What’s Next?

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.

As mentioned before McCain believes in the much debunked connection between autism and vaccines,  now it turns out both Obama and Clinton do as well. I can just feel the hope filling me.

Are you having trouble working out exactly what all those statistics on who voted for who actually mean? Here’s a handy guide for working out what Republican voters in open Democratic primaries mean:

No. 1: If Republicans vote for Obama, it’s a sign he’ll bring unity to the fragile and divided country.

No.2: If Republicans vote for Clinton, it’s confirmation that she’s the reincarnation of Hitler.

There, isn’t that simple?

Obama talking about AIDS treatment (Via Shakespeare’s Sister):

But I also think that — keep in mind, women are far more likely to be infected now between the ages of 18 and 25 than are men. And that’s why focusing, for example, on the status of women, empowering women, giving them microbicides, or other strategies that would allow them to protect themselves when they sometimes in certain situations may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex, all those things are going to be just as important, as well.

Ah! Exactly how I want a potential leader of the free world to talk what UNICEF call a rape epidemic - with clumsy euphemisms!

Given that he’s supposed to be the greatest orator ever to grace this world I sometimes in certain situations find myself not unable to be concerned with the number of times he’s sprouting ass-backward stuff like this.

Here’s a comment from Unity on Liberal Conspiracy:

2. You evidence for a misogynistic ‘campaign’ against Clinton is what? A bit of blog chatter from the kind of people who consider NASCAR to be their national sport?

Look, the American right loathes Clinton because she’s a Clinton and not because she’s a woman - gender doesn’t really come into it and I’d be willing to bet that if Bill were running for elected office then some bright spark would still have come up the ‘CUNT’ acronym…

Look, I love Unity as much as anyone, but anyone who says the media and other groups aren’t guilty of frequently throwing misogyny against the Clinton campaign really hasn’t been paying attention. Evidence? I don’t even have to dig that hard, Melissa McEwan has a nice sum up:

In the same world in which that woman turning sexism on its head is framed as Odd News, and in which that woman is called a bitch to the amusement of the other party’s nominee, and is called a she-devil and depicted with horns, and is heckled by jerks demanding she iron their shirts, and is reduced to tea parties and her response to that demeaned as “really be[ing] on edge,” and in which she is cast as a feminazi monster, and has her ability to withstand the rigors of the presidency questioned with an unflattering image, and has a nutcracker designed in her image, and finds her moment of candidly expressed emotion turned into a national story using dog-whistles once removed from “hysterical,” and is routinely accused of playing a victim and of playing the gender card, often erroneously, and is said to need a copy of The Rules, and is accused of having a career only because her husband cheated on her, and is subjected to the swill of online hate groups with names like “Hillary Clinton: Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich” and “Hillary Clinton Shouldn’t Run for President, She Should Just Run the Dishes,” and is regularly featured in sexist political cartoons, and is challenged by a 527 calling itself C.U.N.T., and is called the Crybaby-in-Chief if she shows emotion, and can’t bloody win no matter what she does, but only in the eyes of misogynist wankers because SHE’S. STILL. HERE.

And so I’m actually contributing something myself here, an Obama quote: “I understand that Senator Clinton, periodically when she’s feeling down, launches attacks as a way of trying to boost her appeal.” Yes sir, no hidden meaning to pick out there. Perhaps this sheds some light on why people find it easy to see the sexism in a picture of Clinton with ‘CUNT’ spelled out behind her.

Mark Halperin at TIME has come up with 10 reasons why Clinton should quit. Whilst I personally think that she’s dead at this point, this list contains some pretty poor items.

1. She can’t win the nomination without overturning the will of the elected delegates, which will alienate many Democrats.

Look, she’s losing by enough that it’s serious, but let’s not forget the reason the super-delegates are involved at all is because she has almost half the party with her. At this point either candidate winning will alienate a lot of Democrats. As for overturning the will of the elected delegates, the only point this matters is if she’s won the popular vote, and given the bizarrely uneven way the popular vote turns into delegate counts, I think the popular vote is the the better metric. I don’t think it’s likely she’ll win the popular vote at this point,but if it does there’s a serious argument to be made for gong with it over delegates. If we look at it the other way round, I don’t think the line ‘Obama overturns popular vote to gain nomination’ goes down that well either.

7. The Rev. Wright story notwithstanding, the media still wants Obama to be the nominee — and that has an impact every day.

OK, so all that stuff I was saying about the delegates and the popular vote? Forget it, what really matters is who the media want! Think quickly: Is bowing out because the media like the other guy better a good or a bad reason?

When Obama wins the nomination, what on earth makes people think the media will stay with him? There’s some wonderfully naive Obama supporters who come out with stuff like “Yeah, except McCain isn’t as sleazy as the Clintons, and WOULDN’T dredge up such slime” seemingly without irony, there are people out there who really think that Hillary Clinton has been far meaner to Obama than McCain and the right-wing establishment is going to be! They really think that after weeks spent on a remark from Obama’s former pastor who he had previously disowned and zero time spent on McCain welcoming Falwell and Robinson back into the fold that the media will stand by Obama. It boggles belief.

Clinton is beating McCain in polls after months (heck years) of abuse from the press, Obama is beating him after an amazingly friendly press run. The press not liking someone is not an argument. If Obama is the right candidate, he’s the right candidate, what the media think should be of no-consequence. If people start picking candidates based on who the media prefer then that’s a fashion show, not a democracy.

10. She can’t publicly say more than 2% of all the things she would like to say about race, electability, beating McCain and experience.

Subtext: Hillary is a filthy racist who just pretends not to be to get elected.

12. This is a change election, and Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton can never truly be change.

It can be if the voters decide that’s the kind of change they want, Clinton’s healthcare plan would bring more change to more people than Obama’s. Clinton is a natural establishment candidate but let’s not pretend that she anything like Bush or that she’s running for Bill’s third term. Things have changed.

Barring some unlikely huge win in the future or reruns in Florida and Michigan, I don’t see Clinton winning. But for the moment Obama hasn’t won a majority of his party yet, and these are lousy reasons to stop.

PhysioProf has neatly summed up exactly what annoys me about the Democrats (and Obama in particular) constantly disavowing the fact that they are, in fact, more liberal than Republicans.

If Reagan is such an inspiration to Obama, then how come he is ignoring the fact that rather than disavow conservatism to “include” Democrats, Reagan rather convinced them that “liberalism” didn’t represent their values, and conservatism did. This enabled long-term electoral success for Republicans, persisting well beyond Reagan’s presidency.

Obama has the opportunity to do the same thing in reverse. If he convinces non-wackadoodle-insane conservatives that it is liberalism that really represents their values, then he can create electoral advantage for Democrats that persists for a generation. By disavowing “liberalism”–even if he is also disavowing “conservatism”–he is turning this into a referendum on him as a particular individual that will not live beyond his presidency.

This neatly catches the key point about Reagan wasn’t that he told people he wasn’t a real Republican but that he told them they weren’t really Democrats. What Obama and his ‘Change’ campaign have done is throw away a huge opportunity to shape the future and reclaim the debate. When he stands up and says things like this:

“He’s liberal. Let me tell you something. There’s nothing liberal about wanting to reduce money in politics that is common sense. There’s nothing liberal about wanting to make sure [our soldiers] are treated properly when they come home. There’s nothing liberal about wanting to make sure that everybody has healthcare, but we are spending more on healthcare in this country than any other advanced country. We got more uninsured. There’s nothing liberal about saying that doesn’t make sense, and we should do something smarter with our health care system. Don’t let them run that okie doke on you!”

Not only are some of those things most definitely liberal but the way it’s phrased (and considering his reputation as a master orator, this is inexcusable) makes it sound like those are things Liberals don’t want, accepting the idea that liberal is a bad thing. Accepting that concept as true not only pisses off his liberal supporters, but it hurts anyone who’s actually campaigning as a liberal. If he becomes the nominee he’ll be running against a third term of Bush’s failed conservative ideology, he shouldn’t be accepting that not-liberal is the only reasonable way to do things, this is a great chance to tell people that “Yes I’m a Liberal…and so are you!”. What he should have said would be something like:

“He’s liberal. Let me tell you some things. I want to reduce money in politics. I want to make sure [our soldiers] are treated properly when they come home. I want to make sure that everybody has healthcare -we are spending more on healthcare in this country than any other advanced country and we got more uninsured. That doesn’t make sense, and we should do something smarter with our health care system. Those are things that I want, those are things that liberals want. So sure I’m a Liberal, aren’t you?”

But he won’t say that. There won’t be a better time for a while to reclaim Liberal for a while after this campaign, yet the Democratic front-runner insists on denying he is one, and continues to accept that being a liberal is on principle a bad thing. That’s why this campaign isn’t ‘Change’.

Truth Dig - Super Tuesday all over again 

The fear now is that she could be damaging the party’s nominee by using the same attacks on Barack Obama that John McCain certainly will. Experience? More time in the Senate? Tough? We’ll hear all this again if Obama is the nominee, just in a different vocal range.  That is why Hillary Clinton is under immense pressure to hang up her campaign pumps and call it one for the history books.

Almost right, but this is bad for Clinton not for Obama. It does Obama absolutely no harm to hear the same attacks early on and would be worse if we didn’t see how he reacted to them until after he’s the nominee. If Obama wins the nomination he has a history of  rebutting the idea that more experience is always better, his dealing with Clinton now shows he will be able to combat the play when McCain makes it. However if Clinton wins she has a long history of claiming the importance of experience, which McCain arguably has far more of. The worry should be that it’ll be a narrative that’s hard to shake off with all this focus her campaign has given to it.

Having said nice things about Edwards in the past, I will admit to being slightly downcast when he withdrew earlier in the week. His speech is really worth a read, it really sums up what his campaign was about.

Edwards problem was that his ideas were ultimately so good that the rest of the candidates had no choice but to copy them, essentially stealing the oxygen from his most powerful argument. This means that the Edwards campaign even in death has an incredible legacy, it moved the rest of the candidates to bring out their own health care plans and has had a dramatic effect in shaping the campaign and hopefully the next Presidency. That’s no mean feat and hopefully, like Al Gore, Edwards will find a position either in or outside the next administration to continue his work.

I’m still concerned about Obama. Watch Obama’s response to the State of the Union, I’m perfectly on board with him (dare I say, inspired?) until he gets to the end. He seems to think that he can so much of a uniter that he can have both sides of Congress applauding him.  The only thing that will have all members of the house on their feet is if the President spent the entire State of the Union telling the nation of the benefits of American Apple Pie and how his reforms will help to make it available to more Americans than ever before (Thought this might still draw ire from those who’d call that Socialising Food).

What an awful thing it would be if everyone agreed with the president! What are our Congresses and Parliaments for if not expressing and arguing about the things we disagree about? If they flawlessly agreed on everything they’d be a pretty pointless institution. Whilst petty squabbling should be exposed and attacked, if our politicians are not arguing their side they are not doing their jobs properly!

Obama wants unity, but seems to think the way to get it is by giving up and not having the debate. The only way not to have the unity-destroying arguments is to let the other side win them uncontested. This doesn’t seem like a great vision for the future. What worries me most about Obama  is that he uses Republican talking points A LOT to attack other Democrats. As Paul Krugman points out, in addition to misrepresenting it, Obama is critising Clinton’s healthcare plan using exactly the same message that Republicans used to attack the previous Clinton’s health care plan. In doing so he’s poisoning the well for his own and all future health care reforms.  This doesn’t seem a constructive approach.

Obama said he doesn’t want to demonize the opposition, but often seems to suggest that this extends to not saying anything bad. As lambert at Corrente points out, it’s not “demonization” to call people who approved torture, torturers.  It’s not “demonization” to call people who commit crimes, criminals.

Obama’s biggest selling point is his unity message, and he’s just not selling me on it.  However, XKCD reminds me that I firmly agree and support his policy on open networks and the internet, which is a part of US policy that will have a great deal of effect worldwide (In addition to, you know, all the foreign policy stuff).  There’s plenty of upside to an Obama win Tuesday.

And to make another thing clear, Obama is still way way ahead of anything the Republicans have to offer.  I just can’t get excited about him.

Obama wasn’t always afraid of being a bitter partisan hack (i.e. a politician who thinks principles are more important than conceding to the other side for ‘bipartisan’ sound bytes), Asheesh Siddique on the Guardian’s excellent Deadline USA blog brings his commencement address at Knox College in 2005 to our attention:

In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society. But in our past there has been another term for it - Social Darwinism - every man or woman for him or herself. It’s a tempting idea, because it doesn’t require much thought or ingenuity. It allows us to say that those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford - tough luck. It allows us to say to the Maytag workers who have lost their job: life isn’t fair. It let’s us say to the child who was born into poverty - pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And it is especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life’s lottery, that we’re the one who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won’t be the chump who Donald Trump says: “You’re fired!” But there is a problem. It won’t work . . .

Doubtless Obama today would be all in favour of inviting these Social Darwinists to the table to help him usher in a new era of Real Change™. Whilst it’s nice to think he’d give up the unity rhetoric if he reached office and govern as a progressive, the fact remains he’d have got there by trashing progressives and progressive values along the way.

And in other news, via Corrente we learn that CNN commissioned a poll which included Rudolph Giuliani but not John Edwards. Giuliani (whose campaign depends entirely on fear and riding on the coattails of a national tragedy) is currently 20 delegates behind the republican frontrunner (and has dropped to 10% in the national polls) whilst Edwards is only 6 delegates behind the front-runner and has a greater share of the Democratic delegates than any Republican except Romney. This isn’t even a Democratic Republican split, Ron Paul currently has four delegates (as opposed to Giuliani’s one) and was also absent in the poll. Now I’m not fan of Ron Paul, but this is a stark reminder on how little the actual votes sway the media narrative, if they’ve decided your campaign is hopeless they’ll ignore it and make sure it is. This leads us to the ridiculous situation where Rudolph “9/11″ Giuliani is a Real Candidate™ for President but John “Lookie, I can kick all the Republicans Asses in November” Edwards is not. Remember, especially in the primaries, it’s not who you vote for but how they choose to report your vote that matters.