. Given the historic number of filibusters and the record of non-cooperation seen on the Right, the ability to beat them is a threshhold issue for Democratic voters. Without the confidence that their candidates can stand against the Republicans, they can't trust that they'll achieve their agenda.
Bit of a weird headline over in The New York Times, where they trumpet that "Voters Split Over Spending Initiatives on States' Ballots." But get into the article and there's no "voters" to speak of -- there are distinct electorates, in distinct states, voting on distinct ballot initiatives. "Five statewide bond initiatives were approved by Texas residents this week," reports The Times, "including $3 billion for cancer research and prevention that was championed by Lance Armstrong and up to $5 billion for highway improvement projects. But in New Jersey voters rejected $450 million in new spending for stem cell research, and in Oregon they blocked a plan for increased taxes for health care."
Not all spending is equal. You often get this sort of framing when talking taxes, and it's hugely pernicious. Voters don't, it's true, "like" new taxes. Voters also don't "like" spending money. No one does. But you may want to spend money in order to buy a new TV, just as you may want to pay more in taxes in order to have guaranteed health care, or a war in Iraq. When voters in different states pass some priorities and reject others, they're not "split" on spending, they're making sending decisions. Similarly, when I go to the market and purchase peas but put back the olives, I'm not "split" on spending I'm making choices.
Ezra, I just don't think Democrats are likely to choose their candidate based on what went down with Newt Gingrich or Tom DeLay in the mid-1990s -- people today just aren't thinking about those guys. Voters aren't looking for a president who can protect them from the Right, they're looking for a president who can protect them from "the terrorists" -- and end the Iraq war, and create jobs, and restore respect for America on the world stage. Gingrich and DeLay have nothing to do with all that in the minds most of Americans.
A CNN/Opinion Research poll finds the highest ever level of dissatisfaction with the war:
Opposition to the war in Iraq has reached an all-time high, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll released Thursday morning.
Support for the war in Iraq has dropped to 31 percent and the 68 percent who oppose the war is a new record.
Despite the drop in violence in Iraq, only one quarter of Americans believes the U.S. is winning the war. There has been virtually no change in the past month in the number of Americans who believe that things are going badly for the U.S. in the war in Iraq.
The public also opposes U.S. military action against Iran. Sixty-three percent oppose air strikes on Iran, while 73 percent oppose using ground troops as well as air strikes in that country.
Given that 2007 is also the deadliest year for American troops since 2003, those figures should hardly come as a surprise.
Today's the last day to vote for the 2007 Weblog Awards, and the climate-change-denier crowd has been voting early and often in the "Best Science Blog" category. (The validity of this contest probably isn't helped much by the fact that you can vote once every 24 hours per computer you have access to.) There are a few flat-earther blogs among the finalists, but the particularly pernicious Climate Audit has crept into the lead, thanks to some get-out-the-vote efforts by conservative bloggers. The blog is run by Stephen McIntyre, a former mining executive that the conservative press and legislators like James Inhofe have touted as their resident expert since he published a paper in a non-peer reviewed journal that suggested scientists are wrong about historical climate records. I'm not going to tell you how to vote or anything, but the blog in second right now (cough, Bad Astronomy, cough) has the best chance of taking the lead.
Harold Meyerson asks why the Democrats are debating free trade:
The House is set to vote today on a free-trade pact with Peru. What's not clear is why.
The Bush administration, of course, supports trade deals with just about anyone, as it has made clear by promoting an accord with Colombia, where murdering a union activist entitles the killer to a get-out-of-jail-free card. But Congress is run by the Democrats now, and some of its leaders have sought to craft a different kind of trade bill -- one that takes workers' rights and the environment almost as seriously as it does the right of global companies and investors to do what they will anywhere they roam. In particular, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel and trade subcommittee Chairman Sander Levin have taken it upon themselves to devise these new-model trade bills.
Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films today issued the latest salvo in its long war against FOX. Called "FOX Attacks Decency... with Bill O'Reilly Leading the Way," the four-and-a-half minute clip argues that all FOX shows use gratuitous sexual images -- mainly women in bikinis, from the look of it, shaking their groove thangs -- and that cable customers should be able to buy packages of channels that don't contain such a pornified public affairs channel.
Right now, the channels are bundled and there's no way for families to screen out the smut on FOX or otherwise block the channel. Brave New Films wants to change that, and is hosting a petition asking the FCC to switch to a-la-carte cable pricing so that viewers who don't want FOX in their homes can opt out of receiving the channel.
On the question of whether the Right's recent ascendance could become a potent political attack against Hillary Clinton, I'm a little closer to Tom's position than Dana's. Dana's right, of course, that though "'Progressive institution-building' has become a major concern for liberal funders, journalists, and politicos...the average Democratic primary voter simply isn't thinking about it." But it's very unlikely that the appeal Tom has in mind would mention progressive infrastructure. Rather, Clinton's presidency abetted the rise (and, to be sure, fall) of Newt Gingrich, saw the Democrats lose the Congress for the first time in 40 years, failed to produce a successor, and ended with the ascendance of George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, and so forth.
In other words, the Clintons didn't beat the villains. They simply survived them. But given the the current Democratic moment, cleverly sidestepping impeachment proceedings isn't a win. Taking on the Right directly, and successfully, is. And that's not what the Clintons did. Indeed, Hillary's immediate strategy in the Senate was to work very hard to make friends across the aisle, to forgive former tormentors, and to demonstrate bipartisanship. That's not fighting the Right. That's making your peace with it. And whether that's a smart legislative strategy, it's not one that fits into Clinton's current appeal.
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland: “Perhaps somewhere, charter schools have been implemented in a defensible manner, where they have provided quality. But the way they’ve been implemented in Ohio has been shameful. I think charter schools have been harmful, very harmful, to Ohio students.”
Public charter schools, which are privately run but publicly funded, can be successful when they hire quality, preferably unionized teachers; keep detailed, public statistics on their performance; and are managed by vetted institutions with proven track records. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case in Ohio, where under Republican leadership, 70 organizations were allowed to open charter schools, including corporate donors to the state GOP. Consider this for comparison's sake: In New York, all charters are managed by one of three institutions.
Now Strickland, elected last year, is cracking down by closing failing charter schools. Of Ohio's 328 charters, half received a D or F on state school assessments. Traditional public schools are doing only a bit better: 43 percent of non-charter urban schools in Ohio are on "emergency watch" or are classified as "failing." But those schools, unlike the charters, are subjected to stricter oversight. Any school funded by the state must be held accountable to the public.
This news has probably already made the rounds, but the Employment Non-Discrimination Act passed in the House yesterday. The bill won approval after more than 30 years of attempts by Congressional Dems to get protections for gay and lesbian Americans, and 35 Republicans even crossed over to approve the measure.
"On this proud day of the 110th Congress, we will chart a new direction for civil rights,” said Representative Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), speaking before the vote. "On this proud day, the Congress will act to ensure that all Americans are granted equal rights in the work place."
But its passage without protections for gender identity was somewhat of a disappointment, since it doesn't in fact guarantee that all Americans will be guaranteed equal rights in the workplace. Taking protections for transgender Americans out of the bill may have made it more politically expedient, but the law will have to be improved if it's to be effective, as I've argued here before. And ENDA is probably more crucial for the "T" portion of the acronym, as studies have found that unemployment rates among those who identify as transgender are as high as 70 percent. So hailing its passage as an assurance that all Americans are granted equal rights is still a bit premature.
Ted Kennedy plans to introduce ENDA in the Senate, and he could choose to restore the language about gender identity in that version. Bush is likely to veto any form of ENDA that legislators do pass, so why shouldn't we try to pass as bold a plan as possible? Resigning ourselves to incremental progress now -- when that progress is likely to remain hypothetical until 2009 at the earliest -- amounts to progressives essentially defeating themselves on this issue.
Garance has an interesting excerpt from a speech by John Kerry, in which he asserts that the Democrats are "too pro-choice" and E.J Dionne asks "Why do you think you didn’t give a speech like this in, say, May or June of 2004?" Dionne's implication is that such a speech would have been politically useful. But would it?
I can certainly see some political value in signaling respect for respect for supporters of abortion criminalization, and I don't believe that Democrats running for national office can say all the same things about reproductive freedom that I would. But in the particular form Kerry articulates it here, the argument seems the worst of all worlds. First of all, very annoyingly it claims (straight out of the anti-choice Book of Myths) that "science" is substantially changing the abortion debate and greatly altering viability, when in fact there's no evidence that this is true and the vast majority of abortions continue take place before viability. Kerry's argument in general concedes (wholly unearned) moral high ground to the abortion criminalization lobby and, even worse, never bothers to explain why it shouldn't have its way. The structure of Kerry's speech is essentially "abortion is really bad but should remain legal because it just should." That's only a good approach if you want to set up the debate to lose, and as long as you have nominally pro-choice policy positions you're unlikely to receive credit for it anyway. (After all, Kerry was in fact very squishy in defending abortion throughout the 2004, but never gets retrospective "credit" for it anyway; you apparently can never be squishy enough. Which in a way makes sense; if I was an anti-choicer, I would want a politician who supports my substantive positions, not one who says that he or she "respects" me.)
If Democratic politicians have to signal respect for "pro-lifers," it seems to me that rather than saying "abortion is immoral but should remain legal for reasons we won't get into," it's much better to focus in what abortion bans would actually do. Wouldn't something like this be both better in the merits and more effective strategically?
Many people in the audience believe that abortion is morally wrong. And no matter what people's moral position is, we can all agree that preventing unwanted pregnancies is better than abortions. However, our opponents take very extreme positions that are unlikely to achieve these goals anyway. The Republican platform supports a constitutional amendment that would make abortion first-degree murder in all 50 states; I don't think most Americans support that approach. But even if it passed, the experience of other countries suggests that there would still be a large number of abortions; the only difference is that more poor women will be maimed and killed in back-alley abortions. That's not effective, and it's not fair. Giving women the access to contraception, education, medical and child care they need, on the other hand, will both protect women's freedom and lead to fewer abortions. State coercion doesn't work, as our history makes clear. This is something we should all agree on.
I'm no speechwriter, so I don't know exactly how you'd phrase it, but it seems to be that to be useful any gambit like Kerry's should 1)make clear why one is pro-choice whatever their moral reservations, 2)should focus on areas where the "pro-life" position is unpopular rather than uncritically accepting opposition frames (or, worse, repeating their erroneous claims), and 3)focus on why criminalization fails to be effective or meet basic standards of equality and fairness even if you support its ends. Kerry's way of discussing the issue fails on all three counts.
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