Eight For 08

Barack Obama 

• Barack is busy practicing the audacity of hope by ardently hoping that his immaculate brilliance will overcome voter concerns about his experience. And he has a case to make. In a loose paraphrase of his inimitable words, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney had the longest resumes in Washington and look at the glories their reign has wrought.
• Obama also has proven he has a backbone of sorts: pressed by a reporter pandering to the imaginary heartland as to why he doesn’t wear his US flag pin, Obama declared the flag pin says nothing about patriotism; after all, “Alberto Gonzalez [the attorney general] was wearing a flag pin the whole time he was shredding the constitution.”                 

                                                   Hillary Clinton  

• Somewhat equally audaciously, Clinton is hoping that voters overlook their gender chauvinism and realize that she has the knowledge, experience, and toughness, to kick some global ass.
• She has a very good case to make. She has been more commanding than any of her Democratic competitors in each of the debates, and swaps away insinuating questions from moderators without blinking. When asked if her competitors were piling on her based on her gender, Clinton replied, “I don’t think they are piling on me because I am a woman…I think they are piling on me because I’m AHEAD.” Huge and justified applause ensued.

                                                 John Edwards 

• Close in the polls to Obama and Clinton in the early primary states, Edwards has struggled with raising the phenomenal amounts of money his Democratic competitors have. But his southern drawl, his genuine rags-to-riches story, and his classic progressive rhetoric appeals to the heartland (or at least so the campaign hopes).
• His wife, a cancer survivor and patient, has plaintively noted: “We can’t make John black or a woman, but we shouldn’t be penalized for it!”

Odb links to the Sullivan article in the Atlantic. My comment: I think there are many reasons to support an Obama candidancy over Clinton’s–a “generational difference” is not one of them. What does it mean to be fighting a battle from the 1960s? Is Clinton really talking about turning back the clock, and reliving the 60s? And even if, for the sake of argument, this was happening, is it necessarily a bad thing? To the extent the 60s were about the rapid attainment of civil rights by disenfranchised minorites and women, this may well be a good thing.

 But I don’t think that’s what Sullivan is arguing here. He is suggesting that Clinton will prolong the “polarization” of the 60s somehow. I don’t think that’s true. Would a Clinton candidancy be more polarizing than a Obama candidancy? Maybe, maybe not. To the extent any candidate tries to further progressive ideas, they will run into opposition from recalcitrant Bushistic conservatives. So if Obama is deemed to be less polarizing, that in itself is not an indication of whether you should support one candidate over another. It is too nebulous a concept to verify and apply to each candidate. More polarization may even be good if it is furthering policies that are in the interests of America.

A must read profile of Giuliani’s youth on Salon. [Also worth checking out is this Salon piece identifying Giuliani as an "authoritarian narcissist"]. Defeated in a college race for junior class president many decades ago, Giuliani meets his one-time opponent in 1994: 

“”Powers encouraged Farrell to greet the mayor, who was seated at the dais. All those years later, the mayor barely resembled the cherubic young man Farrell knew at Manhattan College. Yet, in some ways, Rudy Giuliani hadn’t changed at all. “I reached up my hand, and Giuliani looked at me like, ‘Who the fuck are you?’” Farrell recalled. Then, without uttering a word, Giuliani turned away. “”

For some reason, John Edwards has not been getting anywhere near the press enjoyed by Hillary or Obama. The narrative devised by the press corp seems to pivot around an inevitable Clinton being challenged by the insurgent Obama. But there really are no concrete grounds for reiterating this story line. Of course, national polls show Clinton ahead and often with substantial numbers. But until the early state primaries, these polls are not that revealing except in helping craft media narratives. Most Americans are not paying great attention to Campaign ‘08; it is the primaries that serve the useful function of providing blanket media coverage in concentrated doses to the broader public. And an Edwards triumphant in Iowa and New Hampshire could tilt a lot of support and funds away from Obama and even Hillary.

 Is this completely fantastical? Well, in Iowa, Edwards is within small single digits of Hillary and Obama in the polls. And he is, for what its worth, the anti-Hillary candidate, much more so than Obama. To the extent he can parlay voter disenchantment with triangulation and Bush-lite policies to small town Iowans, Edwards is still very much in the game. So let’s not call the race before it’s begun.

So you’ve got a six hour lay-over in Boise, Idaho. You get to the nearest Tully’s Coffee Shop (even serves wine… but only after 3pm) and log on to find out what your options are. Well, “among the many unique sites to visit are the Basque Museum and Cultural Center, Morrison-Knudsen Nature Center, Idaho Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial, Idaho Black History Museum and the World Center for Birds of Prey.”

No brainer: World Center for Birds of Prey. But now let’s say the media birds of prey event of the week happens to be in Boise? Well, there’s nothing like watching a Senator resign in time to catch the 3:15 to O’Hare.

I’m behind the guy with the camera. Seriously.

Unfortunately I couldn’t hear a word of his speech, but according to every Boisian (?), the main event was the event itself anyway. It’s the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend and the media spotlight is on Boise, Idaho. I don’t think Tim Russert’s going to make the trip. The local press was psyched though - radio commentators barked over cell phones that the “circus was in town,” The Idaho Press Tribune battled the Idaho Statesman for interviews with citizens donning signs that read “Larry Craig is NOT gay, he is a pervert.” Good times. I couldn’t have been more pleased with a lay-over aligned with Dikembe Mutombo’s induction to Boise’s World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame.

A follow-up to Ahmed’s post: more on proposed electoral reforms in California and beyond from Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker.

All of this really speaks to the dangers of only screaming for change after your candidate loses. Since 2000, folks on the Left have wanted to abandon the electoral college and those who don’t look too deeply into initiatives like the one in California may ride the anger from Al Gore’s loss right into an even larger disaster of indirect democracy.