Friday, July 11, 2008

I'm back (This defines me)

Well done to anyone who catches the reference in the title.

It's been an amazing week over in Paris and Budapest, and there will be a time to when I will write up more about the trip, hopefully with pictures as well. For now, my jet-lagged mind isn't working quite well enough to pull that off, so I'll just go over a few things that caught my attention.

Jesse Helms is dead. This brings up an interesting question: "Is it possible to show respect for the dead when they spent they had spent their entire lives denying respect to the living?"

You may not be able to show respect, but you can smile, say that the world is a better place without him, and read David Broader's (yes, you're see that correctly) 2001 essay: "Jesse Helms: White Racist". Or you can be a true champion like this man, who was willing to lose his job before he'd raise the flag to half mast to honor Sen. Helm's death:

"Regardless of any executive proclamation, I do not want the flags at the North Carolina Standards Laboratory flown at half staff to honor Jesse Helms any time this week," Eason wrote just after midnight, according to e-mail messages released in response to a public records request.

He told his staff that he did not think it was appropriate to honor Helms because of his "doctrine of negativity, hate, and prejudice" and his opposition to civil rights bills and the federal Martin Luther King Jr. holiday
...

In a string of e-mail messages with his superiors, Eason was told he could either lower the flags or retire effective immediately.

Though he's only 51, Eason chose to retire, although he pleaded several times to be allowed to stay at the lab. Eason, who had worked for the Agriculture Department since graduating from college, was paid $65,235 a year as the laboratory manager.

L.F. Eason III: Fucking hero.

Another quick note on the bigot's death. For all of the mock outrage that happens any time someone accuses republicans of being the party of racism... go back and look at their press releases about Helm's death. And if they read anything like this, then these are probably not some tolerant individuals:
Throughout his long public career, Senator Jesse Helms was a tireless advocate for the people of North Carolina, a stalwart defender of limited government and free enterprise, a fearless defender of a culture of life, and an unwavering champion of those struggling for liberty.
Question: do people intentionally put things like that last sentence in there as an extra turn of the knife, or are they just unspeakably stupid?

Matt Stoller has a smart post up about the importance of people not labeling Obama as a progressive, because... well he isn't one. This has been true this long before the outrage over the FISA bill, but and I think it's important publicly to point that out, because you don't want someone embodying the mantra of a movement without standing for it's values. He also makes a good point that when he inevitably tries crappy centrist policies and they don't deliver results as promised - it's important that the blame lies in the right place so we can move on from there.
So, as liberals who believe in a different vision for America than Obama, it's important that Obama's centrist policy sympathies are blamed for what goes wrong when he takes over and screws up the country worse than it is right now, which we'll notice after our honeymoon of hoorays some time after the transition. We should not want him to make policies in the name of liberalism unless they are actually liberal policies. America tends to get the right answer after trying everything else first, and this period is no different. After trying out a disastrous top-down financialized conservative framework, the DC elites are moving to more centrist top-down period of transition, much as they did after Bush the first. Just as the 2007-2009 Democratic Congress failed utterly in stopping the war in Iraq or setting us on a different energy future, kicking the can to the next President, the next President is going to try to avoid big ideological fights as post-ideological change agent.
...

Once you absorb this state of affairs, it's a fairly optimistic path forward. All of the work going into getting Obama elected is helping to build the progressive movement and teaching millions of people to get involved, give money, run for office, etc. These people have progressive sympathies and are attaching themselves to important political networks. Some of them paid attention to FISA who were not paying attention in 2006, which is good. The network is just bigger and stronger.

...

So work for Obama, help him get elected, but realize that he doesn't and will never share our values. And we shouldn't try to pretend that he is the progressive we wish he were, since he's a politician, and politicians go where power is. And he's decided that power is not with the liberals. That's fine. But it's important, as people who believe that liberal ideas work, that Obama be understood as who he is, not as who we wish he were. I have tried to broadcast this message over the past few days, but first, I'll make a caveat most of us on this site will recognize.

Caveat: We want to make it very clear that criticism or analysis of Obama is not intended as a repudiation of support for Obama. He's a far superior candidate to McCain, a better person, and will be a much better President. Second, we are not really making an argument that Obama's recent moves will hurt him in this election. They may or they may not. It really doesn't matter what any of us think about his campaign, he's chosen his path, perhaps because he did not think there was a viable progressive alternative or perhaps because he's more of a Jimmy Carter good government Democrat than a liberal populist. Regardless, we don't think this is a sudden swing to the center for him, he has always broadcast his politics as centrist and post-partisan in nature. We don't feel betrayed, because we always took him at his word that he saw incivility and not conservatives as our major political problem.
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We support him, even though we disagree with his political outlook and policy positions.

I'd also like to point to the recent Obama speech where he essentially says that anyone who thought he was different than he is, should have done their homework and listened to what he was saying, which is a fair point for him to make. But rather than quoting the speech, let's have an episode of Train of Thought - Youtube political debate theater.

First we have Obama telling the his supporters that he his who he is. This is portrayed by Marlo Stanfield stating that "My name is my name!" in one of the best scenes from season five of the wire:


As a response to this, we have members of the left who were frustrated throughout the primary procress by those who did all they could to paint Obama as the next Russ Fiengold. These people are portrayed by Former NFL Head coach Dennis Green, who would state that "OBAMA WAS WHO WE THOUGHT HE WAS! AND WE LET HIM OF THE HOOK! (Bangs hand on table, leaves room):



This has been an addition of Train of Thought Youtube political debate Theater. I'm gonna guess this won't be the last time it makes an appearance.

Also some general news about the site. I will be taking another trip next week, but this time the blog will be coming along too, and in a major way. Next Wednesday I'll be heading down to Austin, TX to Netroots Nation on behalf of my employer... but I will be giving the conference full coverage on this site as well. Should be a fantastic time, and I can't wait.

But more blogging on all subjects will have to wait another day, because I'm picking up Train of Thought contributors Jack and Rb and heading up north to the greatest show on earth: D-apolooza 2008! Let the sleep deprivation continue!

6 comments:

  1. Re the quoted Stoller piece:
    “So, as liberals who believe in a different vision for America than Obama, it's important that Obama's centrist policy sympathies are blamed for what goes wrong when he takes over and screws up the country worse than it is right now, which we'll notice after our honeymoon of hoorays some time after the transition.”
    “…screws up the country worse than it is right now…”
    Seriously?
    Wouldn’t that be REALLY hard to do? Even for a Centrist?
    Even for Obama?
    wb

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  2. It's certainly true that Obama's centrism is an unquestionable improvement on Bush's radicalism, and that his stated policies are deeply better than McCain’s. But I don’t think that’s what Stoller is getting at, or what I’m really worried about.

    The issue is that a centrist position doesn’t even have the actions that we need to take on the table, and that an improvement on an insufficient plan does not mean that enough action has been taken to solve a problem. This is particularly true these days, because most of the major issues we face happen to be hemorrhaging and nearing critical turning points. As a situation worsens, the true solutions become increasingly difficult for a centrist to make, which means that Obama’s rightward drift is not only an annoyance, it’s truly worrysome. In particular I have in mind:

    •Climate change and environmental destruction in general. Whatever anyone says, neither candidate has a plan to combat global warming on anything close to the scale of the problem.

    •This is important in part because, as the aftermath of Katrina continues to demonstrate, our national infrastructure is woefully insufficient to handle natural disasters.

    •Our (two? three?) wars, and the declining state of the armed forces (e.g., simultaneous bloating and subcontracting, lack of respect and ability).

    •The miseducation/uneducation of the majority of America. The de-emphasis of science and the arts and the continued growth of christianity as an acceptable form of truth.

    •Any solution to the declining economy besides tax cuts.


    There are plenty of ways in which the state of the nation, and the world, is improving; and plenty of ways in which Obama will speed that, and slow down decline. But the issues listed above are some of the most important we’ve ever faced, and if we take him at his word then Obama is going to partially bungle all of them.

    I honestly believe that Obama will improve things, on the whole. But it’s certainly not out of the question for his centrist policies to “screw up the country worse than it is now.” That strikes me as really easy to do, with the positions we’re in, because the solutions are more radical than he's even willing to talk about.

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  3. Great points all around. Nick, I hadn't even thought of that arguement, but I feel like that makes a great point as well. The more damage that is done as time goes by, the more radical the solution must be.

    @wb, I actually took that phrase in a different way, that made sense for me in the context of the post. The post's thesis is (to some degree) that it's important that progressive policies not be blamed for a failure of centrist policies. This quote from right after the one you quoted relates to that sentiment: "We should not want him to make policies in the name of liberalism unless they are actually liberal policies. America tends to get the right answer after trying everything else first, and this period is no different."

    The point there being that if centrist policies fail, and it is seen as a failure of progressive politics, then we have wasted the the greatest opportunity of our generation for progressive change. And in the grand scheme of things, that would be a worse position.

    That's how I interpreted the quote in relation to the rest of the post. I think that Obama should be a able to do a solid job of undoing the damage, taking us back to zero and making the country a better place. But I think Nick's point is a valid one on the bigger issues of the day, especially ones like climate change that aren't static and will continue to get more and more dire with inaction or an insufficient response.

    Most of stoller's post was in reference to domestic policy proposals, and the most important change we could make would be getting out of Iraq, which is one position where he hasn't moved yet. (I think that quote of his from last week about listening to the generals on the ground vs. changing their mission was taken out of context, with the reporter knowing that the knives are out and trying to make a story out of nothing)

    And there is a lot of shit that I'm willing to eat if he gets Iraq right, and I'm fully prepared for that.

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  4. Just one thing for the record and then I’m out of here. The larger issues are the very ones that concern me and I’ve been part of this debate for 40 years and the public figures I supported either lost or were shot.
    I’m a desperate man. As Jesse Jackson said, in a different context, “JAIL is a step UP|.” Things are going to be very grim for a terribly long time and Obama’s election will not take care of that. But it is, indeed, a step up and it will shift the discussion and the direction. In the 2004 primary debates Al Sharpton said, “We shouldn’t be talking about what color to paint the kitchen when the house is on fire.” Let’s turn on at least one hose, and then we can discuss the color of the kitchen.
    wb

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  5. "But it is, indeed, a step up and it will shift the discussion and the direction. In the 2004 primary debates Al Sharpton said, “We shouldn’t be talking about what color to paint the kitchen when the house is on fire.” Let’s turn on at least one hose, and then we can discuss the color of the kitchen."

    Hear, hear!

    Sorry to come on so strong. Don't let my disappointment in our candidate imply too much: I voted for him in the primary, have donated to his campaign twice already, and openly campaign for him whenever I have the chance.

    But damn, is that shit fucked. His proposed expansion of faith-based initiatives, in particular, is just killing me.

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  6. oh yeah, as far as that reference... "verbally it's like i'm seen as the best, who wanna try me?"

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