Framed

Presumptive

Our long national nightmare is over.

That's what Gerald Ford said upon being sworn in as Nixon's successor, but it's the way I'm starting to feel today.  Sure, I'm overstating things.  The Obama/Clinton contest has been anything but a nightmare for the GOP.  A contested primary is nowhere near as damaging to the Democrats as Nixonland was.  The point, though, is that after last night, all but paid partisans like Lanny Davis are starting to rally behind Barack Obama as the presumptive nominee.

I first noticed this by monitoring HinesSight last night.  Hines has been consistently, staunchly, and even militantly pro-Clinton.  He has headlined nearly every news story about the campaign with a Clinton spin.  Much as I've disagreed with him--and even been mildly irritated by him--I admire him for sticking to his guns and putting the best possible face on a weak hand.  But last night, Hines threw in the towel; the lede on his site called Obama the "presumptive nominee."  As I write this, headlines include:

Historic Nominee: Barack Obama, After a Long and Hard Campaign, Becomes the Presumptive Nominee of the Democratic Party.

Hillary Clinton Loaned Campaign $6.4 Million, Plans to Keep Going

Clinton Fails to Change the Game

How Obama Got His Momentum Back

Disappointing, Close Win for Clinton in Indiana

At Cliniton HQ, Defeat Hangs Heavy in the Air

Clinton Aides Doubtful About Future

At another pro-Clinton site, MyDD, the Blogfather himself, Jerome Armstrong, writes:

As for Clinton's chances going ahead, they are minimal. I gave about a 10% shot after she won TX & OH, and upped that to 15% after her PA win, and around 20% a week ago. Now, it's slimmer than ever before. There's little doubt that, considering any marker, Obama is on the path to the nomination, now more than ever. Congrats to all his supporters on a good night.

At the same site, Todd Beeton proclaims that "The Tie Has Been Broken":

The upshot is that there is no way to spin away what happened tonight: Senator Clinton had a really bad night and Senator Obama had a phenomenal one. It's impossible to overstate the significance of what he accomplished, not only considering what he's overcome over the past three weeks but also considering how decisively he denied Clinton what she needed to continue to have a credible path to the nomination. To put it plainly, tonight was her final shot and she needed to win Indiana by 8-10% and to lose NC by 1-3%; in other words she needed to do about 10% better in each state than she did in order to keep Michigan and Florida relevant and the popular vote in play for superdelegates. Unfortunately, she was unable to do either. Zogby was right this time and Survey USA...and I...were wrong.

Which leads me to the conclusion, sadly, that I no longer see a real path to victory for Hillary Clinton and I now believe Barack Obama will be the nominee of our party.

When people like Hines, Armstrong and Beeton who have loyally and strongly supported Clinton's candidacy effectively cede the race to Obama, something fundamental has changed.  The theme I see on these and other progressive sites is that the contest is over; now it's time to start the healing.

To that end, Andrew Sullivan makes the best case possible for an Obama/Clinton ticket.  I'm still not convinced--I think that putting a hack like Clinton on the ticket might demoralize many of the people who see Obama as a new kind of politician--but I'll admit that Sullivan's argument is pretty persuasive.  Tim Russert has even floated the idea that Obama could offer to take over Clinton's campaign debt in exchange for her accepting the Veep slot.  Various bloggers are suggesting that Obama and Clinton join forces and campaign together in the remaining states and Puerto Rico.

While Clinton's supporters are starting to bow to the inevitable, Obama supporter John Cole (who has just been on fire of late) comes closest to articulating my thoughts right now:

Now, can we get to the very serious business of dismantling the GOP? I have a very serious axe to grind, and it is deeply, deeply personal for me. There are a bunch of frauds, crooks, and phonies with whom I have a serious grudge that I want to settle. You see, I still have my “Peace Through Strength” button from when I campaigned for Reagan. I believed in limited government, I believed in a strong national defense, I believed in fiscal restraint and balanced budgets and I believed in personal integrity and individual liberty and personal freedom.

I am pissed. I want the frothing nutters, the fraudulent hucksters, the race-baiters, the anti-science frauds, the anti-intellectuals, the gay-bashers, the big-money cheats, the torture fetishists, the religious nuts, the tax and spenders, the xenophobes, and the phonies to pay. I want payback. I want the people who ruined my former party relegated to permanent minority status. I know I am a newly minted Democrat, and, as such, it is ballsy for me to start telling you what I want from the party, but this is my website and you are just going to have to deal with my opinion.

I am under no illusion I will buy into everything Barack Obama puts forward, but I am damned sure convinced he is a decent man who, at the very least, will restore a sense of competence to the national stage. I am willing to meet most Democrats half-way, and I am already doing everything I can to get this man elected. I think Obama will act in good faith for this nation, and I am responding in kind. His policies are not outlandish or crazy or uber-left- they reflect a rational, and I would argue, a decent and progressive way forward out of the mess I helped to create. I won’t like all of them, and I will not agree with all of them, but there is no chance that I will ever be President, so perfect agreement is never a possibility.

And don’t get me wrong- I am not for Obama because of what I am against. I am for Obama because he is a decent man, a break from the past, and really a once in a lifetime opportunity. He has treated us like adults throughout this primary, and it is time to act like adults. There will be times we feel he lets us all down, but we are not electing a diety. We are electing a leader, and Obama is that leader. It is time to get past the bullshit of the last 20 years, the battles I am really tired of fighting, and time to turn our attention to the really important issues of the day- the economy, the budget, our international presence, our crumbling infrastructure, our military, medicare and medicaid and social security, and on and on and on.

If Barack Obama was not your your preferred candidate, I am sorry that person did not win, but it is time to remember that the target is John McCain and the Bush/Cheney way of doing things.

In keeping with that notion, this will be my last post under the Primary 2008 category.  On to November.

Bobby

The guy curled up on the floor of an airplane is Bobby Kennedy, and that bit of fluff under the seat near his head is his dog Freckles.  The year is 1968 and RFK was running for President.  This photo was taken by Bill Eppridge; more are posted in a slideshow at Vanity Fair.

The comment on this pic over at BAGnewsNotes is that

[n]obody symbolized the politics of hope more than RFK (if the term even bears credibility anymore).  And then, this photo is so syrupy innocent (sleeping on the airplane floor!  curled up with his dog! THE AMERICAN WAY!), it makes the vibe of the current Presidential race feel about as dank as that ashtray compartment.

Maybe.  My reaction, though, was different.  I don't believe this photo was published during the campaign.  Perhaps it wasn't considered newsworthy, or perhaps the journalistic sensibilities at the time precluded publication of such an intimate image.  If such a picture was to be printed of a Presidential candidate today, however, it would be a net negative for the man running.  I can just hear the chattering classes and the candidate's opponent now:

He  doesn't look very Presidential.

Look, he's all curled up the way babies sleep.

It's so dirty on his plane; look at the litter and the mess.  Is that how he'd run the Oval Office?

There's something pathetic about a grown man who sleeps with a toy dog.

It's undignified.  I mean, how can a guy who conducts himself like this ever hope to stand up to Putin?

Normal people don't sleep like bums on the floors of airplanes.

He looks like a guy who's finished off one too many Irish whiskeys.

Why is he sleeping on the floor?  Can't his campaign afford a plane with a reclining seat?  Maybe his campaign is in financial trouble.

And on and on.  It might even become the visual equivalent of the Dean Scream, an image broadcast over and over, dissected endlessly, nattered about in tones of mock disappointment and concern.

Robosleaze

Once more with the illegal robocalls in North Carolina:

A Durham voter got another odd robocall about voting.

Christina Headrick, a former reporter for the N&O, says she received a misleading call Sunday from a "woman with a professional sounding voice" about mail-in voting.

Here is what the woman said:

"Have you ever wondered how you can vote by mail? From the convenience of your own home? Your vote has never been more important than it is in this critical election year. And this is a great way to ensure your voice is heard. If you would like to vote by mail, please press 1. If not, hang up."

Absentee ballots must have been requested before last Tuesday and returned in the mail by 5 p.m. today. In short, there is no way that it would be helpful for anyone to receive information about mail-in voting yesterday.

She tried to look for a caller ID using *69, but the number was either out of the area or from a restricted caller. It is against state law for robocallers to not identify themselves.

Just like the calls that were made earlier in North Carolina telling people that they were going to receive a form in the mail to sign to register themselves to vote, this call aims at producing voter confusion and suppressing turnout:  Oh, you mean I don't have to bother going down to to the polls and waiting in line to vote tomorrow?  Great--I'll just mail it in.

I'll bet that if the people responsible for these calls are exposed, they will sheepishly claim it was all a mistake, that they were trying to increase, not decrease, voter participation, and that they'll never ever do it again.  And I won't be surprised if a little digging reveals Clintonian connections.

The NBA Primary

Right now, I'm feeling the same way about both Barack Obama and the Boston Celtics: not good

They're both the best in their leagues.  They have the most intelligence, charisma and skill.  They have the best records. They were both rock stars.  They were both the favorites.

But now Hillary Clinton and the Atlanta Hawks are pushing them both to the wire, softening them up for the even more difficult contests ahead.

I watch both races in near-disbelief.

UPDATE: But just as the Celtics dismantled the Hawks this afternoon, so Obama on Tuesday will . . . . Hey, I can hope, can't I?

Your Liberal Media at Work

America's pre-eminent newspaper declares:

Senator Hillary Clinton is a white liberal . . . .

Now look, I will concede that Hillary Clinton is white--but liberal?  By whose standards?  She voted to authorize the war in Iraq.  She voted for the PATRIOT Act and the bankruptcy bill.  She has pushed for content restrictions on movies and video games.  Her health insurance plan would be a boon to the private, for-profit health care industry; she eschews single-payer national health insurance.

Hillary Clinton is a moderate Democrat--maybe even a somewhat conservative Democrat.  The labeling of her as "liberal" shows how far our whole political spectrum has been wrenched rightward.  A legislator who is a "moderate Democrat " one year becomes a "liberal Democrat" the next as conservative memes infect our political discourse.  Those supposed "liberal" legislators are then painted as out of step with the mainstream.  They lose their elections, and then everybody steps to the right.  Conservative Democrats then find themselves cast as liberal, go down to defeat, and make room for other Democrats who are even more conservative.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama is a liberal Democrat.  Neither was Howard Dean.  Historically, they are all well to the right of FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ.  At present, they are to the right of true liberals like Russ Feingold and Dennis Kucinich.  When our media tell us otherwise, they lie--and take the politics of the 21st century a few steps closer to reactionism.

Voter Suppression in North Carolina

While the mainstream media has been focused on the all-important issue of what Obama's ex-minister has said, a group of Washington insiders with ties to the Clinton campaign have been causing illegal robo-calls to be placed to North Carolina residents in an effort to sow confusion and suppress turnout among likely Obama voters.

The calls have been placed to registered North Carolina voters--the key word here being registered, meaning that they don't have to do anything more than show up to vote on election day.  Here's what the calls said:

“Hello, this is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is sign it, date it and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return the voter registration form when it arrives. Thank you.”

There's an audio link here.

A logical reaction to receiving a call like that would be something like, "Oh crap, I thought I was registered, but I guess I'm not."  But in fact, the deadline to register to vote in the May 6 Democratic primary in North Carolina has already passed.  So the calls attempt to cause two voter-suppressing reactions: 1) to make registered voters believe that they are not, in fact, registered so there's no point in showing up on Tuesday, and 2) to further discourage these supposedly unregistered voters from verifying their registration status by placing the calls after the registration deadline had passed.

As Peter Overby of NPR points out,

This sounds like a classic example of voter suppression — sowing confusion in order to drive down turn-out. The calls seemed to be aimed at African-American communities, places where Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is expected to run well ahead of New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The voice of "Lamont Williams" in the robocalls is that of a male with an African-American accent--surprise, surprise.  The calls come from a blocked number.  As Chris Kromm of Facing South notes,

The calls are also probably illegal. Farmer and others have told Facing South the calls use a blocked phone number and provided no contact information -- a violation of North Carolina rules regulating "robo-calls" (N.C. General Statute 163-104(b)(1)c). N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper further stated in a recent memo that the identifying information must be clear enough to allow the recipient to "complain or seek redress" -- something not included in the calls.

It is also a Class I felony in North Carolina "to misrepresent the law to the public through mass mailing or any other means of communication where the intent and the effect is to intimidate or discourage potential voters from exercising their lawful right to vote."

The calls have been denounced by the N.C. State Board of Elections, as well as by voter advocacy groups including Democracy North Carolina, which called them "another in a long line of deceptive practices used in North Carolina and elsewhere that particularly target African-American voters."

An organization called Women's Voices. Women Vote is behind the calls.  This supposedly nonprofit and nonpartisan organization has extensive ties to Hillary Clinton and her campaign:

Some have also questioned the ties between Women’s Voices operatives and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton. Gardner, for example, contributed $2,500 to Clinton’s HILLPAC on May 4, 2006, and in March 2005 she donated a total of $4,200 to Clinton, according to The Center for Responsive Politics’ OpenSecrets.org. She has not contributed to the Obama campaign, according to the database.

Women’s Voices Executive Director Joe Goode worked for Bill Clinton’s election campaign in 1992 as a pollster; the group’s website says he was intimately involved in “development and implementation of all polling and focus groups done for the presidential primary and general election campaigns” for Clinton.

Women’s Voices board member John Podesta, former Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton, donated $2,300 to Hillary Clinton on April 19, 2007, according to OpenSecrets.org. Podesta also donated $1,000 to Barack Obama in July 2004, but that was well before Obama announced his candidacy for president.

While ostensibly a nonprofit group, WVWV's goals (apart from getting Hillary Clinton elected President) are apparently the enrichment of its board members:

Charity watchdogs say the way the group Women's Voices Women Vote has spent its money on at least one contract raises red flags.

In 2006, the organization paid Integral Resources Inc. nearly $800,000 for phone services. That company's CEO and founder is Ron Rosenblith, who is married to Women's Voices president, Page Gardner. The contract represents 16 percent of the nonprofit's budget. The group is funded mostly through foundations and individual donations.

"I think it's a really big concern," said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy in Chicago. "It does give an appearance of a conflict of interest."

The question, he and other charity experts say, would be whether Integral Resources profited from its inside connections. Women's Voices did not make anyone available to comment.

The organization also paid several million dollars more on contracts with companies run by five additional members of the nonprofit's leadership team.

This would be troubling if those people had influence over the nonprofit's expenditures when the contracts were awarded, said Rick Cohen, former executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, now national correspondent for Nonprofit Quarterly magazine.

"By going to companies that are related to members of the organization, it does create the image, if not the reality, of self-dealing," Cohen said of the Women's Voices contracts. "I think this is a concern for donors, a concern for state and federal regulators, and a concern to the public."

Surely this is a matter far more important to the functioning of democracy than off-the-wall remarks by Barack Obama's ex-minister.  Election laws have been violated by a financially self-interested group of Clinton insiders, who now claim that the whole thing was just a mistake that will not happen again.  But as Adam B. notes on Kos, this is a mistake that WVWV keeps making over and over:

Over and over again, voters and officials in states like Virginia, Oregon, Wisconsin and Michigan complained that these calls were going on (a) at times likely to provoke voter confusion as to their registration status and (b) without disclosing their source.  And still, WVWV did it again in North Carolina.  [The anonymous calls are particularly troubling, given WVWV's pledge months ago to identify themselves on all calls.]

Other than NPR, the mainstream media are ignoring this story.  Hey, it's complicated, it doesn't have the good visuals and soundbites that Reverend Wright so thoughtfully provided, so why bother, right?

I suggest taking concerns over these illegal attempts at voter suppression to the organization responsible for them.  Women's Voices Women Vote can be reached at 202-659-9570.  Their fax number is 202-833-4362.  Their e-mail address is [email protected].  Ask them how they can justify their tax exempt status when they spend so much of their money on businesses owned by their leaders.  Ask them why they called registered voters in North Carolina and suggested that they weren't yet registered.  Ask them why those calls went disproportionately to the areas where Obama is expected to do well.

I think we know the answers, but perhaps asking these questions is the first step to holding this un-American, un-Democratic group to account.

Dean Scream Redux

I haven't posted anything about the latest controversy over Barack Obama's former minister, who earlier this week said more goofy stuff once he had a national microphone in front of his face.  My silence has been born of disbelief and irritation that a matter as tangential and irrelevant as this is being treated as a Big Deal by the media and that it appears that at least some segments of the American public are being affected by it.  My gut reaction is "this can't be happening."

This is the Dean Scream all over again.  Actually, it's even worse than the Dean Scream.  At least Dean was the one who screamed.  Here we have a candidate's ex-minister screaming.  By 2012, I fully expect the media to make a Big Deal out of stupid stuff that a Democratic candidate's accountant's sister says:

Smarmy TV reporter (with mock incredulity): Senator, you are no doubt aware that questions have been raised about your opponent in connection with statements made by his accountant's sister that she believes that space aliens caused the 9/11 attacks.  Honestly, what do these comments have to do with your opponent's qualifications to be President?

Candidate (with mock sincerity): Well, I think it says a lot, Chris.  One of the most important jobs a President has is to be a careful steward of the nation's finances.  If my opponent entrusts his own finances to a family which holds such offensive, outlandish and radical beliefs, how will he manage the public treasury?  To many people, this shows a troubling lack of judgment.

That almost sounds plausible, doesn't it?

Listening to the news of the the last week with only a half-attentive ear (which is the way a lot of people get their news), you would think that Reverend Wright, not Barack Obama, was running for President.  It wouldn't surprise me if a poll taken in a week or two  showed that a goodly portion of the electorate thought that Obama said the things that Wright actually said.

Obama keeps voicing his hope that this time around, the people won't be "distracted" by things like this, and I hope he's right.  "Distracted," though, is too gentile and passive a verb to describe what is actually occurring.  "Hijacked" would come a lot closer to what is actually going on.  The national discourse over the Presidential election has been hijacked by the Republicans, the Clintons, our callow, sensationalist news media and a prideful pastor who is clearly envious of his parishioner's superiority and success.

Please spare me the argument that all this is doing is "toughening up" Obama for the general election, and that it he can't "stand the heat" of this controversy he shouldn't be the Democratic nominee anyway.  If only one person on your track team can represent your school in the 500 yard dash, what you do is to try to run faster than the other guy.  That's why the call it a race.   But you don't go out and challenge him to an Ultimate Cage Fighting bout that will leave both you and he bloodied and crippled--not if you really want your team to win.

By adopting Republican memes and Rovian tactics in her race against Obama, Clinton has revealed herself to be unworthy of the nomination.  If Democrats behave like Republicans, what's the point of voting for them?

By trying to turn Reverend Wright into this year's Gennifer Flowers, the media (which used to be described as "the fourth estate," an honorific that ceased being remotely descriptive twenty years ago) have at last shrugged off the vestiges of their historical obligation to inform the public about the issues of the day.  Things have gotten so bad that it has been suggested that CBS--once home to Walter Cronkite, Roger Mudd, Charles Collingwood and Eric Severeid--ought to simply disband its dismally superficial news division.

I'm an optimist by trade and by habit, but I will admit to being disgusted and discouraged by the last week in U.S. history.  What's the point of getting enthused about politics if the best people never win?  Yeats nailed the way I am starting to feel:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And perhaps this is what HRC, the GOP and the MSM desire: a troubled society in which change is impossible, except insofar as it benefits the moneyed and the powerful.  An electorate unconcerned with ideas and drained of idealism.  But

what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Grrr.....

Just in case you wondered who organized the press conference by Obama's somewhat unhinged former minister--you know, the conference where the Rev claimed that the government invented AIDS to wipe out black people--the word on the street is that it was an "enthusiastic Clinton supporter" by name of Barbara Reynolds.

This guilt-by-association jag we as a country are on--the idea that candidates are somehow responsible for the views of their ministers, their supporters or their endorsers--is puerile at best and a scary return to McCarthyism at worst.

Which, come to think of it, pretty much describes what I now think about Clinton.

Whitey

The Politico's Elizabeth Drew suggests that Hillary Clinton is unlikely to provoke a stampede of superdelegates in her favor because "[t]o take the nomination away from Obama when he is leading in the elected delegate count would deeply alienate the black base of the Democratic Party" and therefore, "because the black vote can make the decisive difference in numerous congressional districts, discarding Obama could cost the Democrats numerous seats."

OK, for the record, I am a white guy.  Can't dance, can't jump, likes Wonderbread and The Beatles.  Real white.  See, that's me to the right here.

Despite my pale pigmentation, I declare the following:

If the Democratic establishment takes the nomination away from the candidate who wins the most elected delegates (absent a revelation that said candidate is a pedophile or a closet Republican) I will join with thousands of other Obama supporters of all creeds and colors and sit on my ass come November 4.  And in that eventuality, tell the DSCC and the DCCC not to bother asking me for campaign contributions too.

I'm actually the moderate one on this in my family.  If the nomination is stolen, my wife (also a white person, BTW) plans to riot in the streets.

Levity

Because my wife says we really need a moment of levity:

(h/t to Atrios)