Barack Obama News and Analysis

Democracy run aground

2008-08-21T10:59:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama has run as a change candidate.

Before John McCain's conversion to a doctrinaire Bush clone,McCain called himself a "maverick".

Obama and McCain have a chance to bring maverick change today by agreeing to bring true democracy to our presidential elections for the first time in our nation's history.

As we all remember, George Bush 43 was elected president in 2000 even though he lost the popular vote by more than half a million votes. In 2004, Bush won the popular vote by a reported 3 million vote margin -- but almost lost the election. Ohio's electoral votes went to Bush based on a 118,775 vote margin. According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 160,000 Kerry votes were lost due to various illegal vote fraud and suppression tactics. But for this illegal activity, the winner of the popular vote by a nearly 3 million vote margin would have lost the election.

The message is clear: Our nation runs an unacceptably enormous risk of electing a president who lost the popular vote.

There is a movement afoot to solve this problem. http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ is promoting an agreement between various states where all of their electoral votes would be given to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome in any particular state. To avoid "unliateral disarmament" (where for example, blue states agree to give their votes to the nationwide winner, but red states do not, creating a situation where the republican wins if he wins the popular vote or the majority of electoral votes), the agreement only takes effect when states representing a majority of electoral votes (270) have signed on.

Many states are reluctant to enter into this agreement. It is understandible, given that even a state with three electoral votes will see more campaign spending and attention than California, with its 55 electoral votes. But how about a trial run?

If Barack Obama asks the big blue states to get on board with a trial run for true electoral change, and if John McCain asks the big red states to get on board with a trial run for a maverick trial of true democratic elections, we can have a guarantee that our next president will have the support of a majority of the voters in this nation.

If John McCain or Barack Obama wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote by a margin in the millions, this nation will enter an era of civil unrest unprecedented in modern times. Imagine the fury over an unpopular war, costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives, extended for four years based on an anachronistic electoral vote system that ignores the popular vote. Imagine the fury over ending that war when a majority of voters cast their lot with the candidate who promised to continue and expand it.

Florida in 2000 was decided by a vote margin in the hundreds. Five states in 2000 were decided by a margin of under one half of one percent. Three states in 2004 were decided by less than one percent, and Ohio's result will be forever questioned. It would be a constitutional crisis, a constitutional disaster, if we wake up on November 5 to the headline "Ohio, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico results too close to call; Candidates challenging voting irregularities in those states." Florida was only settled in 2000 when the Supreme Court stepped in. The potential for a disaster with multiple states in the "Florida posture" is too big to ignore at any time. We must not ignore it at this especially sensitive time, while the nation is at war, fighting terrorism, and struggling for its economic footing.

We need not decide today to scrap the electoral college permanently. But we should at least put in place an interstate compact that assures us that for this election, at this enormonus inflection point in American history, our votes will not be overturned by the electoral college system -- and that a close call in a few states would not cause a crisis if the national results are even slightly decisive.

** Disclaimer: The opinions in this post are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Obama campaign.

A simple approach to understanding offshore drilling

2008-07-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

The oil will not go away if we don't drill for it today. Offshore oil will stay just where it is, ready to be drilled for in the future.

Press coverage of the offshore drilling has been reductionist, yet ignores this simple fact: "McCain proposed lifting the ban on offshore drilling last week as part of his plan to reduce dependence on foreign oil and help combat rising gas prices." By contrast, Obama opposes lifting the ban on offshore drilling. The line of attacks against the McCain position have been that the environmental risks are too high, and the benefits (other than purely psychological ones) would take decades to be seen.

This is approach is a mistake. We are mistaken if we think the only way to win this argument is by changing the minds of those who think the environment must always take a back seat to short term human needs. More importantly, the argument that offshore drilling with oil delivery following decades later provides only psychological benefits in the near term is wrong. The Republicans analyze it using an economic approach that seems sound at first glance: If you have a scarce good, and you know more of that good will be introduced into the market in the future, the value of the good even today (especially among speculators) will go down. To illustrate with something more concrete, imagine if it were announced that a deposit of gold had been discovered that will yield ten times the current global amount of gold that had ever been mined, but that the gold would take ten years to extract and come to market. Gold prices would immediately plunge -- even though gold stocks will remain stable for the ten years it takes to recover the huge new stockpile. The Republican mode of analysis seems rather straightforward. However, like most things Republican, even when the mode of analysis is sensible, the Republicans have drawn the wrong conclusion.

In the case of oil, our offshore reserves will not disappear if we do not drill them today. Let me say that again, because this is the key point: A barrel of oil left in the ground, on property that the United States owns, will stay in the ground until we get it. More to the point, if we were to drill that oil out fifty years from now, improvements in technology will inevitably make extraction safer, more efficient, and less dangerous to the environment than it is today. And to top it off, if we learn that we do not need to drill it out (perhaps as a result of breakthroughs in clean energy), we don't have to. Additionally, the fact that the oil is there and recoverable is enough to create downward price pressure on oil (although less than if the oil were being extracted).

By contrast, wind and solar energy will disappear unless we use them. All the sunlight falling to earth today represents a lost opportunity. As we burn oil or coal to run our air conditioners, we cannot unburn the coal and use today's sunlight in the future.

In light of this, the economic method the Republicans have been using argues strongly in favor of a policy of conserve, develop alternatives, and make clear that we view offshore oil as a massive strategic reserve, only to be drilled in the event of a simultaneous catastrophic failure in conservation, alternative energy, and global markets.

Obama's position on oil is correct: We should not take steps to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive areas. Nobody has asked him the follow up question -- though I know he will answer that one correctly: "Are you taking offshore drilling off the table under all circumstances at all times in future?" The answer, of course, is that "offshore oil remains a valuable strategic reserve, and we can and will drill for it if it if our primary goals of conservation and development of alternative energy sources have failed to yield adequate timely results."

Maybe even McCain can figure this out given the right analogy: You have a piece of oily, polluting cake on the table. You also have every reason to believe there will be plenty of other, better tasting and healthier cakes in the refrigerator. Do you eat the cake on the table before you check out the refrigerator, just in case the refrigerator is empty? Or do you go to the refrigerator first, knowing that the cake on the table is not going anywhere?

Politico -- What are you thinking?

2008-06-30T22:25:00.001-07:00

"If you look back, some people have been comparing one of the other candidates to JFK, and he was a wonderful leader," she said. "He gave us a lot of hope. But he was assassinated." Clinton supporter Francine Torge, a retired educator from Durham, January 8, 2008.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak. Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.” Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, May 16, 2008.

"Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama." May 23, 2008.

"NRA gathers ammo against Obama." -- Politico headline, June 30, 2008.

Lets get it straight: The Secret Service is good at what they do. No, they are great at what they do. Sure, some crazy might get lucky. But the fact that nobody has even come close to killing a President since Reagan was shot tells you all you need to know: The next President to die in office will likely die of natural causes or freakishly bad luck. Seriously, the biggest risk to Bush's health has not been a terrorist plot or a wacko, but an errant pretzel. The Secret Service is good enough at its job that the number of people who might wish a President ill has nothing to do with the chance of any person succeeding at such a horrific mission.

We should see articles celebrating the efficacy of the true American heroes at the Secret Service. Instead, we see comment after comment that seem to gloss over even the existence of the Secret Service. This shameful trading in fear must stop. It sells stories. It makes for grabbing headlines. And it exploits a myth. From a candidate or her supporters engaged in a tight race, or from a partisan Republican, I can at least understand the adrenaline that might lead to some of the still inexcusible quotes we have seen. But the press is not supposed to have a dog in this race.

Politico should apologize.

The OTHER thing that should not be forgiven

2008-05-27T17:26:00.000-07:00

This remarkable, ten minute editorial by Keith Olbermann offers an enormous list of things that "we" have forgiven Senator Clinton for.

Olbermann says that the one thing that is unforgivable is Clinton's raising the spectre of assassination.

His list, however, was all about her actions in pursuing the nomination. On this Memorial Day weekend, it is fitting to point out the one enormous issue not of process, but of substance, that was missing from Mr. Olbermann's list: Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the war in Iraq. 4,080 of our nation's children have given their lives for that war. By some estimates, the total number of casualties linked to the war range between 150,000 and a million human beings.

As Barack Obama notes, even the proponents of the war have "failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer." Yet, Senator Clinton continues to defend her vote to go war.

We cannot forgive that which Clinton has yet to acknowledge requires forgiveness. Come clean, Senator Clinton, admit what Barack Obama knew from the outset: The Iraq war should never have been authorized and should never have been waged. Until then, whatever forgiveness you need for mistakes you make on the campaign trail will pale in comparison to the unforgiven enormous lapse of judgment that has, sadly, given this nation 4,080 more true heroes to remember and honor on this Memorial Day.

A sad reminder of why we are in this

2008-05-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

Ted Kennedy has a brain tumor.

Even with the a health care plan that equals what every American would get under an Obama or Clinton administration, he has a brain tumor. Even with the world's best health care, most patients with this kind of cancer are expected to lose this battle within one to five years. He may lose this battle, but his tireless work on our behalf should inspire us to win this war.

Not only must we provide health care for all Americans -- and let us meet Ted Kennedy's goal of having this in place by 2010 -- but let us also return our focus to spending money in a manner that makes us safer.

Barack Obama says that the Iraq far has made us less safe. But that is hardly the whole story. The cost of the Iraq war is at least one trillion dollars. The total cost of the Bush tax cuts is around three and a half trillion dollars. With a little over three hundred million people in the United States, that amounts to $1,500 per person. Every family of four has spent $6,000 financing the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy.

Total spending on all health research conducted world-wide was $129 billion in 2003, and was estimated to be rising at $10 billion per year. By this estimate, spending in 2008 will be $179 billion in 2008.

Quick math: We have spent, in tax cuts for the wealthy and the Iraq war, more than 25 times the total global annual investment in basic human health research. Imagine the progress we could have made, the lives we could have saved, had that money gone to seeking a cure for cancer and AIDS. How much safer our children would be if we had used the money to tackle the looming disaster of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Would a decision to spend this money on research instead of war and tax cuts have resulted in a cure that would could today use to resolve Ted Kennedy's malignant glioma? Maybe not. But it has absolutely cost millions of people world-wide their health and in many cases their lives. Imagine if we had accomplished in the seven years since the tax cuts and war efforts had taken place what we will not, under today's spending scenarios, accomplish for decades? What if the state of the art of medicine in 2008 was equal to what, with today's spending, it will not be until 2033?

We will never know. And saddled with debt and war, it will be difficult to move toward progress. But move we will. There is hope. We are a strong nation. And we will find the strength to redefine our priorities in a way that makes us all safer -- not just from real or imagined military threats, but from all things that threaten our health or welfare.

Ted Kennedy, you have fought for the health of this nation for decades, and we thank you. We hope your unmatched determination keeps you by our side far into the future. But we will have learned nothing from your example if we do not pause and ask: If America had heeded Ted Kennedy's voice on health policy, tax policy, and the war, how many families would have been spared the sorrow that his family now feels? What diseases that now ravage our lives would be relegated to easily cured annoyances?

We stand on the edge of a sea change in American politics. It is fitting that Ted Kennedy, an icon of the future that could have been, stands today beside Barack Obama to seek the future that we deserve. It is easy to say "yes, we can". It is easy to say "change", or "hope". But today, in the most grim manner possible, we are reminded that those words have meaning.

Fixing Campaign Finance The Obama-Tzedakah Way

2008-05-14T12:34:00.000-07:00

Much has been written about Barack Obama's "Amazing Money Machine." As of March 31, 2008, Obama had raised about two hundred thirty four million dollars from individual donors. This puts him on track to raise over half a billion dollars for the 2008 elections. And he is doing it with an average donation of under $100. Indeed, his fund raising base is so wide that almost one out of ten Obama voters has given money to his campaign.

It is clear that Obama's model has changed the thinking about campaign finance reform. Joshua Green's article in the Atlantic describes the impact as the conventional wisdom now casts it: "Obama represents a triumph of campaign-finance reform. He has not, of course, gotten the money out of politics, as many proponents of reform may have wished, and he will likely forgo public financing if he becomes the nominee. But he has realized the reformers’ other big goal of ending the system whereby a handful of rich donors control the political process. He has done this not by limiting money but by adding much, much more of it—democratizing the system by flooding it with so many new contributors that their combined effect dilutes the old guard to the point that it scarcely poses any threat."

This is a terrific achievement whose importance to democracy cannot be overstated. But the conventional wisdom that the significance lies in simply diluting the importance of big donors misses the point.

The significance is not that Obama's model ended the system whereby the "a handful of rich donors control the political process." Indeed, McCain -- apparently a campaign finance reformer only when it advanced his political ends -- proves that the rich still control much of the process. His McCain Victory '08 fund creates a "hybrid legal structure" under which "up to $70,000 in individual contributions [can be accepted] by channeling the money into different McCain-centric funds. The first $2,300 of that would go to McCain's primary campaign. The Republican National Committee would receive $28,500 of the donation. The remaining funds would be divided equally, up to $10,000 a piece, among four states the campaign has designated as battlegrounds for November: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico." So a husband, wife, and three adult children could donate $350,000.

It is a remarkable achievement that Obama has built his small money donor base to the point where he can seriously consider eliminating even the inference of improper influence by voluntarily capping donations at well under the currently federally permitted maximum of $2300. Indeed, he would be a formidable fundraiser even with a $150 cap. But as Clinton's $11,000,000 loans to her campaign and McCain's efforts to raise $70,000 per donor indicate, the small donor model does not work for all candidates. Indeed, that model did not work for Obama at the outset, as he was not able to launch his campaign solely with the small donations that he is considering making his sole source of financing going forward.

The significance of what he has done in this year is not that he proved small fund raising is viable in a presidential race (Howard Dean did that). Rather, he proved that functionally anonymous giving can drive a campaign's finances. And that people will give at least $2,300 with no realistic expectation of buying anything except a better chance for their candidate to win.

True, over $200, there is no anonymity -- it is all reported. I maxed out in the primary, and you can look that up on opensecrets, Huffington's fundrace, or directly from the FEC. But the point is that with over 1,500,000 donors, Barack Obama has no idea who I am. His staff doesn't know me. Honestly, I didn't even get a thank you note. And I shouldn't. Because this is not about me. It is not about any of the million and a half donors. Rather, it is about all of us. The thank you I want is Barack Obama, in the White House, keeping his promises. So I donated precisely because I don't get access based on my donation. And in an Obama administration, neither does Halliburton, or the drug lobby, or the $100,00 a pop Clinton "Hillraisers", or McCain's bundlers. Certainly, Obama has big donors in his past, but he has proven they need not be promised a thing -- as they are not central pieces in his fund raising. If he does move forward with voluntarily limiting donations to less than the federal cap, it will seal the deal.

Democrats are often criticized for not discussing their faith, and I should point out that this concept of anonymous giving forms a central part of mine. In Judaism, "Tzedakah", translated as a form of "justice", refers "to the religious obligation to perform charity, and philanthropic acts, which Judaism emphasises are important parts of living a spiritual life; Jewish tradition argues that the second highest form of tzedakah is to anonymously give donations to unknown recipients. Unlike philanthropy, which is completely voluntary, tzedakah is seen as a religious obligation." While it is preferable to give to an unknown recipient to avoid shaming them, when the identity of the recipient is important, Tzedakah teaches that we should still give anonymously, noting that "the greatest sages used to walk about in secret and put coins in the doors of the poor."

The wisdom of anonymous Tzedakah is obvious: One should not give for their own glory or private benefit.

Putting the lessons of the Obama campaign finance revolution together with the lessons of Tzedakah, it becomes obvious how campaign finance reform must play out in order to truly isolate politicians from the undue influence of the money they need to run their campaigns.

My Obama-Tzedakah proposal is this:

(1) Precisely flip the reporting rule. Currently, donors giving $200 and over must be identified in campaign finance reporting. Instead, only donors giving under $200 should be permitted to be identified.
(2) Require that campaigns be prohibited from directly accepting donations over $200.
(3) Allow donations over $200, but require that such donations be made to the FEC which collects the money and forwards it, together with many other donations, in one check to the candidate, while being required by law to keep secret the identity of the donor and the candidate to which they donated. The donor is not permitted to get any kind of receipt or canceled check that identifies the identity of the recipient. For online donations, the donor would be required to be donate through a site operated by the FEC.
(4) The FEC would report aggregate statistics, but not the amounts of individual donations (i.e. "in March 2012, Obama's reelection bid received $28,888,221 from 90,000 donors"). Preferably, the banks and FEC would not be permitted even to identify the fact that somebody had donated to federal campaigns, or to provide any receipt or canceled check for such a donation. If such a rule is not functional, the FEC should make that information available to the public, but only in an aggregate way, giving a single number for each donor's total contributions to all federal candidates combined.
(5) Candidates would be allowed to oversee the process using attorneys or accountants who are prohibited from reporting back to the campaign any specific donor identification information.
(6) To provide a disincentive to end-run the process through a 527 or a structure like McCain's Victory '08 Fund, the maximum donation cap should be significantly increased.

What do we get from this?

First, counter-intuitively, we get more transparency. While we lose the ability to see who gave to which candidate, we get an iron-clad list of everybody who was promised a quid-pro-quo: Nobody. Because a candidate cannot verify that a contribution went to them, even a donor who showed a canceled check for a huge sum could not prove to the candidate that it was made to that candidate, or even in that race.

Second, the free speech arguments that could ultimately fell existing campaign finance laws would be eliminated. The only remaining argument is that it is a free speech right to hand a big pile of money directly to a candidate -- hardly a convincing concept.

Finally, the benefits of the Obama model are immediately visited on the old fund raising models as well. While a person who truly believes in a candidate will still make a big donation, few people will believe they can donate their way to a federal judge or ambassador appointment regardless of the size of their anonymous donation or the number of anonymous donations they claim to have bundled.

The Vice Presidential Gambit

2008-05-07T14:37:00.001-07:00

Many are questioning what Clinton wants out of this process. The math alone makes Obama the inevitable nominee. The Superdelegates are switching their Presidential preference or at least questioning it. So what is her exit strategy?

Nobody knows for sure. She may want help retiring her campaign debt, input on policy issues, or a role in picking Vice President. But these rewards are simply too small for her. She wants the ability to force herself onto the ticket as the candidate for Vice President. This ability, whether exercised or not, allows her not to request things of Obama, but to demand them. Refuse them, and Obama has a running mate not of his own choosing.

How does this work? The fact that Obama is rapidly closing in on the 2,025 delegate votes necessary to clinch the nomination does not mean that he can command those same delegates to vote for his Vice Presidential choice. Obama has a lead of about 168 elected delegates. The initial flood of superdelegates to Clinton, the pained stories of superdelegates suffering the anger of the Clintonites, all of the superdelegates who feel they have debts to the Clintons add up to a huge number of delegates seeking redemption from the Clintons even as they pledge to vote for Obama as the better, and inevitable, nominee.

Redemption could easily be offered in exchange for a vote for Clinton as Vice President -- even over Obama's objections. Even the pledged delegates might seek to heal wounds or form a "dream ticket" by putting Clinton in as Vice President despite Obama's objections. Certainly the superdelegates would be motivated to mitigate the Clintons' wrath. Assuming an even split in the preference of superdelegates (not who they will vote for, but who they wished would win -- a very different question), and assuming the 168 elected delegate gap remains, only 85 Obama delegates need to vote for Clinton for Vice President in order to put her on the ballot. By staying in until the bitter end, Clinton cannot win the Presidential nod -- but she can, and intends to, close the gap further in a way that strengthens her the Vice Presidential gambit.

This would be a horrible outcome. Barack Obama needs the ability to pick his own running mate. It would be unprecedented in modern times to deny a nominee his Vice Presidential pick. I am hopeful that delegates will honor history and reason in giving Obama his Vice Presidential pick. But forcing herself into the Vice President slot is very much within the reach of Clinton, and becomes closer with every delegate she picks up. The question is whether her ego forces her to flout tradition and reason in this way.

The Devolution Is In The Details

2008-05-06T10:53:00.000-07:00

The "Gas Tax Holiday" debate points up a key difference between Clinton and Obama, but not the difference Clinton hopes. Clinton has made a point of taking positions that can be explained in a single sentence that appeals viscerally to voters, regardless of whether those positions are actually good policy.

The most recent example is the gas tax: "Hillary wants the oil companies to pay for the gas tax this summer - so you don’t have to." However, economists universally agree that a gas tax holiday "would generate major profits for oil companies rather than significantly lowering prices for consumers," "would encourage people to keep buying costly imported oil and do nothing to encourage conservation," and "would provide very little relief to families feeling squeezed."

Obama's position is that the economists are right, and what the people deserve is a comprehensive fix, not a band-aid. Unfortunately, a comprehensive fix is complicated to explain and even more complicated to get properly reported in the press. As articulated by Obama, it sounds like this: "That's why we'll put a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use it to help Indiana families pay their heating and cooling bills and reduce energy costs. We'll also take steps to reduce the price of oil and increase transparency in how prices are set so we can ensure that energy companies aren't bending the rules. And to help Indiana families meet the rising cost of gas, we'll put a middle class tax cut in their pockets that will save them $1,000 a year, and we'll eliminate income taxes altogether for seniors making less than $50,000."

Clinton and McCain have both shown their willingness to believe that a good idea will devolve to into a political disaster if it cannot be easily explained. Barack Obama is unwilling to compromise good policy for political expediency.

When Barack Obama is sworn into the office next January, we will put to rest forever the idea that Americans are simply too inattentive and disinterested to be swayed by an argument that requires polysyllabic words. We have insisted for generations on free, quality high school education for all our people. It is time to believe in the return from that investment.

Enough With The Elitism Arguments

2008-05-06T08:19:00.000-07:00

I keep hearing Clinton surrogates claim Barack Obama is an "elitist". The latest is that he must win Indiana or he is an "elitist" and out of touch with white working class voters. Will somebody in the media please pull out a dictionary? At the outset, he is not elitist because he does not believe that an elite group should rule the nation (compared to, say, those who find it acceptable for two families to run the United States for 28 sequential years). The inevitable Clinton fallback is that his elite education set him up to be elitist. I went to Harvard Law School while Barack Obama attended, and that argument is totally contrary to that experience I shared with him.

There is no secret club, no secret handshake. If we were let in on a special natural right to run the world based on our "elite" education, I must have been absent that day. What I took away from my experience was not a respect for elite, top-down rule, but an abiding fear of it. It is this disdain for elitism that I hear in Obama's voice.

From the first day, we learned that judges make close calls. And they often make them wrong. Three years, and thousands of cases studied, reinforce these core truths: The world is not simple; judges and leaders make mistakes; and the mission of government is not to dictate truth, but to protect the ability of the people to fix those mistakes (or, as the "elitists" of the 18th century put it, to provide the people a mechanism for "redress of grievances").

I have long described Harvard Law's lingering lesson as recasting our bimodal "black or white" world as a spectrum of grays. I see this lesson reflected in Barack Obama's words that "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America." Our nation, in short, is not one where half of the people are right and half are wrong, but one we try to make our way to the right answer by compromise, discussion, and cooperation.

Our recent leaders, by contrast, have tried to break that great strength by casting us as a nation of opposites. They are wrong. They are selfish. And they are doing it to ensure that they perpetuate their own rule -- the very definition of elitism.

The argument that the Clinton campaign repeatedly makes to superdelegates, that Obama is less electable in a general election, is the model of elitism. We, the people, have a grievance: We are sick of politics as usual. We are ready for a change. The Clintons, having ruled the nation for a decade, know that the voters didn't really mean what they said with their votes. The voters are simply incompetent to pick the right candidate to run against McCain. And the Clintons are willing to overrule the people because they don't trust the judgment of the people. How much more elitist could one be?

Well, actually, slightly more. The Clintons also know which voters matter. Which ones should be listened to, and which ones should be ignored. Caucus state voters are simply activists -- ignore them. African American voters, students, highly educated voters -- they aren't the "real" democrats, ignore them. White, working class voters -- they know better than any of the others who the best candidate is. I hear in that a refrain that democracy be damned, and I say no. Democracy is at the core of our ability to fix the mistakes of the past. And none of us are so learned or elite that we dare tamper with the gears of our democracy.

What drew me first to Barack Obama was not his thrilling speaking style, but his substance. He gets it -- trust the people. His campaign is run from the grassroots. His great strength -- often mocked by those who believe in top-down rule -- is to inspire ordinary citizens to make a difference. To deliver to the people not the change they seek, but the tools to to make that change. His time in office will one day end, but those tools will remain to empower people for generations.

Hope, exceeded

2008-04-29T10:34:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama is not going negative. He put the nail in that coffin with comments over the weekend. The incredulity of McCain over Obama's "backing out" of an agreement to stick with public funding. The paraplectic response of the Clintonites to the idea that mountains of favors earned are not destiny. These stem from a fundamental truth: The Obama campaign has won already. Not the Presidency, that is yet to come. But the battle to change how voters think about campaigns, and how politicians run them.

It is true that in Obama agreed early on (with some important nuance and limitations that, of course, never get reported) that if the Republican in the general election accepted public financing, so would he. It is also true that he seems reluctant to stick with that agreement. I hope his reluctance sticks, because that agreement came from a fundamental error: Obama may have had the audacity of hope, but when he agreed to public financing, that audacity was not coupled with a belief he could pull it off quickly enough. Somewhere deep inside he was still playing on the old playboard. One where nobody believed the public at large, by the millions, would reach into their pockets to take command of their own destiny. He has, apparently, exceeded his expectations. And when presented with this new information, he must do what any true leader does: Change his actions to conform to the new reality.

The same is true of negative campaigning -- although on this count, he exceeded the fears of the Clintons and the Republican machine, but not his own expectations. From the outset his campaign was about speaking truth and addressing issues. Yes, he is a wonderful speaker. Yes, he is as smart and reliable in his judgment as Bush 43 is not. But few outside the Obama team thought that voters would respond to truth, honesty, and a focus not on the flaws of others but on the failures of their policy. Indeed, he has approached this campaign much as Roger Fisher (a Harvard Law professor during Barack Obama's tenure at Harvard) suggests in Getting to Yes: Be hard on the problem, but soft on the person.

Getting to Yes stresses the importance of examples, and in a strange fit of timing, I have one. I am having work done on my kitchen, and the work started while I was in Pennsylvania for the campaign. Upon my return -- from working on a campaign where the Clintons were using a "throw the kitchen sink" strategy -- my kitchen sink had in fact been removed. In what is a Democratic family dispute about which family member gets the nomination, one of the family members has decided to destroy the family house in the process. I can tell you from personal experience, no matter what benefit you get from removing the kitchen sink, it is messy and very expensive to replace -- and nobody in the family is happy while the sink is gone. The family home becomes non-functional. This is, of course, an object lesson on why we must be hard on the issues without engaging in the kind of fratricidal attacks that injure us all.

In my view, the Obama candidacy is about two very important goals: Helping move America forward from within the White House, and rewriting the rules of how we pick our leaders. While the former goal is ahead of us, we are well on our way to achieving the latter. Already Obama has proven that a campaign can be flush with cash without being flush in political debt owed to lobbyists and special interests. Obama has proven that people will participate in the process -- by the millions -- when that participation is driven from the grassroots. Obama has proven that people can rise about cynicism.

Obama may yet have the nomination stolen from him by superdelegates driven away by a campaign that is hard on the person while ignoring the issues. He may yet lose the general election to the old politics of destruction and distraction. But he has fatally wounded that old system. That system may take a few cycles to die from the wound, but die it will. And the millions of Americans who worked hard to remake America through the Obama campaign can take credit for the inevitable rebirth of American democracy that will follow.

The Obama Troop Surge (its not what you think)

2008-04-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

USA Today reported that "the percentage of recruits requiring a waiver to join the Army because of a criminal record or other past misconduct has more than doubled since 2004 to one for every eight new soldiers. The increase reflects the difficulties the Army faces in attracting young men and women into the military at a time of war. 'Each month is a struggle, for the Army in particular,' said Bill Carr, a top military personnel official."

The press and the public have assumed as a fact that need not be proven that it is tough to recruit in a time of war. They have it wrong. It is not tough to recruit because the nation is at war. Recruiting stations were mobbed right after September 11, 2001, and it was clear then that we were going to send troops abroad to fight. There was a "wave of interest immediately after" the attacks, and recruiting was "going well" even a year later.

It was not until the Iraq war became clear for what it was -- a war that should never have been waged -- that recruiting tanked.

The official press line, that recruiting is hard during war, implies that the United States is a nation of cowards afraid to fight at a time of war. Such a claim is not just wrong, but it flies in the face of history. This nation has had no shortage of volunteers willing to fight the good fight. But the United States of a nation of reason, a nation of laws. We are a country not afraid to fight an unjust war, but a country unwilling to fight an unjust war.

The next President will inherit a military that has been decimated by poor recruiting, overextended tours, "stop loss" provisions being used in a manner that keeps families split far beyond their expectations, inexplicable resistance to body armor and up-armored vehicles, poor veterans programs upon troops' return.... The list is long. But the list also exudes a theme: At every turn, the Bush administration has taken what it wanted from our troops and given them less than they expected and deserved in return. Soldiers who volunteer to fight expect and deserve to be treated with respect by their commander in chief.

In order to repair this damage, and bring the military back to where it must be, the next President must be trusted by potential recruits to treat them right. To not start wars without purpose.

John McCain clearly cannot make this promise. A war without end in Iraq, new preemptive wars against Iran and others, represent an emboldening of the Bush policy on troops.

But neither can Hillary Clinton make this promise. She authorized Bush not only to invade Iraq, but also to take military action against Iran. Preemptive wars both. She has closed the door on diplomacy, saying in essence that once somebody is our enemy, it would unjustly reward them to negotiate with them. This policy, unfortunately, may leave war -- even though otherwise avoidable -- as the inevitable outcome. With Hillary Clinton in office, potential soldiers -- soldiers who hope to bravely go to battle in a just war -- will still ask "can I trust you to treat me right?" "Can I trust that this war was truly necessary?"

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has made clear that war is not his first option. He is not afraid to talk to enemies. He knows, and says, as Kennedy did, that we must never negotiate from fear, but we must never fear to negotiate. And ultimately, he is the only candidate to have voted against authorizing Bush's war in Iraq and against authorizing preemptive action against Iran.

We need a recruitment surge to fill the ranks and, more importantly, to relieve the overextended national guard and other troops who are even today fighting well beyond their original terms of service. But we cannot achieve that surge unless the troops know that they are there to heroically fight wars that are unavoidable, just, and necessary. In short, if they fear the next President will send them to the next Iraq, they will stay home.

Only Barack Obama can make the promises our recruits need to hear. And for this reason, only Barack Obama can ensure a strong military emerges from the wake of Bush's folly.

Why I am not running for delegate in my California Congressional District

2008-04-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

I ran across a post that bemoaned the Obama campaign's decision to eliminate some people from the list of potential delegates to Denver. As the AP reports it, "Barack Obama's and Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaigns are purging potential California delegates to ensure that only their loyalists vote at the national convention that will crown one of them as the Democratic presidential nominee. Locked in a race with an uncertain outcome, representatives for both camps this week directed the California Democratic Party to remove dozens of names from the lists of more than 2,000 potential delegates. Party caucuses scheduled for Sunday will elect a slate of delegates for each candidate."

The poster complained that "The ostensible rationale for the cutting of delegate candidates is to prevent "Trojan horse" delegates from making their way to the Convention floor and then switching allegiances. The vetting and removal of delegate candidates is expressly allowed by party rules. But could the 30th District really have had 73 such turncoats, and was I really one of them? I was a Precinct Captain for the Obama campaign for the California primary; I've donated several hundred dollars to Senator Obama's campaign (the first politician I've ever supported financially); and I've boosted the campaign in numerous posts on this website." (I've included his links in the quote).

I tried to post my response in the comments section, but apparently I wrote too much (a common problem for me). Here is the full response, as I would like to have posted it:

Like you, I would love to be a delegate in Denver. I maxed out my campaign contribution to Obama. I flew across the country to volunteer on his behalf. Under the old school rules -- say if I did the same for Clinton -- I would have "earned" my space on the delegate list. Yet when the opportunity to run for Obama delegate arose in my California congressional district, I did what best serves the campaign: I volunteered to run ("convene") the caucus in my district where the delegates were chosen. In so doing, I made myself ineligible to run for delegate during that caucus. Why? Because this election is more important than my personal vanity or ambition. Because this is not some fun and games election, but rather one where we choose between war and peace; between misplaced priorities and prosperity; between a government that runs right, and one that doesn't run at all.

But to get there, we have to navigate the old system. A system where "superdelegates" cast votes worth more than entire states; where a nominee is selected not on the basis of popular vote, but on the basis of the few who convene in Denver; a system, in short, that is as tenuously tied to the will of the people as the electoral college. But we cannot change that system from the outside. So yes, the Obama campaign may have cut out many diehard supporters. But his supporters will come to understand his true message: This campaign isn't about any one person or group of people, but rather it is about all of the people.

They don't need me in Denver. They need me on the ground, here in my Congressional District, making sure that the delegates are selected according to the rules, and that the Clinton campaign cannot make good on its threat to subvert our democracy by poaching delegates. My only role at the convention would be to vote Obama. Others can do that role as well as I can.

I would urge you to find a way that you can make a unique contribution. Whether by convincing your friends to become active; by putting some unique skills to use; or by simply being part of the team that makes up the campaign. Corporate America did not buy this campaign. The Democratic Machine politics of the past do not fuel this campaign. And our individual egos must not derail this campaign.

You have a unique skill: You are a compelling and interesting writer. Recognize that you do more for the Obama campaign with a single blog comment than you would ever accomplish as a delegate in Denver.

I would close by quoting Barack Obama from one of the debates. This is the language that inspired me to put my skills to their best use not for my own vanity, but so that my children will enjoy the prosperity that an Obama presidency will leave in its wake:

"You know, there is a vanity aspect and ambition aspect to politics. But when you spend as much time as Senator Clinton and I have spent around the country, and you hear heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story, and you realize that people's expectations are so modest.

You know, they're not looking for government to solve all of their problems. They just want a little bit of a hand-up to keep them in their homes if they're about to be foreclosed upon, or to make sure their kids can go to college to live out the American dream.

You know, it is absolutely critical that we change how business is done in Washington and we remind ourselves of what government is supposed to be about."

Now of course, if I can run for delegate some other way, I will. I'd love to do it. I an unshakable supporter. But nobody is owed this. And certainly, anybody with the skills to help the campaign in another way should choose to help the campaign first, and let the delegate seat take a, well, back seat.

So you're off the candidate list. You should still go to the caucus. You should still bring your friends and family into the picture. You should help organize it if you can.

Its not about me. Its not about you. It is about all of us.

James Carville and some unexpected nausea

2008-03-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

As you may know, James Carville recently called New Mexico governor Richardson "Judas", adding that given that Mr. Richardson held positions in the Clinton administration, the endorsement constituted an “act of betrayal.

Reality check: Hillary Clinton is not Jesus.

Further reality check: The Presidency of the United States is not something that should be sold, traded for, or obtained via cashing in personal favors. It is not owed to anybody. It must be earned.

Carville's comments fed both anger and disappointment. But the true import of the kind of scorched earth politics, the do anything to get the nomination approach, the willingness in fact to equate Bill Richardson's endorsement of the likely Democratic Nominee over Hillary Clinton to a betrayal of Jesus -- well, that impact hit home for me today.

I have given money in the past to the DSCC. I get their emal solicitations almost every day. I had planned to give again during this cycle. Yet when an email from James Carville appeared in my inbox this morning, I had a shocking reaction. I was revolted that the DSCC should use such a divisive spokesman -- somebody willing to throw fellow democrats under the bus in order to further the political goals of his own personal Jesus -- in order to raise money. Doesn't the DSCC know that Carville now stands for, speaks for, only a small part of the party? A part of the party that favors division over victory?

I promptly unsubscribed from their email list, and called the DSCC and let them know why. I also told them that this cycle's donation will still be made for Democratic Party causes, just not through them.

They should apologize for this big error -- or they should fold up shop. The DSCC should bring us all together to build 60 vote Senate majority -- not remind us of how this Clinton surrogate is ripping us apart.

Clinton's 3 am phone call on the campaign trail was Michigan/Florida. And she failed.

2008-03-23T09:21:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton said in a March 20 press release that "It is unacceptable to disenfranchise the voters who participated in January and if Senator Obama allows that to happen, there will be implications for Democrats in the general election." On May 12, she said "The nearly two and a half million Americans in those two states who participated in the primary elections are in danger of being excluded from our democratic process and I think that’s wrong." Her belief (now) about the importance of enforcing the right of voters in Michigan and Florida to have their votes counted: "That is why generations of brave men and women marched and protested, risked and gave their lives for this right."

Obviously, this threat to a fundamental right, this violation of the very right that our fellow citizens have fought and died for, at the very minimum counts as a "3 am phone call". And when that phone rang, what strong, decisive and well reasoned way did she show her good judgment? By agreeing to void this fundamental right in order to ingratiate herself to the very Superdelegates who decided to void this "fundamental right" and to the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa.

September 1, 2007 is when that red phone rang. When Hillary Clinton answered it, she agreed to void those votes. Her statement strongly defending this fundamental right: "We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process. And we believe the DNC’s rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role. Thus, we will be signing the pledge to adhere to the DNC approved nominating calendar." Whoops. Guess fundamental rights take a back seat to political expediency.

As a practical matter, there are many arguments as to why Michigan and Florida should not count -- not the least of which is that we can look forward to Iowa caucuses in the summer of 2011 if they are counted. A commentator I rarely agree with sums it up well, saying "what would it say about personal responsibility in this country if we allow the two states that broke all the rules to end up having the biggest say of all?"

But whether Florida and Michigan's votes should be counted is not the point. The point is that Hillary Clinton says counting those votes is a matter fundamental to the functioning and validity of our democracy. And when that phone rang back in September, when the voice on the other end of the line said "Hillary, your own party is ready to disenfranchise Florida and Michigan," what was her response? "Go for it." So is Hillary Clinton "tested and ready to lead?" Tested, yes. Ready to lead? Hardly.

More on race and primary voters

2008-03-17T11:38:00.000-07:00

It is fairly widely reported that Obama's showing among black voters has increased from the low 70% range (in early voting states) to 92% in Mississippi. Looking at exit polls for various primaries, here is the breakdown of Obama's support from black voters:

33% 10/07 polling
59% 01/08 polling
72% 01/03/08 Iowa
??? 01/08/08 New Hampshire (not a statistically significant sample size)
78% 01/19/08 South Carolina
78% 02/05/08 California
92% 03/11/08 Mississippi

Whoops! What happened between early polling and Super-Tuesday? Between Super-Tuesday and Mississippi? Clinton (and right wing talk radio) have refocused the race on, well, race.

As a sociology major (granted, decades ago), this creates a fascinating polling situation. If you make the assumption that the election of Hillary Clinton is a historical step toward the end of sexism, and the election of Barack Obama is a historical step toward the end of racism, we are presented with this amazing question: What condition is more important to work toward ending?
The only group in America that directly suffers the brunt of both conditions is black women. And they are breaking almost entirely for Barack Obama.

Looking at the same exit polls (excluding Iowa and New Hampshire, which did not gather data specifically from black women), Obama's support among black women is as follows:

78% 01/19/08 South Carolina (80% among black men)
75% 02/05/08 California (81% among black men)
90% 03/11/08 Mississippi (94%)

Now this may simply be because sexism is so structurally integrated into American life that black women accept it. Or worse yet, they have internalized sexism so much that they prefer to improve the lot of black men more than they prefer to improve their own lot. Or any one of a dozen other explanations. But often times, the simplest explanation is right. And the simplest explanation is this: For the cohort that suffers both racism and sexism, racism is worse. And any chance to diminish the force of racism in this nation takes priority over the reduction of sexism.

I do need to disclaim all of the above to some extent. It is speculation, of course. I am a white male, so I can hardly do more than look through a window at the experience of women and African Americans in the United States. There may be (surely are, actually) feelings and experiences that are influencing this voting behavior that I cannot get my hands around. And sociology is, well, lots of guesswork. But still, this primary presents a fascinating window into the interplay of sexism and racism.

There is also one enormous polling result that may upend all of this analysis: What if (gasp!) Obama simply has positions that appeal to African American voters? What if those positions are so appealing that they would vote for him over even another African American candidate? If those things were true, you would have his 92% win over Alan Keyes among African American voters in his 2002 Senate race. Hmmm. Exactly his polling percentage in Mississippi. Just saying.

POSTSCRIPT: After I published this blog entry, I found a Washington Post article that addresses just this question.

Bill Clinton: "We did not play the race card"

2008-03-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

CNN reports that Bill Clinton told them "the notion that he went negative toward Barack Obama 'is a total myth and a mugging'", and that they didn't play the "race card". (Source: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/17/bill-clinton-we-did-not-play-race-card/).

After all, some of his best friends are black, right? Right, and here is the proof, Bill Clinton quoted as saying: "Charlie Rangel, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in unequivocal terms in South Carolina that no one in our campaign played any race card."

Bill Clinton was famously dubbed the "first black President" by author Toni Morrison. Wait a minute, she's African American, right? So why not seek cover by saying she's supporting Hillary? Oh, wait. Because she endorsed Obama.

The fact is that Bill Clinton is way too smart to be loose with his words. This is the man capable of parsing so precisely that things depend on what the meaning of "is" is. So his Jesse Jackson comments, the "fairy tale" comments, the measured and slow response to out of control surrogates (Ferraro, anyone?) are hardly accidents. Own it, Bill. You either played the race card or did not care that your actions invoked race. Either way it is below what I would expect of a man who was once my hero.

As a postscript, consider this: Hillary Clinton several days ago launched a massive "apology to black voters" campaign. However, given that she was apologizing for "belittling Obama's success" in South Carolina by linking Obama's success to Jesse Jackson's, isn't it a little strange that her apology concluded with "We can be proud of both Jesse Jackson and Senator Obama"?

Obama the open-minded

2008-03-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein wrote a terrific article in the Chicago Sun-Times on March 16. The take-away: "niceness and ability are only part of the story. Obama has a genuinely independent mind, he's a terrific listener and he goes wherever reason takes him."

Well, its about time. Clinton's position on health care, for example, is about as likely to succeed as her 1993 effort. By contrast, "Obama's health-care plan places a premium on cutting costs and making care affordable, without requiring adults to purchase health insurance. (He would require mandatory coverage only for children.) Republican legislators are unlikely to support a mandatory approach, and his plan can be understood, in part, as a recognition of political realities." Put another way, Obama managed to tweak his plan so that it could actually pass. I mean, Clinton might as well be proposing a giant army of robotic doctors who would provide free health care -- that is as likely to become reality as a full-scale mandate plan.

In fact, even on those items where Clinton's positions are identical to Obama's, Clinton's take-no-prisoners, make no friends approach makes translation of those positions into signed legislation far more unlikely with her in the White House.

By contrast, Obama's approach is one of inclusiveness and reduction of partisanship -- possibly the only formula for obtaining real change domestically. McClatchy had an article on March 7 that emphasized the efficacy of this approach for international affairs, quoting an international law professor to make the point that he is "unburdened by rigid ideology": "It seems to me he's really receptive to good ideas no matter where they come from, including his opponent," said Michael Glennon, a professor of international law at Tufts University's Fletcher School.

Post-partisanship, anybody?

Opening blog entry...

2008-03-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Obama is genuine, reasonable, articulate, and smart. But he is also the target of an increasingly strange alliance between the "vast right wing conspiracy" and the Clintons. For the past few months, I have sent article after article after article about Obama to my friends, trying to provide them the information they need to see the difference between the Clinton/Republican lies and the real Barack Obama. Since I know it is unlikely that my friends will stay friends if I pummel their inboxes many times a day, I created this blog.