Feeding The Fish

Come on, even the BBC was on about this. Is a seventeen-year old’s pregnancy really an important thing to be talking about? Tip: No, it isn’t.

Why? The fact that she’s SEVENTEEN should be enough. For those who seem to be saying it’s justifiable because of Palin’s support of abstinence education over actual sex education, really there are enough examples of the horrific failure of that idea than picking on one kid. Statistical evidence should always trump anecdotal evidence, especially as there’s hardly any evidence to connect the two stories other than in a “we really really wanted to talk it” way. I’m deeply suspicious of any argument that seems to making up excuses to shame a kid on the world stage for the heinous sin of getting pregnant.

Yes yes, Republicans would say if the situation were reversed that it speaks to the matter of Obama’s character but that forgets that we don’t think that, we don’t spit ‘born out of wedlock’ like it’s a curse word. Least last time I checked.

Perhaps I’m hopeless out of touch, but I think it’s possible for Democrats to be more assertive, combat smears and be tough on the Republicans terrible record without actually becoming them. In 2000 Bush’s Campaign spread the idea that McCain had fathered an illegitimate black child, that is an really low moral standard to try to follow. If we say that anything Republicans have done in the past is justifiable politics for us now then we create a horrific world. Obama is right on this: kids are out of bounds. The people that are saying otherwise are really scary people to have in the camp.

We currently live in the world where a teenager’s pregnancy is seriously talked about world-wide as the most important issue in who becomes the most powerful person on Earth - that is a Republican’s wet dream for so many reasons. It plays right into the hands of those who would much rather be talking about this than the last eight years of a Republican government.

In other news, the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee used to be part of a group that wants Alaska to secede from the Union. This might rank a tad higher in ‘Palin stories drawing attention away from the rotting elephant in the room’ game we seem to be playing.

Behold his take on McCain picking Sarah Palin his running mate:

Watch as the ultra-feminist sisterhood back away in horror from Sarah Palin, John McCain’s new running mate.

Mrs Palin is technically female, but she’s enthusiastically married, hates abortion and thinks criminals should not be the only people allowed to own guns. She’s everything Hillary Clinton isn’t. In short, she’s the wrong kind of woman.

Which just goes to show that ultra-feminists are not actually interested in promoting women because they’re women. They pretend they are, but really their agenda is a campaign against marriage, in favour of abortion and for every other disastrous liberal and socialist cause that ever existed. In which case, they really can’t go on pretending that their opponents are women-hating bigots. Not least because they are the bigots - merciless when it comes to a choice between their own convenience and the life of an unborn baby.

‘Their own convenience’ - Yes he really is that much of an ass.

Right-wingers have for years created the concept of the ‘ultra-feminist’ - who are not only hairy, scary man-haters but are venomously unmarried and go around deliberately destroying other people’s marriages (which is why they find so much common ground with the dreaded gays). I have to say scorning feminists for failing to match up to a fictional standard of horribleness is really quite inspired.

The idea that feminists should always vote for a woman and that women who don’t understand that are betraying their own is a profoundly sexist outlook. See, men are complex beasts capable of rationally judging the issues and making an informed decision about their vote, on the other hand women should just check for breasts and any feminists who look past those to see what the candidate thinks about real issues are traitors.

So no, feminists don’t blanket vote for women - they look at the issues, and surprise, someone who thinks that abortion is not even justifiable in cases of rape and incest does not win the feminist seal of approval. They would much rather there be a government that has a decent approach to women’s issues than a government with a woman in it. As a rule in the States women are generally more leftward leaning and so the fact they’re not flocking to Palin is not a surprise because she is really really conservative.

Now have ‘feminists’ abandoned her? Are they not going to call out the sexist crap because they dislike her politics? No. In fact it says a lot that there’s already responses up against the sexism that’s already emerged. This angle is why it might possibly be a smarter pick for McCain than I initially thought because it gives the most base misogynistic parts of Obama’s base another chance to shine (and oh how they will).  Sure Palin can’t convince many of Clinton’s female supporters to vote McCain (as mentioned, because women actually care about issues), but her presence in the race might make them look long and hard about the company they’d be keeping as an Obama voter and keep some at home. It ruthlessly divides Obama’s supporters by reminding them of the hatred that comes from the some of his most vocal supporters directed at female politicans using attacks that would equally apply to all woman. It’s a nice trick because if it pays off he can sit back at take the high road in defending Palin against the attacks that Obama never spoke out against when his supporters were attacking Clinton.

So yes, feminists defend all women against sexist crap, even when they disagree with them, because they understand that a sexist attack that is left to stand against one woman hurts everyone. But doing some actual research and discovering woman rejecting Palin but defending her from sexist attacks would be asking a little much, after all, it might ruin his nicely cliched worldview. The fact that women are actually human beings who have more interests than just ‘is candidate a woman’ is apparently a little complex for Peter Hitchens to digest.

There’s an article at The Times neatly demonstrating the idea that Obama’s rightward wing is genius politics and the left will just have to get over it, he knows what he’s doing,the Unity Ponies are a comin’, etc.

Since securing the Democratic nomination a few weeks ago, the only change coming from the Illinois senator has been in what he seems to stand for. Last month he dropped his opposition to a Bill before Congress that would give telecoms companies immunity from prosecution for carrying out illegal wiretaps on potential terrorist suspects.

…

This is another example of how smart the Obama campaign is. They understand that the biggest impediment to an Obama presidency is lingering doubt about whether their man is a straight-down-the-middle American. Despite having a couple of bestsellers to his name, he is still something of a blank page to most voters, one on which his opponents are trying to doodle all kinds of unflattering portraits of an extremist.

…

What is more, by abandoning so many left-wing totems, Mr Obama is emphasising that his promise of change is more than just a swing to the left of the old political pendulum; that his promise of post-partisan politics is a genuine one.

The trouble with this theory is that Obama was a solid centrist at the start; he’s already where most Americans are.  Being “post-partisan” is nothing new, Clinton called it “triangulation” and the short of it is selling your soul to the right on issues of your choice in the hope of getting elected.  Most of these changes aren’t just running to the centre, it’s running to the far right. The idea that the President has the power to break the law as he sees fit is something that should have been thrown out with Nixon, now what Bush did illegally is being approved by the Democratic nominee. This is not a token issue, Obama gives himself an enormous increase in presidential power by going down that road.

I’m also not sure as to the genius of convincing the voters he’s not a blank page by reminding people his principles are so unimportant he will jettison as many as needed to get elected, people keep rejecting Democrats for doing exactly that. The Democratic nominee running right is nothing new, but they keep losing!

Funnily enough, Republicans never seem to have to “run left” to win elections, McCain is the second most conservative voting senator yet gets described constantly as a moderate. The Republican genius is to keep talking so much about ultra-conservative ideas that the center moves in their direction. Democrats never fight this, they’re told that the “smart” thing is to move to the new center (no matter how artificial) and become kinder versions of those nice, electable Republicans.

People keep insisting that this is the “smart” thing to do, despite much of a record of success, despite the obvious danger if it’s allowed to progress any further. Obama just wants to win the election; Republicans are more concerned with changing the nature of the debate so it’s consistently more favourable to them. In the long run they still win, the democratic nominee in 2012 is likely to accept even more of Bush’s ultraconservative ideas as a given to try to distance themselves from what doubtless will be described as the most liberal government ever (despite its likely actual centrism) and we’ll be told again that this is genius!

Ok, so I’m back from my saunter around North America. It was thrilling to experience firsthand just how broken the American media is: They really talked for several weeks about Obama and his wife sharing a  fist-bump when he got the nomination. This might signifies him as someone who respects his wife and apparently considers an equal, so an obvious sign he is wrong for America and may in fact be a secret Muslim terrorist (one Fox newsanchor saw this truth and described it as “a terrorist fist jab“, I love that country.)

This aside, there have been more important developments in the Presidential race: Obama won! But then almost immediately pisses off his base by supporting the FISA bill, not only legalizing Bush’s previously illegal wiretaps and giving immunity to the telecoms companies that broke the law to help him but also delivering the next president unprecedented power. That’s style!

Now, there are some crazies out there who see the ability to wiretap without a warrant to step on some of those fourth amendment rights (as Obama is a former constitutional law professor, he should really know better.) This is naturally billed as a compromise, but it’s that delightful form of Democrat compromise which involves giving away in exchange for the warm glow of being “strong on terror” by doing absolutely everything Republicans want.

This leads to the internet equivalent of snowballs in hell: substantial critiques of Obama rising to the front of reddit.  It is of course a complete surprise to me that Obama would move to the right given how much he’s used their talking points to attack Democrats (yes yes, he wasn’t the only one) and progressive ideas. It is also a shock that “post-partisanship” is in fact, exactly the same thing as Clinton’s triangulation. There has been so much change we’re right back to 1992.

This “compromise” plays perfectly into the perception that Democrats have nothing intelligent to add to the debate or they wouldn’t keep going with the Republican line, as do these rumours that he’s planning to keep Gates on as Secretary of Defense. That just seems to send the message “Oh, don’t worry about voting for a Democrat, we’ll have solid Republicans around to do the hard foreign policy stuff.” You can have as bi-partisan cabinet as you like, but for the love of pete, what I keep hearing about Obama is that his foreign policy is like, super awesome - you don’t get there by keeping Bush’s guy on, nothing says ‘Democrats aren’t serious’ more. If we could get the Barack Obama who ran for the nomination (and actually seemed to be have an independent take on foreign policy) back to run for President that’d be a slight improvement.

The best possible path I see to the Presidency for McCain (and despite my growing validation of my dislike for Obama, I still don’t think McCain has a chance) is a national security narrative and Obama is playing right into his hands by saying that the Republicans have it right to focus enormous unchecked power in the hands of the president - but that he’s a far more trustworthy guy to wield that power. Does that really seem a credible argument to anymore? Obama is developing a nasty habit of accepting Republican’s framing on national security (just as he has previous accepted their framing on health care). This is not how you bring about change.

But then we hear from the people who seem utterly incapable of accepting Obama is not, in fact, super-Jesus: Oh, it’s genius, Obama is moving to the center to get votes! He’s just lying to all those independents and republicans to get them to vote for him, and he’ll get back to be a principled leader once he’s elected!  This would be great…if he wasn’t already at the center and this is really moving to the far right.  This does give us a chance to catch all the Obama shrills who are now officially useless as infomation sources (I’m looking at you Keith Olbermann, “boldly standing up” to the ACLU isn’t something that should be applauded in the Democratic nominee, it’s just a way of making him sound bold in a way that  “Obama caved to the far right” doesn’t. )

This line is encouraged by the reemergence of the media narrative that any Democrat running for president is automatically the most liberal person possible (In reality, Obama has a very centrist record) and all Republicans are cuddly moderates (for example, McCain is clearly at the center of the political spectrum with the 2nd most conservative voting record in the Senate). This is the classic game where Democrats will election after election feel a need to move to the center to win, whilst Republicans will calmly respond by talking even more about ultra-conservative ideals and move the public idea of where the center actually is even further to the right. This is a formula that means that the right’s stupid ideas are winning time after time even when they lose elections.

Whilst there were a lot of flat out lies and innuendo around Clinton’s public perception the idea that she was a centrist candidate was basically true - but there seems to be this strange perception that Obama is far more liberal than she is, when in fact their voting records are virtually identical. The concerning thing about the result of the primary is that a lot of people seem to have projected a lot of positions onto Obama he doesn’t actually have and voted for a fictional candidate, and the real thing is likely to disappoint.

Next post: The crazy shananigans that have been going on here whilst I’ve been gone.

Ok I’m in the last stages of wrapping up for my month-long North America trip (no new posts for a while), just wanted to weigh in on one last thing: Clinton calling for Obama’s assassination by invoking Robert Kennedy’s assassination in June? That’s awful! That’s outrageous! That’s…not true.

Watch the actual video:It’s clear she was simply referring to people who wrapped up the nomination later than the current date and the thing about Bobby Kennedy is that the date he had the nomination in the bag is the same as the date he was assassinated - it’s no surprise the two are seen as the same moment in time in some people’s minds. I see nothing factually wrong with what she said, nor anything vile in it. This just seems like another fake scandal that will carry on because the person everyone seems to love to hate is involved, facts be damned.

Update: Whilst I agree that the constant campaign for her to drop out is without precedent and is just disgusting at times, I disagree with the specific point she’s making here because in those cycles there were still enough delegates left in play to make a difference. Whatever path she has to the nomination can’t rely on straightforward delegate wins at this point but by pointing out flaws in Obama’s legitimacy as nominee (barely ahead in popular vote, most delegate support from caucus states, stood in the way of Florida and Michigan recounts, etc) and then making the argument that she’s more electable. To be honest, while I think she is more electable (and is a better candidate), I’m coming round to the idea that either of them will do just fine come November and this phase where McCain looks semi-viable is going to be short.

Update: In the interest of looking at the issue closer, Slant Truth has noticed  there’s a divide on how this is seen in primarily white blogs vs primarily black blogs. Perhaps this is unsurprising. I still think I’m right (just like always) but I think it’s something that does resonate.

The Barefoot Bum has a nice bit on why the US conservative movement is so successful:

The Republican strategy is very simple, and very powerful: When they win an election, move the government to the right. When they lose an election, prevent the government from moving to the left. Sure, they’d like to win every election, but they know they won’t, and they have a plan in place for when they lose, and thus they can afford to lose on principle.

The Democratic “strategy” is precisely the opposite. When they win an election, they try (with diminishing success) to prevent the government from moving to the right. When they lose an election, they themselves move to the right to win the next one.

This is one of those things that immediately obvious about US politics from the outside, the Democrats are eternally on defense and willing to compromise over anything they perceive will help them win elections. The driving force being the idea that once they sit in the Oval Office and a majority of Congress, everything will be right with the world again and they can push the conservative movement back….except they can’t because they’ve laid no groundwork for moving a liberal direction because they got into office by compromising on essential policies. Case in point: Obama has before even reaching the general election compromised on the idea of universal health care (and attacked Clinton’s universal plan using exactly the same ads Republicans once used) by doing this and accepting the conservative view on the issue as legitimate he hands them a victory because even when they lose they still get to set the boundaries of the issue.

The conservative movement’s reaction to compromise isn’t “well they’re meeting us halfway, let’s be reasonable about this”, it’s “let’s talk even further right so the point of compromise moves ever further our way”. In this way even losing isn’t bad for Republicans because with the current Democratic mindset even in losing they have shifted the mainstream in their direction. Republicans constantly talk about their extremes and simply by talking about ultra-conservative ideas makes them seem more reasonable, Democrats on the other hand are constantly in a rush to paint themselves as more reasonable versions of those nice electable Republicans.

The process which an idea journeys from the unthinkable to popular policy was neatly summed up by a right-wing think tank as the following:

–Unthinkable
–Radical
–Acceptable
–Sensible
–Popular
–Policy

And that’s a process every outfit claiming to be progressive should have pinned to their walls. There is no sense censoring yourself to seem more electable if the other side is constantly priming the electorate with an ever more conservative worldview - you have to be out there talking about the unthinkable ideas until they become an accepted view on the issue or you’re letting them win even when they lose.

Yes yes, I promise to stop talking about the US election soon, apparently fun stuff has been happening closer to home that might be slightly more relevant. Just to push the point I made in my last post, Violet has a vivid description of what the last few months would have looked like if racism had existed to the same extent as sexism in the campaigns:

Imagine this scenario:

The shoe is on the other foot, and Obama, not Hillary, is the punching bag of the media — a media that is blatantly and unapologetically racist. And I do mean blatant. Jokes every night on the cable news shows about Obama’s hair and his fondness for fried chicken. Pundits laughing about what a problem uppity Negroes are.

Across the country, racists openly ridicule Obama and his candidacy. In mainstream stores there are gag gifts playing on racist themes: maybe a (water)Melon Baller with Obama’s head on the handle, maybe a Barack Obama Shoeshine Set — you get the picture. 501c groups invoke the most grotesque racist slurs with their advertising; T-shirts say “Quit Running for President and Shine My Shoes!” Anybody who protests is branded a fool and a spoilsport.

Online, Hillary’s supporters constantly refer to Obama and his supporters as n—–s and c— -s and all the other epithets I refuse to type out. Blogger Boyz blog about those stupid lazy Negroes who are still wallowing in memories of the Civil Rights era, too dumb to get with the program and vote for Hillary.

And the lies: Obama is constantly lied about, belittled, demeaned. His record is distorted, his character impugned. Every day the pundits and the Blogger Boyz urge him to drop out of the race, to remember his place, to give up his seat to the white woman. All in the interest of “party unity.”

And nary a word of reproach from Hillary herself. No denunciation at all of the relentless racism. In fact, she actually cracks a few racist remarks herself, albeit subtle ones. She jokes and nods with the media about “letting” Obama run as long as he wants to. And when she makes speeches about American values, she talks a lot about women’s rights but never mentions civil rights. She’s strikingly silent on the subject. Even when she delivers a major address on the importance of rooting out bigotry, she neglects to mention racism at all.

Just to make the analogy even more apt, let’s further imagine that some key civil rights issue is on the table — say, voting rights. For forty years the Democrats have been on the side of the angels with that one, but Hillary goes out of her way to say how much she admires and respects those Republicans who don’t think African-Americans should have the right to vote. She says judges with a record of opposing voting rights are good candidates for the nation’s benches — even the Supreme Court.

And the Democratic Party goes along with all this, pushing Hillary as the nominee, ignoring the anger of African-American voters, smugly assuming that they’ll “come back to the fold” by November. After all, say the pundits and the Blogger Boyz, where else are they going to go? The Republicans are even worse.

Via Matt Yglesias, interesting article in The Nation on the interplay on racism and sexism in the the Democratic primary. I’m not sure I can agree with this though:

Clinton has, to be sure, faced a raw misogyny that has been more out in the open than the racial attacks on Obama have been. But while sexism may be more casually accepted, racism, which is often coded, is more insidious and trickier to confront. Clinton’s response to “Iron my shirt” was immediate and straightforward: “Oh, the remnants of sexism, alive and well.” Says Kimberlé Crenshaw, law professor at Columbia and UCLA and executive director of the African American Policy Forum, “While sexism can be denounced more directly, that doesn’t mean it’s worse. Things that are racist have yet to be labeled and understood as such.”

I think it’s a weird logic that says the overwhelmingly obvious and omnipresent sexist commentary which tend to be carried out by the mainstream media isn’t worse than a more underground reaction that tends to commented on as opposed to practiced by the media.

I’d also say it’s a little limiting to say that all the sexist stuff is obvious and understood whilst all the racist stuff is clever and coded. I think it’s more the case that the coded stuff is there for both, but the sheer load of obvious sexism means the hidden stuff tends to go unnoticed. Take this Obama quote: “I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.” A nice coded dogwhistle on Clinton’s sex by the candidate himself that no one seemed to notice. I think a fair yardstick to working out which is ‘worse’ is not so much who said what, but how much they get called on it, and I think it’s fair to say the Clinton campaign has been called more on racist dogwhistles than the Obama campaign has on sexism ones.

Interesting allegations here of foul play at Texan Caucuses by Obama’s supporters. I’ve read enough talk of shenanigans like these now that I’m sure there’s some weight to it. In the end this doesn’t really seem damning for Obama (but does make the popular vote argument stronger if he ends up with a mild delegate lead derived from disputed caucuses), all this really does is confirm my perception that caucuses are fundamentally undemocratic.  The implication that Clinton is working behind the scenes to avoid a party damaging rift over the results is also interesting because it plays counter to the perception that she’d ‘do anything to win’ (as we all know, this is a unique trait in a politician and certainly not shared with any other candidates we might think of), naturally the other take is that there isn’t enough to go on and that’s why the campaign hasn’t touched it.

What’s interesting about this story is how it’s hardly splashed at all on the internet, if a similar story with less substance about Clinton supporters appeared, it’d be talked about everywhere. It’d be nice to think that the Paul-bots and Obama Fan Base were distorting the process here, but what I think is more likely is that this is their natural medium and groups like this were always likely to emerge, It’d be interesting to see if they’re less prevalent when the digital divide is less existent.  I remember once giving a short talk on the Internet and the “blogosphere” (I wish we had a better word than that) and one of my points was that it would start holding the mainstream media to account, I’m starting to realise that was a tad optimistic. Looking at the state of things now I think it’s fair to say it’s not always better at zeroing in on the important stories and just having the medium isn’t enough to correct the mainstream’s problem. I’m both encouraged and repulsed by the way this campaign is playing out on the web.

Sign 1: Registering woman to vote in the general election is on principle a bad thing because they might prefer Clinton. Clinton voters are the cause of division (the enemy of all Unity Warriors), more are not desirable. (Via TalkLeft)

[I]t should be pointed out that a non-profit group focusing efforts on registering unmarried women in presidential primaries has to know that their activities will almost certainly help Hillary Clinton, as that is probably her strongest demographic.

Sign 2: Matt Drudge is an entirely fair and reliable source of infomation on Democratic Candidates as this reaction to Republicans assuming their opponent in the fall will be Obama shows.

Although it should be noted that the Unity Warriors are taking inspiration from the top on this one. That comment also leads us neatly into…

Sign 3: It’s entirely reasonable to allow Republicans to dictate the Democratic Agenda….unless they’re voting for Clinton, in which case it means they’re trying to give Democrats the weaker and/or evil candidate. This simple rule can easily be demonstrated by this reaction to the news that 62% of former Republican voters went for Obama.

Here we see that 62% of Republicans vote for Obama because they think he’s an amazing unifier who will change the world and give us all rainbows and ponies, whilst the other 42% vote for Clinton because she’s the second coming of Hitler and they approve of such things.

These Unity Warriors should be assumed to be highly impervious to rational thought, if one is encountered do not attempt to engage in debate. If cornered remember that, like religious symbols repel vampires, anything that lacks purely symbolic meaning (such as issues of substance) will ward them off.