ET TU, OBAMA?!

So THIS is just in from Mark Halperin: Barack Obama is going to announce his support for tapping the strategic oil reserves.

I am so pissed off right now.

But I will wait until he actually makes the announcement before I rail against him for his latest act of triangulation - and clarify why I can actually denounce him for it after supporting Hillary "I love triangulation!" Clinton.

UPDATE: According to the comments, I left the impression that I was more angry with Obama's reluctract embrace of offshore and strategic drilling than anything else. But that isn't the case. My beef is not with his change in position, per se; while I may disagree with the mechanism of his triangulation, I understand its political implications and the reasons behind it. I even understand why targeted drilling could help ease our dependence on foreign oil, even though I don't think it would do much (especially given the relatively small amount of oil as yet untapped by our nation). No, I am MUCH more pissed off that this is Barack Obama's latest move to the center.

A point of clarification: I am not absurdly liberal. I am somewhat moderate. I worked for Senator Clinton, who isn't absurdly liberal but somewhat moderate. For me, moving to the center isn't always a bad thing. It's necessary for productive compromise, and it ensures, to some degree, that a hard-and-fast branding of a party (like, say, the branding of the Republican Party as out-of-touch and ultra-conservative) remains in the somewhat distant future. President Clinton effectively moved the Democratic Party to the center; and whether we agreed with his mechanisms or not, he  was the first Democratic Presidential candidate to win two terms since FDR.

Triangulation itself, while somewhat dubious, isn't the horrid ideological sacrifice to some make it out to be. It is a means of bridging two divergent ideas with a third that may sound like both, originate from both, or just sound like it originated from both. The Clintons - and yeah, a lot of people hate them for it now - became masters of triangulation - not because it was pleasurable or fun, but because it worked.

The difference, though, is that they didn't run on themes of divergence from triangulation. Obama said, more than once, that Clinton was using the "same old playbook," telling people one thing and craftily doing another. He compared her to Annie Oakley because she appealed to gun owners, and said that she would "say or do anything to get elected." And yeah, maybe that was true. She did emphasize her sensible gun policy to appeal to voters who were otherwise unlikely to support a Democrat for President, and it worked. She did triangulate her positions on some issues, and she won 8 of the last 13 primaries, often by large margins.

The point of this is not to rehash the Democratic primary contest (I promise, I DO support Obama. I do I do I do I DO!). It does, however, put Obama's now-apparent respect for triangulation into perspective. He ran on themes of straight-talk, of change, complete, unfettered change. He wasn't going to accept money from Washington lobbyists, he wasn't going to play with the special interests, he wasn't going to say anything he didn't believe to be true. He was going to transform politics, run as himself, and nothing but: Obama wouldn't be prey to political winds, because he is a New Type of Presidential Candidate - he isn't even a politician!

But what the New Yorker famously uncovered, and what Obama's efforts at triangulation have revealed, is that he isn't so much different. He's a skilled politician, a wunderkind, a skilled communicator that can bridge those gaps between liberal and conservative. It is to his credit that he can do this so effectively, all while wrapping himself in that same mantle of newness and change.

But it is more than disappointing. I actually had hope that we could finally have a new type of President, one devoid of political influence, one who would tell people what they needed to hear. While Obama still does some of that, his changes on so many issues - for me, his support of FISA was most galling - don't live up to his image of the man who will transcend politics-as-usual. 

 

 

a few thoughts

because i have a final tomorrow morning (my second of four! haaaaaaaaaay, great end of the semester), i want to a share a few thoughts - random, in no particular order, irrespectively, etc - before i go even more insane with academic saturation. (side note: today, in my usual display of pop culture allusions, i confused julia roberts with richard dreyfuss.) to retain some semblance of interest in things i won't be tested on, i've been reading TEH NEWZ constantly. so here's what i'm thinking about, politically and otherwise, seriously and not-so-seriously, before i creep into dementia and sing radiohead until i die:

• KARL ROVE is a jerk. a foul-mouthed, sick, disgusting, perverted jerk. i don't base this assessment on a newly-revealed sexual scandal - who'd have sex with death, anyway? - or a personal encounter. but you know what? giving barack obama "advice" on combating charges of elitism and then promptly criticizing him for those "bitter, cling, guns, antipathy towards other people, blah blah blah" comments of last century suggests a serious lack of human emotion. i bet karl rove is the one that killed that dude hillary clinton supposedly murdered. and then spread the rumors about clinton. and then clubbed kitties and puppies for fun. what an asshole.
• speaking of, MIKE HUCKABEE's a pretty funny dude. he thought he could win the presidency and everything, even though he taxed and spent, made love to "illegals," and didn't have any money other than the currency of The Jesus. so he makes a joke chronicled by our own brian kaufman, and only racists and rednecks laugh. because the joke's about shooting barack obama. i thought it was weird that huckabee's son would lynch a stray dog, but i guess not. the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, i suppose. (my guess is that mike huckabee probably ate the apple, but only after dipping it in sugar and coke and frying it in bacon grease).
• on an unrelated-ish note, BARACK OBAMA is shaping up to be a great general election candidate. hell, he's running like one, and the media loves it. (how do i know? i haven't read anything - except for this, maybe - about HILLARY CLINTON since wednesday, and that was a very bad day for her. more on that later.) at the same time, i think that for all the great things obama will do for our party - bringing heretofore excluded demographics (read: the youth) into the process, establishing a liberal majority for the rest of time - we might have a slight problem winning. time's swampland has a good post (and link!) on obama's electoral road map to winning the white house. i'm confident we'll win. but the trends in florida and ohio worry me, especially when hillary's strongly positioned to PWN john mccain in the rust belt and my VERY OWN sunshine state. i still think he should pick her as his VP. it'd solve so many problems at once, and it might make him much more appealing to all those racists the media loves to talk about.
• the SAME-SEX MARRIAGE RULING is an incredible thing, and i must say that i've never been more proud of a state i've come to pettily revile. (for clarification: i hate california because everybody from california just LOVES california, and i find it very irritating. fucking go to stanford and stop complaining about the weather, okay?) i hope it initiates a culture war, because i think we'll win. with "queer eye for the straight guy," andy dick, and ellen degeneres on our side - not to mention TGI friday's best patron ever - we're sure to beat back the religious right that doesn't have a candidate. at the same time, it'll be interesting to see how the dems and mccain run on the issue, because their positions are pretty similar. mccain will use harsh language to appeal to the crazies, but whatever. he won't be able to raise his arm in fury.
• JOHN EDWARDS endorsed obama. surprise! come on, everyone should have seen that coming. he called hillary a corporate democrat and regularly admonished her for her "support" of lobbyists (even though he took contributions from state lobbyists, those who represent and defend lobbyists, and former lobbyists). so he endorsed the similarly "anti-lobbyist" candidate, heralded themes of HOPE and CHANGE, etc. not sure if it'll do anything, but the media loves to talk about racist white people and how john edwards might help barack obama win them over.
• like many feminists, i, too, feel betrayed by NARAL. and it isn't because they chose to support a man instead of a woman; it's because they chose to support a one pro-choice candidate over another. obama and clinton have similar records on choice - though i think hers is stronger than his, if only because of his tactical "present" votes and his relatively short time in public life. so why endorse? why not wait until the end of the primary season? three weeks does not a winning pro-life candidate make, and a negative campaign against mccain doesn't necessitate a positive campaign for the obviously pro-choice democratic nominee. to me, the endorsement smacks of disrespect to senator clinton, effectively adding to the chorus of those irresponsible pundits that want to end her candidacy before she does. and it's made even worse by senator clinton's more than admirable record on agitation for women's rights.

and thus, in my mind, i've come full circle. because i need to study for my final on the history of women, gender, and sexuality in europe. onward!

in limbo

it's taken a while, but hillary supporters at harvard are starting to come out of the woodwork. it seems that the threat of an obama nomination--or, perhaps more accurately, the threat of a non-hillary nomination--has induced some students to assure me of their support. people whom i had never thought to support hillary (it's quite a thing for me not to know who supports hillary and who doesn't, really) have taken me aside, their voices grave, asking me for my thoughts. and my thoughts--at once optimistic and resigned--are of no comfort.

it feels like it's the beginning of the end. when senator clinton won indiana and lost north carolina--and when barack obama gained a total of twelve delegates out of more than two hundred possible--i thought there was hope. hillary won indiana, after all, even though she was heavily outspent in a state that neighbors obama's home turf. and so, when the press declared hillary's campaign dead for the third or fourth time, i was rightfully pissed off. meanwhile, pundits the world over declared that the democratic party was fractured, citing exit polls in indiana suggesting that a large number of hillary supporters would rather vote for mccain or stay home than vote for barack obama.

my first reaction was skepticism. though it isn't unprecedented or without basis, the argument that long primary seasons harm the candidates involved and engender bitterness between the two camps is somewhat simplistic. it's natural to think that months of negative ads raise the negatives of both candidates, that jibs and jabs adversely affect each candidate's supporters. and polls have suggested that both obama's and clinton's negatives have risen (an unfortunate thing for hillary, too, because hers were already pretty high). nevertheless, i prefer the counterargument: that this extended fight for the nomination is a good thing, especially if barack obama gets the democratic nomination, because it's prepared the candidates for the much more specious attacks to come from the Evil Republicans.

but now i'm beginning to see something different. my mother--my very own mother! a democrat!--recently told me that she'd rather stay home than vote for barack obama, but only if hillary isn't on the ticket. (my response: "we'll talk about this later, and i'll make you change your mind.") another one of my friends approached me in the library a few days ago, bemoaning the changed tide in the race, declaring, "i'm just so pissed off right now that i don't think i'll vote for him out of bitterness." one of my teachers from high school, a life-long republican whom i persuaded to support hillary over john mccain, was more explicit in her disapproval of obama: "just about all of what he promised in his NC acceptance speech cannot be accomplished. when he is finally President (if he makes it), the huge bubble he has created will develop a hole and all the air will leak out." (to be fair, she also called john mccain "a wet dishrag right in the face.")

my point: i'm beginning to see the signs of disenchantment that the punditocracy blathers about endlessly. still, i'll work tirelessly to make sure we have a democratic president for the next four years. obama--though hardly my first choice--is a great man, a great american, and a great candidate. he is promising. and if he isn't particularly inspirational to me, the fact that so many of my peers are inspired by his candidacy is, in itself, pretty inspirational. i've come a long way in my resignation that he's the presumptive democratic nominee. but at this point, to fight the more bitter feelings of millions of clinton supporters, he might have to buck maureen dowd and ask hillary to be his vp.

operation chaos

when did a win become a loss? for the life of me, i can't understand why the media thinks that hillary should quit. because she lost one of two states she was expected to lose? because she only won indiana by two points? because she lost a southern state expected to heavily favor obama?

let's get real, folks. hillary clinton won a state that neighbors illinois and receives media from chicago, one in which she was heavily outspent, and one the obama campaign predicted to win by seven points. she won by two points, about sixteen thousand votes. granted, it isn't a huge margin. but she didn't win new hampshire by a huge margin, either. because she lost iowa by eight points, does it follow that she should have dropped out after winning new hampshire by three? obama handily outspent her in texas, and she won texas by four. should she have dropped out then?

granted, i've grumbled about the media's propensity to prematurely end her candidacy before. this isn't anything new. nevertheless, the fact that tim russert has the gall to de-legitimize her candidacy before full results from indiana came in says everything we need to know about the media. remember, media executives who determine front-page headlines and nightly news lead-ins also maintained--in the case of the AP--that britney spears died. and these are the people who gauge paris hilton as a representative of our generation, the people who covered her journey to prison for an entire news cycle.

and so these same people have pronounced her "toast," declaring that the race "is over," that she can't continue. (the new york post even has an online poll that blatantly ignores her candidacy.) well, here's my official response to our beloved "independent" media: fuck you. they've no right to determine an election's result until every vote is counted. they don't nominate our party's standard-bearers; voters do. until the punditocracy learns to curb its impulses to decide an election, our democracy is in danger. 

UMMMMMMMMMMMMM

some crazy at dailykos (a liberal blog for crazies) thinks barack obama is a mythic hero, hillary clinton is medusa, and barack is destined to save the planet by severing hillary clinton's head, etc etc etc. read the whole thing for a big dose of crazy, etc etc etc.

i really hope am really glad that this is satire. because if it wasn't, this post would just demonstrate that the far left, in its quest to manufacture a soothsaying wunderkind, will stop at nothing to destroy pragmatic politics and its purveyors. hillary clinton, for reasons left unclear, is medusa simply because she is, kind of like samantha power once said, "a monster that turns people into stone if they gaze upon her." and if that isn't enough, it's sooooo well-known (especially in the circle of prophesy-wielding crazies) that "Algol, Medussa's eye, has long been seen as one of the most malifec and evil stars in the heavens."

well, to quote an oft-used and tacky phrase, if loving medusa is wrong, i don't want to be right. i'd rather have a tested woman impervious to attacks than a man guided by perseus.

really, i like barack obama. but why do some of his supporters have to be so farcical?

UPDATE: duly noted, eva. samantha power did NOT say that hillary clinton was a "monster that turns people into stone if they gaze upon her"--that's from the dailykos entry, tenuously attributed by the comma that separates "is" and "like." i've added "kind of" to  emphasize the difference.

 

deceptacon

so last night sometime this morning, as i was preparing for bed, my eyes happened upon a little-read development that negatively effects more than half of the united states. the title of the article says it all: "senate republicans block unequal pay bill." and i was so furious, so OUTRAGED, that i had to put on some le tigre to get in the mood to break shit---namely, the backs of every republican (and democratic) senator who voted to enshrine unequal pay for equal work.

 even more grating? the article is nowhere to be seen on cnn's politics page, even though it was published yesterday. (articles on tuesday's primary are still up.) the new york times didn't cover it, though they did write about barack obama's abercrombie boys. for what it's worth, the washington post did publish an article, and it's on the main page.

the point? gender discrimination is so rarely talked about. and it's so omnipresent.

i decided to search for videos tagged as "feminist" on youtube, and i found a pro-feminist video entitled "this is what a feminist looks like." and then i read the comments. 

IndianObserver writes,

 

 

even more completely accurate predictions for today's PA primary

with polls closing in just a few minutes, i thought i'd leave you with an accurate depiction of the toll of the pennsylvania primary on our party's future nominee.

i'd like to wax about the inherent sexism in the piece--hillary clinton can't win without her husband's intervention, etc--but i feel like this just can't be given any legitimacy whatsoever.

that said, whatcha gonna do when hillary clinton and her superdelegates run wild on you?

wires and waves

as a supporter of senator hillary clinton, the past couple of weeks--or months, really--have been quite trying. our campaign has certainly done better than it's doing now, and my disappointment, i think, is hardly individual. i've cringed, shaken my head in disillusionment, clenched my teeth in anger. there have been times when, oh-so-privately, i've hoped for a quick ending---that she were to lose here, then there, to spare both a candidate i find so wonderful and my own sense that, if things progressed in the same direction, i'd eventually support a woman i could no longer consciously support.

but barack obama's campaign has always, almost insistently--and quite flagrantly--given me a reason not to give up hope. i don't think it's a central character flaw or anything so morally damning. instead, it's a hypocrisy that his campaign--and many of his supporters--fervently deny: barack obama plays politics, whether he likes to or not.

i'm familiar with politics. hillary clinton is familiar with politics. americans are familiar with politics. and most unfortunately, barack obama is forced to play politics. his central campaign theme has been a fervent desire to change washington as we know it, to bring about what americans so desperately want and need. no more lobbyists, no more equivocation, no more triangulation---essentially, no more politics.

it is his insistence on removing triangulation that bothers me the most. his premise is wonderful, his goal extraordinary. but he has realized, quite shrewdly, that you need to play politics to change them. by calling hillary clinton a "slash-and-burn" politician, a slave to the vested corporate interests in washington, barack obama is doing exactly as he says he doesn't want to do. the times reports that he's gone negative--negative!--against hillary in pennsylvania, "[casting] his opponent in one of the most negative lights of the entire 16-month campaign, calling her a compromised Washington insider." (time magazine's blog, swampland, has more here.)

i think my favorite part of his latest closing argument is this:

"When she talks about experience what she really means is: 'I’ve been around the track quite a few times, I know how it works.’ So she takes more money from Washington lobbyists than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican, because she says, and she said this in a debate recently, that lobbyists are real Americans. Now, I don’t know if any of you have lobbyists in Washington representing you, but I don’t think so… Then this weekend she starts running ads saying, ‘Oh, no, no, he’s actually taking money from these folks,’ even though we have sent back money that was from lobbyists, we sent back money from PACS. But she just ignored the facts. And listen, understand the argument that she’s making. She’s essentially saying: “Yeah, I’m bad but he’s just as bad.’ What kind of argument is that? What kind of inspirational message is that?”

obama operates under two false premises, neither of which he can fully illuminate to a crowd of undecided (or committed) voters: the first is that his campaign doesn't benefit from associations with washington lobbyists, and the second is that the evil "lobbyists" represent a large swath of organizations, including research organizations. the problem: his campaign DOES benefit from his associations with washington lobbyists (and state lobbyists, for that matter), which is fine, because not all lobbyists are bad.

so, let's follow barack's logic: hillary takes money from lobbyists and says they're good, and that's bad; i take money from lobbyists and say they're bad, but i tell people i don't take money from lobbyists because they're bad. i'm bad, but hillary's just as bad.

a simple translation: i play politics, too.

i wish politicians didn't play politics. i wish barack didn't have to play politics to want to change the way the game is played. i wish things were different. but sometimes, planes smash up in the sky.

ROBOT MAKES JOKES

for some reason, i've always had an odd soft spot for mitt romney. he was so delightfully and carefully manufactured, so insincere. his absurdity belied what i think is his true self: a smart, pragmatic moderate, willing to bridge divides with sane, comprehensive policy. though i hated the candidate--on the surface, there really was nothing to love about a man who out-tanredo'ed tancredo--i respected the man that, i thought, resided beneath his shallow, lacquered veneer. the problem, though, is that romney--and, to an extent, the republican base--was unable to accept the plausibility of a moderate republican as a candidate and as a president. he resorted to obfuscating his record and his positions, his ideology and his education, and, in the process, diluted his value as a public servant. if he had avoided the quasi-reactionary varnish and accepted his moderate politics, he could have been a contender---albeit one that would have lost to the democratic nominee in the fall. it's good to see that he has a manufactured sense of humor, at least.