Doing Two Things At Once? Here's a Thought

From approximately the first third of Obama's campaign, I've been concerned about the "bipartisan" strategy. Now, with the appointment of Judd Gregg, I'm more concerned, and the reason is because bipartisanship takes two. Otherwise it's a fool's errand.

Judd Gregg wants to abolish the Commerce department. Fine with me, but I also want our trade agreements renegotiated from a bona fide liberal economic perspective. He's not the guy for that.

Judd Gregg supports the stimulus bill but won't vote for it. Some support. How does that translate into proper behavior for a Cabinet officer? It looks like making a fool of the President to me.

McCain repaid Obama's gentlemanly overtures with back-stabbing. The GOP stonewalled him in the House. Cheney is speaking publicly to undermine him on domestic security. How is this "bipartisan"?

It isn't. This is the party that called "bipartisanship" another word for date rape. Google on Grover Norquist if you don't believe me.

This is the party that has one constituency: Far-Right white men. These geezers and their warped offspring have been hanging around like cockroaches since the New Deal, and they're not going to go away now, not when we look to be on the verge of rolling out a Second New Deal. Not when women's rights are in the ascendant for the first time in 30 years. Not when GLBT people appear to be at the door of the House of Humanity for the first time ever. Not when there's a Black man and a Black woman in the White House. Not when Planned Parenthood can get on with the job it was created to do. Not when three SCOTUS Justices are in the works. Oh I don't think so.

I hope that Obama can do two things at once. I hope he can talk "bipartisanship" while he's kicking their teeth down their throats.

Obama

If ever there were a graphic illustration of the difference between hope and hatred, it is the photographs of the crowds attending Obama and McCain.

I am so proud of Barack Obama. He calls out all the best in me. I may not always agree with him, but I will never forget this night because America finally entered the Promised Land that Martin Luther King, Jr., pinned on the horizon for all of us to see.

To see this man tonight calling us all to step forward, to transcend race, gender, sexual orientation, fear, and paranoia is to take a giant step toward that Promised Land.

My heart is especially full tonight for America's African Americans. Now the least are the greatest among us. And that, my friends, is the unique promise of a great, great nation.

God bless America, and God bless this planet of which we are but a small part. This victory is for us all.

Just DO IT

If you haven't already voted, get up early, get to the polls, and VOTE for Obama.

Ahhhhhhh, I Fink I See the Light

You know how I've been saying that something doesn' quite meet the eye about this Paulson bailout proposal? I mean, I keep hearing that not one single economist can be found who thinks this is the way to unfreeze credit, and not one person can be found who likes it. So why would BushCo propose it, I wondered, wondered I.

I heard something on Hardball today that may answer this question. One of Squeeky's guests said that Wall Street would "say" to Obama: "You're proposing all this new spending (healthcare, infrastructure, college loans, renewable energy development, etc.). Well, you can have that, or you can have this (bailout). Which will it be?"

That, Dear Readers, may be the missing piece of the puzzle. THAT would explain why a radically "free" market administration in its waning days would intervene in a market to the tune of $700 Billion.

The good news is that I also understand that Obama has seen that little move coming and inserted into the measure a clause that sticks Wall Street with any difference between the bailout amount and the sum earned for the taxpayers when these bundled "assets" are sold. The trick will be to sell them before the end of Obama's first term, or make recouping the loss a visible part of his re-election bid four years from now.

Have I mentioned? Republicans need to man up and admit that 30 years of Reaganomics got us where we are today, and McCain and his finance adviser Gramm were driving that truck.

Who Could Make This Up?

This is a completely incredible week.

Thanks to the sustained, core, much-ballyhoo'd Republican "free" market, de-regulation economic policy, the stock market--that would be us, you and me--has lost over $1 Trillion Dollars, yet 45% of Americans are still supporting McPalin.

McCain, whose economic advisor is de-regulation architect Texas Republican Sen. Phil Gramm (whose wife is our Secy of Labor, by the way), is declaring himself a regulator (for the first time in 30 years), and former Hillary supporter Lady Lynne Rothschild (yes, that Rothschild, the baroness) has left the Democrats in a huff because that Obama--get that, Obama--is "an elitist."

Right. New Deal advocate Obama is an elitist, and 9-houses-and-a-jet McPalin is a feminist ethics professor and pro-gay rights market regulator.

Who could make this stuff up?

If I weren't numb with anxiety about our retirement income and the prospects for a worldwide crash, I would be in hysterics. As it is, I'm sick at my stomach.

I'll Vote for Obama

Some while back, I declared here that Obama lost my support when he chose to campaign in South Carolina with an anti-GLBT activist. Since then, Obama has come out publicly as our supporter. In late February, he wrote a public letter to the GLBT community. Its concluding paragraph reads:

Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible. I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit. Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all Americans, gay and straight alike.

I believe that's an accurate assessment of the frame of mind that will be required to advance us to equal footing in law and in legislated benefits such as those governing Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, the federal income tax, military spouse survivorship, hospital visitation, etc.

Of course that's not all that will be required, by far. And he knows that. Obama's letter spells out where he stands on specific GLBT issues, and what his White House can be expected to do in our support.

So I've forgiven his foray into South Carolina with Donnie McClurkin.

In the interim, I've also had a great deal of exposure to Obama and to Clinton. As Obama has risen in my esteem, Clinton has fallen. I will spare you a lengthy play-by-play, and instead offer the seven chief reasons that finally persuade me to support Obama.

1. Judgment: I agree with Obama that judgment is the crucial variable in any President. All presidents have expert advisors. The president's judgment, and his or hers alone, is what, in the end, sorts them out and chooses a course to pursue. Not only Obama's stance on the war, but also his decision about how to run and nuance his campaign illustrate good judgment that's also far more in tune with Americans' longterm best interests than any other candidate's. That same judgment informed the content and tone of his speech on race delivered in response to critics of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama's association with him. Obama took this low-life diversion to the level of worthy discourse, and did so in a way that affirmed people--even people with serious issues about race--and summoned us to a better place: "The union will never be perfect, but it can always be perfected." Lincoln, too, was a first-term legislator when he took the presidency in circumstances that could hardly have been direr. I think Obama is cut from that rare cloth.

2. Leadership: That speech also demonstrated courageous leadership. Americans on the whole are not comfortable with a candid discussion of race, and politicians, with rare exceptions, avoid it like the plague. No so Obama. To his credit, even when his campaign is on the line, he stepped up and led. We're not used to that. We're used to hops and dodges and platitudes on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We're not used to a politician who can convert a race-based attack into a national growth opportunity.

While there remain issues about which I disagree with Obama or about which I want more information from him (free trade, privatization, the balance of powers, constitutional safeguards, FISA, etc.), the issues that I have heard him discuss give me reason to believe that he'll come down somewhere that I can live with.

3. Cool under fire: One of the things I like most about Obama is that he is unbelievably calm under fire. If he's going to have his finger on the nuclear trigger and his mouth at this end of the red phone, I want cool, calm, reason, and diplomacy. I've seen him exhibit precisely these characteristics repeatedly.

4. Common Decency: Time and again, Obama has reached out to the enemy, behaved with dignity and courtesy in the face of just the opposite, and comported himself with a nobility that I think will grace the Oval Office. And not a minute too soon. He is modeling for us the demeanor that he expects of us. That's also leadership of a very high order.

5. Change: I agree that we desperately need change in Washington. I must trust that Obama is what he says he is with respect to bought-and-paid-for lawmaking, but I will take that chance. Compared with McCain, Obama is a whole new world. Compared with Clinton, he's a refreshing outsider with enough experience in Washington to know how to get around town. On a more serious note, Obama's appeal to the best in the nation is desperately, desperately needed. We have generations of youngsters to teach about government in the interest of the people. I think Clinton is sullied by some of her own decisions and by the myths energetically generated by the Right about "The Clintons." I think the nation really is weary of both the Bushes and the Clintons, and wants and needs precisely the qualities that Obama uniquely brings to us.

6. Race and Heritage: I don't know of anything that can both mark growth on this nation's part and help this country address its racism than having a man of mixed race who identifies as Black in the White House. I think his multiracial and multinational heritage equip him uniquely as a symbol and as a negotiator on the world stage, and I believe the rest of the world will respond very positively to this President. While I think Clinton would attract global support as well, and know that McCain would be met as the anathema he is, I think Obama has the "face validity" to move us light years ahead in global diplomacy and domestic social accord.

7. Electability: Yes, he'll mobilize white racists and the far Right, at the risk of being redundant. So will Hillary. But Obama will bring whole new cohorts to the polls, and Clinton will not. If the White House and "Justice" Department are not tapping the campaign's phones and rigging the vote, Obama will be the next President of the United States.

Clinton/Obama

It seems to me that Clinton has a depth of understanding of issues and government process that Obama simply doesn't yet have. It also seems to me that Obama has charisma that Clinton simply doesn't have. If there's a God, we will have a Clinton/Obama ticket.

Edwards?

Conventional wisdom has made much of how the GOP is divided and unhappy with its slate, and, IMHO, not given enough attention to the similar feelings among Democrats. At first I was more pleased with most of them than not. Now I'm less pleased with all of them but for different reasons. And that's why I've had little to say about this election so far. All I know at this point is that I'll support any Democrat over any Republican. I wish I felt the enthusiasm and hope I did when Bill ran first, but I don't, though I am tending now for John Edwards.

Capitulation to conservatives isn't the way of the future. It's the way of now. No change, no hope. Anyone who trends to the Right or hopes to run the country by reaching out to the GOP is dangerously out of touch with the needs of the country and the world to the extent that the US affects it. On the other hand, the fact of the matter is that corporatists have far too much power--over the media and over the purse--for a true Left Democrat to get in office. Hence the loathesome reality that Democrats run more conservatively even when decades of national polls show strong American support for progressive values on abortion, health care, energy, the environment, and foreign policy.

This is why Edwards is not given more attention by the media and not shown in the Iowa polls as its front-runner. I would bet real money that he represents the policy choices of most Democrats in Iowa, but that they don't believe he can win the White House because of establishment opposition. It would really delight me if he comes out of Iowa in a powerful second slot and charges into New Hampshire in a position to take that state.

I have considerably more trust in Edwards than in Clinton or Obama. Anybody the corporatists hate has to be my kind of guy. Besides, Clinton does not speak with fire about her core positions. As a result, I don't know where she stands. And to my great dismay, Obama has begun the fight with signals of concession to the GOP, and that's not where I mean to be, for all the reasons noted in "Obama? What's At Stake in Making Nice." He may play well in Midwestern Niceland, but excuuuuuuuuse me, hasn't he noticed the relentless assault from the Right on everything the Constitution and Bill of Rights stand for?

Edwards, on the other hand, has a big house, a $400 haircut, and a career as a trial lawyer. The house and the haircut make me sick. New rich, bad form, not my style at all. And the Right has made good use of this to raise questions about his core values.

But remember: A trial lawyer is a pit bull who has kicked corporate butts for 30years and made a profit winning at it. That's not a bad thing.

I want a person in the White House who knows what Appalachia means, and why unions are essential to the future of middle America, and why the much-abused white southern blue collar family is a valued part of the sadly neglected heart of America.

If I had it to do again, as a Lefty activist/theorist, I'd do two things differently. I would give as much effort to ensuring the job security and dignity of working people as to ensuring the civil rights of minorities and women, and I would focus on buying up as much media as possible. That last is another subject. As to the first, the interests of poor white people are identical to those of poor black and brown people. The mistake we made was ever allowing the Right to see daylight between the emphasis we gave them. So hear me clearly. I'm not saying that we should have, or must now, advance the interests of working poor whites over those of African Americans, Hispanics, women and others.

I'm saying that when the tide rises for working people, it rises for us all.

I'm not underestimating the challenges we all faced in the South and elsewhere fighting for civil rights, don't think we're done by a long shot, and would be a fool to suggest that white working poor people were on board as one. The racist division was real. Where we dropped the ball, however, was in allowing the Right to shut out unions, outsource jobs, and thus leverage race as a huge wedge in the way it has.

But I digress. Edwards understands that we have two choices. Either the Left can continue to treat working white people with the contempt embodied in words like "trailer trash" and "red neck" and wonder why they're getting redder and meaner by the year, or we can treat them with real respect when possible and with anticipatory respect when necessary, and lift them up as we continue to lift up African Americans, gays and lesbians, Hispanics, and women. It begins with ensuring the jobs, defending and growing the economy, protecting the environment--acid rain and strip mining aren't funny--and making damn sure that the working people receive their fair share of the profit. And it begins with a change of tone, with regard and consideration for the conditions of their lives. And it continues with education and with demonstrating the lies embedded in the Far Right's divide-and-conquer strategies.

Easy? Nope. But it beats the alternative so lavishly laid before us by the Right.

I could change my mind, but Edwards career, tenacity, and personal experience of deep wounds to the heart speak to me more persuasively at this time than anything else I've seen out there.