Within seconds of last night’s “debate,” moderated by the cartoon character Wolff Blitzer, the deep thinkers CNN has for pundits, led by former Wall Street Journal editorial page columnist, former PBS bore (on the soporific Jim Lehrer show), former (Bill) Clinton advisor, and current Harvard (Kennedy School) “professor,” David Gergen, pronounced a victory of sorts for Hillary Clinton. It seems she got past the drivers’ license issue OK. Then, this morning, the paper of record praised her “assertive tone,” and noted especially her remark (full of pith) that Democrats (read John Edwards and Barack Obama) “should stop ‘throwing mud’ and adopting tactics ‘right out of the Republican playbook’.” Even Christopher Dodd seemed to agree.
Well, here’s a better instant comment: Democrats – not just the ones in Congress who play games with the Bush boy by throwing money at “the troops," but also the candidates should stop adopting strategies right out of the Republican agenda. John Edwards was a partial exception -- but only because he wants the interests of the poor and other victims of Republicrat feed-the-rich politics to receive mention. Dennis Kucinich was, as usual, a more thoroughgoing exception – because, on every “issue,” his position is far superior to his rivals. [To the viewers’ and listeners’ detriment, Mike Gravel was, again, excluded.] But, of course, in our “marketplace of ideas,” what matters is not what candidates say but how what they say is reported – and our opinion shapers, for now, seem to be falling into line behind the likes of David Gergen.
Time is running out. Were there anything to pray to, now would be the time to pray that something, anything, happens to remind Democratic voters of the evils of Clintonism, evils amply chronicled here in preceding entries. With only a tad of consciousness about that, the regime’s risible media flunkies would be swamped, and the prospect of a Clintonite restoration reversed. But, alas, prayer is of no avail: by not existing, the Living God, still doing “a heck of a job,” has left it up to us -- and it is looking increasingly like we’re not up to the task.
Showing posts with label the horse race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the horse race. Show all posts
Friday, November 16, 2007
Monday, October 29, 2007
Halloween: The Final Stretch
NPR’s “Morning Report” has long been a reliable source for conventional wisdom, and not just thanks to the inimitable Cokie Roberts. Thus NPR’s ace political correspondents, Mara Liasson and Ken Rudin proclaimed this morning (October 29) that the horse race for the Democratic nomination is about to go into its final stretch. Translation: the October 30 “debate” in Philadelphia may be the last chance to stop the Clinton juggernaut – but only if Hillary makes a “gaffe” (which is unlikely) or if somebody else comes up with a show-stopping bon mot (as Ronald “the actor” Reagan was good at doing). This is indeed conventional wisdom, conveyed with the usual mindlessness of what passes for journalism today. But since what Liasson and Rudin and others like them say can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, it could be true: the race to the bottom in the Democratic Party may soon be over.
If it is, the corporate media – and NPR, being not much better -- are more than usually culpable. It is they who have turned this election, even more than its predecessors, into a “horse race” – reporting, first on the money (not where it comes from, but how much of it there is) and then on polling data that reports mainly on the effectiveness of their reporting. “Issues” are seldom discussed; power relations and their effects on the economic and cultural factors that shape agendas – determining what the “issues” are -- are not discussed at all. Thus, from early on, it was Clinton versus Obama. Over the summer, Obama seemed to tank – thanks partly to the desertion of African American “leaders.” [As was widely reported, some of them think that he isn’t “black enough.” But the deeper problem, not reported in the media, is that some of them all of the time (especially the stalwarts of the formerly progressive Black Caucus) and all of them some of the time have become bought and paid for assets of corporate power, and of various miscreant “lobbies, not least the Israel lobby. Thus these “leaders” are natural allies of the Clintons who, by the way, “feel the pain” of the other African Americans, the vast majority, who, along with most latinos and other “persons of color,”are of no interest to the corporations and lobbies. Small wonder, then, that so many pillars of the community, people like Ron Dellums and John Lewis, would endorse Hillary Clinton. Obama may be – and probably is – a Clintonite at heart. But if it’s a Clintonite you want, why not go for the genuine article!
It isn’t just the two candidates who actually have something important to say – Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel – who are read out of the story (when they aren’t turned into objects of derision.). It’s the more “electable” candidates too. The one most harmed by media neglect is the one who still has the best chance to pull off an upset, John Edwards. Arguably, on foreign policy – or at least on imperialism and war – his positions are more or less the same as Obama’s and even Clinton’s. He is clearly better on trade, however, and even more clearly on a host of domestic “issues.” So is Chris Dodd. On the Iraq War, if nothing else, Bill Richardson has the best position this side of Kucinich and Gravel. But none of this matters to the opinion makers. They’re too busy promoting Clinton’s inevitability, while keeping Obama in focus just enough to perk up interest so that their audience won’t fall asleep or go away.
Does it matter? Arguments can be made both ways. On the one hand, Clinton isn’t that much worse than the others (Kucinich and Gravel excepted) and, although much hated (for the wrong reasons) by “the vast right-wing conspiracy,” she, or any Democrat, is bound to be a winner against any of the pitiful candidates the Republicans might field. On the other hand, the Democrats in Congress have been so utterly disappointing (especially after being voted into office to end the Iraq War) and, more generally, so worthy of contempt that they just might lose. That’s an outcome too frightening to contemplate: imagine, say, Rudy Giuliani in the White House (advised by Norman Podhoretz) and Mike Huckabee, everybody’s choice for VP (according to the conventional wisdom) affably chiming in for creationism from his “bully pulpit.” It strains credulity to imagine that anything could be worse than the Cheney/Bush administration, but just watch any Republican debate! A Democratic defeat is unlikely even with Clinton leading the ticket. But it is not impossible.
Maybe I’m so worried because it will soon be Halloween, the season to be scared. After all, in the light of day, I realize that we do live in a country (and world) eager to see the backs of Cheney and Bush, that the Republicans have fielded the vilest collection of candidates ever to vie for national office, and that, in recent months, their useful idiots, the “values voters,” have all but given up. I know this because, in its October 28 edition, The New York Times, which is never wrong, said so twice – in a long article in the Sunday Magazine by David Kirkpatrick and in a column by Frank Rich. Of course, there are still a few hapless neo-cons, like Charles Krauthammer, who think the Republican candidates are just fine, and who keep repeating this nonsense in their syndicated Washington Post columns. But Krauthammer, like everyone close to the Vice President, has trouble with reality. Why then am I still worried? Could it be because I can’t help but remember what the Democrats are like -- not just the comparatively powerless ones who illustrate Robert Frost’s observation that a liberal is ‘someone who won’t take his own side in an argument,’ but also the Clintonized leadership, who want nothing more than to implement Cheney/Bush policies more competently and in a kinder, gentler way. Even with Hillary Clinton as the candidate, they’ll probably get their way (thanks to George Bush and notwithstanding the hordes of right-wing Hillary haters), and we’ll be better off than with the alternative. But win or lose, we’ll lose.
If it is, the corporate media – and NPR, being not much better -- are more than usually culpable. It is they who have turned this election, even more than its predecessors, into a “horse race” – reporting, first on the money (not where it comes from, but how much of it there is) and then on polling data that reports mainly on the effectiveness of their reporting. “Issues” are seldom discussed; power relations and their effects on the economic and cultural factors that shape agendas – determining what the “issues” are -- are not discussed at all. Thus, from early on, it was Clinton versus Obama. Over the summer, Obama seemed to tank – thanks partly to the desertion of African American “leaders.” [As was widely reported, some of them think that he isn’t “black enough.” But the deeper problem, not reported in the media, is that some of them all of the time (especially the stalwarts of the formerly progressive Black Caucus) and all of them some of the time have become bought and paid for assets of corporate power, and of various miscreant “lobbies, not least the Israel lobby. Thus these “leaders” are natural allies of the Clintons who, by the way, “feel the pain” of the other African Americans, the vast majority, who, along with most latinos and other “persons of color,”are of no interest to the corporations and lobbies. Small wonder, then, that so many pillars of the community, people like Ron Dellums and John Lewis, would endorse Hillary Clinton. Obama may be – and probably is – a Clintonite at heart. But if it’s a Clintonite you want, why not go for the genuine article!
It isn’t just the two candidates who actually have something important to say – Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel – who are read out of the story (when they aren’t turned into objects of derision.). It’s the more “electable” candidates too. The one most harmed by media neglect is the one who still has the best chance to pull off an upset, John Edwards. Arguably, on foreign policy – or at least on imperialism and war – his positions are more or less the same as Obama’s and even Clinton’s. He is clearly better on trade, however, and even more clearly on a host of domestic “issues.” So is Chris Dodd. On the Iraq War, if nothing else, Bill Richardson has the best position this side of Kucinich and Gravel. But none of this matters to the opinion makers. They’re too busy promoting Clinton’s inevitability, while keeping Obama in focus just enough to perk up interest so that their audience won’t fall asleep or go away.
Does it matter? Arguments can be made both ways. On the one hand, Clinton isn’t that much worse than the others (Kucinich and Gravel excepted) and, although much hated (for the wrong reasons) by “the vast right-wing conspiracy,” she, or any Democrat, is bound to be a winner against any of the pitiful candidates the Republicans might field. On the other hand, the Democrats in Congress have been so utterly disappointing (especially after being voted into office to end the Iraq War) and, more generally, so worthy of contempt that they just might lose. That’s an outcome too frightening to contemplate: imagine, say, Rudy Giuliani in the White House (advised by Norman Podhoretz) and Mike Huckabee, everybody’s choice for VP (according to the conventional wisdom) affably chiming in for creationism from his “bully pulpit.” It strains credulity to imagine that anything could be worse than the Cheney/Bush administration, but just watch any Republican debate! A Democratic defeat is unlikely even with Clinton leading the ticket. But it is not impossible.
Maybe I’m so worried because it will soon be Halloween, the season to be scared. After all, in the light of day, I realize that we do live in a country (and world) eager to see the backs of Cheney and Bush, that the Republicans have fielded the vilest collection of candidates ever to vie for national office, and that, in recent months, their useful idiots, the “values voters,” have all but given up. I know this because, in its October 28 edition, The New York Times, which is never wrong, said so twice – in a long article in the Sunday Magazine by David Kirkpatrick and in a column by Frank Rich. Of course, there are still a few hapless neo-cons, like Charles Krauthammer, who think the Republican candidates are just fine, and who keep repeating this nonsense in their syndicated Washington Post columns. But Krauthammer, like everyone close to the Vice President, has trouble with reality. Why then am I still worried? Could it be because I can’t help but remember what the Democrats are like -- not just the comparatively powerless ones who illustrate Robert Frost’s observation that a liberal is ‘someone who won’t take his own side in an argument,’ but also the Clintonized leadership, who want nothing more than to implement Cheney/Bush policies more competently and in a kinder, gentler way. Even with Hillary Clinton as the candidate, they’ll probably get their way (thanks to George Bush and notwithstanding the hordes of right-wing Hillary haters), and we’ll be better off than with the alternative. But win or lose, we’ll lose.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Not Looking Good
Back in June, I bemoaned the fact that, according to the polls, the leading contenders in the primaries (now less than four months away) were Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. They are still out front. In Hillary’s case, the lead is growing alarmingly. Is everybody nuts?
The Republicans certainly are. A plurality of them don’t seem able to get beyond that day more than six years ago when Giuliani was there at Ground Zero while the Bush boy was cowering in a bunker in Nebraska and Dick Cheney was in his spider hole near the Pennsylvania – Maryland border. No GOP elephants these; Republican voters are fledgling ducks “imprinting” on their Mama. No matter that Giuliani messed up big time that day and all the succeeding ones; no matter that he was a piss poor mayor or that he is a wretched human being; no matter either that his views on gay rights and abortion are of a sort that no God-fearing “values voter” can abide. What matters is that Giuliani, not the man but the idea, is the anti-terror, national security candidate. Neocons (like his foreign policy advisor, Norman Podhoretz) rejoice! Names like Giuliani and Podhoretz should cause even Bush voters fear and loathing. Somehow that hasn’t registered yet.
As for the Democrats, there was hope last spring that, by now, Obama would have knocked Hillary out of the water, and that the Edwards campaign would have caught on. It hasn’t happened, and there’s no indication that it will. Could it be that Democrats too are crazy? Or are they just obtuse?
On domestic “issues,” there’s little doubt: HRC is worse than any Democrat running. But for the pundit-wannabe voters flocking to the Lesser Evil Party, that just might be a good thing; it might make her more “electable.” They’re dead wrong, of course. Just as too few people hate Hillary for the right reasons, too many hate her for the wrong reasons. If she’s the candidate, that “vast right wing conspiracy” is sure to gear up again; making it not impossible, despite Bush’s and Cheney’s best (unwitting) efforts, that a Republican will win in 2008.
On foreign policy, the line is that there’s hardly a shade of difference between the major candidates. That’s not true on trade or global environmental policies or any of a host of other issues where, as with domestic policy, Hillary brings up the rear. But, if we restrict attention just to matters of the most immediate concern to most voters – the Iraq War and “security” in the face of “Islamic extremism” – the conventional wisdom is right in a sense; the “electable” candidates (Clinton, Obama and Edwards, but also Richardson and Dodd and even Biden) are close. [Kucinich and Gravel are another story, but alas they have no chance at all.] There’s no likelihood any of them (except maybe Richardson, were he true to his word) would bring ALL the troops home from Iraq or close down military bases in the Middle East and Central Asia or pressure Israel to do anything it doesn’t want to do or, not unrelatedly, lift a finger to prevent Cheney and Bush from going to war in Iran. In these matters, Hillary isn’t significantly worse than the others; she may not even be worse at all.
But wait. Though I still harbor (groundless) hopes for John Edwards, we may face an inevitable Clintonite restoration, even if Edwards somehow wins. But Clintonism is susceptible to more or less bad implementations. If an actual Clinton oversees the restoration, then beware the return of the likes of Richard Holbrooke, Mad Maddy Albright, Donna Shalala, Richard Rubin and the rest of that sorry crew – maybe not in person (though Holbrooke is plainly angling for the job of Secretary of State), then in spirit. Would this be better than a Giuliani administration? Of course. Instead of preemptive aggression, we would have “humanitarian interventions”; instead of ground wars and brutal occupations, we would have the occasional aerial Anschluss; instead of “unilateralism,” the US would go back to getting whatever it wants from the UN and other international organizations; instead of a torture state, we’d have the appearance, if not the reality, of the rule of law. All of these and other changes would be for the better. But there is still time to do better (or rather less bad) still. If the HRC juggernaut continues on track, it will soon be too late.
This is why now, more than ever, it is urgent that Democratic voters learn about and focus on the Clinton era sanctions that accounted for upwards of a half million avoidable deaths in Iraq, about Clinton’s (unacknowledged) “war on terror” with its bombing campaigns and “extraordinary renditions,” and about how the US government under Clinton would bypass the UN whenever it couldn’t get its way there (getting retroactive approval, wherever possible, from a servile Kofi Annan and compliant Security Council members). Most important, we all need to reflect on what the US – and our NATO partners (especially Germany) -- did to the former Yugoslavia. Even many of the folks who, out of sheer niceness, opposed the Iraq War from the start still don’t get it. They should read Diana Johnstone’s Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press, 2003) and, if nothing else, the article by Ed Herman and David Peterson in the current Monthly Review (vol. 59, no. 3, October 2007): “The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention – and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse.”] Then they should decide if the devil we know too well really is good (not bad) enough.
The Republicans certainly are. A plurality of them don’t seem able to get beyond that day more than six years ago when Giuliani was there at Ground Zero while the Bush boy was cowering in a bunker in Nebraska and Dick Cheney was in his spider hole near the Pennsylvania – Maryland border. No GOP elephants these; Republican voters are fledgling ducks “imprinting” on their Mama. No matter that Giuliani messed up big time that day and all the succeeding ones; no matter that he was a piss poor mayor or that he is a wretched human being; no matter either that his views on gay rights and abortion are of a sort that no God-fearing “values voter” can abide. What matters is that Giuliani, not the man but the idea, is the anti-terror, national security candidate. Neocons (like his foreign policy advisor, Norman Podhoretz) rejoice! Names like Giuliani and Podhoretz should cause even Bush voters fear and loathing. Somehow that hasn’t registered yet.
As for the Democrats, there was hope last spring that, by now, Obama would have knocked Hillary out of the water, and that the Edwards campaign would have caught on. It hasn’t happened, and there’s no indication that it will. Could it be that Democrats too are crazy? Or are they just obtuse?
On domestic “issues,” there’s little doubt: HRC is worse than any Democrat running. But for the pundit-wannabe voters flocking to the Lesser Evil Party, that just might be a good thing; it might make her more “electable.” They’re dead wrong, of course. Just as too few people hate Hillary for the right reasons, too many hate her for the wrong reasons. If she’s the candidate, that “vast right wing conspiracy” is sure to gear up again; making it not impossible, despite Bush’s and Cheney’s best (unwitting) efforts, that a Republican will win in 2008.
On foreign policy, the line is that there’s hardly a shade of difference between the major candidates. That’s not true on trade or global environmental policies or any of a host of other issues where, as with domestic policy, Hillary brings up the rear. But, if we restrict attention just to matters of the most immediate concern to most voters – the Iraq War and “security” in the face of “Islamic extremism” – the conventional wisdom is right in a sense; the “electable” candidates (Clinton, Obama and Edwards, but also Richardson and Dodd and even Biden) are close. [Kucinich and Gravel are another story, but alas they have no chance at all.] There’s no likelihood any of them (except maybe Richardson, were he true to his word) would bring ALL the troops home from Iraq or close down military bases in the Middle East and Central Asia or pressure Israel to do anything it doesn’t want to do or, not unrelatedly, lift a finger to prevent Cheney and Bush from going to war in Iran. In these matters, Hillary isn’t significantly worse than the others; she may not even be worse at all.
But wait. Though I still harbor (groundless) hopes for John Edwards, we may face an inevitable Clintonite restoration, even if Edwards somehow wins. But Clintonism is susceptible to more or less bad implementations. If an actual Clinton oversees the restoration, then beware the return of the likes of Richard Holbrooke, Mad Maddy Albright, Donna Shalala, Richard Rubin and the rest of that sorry crew – maybe not in person (though Holbrooke is plainly angling for the job of Secretary of State), then in spirit. Would this be better than a Giuliani administration? Of course. Instead of preemptive aggression, we would have “humanitarian interventions”; instead of ground wars and brutal occupations, we would have the occasional aerial Anschluss; instead of “unilateralism,” the US would go back to getting whatever it wants from the UN and other international organizations; instead of a torture state, we’d have the appearance, if not the reality, of the rule of law. All of these and other changes would be for the better. But there is still time to do better (or rather less bad) still. If the HRC juggernaut continues on track, it will soon be too late.
This is why now, more than ever, it is urgent that Democratic voters learn about and focus on the Clinton era sanctions that accounted for upwards of a half million avoidable deaths in Iraq, about Clinton’s (unacknowledged) “war on terror” with its bombing campaigns and “extraordinary renditions,” and about how the US government under Clinton would bypass the UN whenever it couldn’t get its way there (getting retroactive approval, wherever possible, from a servile Kofi Annan and compliant Security Council members). Most important, we all need to reflect on what the US – and our NATO partners (especially Germany) -- did to the former Yugoslavia. Even many of the folks who, out of sheer niceness, opposed the Iraq War from the start still don’t get it. They should read Diana Johnstone’s Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press, 2003) and, if nothing else, the article by Ed Herman and David Peterson in the current Monthly Review (vol. 59, no. 3, October 2007): “The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention – and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse.”] Then they should decide if the devil we know too well really is good (not bad) enough.
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