Dear (check all that apply): Upper/Middle Class, Political Geeks, Journalists, Liberals, Blogosphere:
There are less than three weeks left until the convention primary voting ends.*
Why the desparate push for Clinton to drop out? Is it going to make a difference in the next twenty days? What will her abdication accomplish?
You cry about the irreparable damage to the party. What damage is being done? I see record voter turnout -- in many cases higher turnout in the Democratic primary than the 2004 Presidential race -- record numbers in fundraising for both candidates; incredible enthusiasm on the part of supporters for both candidates; an actual sense of purpose and direction in the party as a whole, and an actual backbone!
We are accomplishing so many things. Our Democratic leaders are actually pushing forth an agenda that means something to the people of the country. And even with the albatross that is the Republican party, we are seeing actual progress and accomplishment. Over the last four and a half months, we have been arguing over matters of policy both foreign and domestic, learning from each other, and finding a voice together, boldly speaking out against the policy of the last seven years that has lead us to where we are today. And the people are hearing us!
Both candidates have run historic campaigns, the closest to the White House any woman or any person of color has ever come. People are turning out in droves to support the both of them, and the level of excitement inspires, well, hope. We are doing good things! And even the quibbles between the two only lead us forward, helping us to stake out a firm position, to strengthen the one who will lead the country to a better place.
Where is the damage to the party? Are we not accomplishing incredible things? Are not the people happier with both the two remaining Democratic candidates than they have been in decades?
In three weeks, when we decide on one leader, will we be damaged?
In just less than six months, when the people of America vote for their President -- may the best person win -- will we be damaged?
Does anyone honestly believe that one month from now, two, three, four, five, or even that sixth, that our case will be so damaged as to be irreparable, and that it will be Clinton's fault?
If our strong, true, and persuasive case for smarter public policy is rejected by the people, who will have been the one to damage it? Will it have been the left, or will it have been the right?
We have six months now to work together. Even now, in the midst of this damaging primary, both candidates are helping define their opposition -- John McCain -- as "more of the same." Even now, independent groups are leveling attacks on the presumptive Republican nominee.
And six months, in the past, has been derided as a campaign that takes too long!
We have plenty of time, my friends. Won't you let us all voice our preferences at the booth, and then join us at the convention, where we will decide together on which excellent candidate will lead us both to victory?
I will be there. I hope you will join me.
Yours,
Amanda
* Thanks hn in comments for correction.
She Writes Letters
Noted.
Conventional wisdom, May 2007: The prominence of Iowa and New Hampshire in the national presidential primaries is inequitable and unproductive. It weights the voting opinions of a very unrepresentative class of Americans over every other. We should allow each state in the union its fair say in the primary.
Conventional wisdom, May 2008: Clinton needs to step aside. The race is already won, and having her remain will only cause more trouble. In the past the nomination has been wrapped up much earlier than this, so it's OK to insist upon it.* We shouldn't have to wait for each state to have its say -- that's too long!
Principles. Eh. Too inconvenient.
*I would do that nifty thing where you link to a bunch of posts in the words of the sentence, but honestly, I don't have the time/energy to search out everything I've read over the past several weeks on the matter. Suffice to say the sentence isn't long enough to fit them all.
Sez Ez (about a different subject altogether),
One nice thing about blogs is you can say the same thing over and over again without any editors getting pissed at you. When you're coming up with story ideas, "what's new" is always the first question you're asked. But on a blog, by making the same arguments in response to different news pegs and events, you're actually much more effective at conveying your points. Few writers are so persuasive, and few arguments so instantly convincing, that one bite at the apple will transform the thinking of your audience.
I just wanted to highlight this, because it's something I've been chewing on for awhile re: my growing radicalism over the last several years. On my introduction to feminism, I was, initially, repulsed by a good many arguments even as there was something at the core of the community I felt drawn-to. As time went on, through the repetition of arguments in different ways, in response to different events, I began to understand those arguments better. That is, without a context, the arguments offended my status-quo sensibilities. But as I came to understand the context -- as I saw how seriously rampant harassment and assault are -- as casual misogyny in so many different places was pointed out to me, over and over again -- I began to understand where those arguments came from.
Conditioned blindness is what I called it in conversation with a friend today. We are conditioned from birth to deliberately not see the evidence of oppression in our society. Recognition of it leads to a dangerous place, after all. But if a person has a notion to de-condition hirself, even if not everything is tasteful to hir at the beginning, sie will eventually come to understand where those speakers are coming from.
That's really at the heart of the mainstream's rejection of feminism. They don't understand it, and they have been told from day one that understanding it leads you to want to change it, and that's an extreme position to take, and mostly it just annoys the hell out of your peers. So hey, be cool, don't get on us for shit, just go with the flow. Wouldn't want to put a damper on the mood.
Anyway, I think there's a reason blogs are at the center of a growing feminist community these days. Well, one of many reasons, anyway.
Ring that old bell
"Worth repeating":That the Clinton people need to get used to the fact that Obama is the nominee. All the hyperbolic "he can never win the general" and the "it's not fair" stuff needs to stop right now unless you want a 100-years-in-Iraq, pro-life, pro-Roberts/Alito Supreme Court, 22% lifetime LCV rating, economic right-winger as President. To spend any time or energy at all nursing your resentments is the most fundamentally selfish thing you can do right now. I hate losing elections, I know how badly you feel, and how hard it is, but there is too much at stake to be selfish right now.
Now now, ladies, you need to stop worrying about your silly female things. We have a lot to get accomplished and we'll never get there if you sanctimonious women's studies set keep making your fuss about all this lady stuff. We do need to keep Roe in place, now, don't we, dears? It would be awfully selfish of you to cost us this win.
Hmmm. Haught dismissal of expressed concerns, threat held over head about women's basic human rights, accusal of "selfishness" (one of the most invisibly gendered words), "there's too much at stake", patronizing "I know how you feel", promise-one-never-intends-to-keep to get back to their issues when this election is over. (Oh, wait, they didn't even bother with that one.)
This all sounds awfully fucking familiar. Seems we've been hearing this for pretty much every fucking election since the fucking invention of elections. Or at least since the nineteenth amendment.
Hm. I suppose I should add here that when I voted, I did not vote for Clinton, that I don't share concerns about Obama's viability in the general (and in fact tend to be a bit skeptical about such arguments), that I think Clinton has done some pretty damn reprehensible things over the course of both her political career and her run for president -- etc. But I don't think that's what we're really talking about here, is it?
What was that again?
So, what do the three presidential candidates have to say about disability?
Oh yeah. That. Doesn't ever seem to be much of a topic, does it?
Michael Bérubé explains, in his somehow simultaneously meandering-but-crisply-clear manner.
What I found interesting is that this:
The nine-page .pdf, “Barack Obama’s Plan to Empower Americans with Disabilities”, says many of the same things Hillary does – about [...] hiring 100,000 people with disabilities in the federal government (except that someone needs to tell the Obama camp that it’s Executive Order 13163 Obama needs to reinstate, not 13173, which created an Interagency Task Force on the Economic Development of the Central San Joaquin Valley; reinstating 13173, whatever its merits, probably won’t do much for disability policy in the United States).
would benefit me either way! ¡Vive la valle central! God, I miss home.
God, I am sick of
this primary.
Well, not so much the primary.
I am sick of calls for Clinton to drop out of the race.
I am sick of "tearing apart the party."
I am sick of "cares only about herself/her ambitions."
I am sick of the insecure assertions that Obama already has the nomination tied up, and Clinton has no chance to win, when both candidates are within reasonable reach of the nomination.
I am sick of assertions that the superdelegates have a responsibility to vote based on the popular vote/non-super delegate count (whichever is more favorable to their candidate, of course).
I am sick of how obvious the motivations behind that assertion are. If the superdelegates are obligated to replicate the will of the people, they have no purpose whatsoever. If people truly believe it is undemocratic that the superdels vote any other way, they should be arguing that there should be no superdelegates, not piddling around how they should justify their votes.
I am sick of people complaining about Clinton's call for Michigan and Florida to be counted, saying that she does so only because it is in her self-interest, while then turning around and making the two above arguments, as though they are being Objective and Rational and Above It All.
I am sick of the fucking misogyny that has reared its head in this primary, and how even so-called progressives can't seem to criticize Clinton without framing their argument in sexist slurs and stereotypes.
I am sick of the ugly racism that has made itself known across the country. The obvious white antipathy to being reminded that race exists, no less racism, even if it stays thousands of miles from ever implicating them personally. The Brown Menace, secret Muslim-ism, the deep-seated fear of the Angry Black Man. I am sick and tired of the unconscious but vehement effort put into preserving the system of white supremacy.
I am sick of the reflexive move to knock back down any woman in any position of power. Put her in her place. Remind her. Make it known that she can play the game, but she can never win.
I am sick of people who say that if their candidate doesn't win the nomination, they will defect and vote instead for McCain. What kind of fucking moron are you? Is it going to take a few knocks of the skull against a cement brick for you to regain consciousness and realize that yes, there are differences between Clinton and Obama, significant ones even, but that McCain is going to be outright dangerous for the country compared to either of the two? I understand those who choose not to vote for the Democratic candidate if said candidate does not meet their standards; I do not understand those who would then vote for a candidate who spits upon their standards.
I am sick of all of this. Shame on all of you. Fuck this. I'm tired of it. I will vote for either Democratic candidate in November, but I'm damn well not returning to read, watch or listen to some of you who resort to such tactics as you yourself would condemn when used by Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove. Yes, I just compared you to those two fuckwits. You may not perform such grand evil, but you are feeding into their narratives. And you should damn well feel ashamed about it.
I have never voted in a primary contest before. I've only been old enough to vote in one presidential election. I have been excited for over a year now about my opportunity to vote for a candidate I was actually exicted about in an election that will actually matter.
And I got my twenty minutes of cheery happy yay-America-ness. And then I came back to the real world. And my enthusiasm for this party is just about shattered.
Way to gear up the youth of America, folks.
Self-fulfilling prophecy
I've been trying to make this point throughout the week, but Paul Waldman is pithier than I am.Reporters will choose to write about flag pins. They will choose to write about whether some catastrophic, heretofore hidden character flaw has been revealed by a comment a candidate made, or by a comment somebody who knows the candidate made. They are not merely conduits for the campaign's discourse, they create the campaign's discourse, as much as the candidates themselves.
Ah, but didn't Hillary Clinton criticize Barack Obama over his "bitter" comments? Doesn't that justify a week of relentless, repetitive discussion? Yes, she did (as he has criticized her before on matters equally trivial). But on that day, she probably held half a dozen campaign events and talked about a hundred different things. Had reporters wanted, they could have written stories about what she said about health care, the economy, Iraq, or just about anything else. They chose instead to write about this. The time is long past for them to stop pretending they have nothing to do with how trivial a campaign becomes.
On some level, the media gets this -- it's the essential conflict of interest that runs like the San Andreas fault line right through the center of the profession. But because they haven't figured out a way to it, they by and large refuse to talk about it, because if you talk about it, then it's real, and you're both open to the criticism and obligated to figure out a transparent fix.
What is "the media"? It's cable television network news. It's local television news. It's national news magazines and papers, and local news magazines and papers. It's advertising companies. It's film, it's radio. Talk shows, commentary. It's even blogs. (No longer are they so marginalized as to be able to avoid the "mainstream" label.)
And this media shapes the discourse in this country, in this state, in this neighborhood.
They do not control every detail, but they provide the basis, the foundation, upon which the populace builds its conventional wisdom.
They know this, obliquely. They know it deep inside, but they can't allow themselves to acknowledge it, because that would oblige them to pay attention. It would make clear their burden. They would have to take responsibility for every small thing they say. And that is too far-reaching an implication for them to accept it.
And so they don't. They detach themselves entirely. They say that the people dictate their coverage; they don't dictate the people's thoughts. They willfully ignore that this is not a one-way transaction, but a complicated interaction in which all sides feed, and feed off, one another.
But that's too much to consider. And tomorrow we will undoubtedly hear about the color suit Clinton wore during her campaign events on election night. And it goes on.
Word
Nobody’s ever defended themselves against assault charges by claiming “it doesn’t hurt when I punch me,” and you’d presumably think it pretty ridiculous if they had.
Hah
I gotta say, I respect my new geographical neighbors. The national media was working itself up into a lather about Obama's remarks about working-class Pennsylvanians, and then it turned out that, here in actual non-Philly PA (those same voters about whom Obama was talking), nobody gives a shit. I hope all of these pundits who pride themselves on being "in touch" with the average Joe down here on the ground (who is lucky to count unpaid vacation days among his benefits, much less owning his own vacation home) feel the sweet, sweet sting of pwnage.
And just now, my husband emails me this:
Politics stops at the water's edge -- even if that water's frozen, apparently.
About 57,000 more households in the Pittsburgh region tuned in to watch the Penguins beat up on the Ottawa Senators than tuned in to see two senators (Obama and Clinton) beat up on each other in the Democratic presidential debate, according to Nielsen Media Research.
The hockey game played in 175,000 -- or 23 percent -- of all households in the Pittsburgh metro market, while the blame game played in 118,000 households -- or 14 percent of the market, according to Nielsen.
Pittsburghers know better than to think that debates moderated by TV "journalists" are worth anybody's time. They neither inform nor edify; they aren't entertaining; they have nothing to do with our actual lives. We'd rather you broadcast ol' Sax Guy playing the Addams Family tune on a two-hour looop than watch a couple of blowhards play the same old tired gotcha game with two politicians who'd be better served catching a few hours of much-needed sleep.
We're too smart for you, o MSM. Neener neener.
Submitted without comment
President George W. Bush, in response to a question of how to protect Christians in Iraq:
Well, one thing we can do is to keep our troops there long enough to have a civil society emerge, and go after them, and go after these killers, and bring them to justice so they quit killing people, including our own troops, because this is a war.
for what it's worth
I don't like it when people pick on Condoleezza Rice for her facial expressions. The fact that a woman's face at rest isn't pleasant and bright shouldn't be something to use against her. I don't get the sense that she's deliberately scowling; there's room for interpretation there, certainly, but I don't feel that she should have to walk about with a smile plastered on her face at all times to be acceptable to the public at large.
UPDATE
I wanted to post my own clarification. :) The subject was brought to mind by this post over at Shakesville, Melissa's graphic in particular. My post here wasn't so much directed explicitly at her, however. It's an issue I've noticed repeatedly over the years; much of the criticism of Rice's facial expressions are overtly sexist, and it bothers me. Knowing Melissa's rationale, it's obvious she isn't coming from the same place. It is worth reflecting to consider whether one is reinforcing a patriarchal narrative; that reflection will naturally lead to different conclusions in different people, which is of course why we refer to feminisms, plural.
I do have to thank Melissa for reading and responding. I certainly understand her reasoning. I was pointing out something that made me personally uncomfortable, and hoping it might start a conversation that explored the issue a bit more, not trying to draw judgment.
(Also keep in mind this was a quick post I threw up while rushing about getting ready for work last night -- not so much a "very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care." ;))
I *heart* Elizabeth Edwards
Elizabeth Edwards is, by far, my favorite public figure. I see a lot of myself in her, and I see a lot of what I wish I could be in her. There's been no shortage of times I've wished that she would get involved in politics, not only her husband John.
All of which is to introduce this video of her throwing hardball at John McCain's so-called health care plan, pointing out that even John McCain would be refused health care under the plan he proposes:
The phrase "pet peeve" is not strong enough to describe my feelings toward the universal policy of preexisting condition exclusions. I consider them cruel and immoral. If only one thing could be changed about our health care system in America, I'd criminalize this sort of policy. Consider it like loaning money only to people who don't need it: so no mortgages, no car financing, no student loans. Nothing. The only way to qualify for a loan is if you can prove that you have no reason to need the money at all. Doesn't that sound, well, fucked up? That's because it damn well is.
Not surprised that the host of the show tried as hard as she could to get some sort of salacity out of Edwards. "Did you have a fight?" Good God, these people belong back on the schoolyard, if only for the safety of the rest of society. Elizabeth, as always, stays out of it, ever classy.
Truth to Power
Here's an interactive question (as soon as I fix Haloscan -- sorry): Who else can you think of in history who's been greatly maligned for actions or comments that aren't, in retrospect, bad at all? (See previous post; Wright, Jeremiah.)
Something I don't understand
Jerry Falwell and his cohorts can damn America for allowing teh gays to exist, going so far as to call natural disaster upon the land -- calling for the destruction of the country. The most that happens is a roll of the eyes.
Jeremiah Wright says "God damn America" for its horrific treatment of blacks throughout its history, and the entire nation erupts in a fit.
I understand "God damn America" is the most blasphemous thing a person can say in this country (moreso than damning God himself, it seems), but most Americans seem perfectly comfortable with the concept, so long as the damning is based on their version of immorality.
But when a black preacher is calling out a nation for something that most people, even the most conservative, agree is plainly sinful -- the enslavement and continual discrimination against people of color in the country -- we all get our dainty fee-fees injured. Even the left seems to be largely in agreement that what Wright said was loathesome.
I don't get it.
Predictions
Yes:
And the thing about this argument is that's not the end of it.
... an alleged lack of patriotism will be the main line of argument against Barack Obama.
There's been a lot of talk recently in the feminist blogosphere of dogwhistles. And I would argue that this line of attack is exactly one. The "unpatriotic" whine is usually wrapped up in arguments about Obama being a secret Muslim, a black nationalist, Communist, etc. By extracting out the most innocuous (of the set, not on an absolute scale) and repeating it, the upper punditry and co. can signify to the bottomfeeders that they're on their side, without explicitly saying so, and while maintaining plausible deniability against accusations of racism.
Two cents.
Hey, that feels pretty damn familiar.
What is it? Oh, it's just the foot of Schwarzenegger & co. on our backs.
Dammit, this will never cease to make me angry. For the most part, the disabled already live in poverty, and they have no way of changing that. You usually can't magically become un-disabled. And disability is, by definition, the inability to just "work harder" to make ends meet. It's the inability to work enough to live.
And here we go cutting their benefits left and right (including, apparently, again, COLA for the blind and disabled). With an inflation rate of 4.3%. So that we can ease the burden on those poor yacht consumers.
Deep breaths.
So apparently
my humble new home may make an actual difference in who wins the Democratic nomination.
I've dreamed for a while now of casting my vote in the primaries, and in fact finally crossed to the dark side—registered Democratic when I moved here—specifically to enable such an action. But I had figured the whole time that my vote wouldn't make much of a difference, anyhow (especially being a tentative Edwards supporter and all).
So, um.... woobama?
Life isn't fair
As though you weren't given the toy you hoped for in your Happy Meal.
As though you caught all the red lights home.
As though you got a few bad letters after your turn at Scrabble.
Isn't that exactly it, too? You were dealt a bad hand, after all. It's just a game.
It's easy for it to be just a game when you never so much as feel the fallout from your own bad decisions -- after all, you've already been sheltered from feeling the effect of any act God could throw at you.
Sometimes, life isn't fair -- for the rest of us.
Harbinger
This is how you know your economy is for shit.
Wal-Mart noted in its news release that gift card redemptions were below expectations and that customers appear to be holding gift cards longer and ''using them more often for food and consumables rather than discretionary purchases.''
We're doomed.
(article), (via)
