Who are the real "crazies" in our political culture?

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/28/crazy/index.htm

Friday, May 28, 2010
Who are the real "crazies" in our political culture?
Glenn Greenwald

One of the favorite self-affirming pastimes of establishment Democratic and Republican pundits is to mock anyone and everyone outside of the two-party mainstream as crazy, sick lunatics. That serves to bolster the two political parties as the sole arbiters of what is acceptable: anyone who meaningfully deviates from their orthodoxies are, by definition, fringe, crazy losers. Ron Paul is one of those most frequently smeared in that fashion, and even someone like Howard Dean, during those times when he stepped outside of mainstream orthodoxy, was similarly smeared as literally insane, and still is.

Last night, the crazy, hateful, fringe lunatic Ron Paul voted to repeal the Clinton-era Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy (or, more accurately, he voted to allow the Pentagon to repeal it if and when it chooses to) -- while 26 normal, sane, upstanding, mainstream House Democrats voted to retain that bigoted policy. Paul explained today that he changed his mind on DADT because gay constituents of his who were forced out of the military convinced him of the policy's wrongness -- how insane and evil he is!

In 2003, the crank lunatic-monster Ron Paul vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq, while countless sane, normal, upstanding, good-hearted Democrats -- including the current Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Senate Majority Leader, House Majority Leader, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, and many of the progressive pundits who love to scorn Ron Paul as insane -- supported the monstrous attack on that country.

In 2008, the sicko Ron Paul opposed the legalization of Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program and the granting of retroactive immunity to lawbreaking telecoms, while the Democratic Congress -- led by the current U.S. President, his Chief of Staff, the Senate Majority Leader, the Speaker of the House, and the House Majority Leader -- overwhelmingly voted it into law. Paul, who apparently belongs in a mental hospital, vehemently condemned America's use of torture from the start, while many leading Democrats were silent (or even supportive), and mainstream, sane Progressive Newsweek and MSNBC pundit Jonathan Alter was explicitly calling for its use. Compare Paul's February, 2010 emphatic condemnation of America's denial of habeas corpus, lawless detentions and presidential assassinations of U.S. citizens to what the current U.S. Government is doing.

The crazed monster Ron Paul also opposes the war in Afghanistan, while the Democratic Congress continues to fund it and even to reject timetables for withdrawal. Paul is an outspoken opponent of the nation's insane, devastating and oppressive "drug war" -- that imprisons hundreds of thousands of Americans with a vastly disparate racial impact and continuously incinerates both billions of dollars and an array of basic liberties -- while virtually no Democrat dares speak against it. Paul crusades against limitless corporate control of government and extreme Federal Reserve secrecy, while the current administration works to preserve it. He was warning of the collapsing dollar and housing bubble at a time when our Nation's Bipartisan Cast of Geniuses were oblivious. In sum, behold the embodiment of clinical, certifiable insanity: anti-DADT, anti-Iraq-war, anti-illegal-domestic-surveillance, anti-drug-war, anti-secrecy, anti-corporatism, anti-telecom-immunity, anti-war-in-Afghanistan.

There's no question that Ron Paul holds some views that are wrong, irrational and even odious. But that's true for just about every single politician in both major political parties (just look at the condition of the U.S. if you doubt that; and note how Ron Paul's anti-abortion views render him an Untouchable for progressives while Harry Reid's anti-abortion views permit him to be a Progressive hero and even Senate Majority Leader). My point isn't that Ron Paul is not crazy; it's that those who self-righteously apply that label to him and to others invariably embrace positions and support politicians at least as "crazy." Indeed, those who support countless insane policies and/or who support politicians in their own party who do -- from the Iraq War to the Drug War, from warrantless eavesdropping and denial of habeas corpus to presidential assassinations and endless war in the Muslim world -- love to spit the "crazy" label at anyone who falls outside of the two-party establishment.
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This behavior is partially driven by the adolescent/high-school version of authoritarianism (anyone who deviates from the popular cliques -- standard Democrats and Republicans -- is a fringe loser who must be castigated by all those who wish to be perceived as normal), and is partially driven by the desire to preserve the power of the two political parties to monopolize all political debates and define the exclusive venues for Sanity and Mainstream Acceptability. But regardless of what drives this behavior, it's irrational and nonsensical in the extreme.

I've been writing for several years about this destructive dynamic: whereby people who embrace clearly crazy ideas and crazy politicians anoint themselves the Arbiters of Sanity simply because they're good mainstream Democrats and Republicans and because the objects of their scorn are not. For me, the issue has nothing to do with Ron Paul and everything to do with how the "crazy" smear is defined and applied as a weapon in our political culture. Perhaps the clearest and most harmful example was the way in which the anti-war view was marginalized, even suppressed, in the run-up to the attack on Iraq because the leadership of both parties supported the war, and the anti-war position was thus inherently the province of the Crazies. That's what happens to any views not endorsed by either of the two parties.

Last week in Newsweek, in the wake of the national fixation on Rand Paul, Conor Friedersdorf wrote a superb article on this phenomenon. While acknowledging that Rand Paul's questioning of the Civil Rights Act (and other positions Paul holds) are "wacky" and deeply wrong, Friedersdorf writes:

Forced to name the "craziest" policy favored by American politicians, I'd say the multibillion-dollar war on drugs, which no one thinks is winnable. Asked about the most "extreme," I'd cite the invasion of Iraq, a war of choice that has cost many billions of dollars and countless innocent lives. The "kookiest" policy is arguably farm subsidies for corn, sugar, and tobacco -- products that people ought to consume less, not more. . . .

If returning to the gold standard is unthinkable, is it not just as extreme that President Obama claims an unchecked power to assassinate, without due process, any American living abroad whom he designates as an enemy combatant? Or that Joe Lieberman wants to strip Americans of their citizenship not when they are convicted of terrorist activities, but upon their being accused and designated as enemy combatants?


He goes on to note that "these disparaging descriptors are never applied to America's policy establishment, even when it is proved ruinously wrong, whereas politicians who don't fit the mainstream Democratic or Republican mode, such as libertarians, are mocked almost reflexively in these terms, if they are covered at all." Indeed, this is true of anyone who deviates at all -- even in tone -- from the two-party orthodoxy, as figures as disparate as Dennis Kucinich, Noam Chomsky, Howard Dean or even Alan Grayson will be happy to tell you.
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The reason this is so significant -- the reason I'm writing about it again -- is because forced adherence to the two parties' orthodoxies, forced allegiance to the two parties' establishments, is the most potent weapon in status quo preservation. That's how our political debates remain suffocatingly narrow, the permanent power factions in Washington remain firmly in control, the central political orthodoxies remain largely unchallenged. Neither party nor its loyalists are really willing to undermine the prevailing political system because that's the source of their power. And neither parties' loyalists are really willing to oppose serious expansions or abuses of government power when their side is in control, and no serious challenge is therefore ever mounted; the only ones who are willing to do so are the Crazies.

Thus, for the two parties to ensure that they, and only they, are recognized as Sane, Mainstream voices is to ensure, above all else, the perpetuation of status quo power. As Noah Millman insightfully pointed out this week, those on the Right and Left devoted to civil liberties and limitations on executive power find more common cause with each other than with either of the two parties' establishments. The same is true on a wide array of issues, including limitations on corporate influence in Washington and opposition to the National Security State.

That's why the greatest sin, the surest path to marginalized Unseriousness, is to stray from the safe confines of loyalty to the Democratic or Republican establishments. To our political class, Treason is defined as anyone who forms an alliance, even on a single issue, with someone in the Crazy Zone. That's because breaking down those divisive barriers can be uniquely effective in enabling ideologically diverse citizens to join together to weaken power factions, as Alan Grayson proved when he teamed up with Ron Paul to force the uber-secret Fed to submit to at least some version of an audit (backed by several leading progressives joining with Grover Norquist and other Crazies to support it), or as Al Gore proved when he brought substantial attention to Bush's war on the Constitution by forming an alliance with Bob Barr and other right-wing libertarians. Preventing (or at least minimizing) those types of ad hoc alliances through use of the Crazy smear ensures a divided and thus weakened citizenry against entrenched political power in the form of the two parties. Obviously, the more stigmatized it is to stray from two-party loyalty, the stronger the two parties (and those who most benefit from their dominance) will be.

If one wants to argue that Ron Paul and others like him hold specific views that are crazy, that's certainly reasonable. But those who make that claim virtually always hold views at least as crazy, and devote themselves to one of the two political parties that has, over and over, embraced insane, destructive and warped policies of their own. The reason the U.S. is in the shape it's in isn't because Ron Paul and the rest of the so-called "crazies" have been in charge; they haven't been, at all. The policies that have prevailed are the ones which the two parties have endorsed. So where does the real craziness lie?
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Just to preempt non sequiturs, this isn't a discussion of Ron Paul, but of the irrational use of the "crazy" accusation in our political discourse and the effects of its application.

Dean urges defeat of emerging health care bill

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5irPOJsLck6oxp2-eAE8h9-xaJcZQD9CKEC3O0

Dean urges defeat of emerging health care bill
(AP) – 12-16-9

WASHINGTON — Former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean argued Wednesday that the health care overhaul bill taking shape in the Senate further empowers private insurers at the expense of consumer choice.

"You will be forced to buy insurance. If you don't, you'll pay a fine," said Dean, a physician. "It's an insurance company bailout." Interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," he said the bill has some good provisions, "but there has to be a line beyond which you think the bill is bad for the country."

"This is an insurance company's dream," the former Democratic presidential candidate said. "This is the Washington scramble, and it's a shame."

Dean asserted that the Senate's health care bill would not prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions and he also said it would allow the industry to charge older people far more than others for premiums.

Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., a prominent House liberal, protested the absence of any government-run insurance option in the Senate bill.

"We can't let the perfect be enemy of the good," Weiner said on CBS' "Early Show," "but we are reaching a tipping point."

When House and Senate negotiators go to conference to work out a compromise bill, Weiner said, "We should move away from some of the things the Senate has done and move back to where the House is. You need to contain cost. You do that with a public option."

Bush would have loved Democrat’s health care bill

http://rawstory.com/2009/09/dean-health-care-backlash/

Dean: Bush would have loved Senate Democrat’s health care bill
By David Edwards and Daniel Tencer
Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

The health care bill drawn up by Sen. Max Baucus and the Senate Finance Committee is a “terrible mistake” that George W. Bush “would have loved” because it is a massive giveaway of taxpayers’ money to the health insurance industry, former chair of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, told MSNBC Monday night.

Dean also said he believes there is a very slim majority in the Senate that would support a health care bill that includes a public option.

“This is a bill that George Bush would love, it’s a massive redistribution of government taxpayers’ money to the insurance industry, exactly the same thing that was going on with the banking industry and other industries on Wall Street,” Dean told Countdown guest host Lawrence O’Donnell. “It is a bad bill, this Finance Committee bill, it doesn’t insure people, and it spends an awful lot of money and it gives it away to the insurance companies. So I do think ultimately the bill will have a public option in it, because I don’t think the Democratic Party will stand for this.”

Asked by O’Donnell how the public option would make it into a Senate bill, given the level of opposition to it, Dean said that “we think there are 51 or 52 Democratic senators who will vote for some sort of public option.”

Dean’s assertion challenges the conventional Beltway wisdom thus far about the public option’s chances. While it appears the public option has the votes necessary to pass the House of Representatives, it has been assumed that the votes aren’t there for a public option in the Senate.

But Dean was insistent on the need for one: “If you don’t have a public option, you are wasting nearly a trillion dollars of government money and giving it to the health insurance industry. I think that is a terrible mistake, and I know very well it is not what President Obama planned on when he was campaigning.”

And Dean issued a warning to Democrats on the matter. “Every Democrat is going to sink or swim together on this,” he said. “If we pass a bill that’s just a big giveaway to the insurance industry, every Democrat will suffer.”

Why the Public Option is Doomed To Fail

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/why-public-option-doomed-fail-and-what-can-be-done-about-it

Wed, 09/23/2009
The generous, expansive public option on the lips of Congressional progressives, which would be open to all and compete to lower insurance prices is largely imaginary, while the president's stingy, divisive and means-tested version is all too real.
But what about the third version of the public option? What is the Congressional Progressive Caucus doing to promote it, and to allow states to pursue single payer on their own?

Why the Public Option is Doomed To Fail, and What Can Be Done About It.
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Some highly profitable and job creating industries simply cannot be reformed. Slavery and child labor cannot not be made humane and reasonable, not with kind and solicitous masters or school and limited hours for the kids. Allowing souless and greedy corporations to collect a toll for standing between patients and doctors is immoral, uneconomical, and just plain wrong. But it's not illegal. Not in the US, at any rate, not yet.

The issue in health care reform today is how much longer and under what conditions private insurance companies will be allowed to collect tolls for rationing and denying health care. The public option is a cruel and cynical hoax inside of a much larger scam. The great scam is the substitution on the part of the president and his party, of health insurance reform for their campaign promise of universal health care for all Americans. The public option is, at bottom, an excuse not to abolish the role of private insurance death panels and toll collectors in the nation's health care system.

Nobody can read the president's mind, but he did promise to construct health care legislation in an open and transparent manner, even "on C-SPAN." Instead, Obama handed off the drafting of health care legislation to five House and three Senate committees. The most generous view is that he did this to give legislators a stake in the bills, and because there is this thing called the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.

Another view is that the embedded influence of Big Insurance, Big Pharma, and Big Medicine were easier to conceal when spread out over several committees, where the lobbyists are themselves former congressmen, senators and their top staffers, and many current members and staff look forward to the same career paths. These are the men and women who wrote what is and will be the president's health insurance reform legislation. The result has been a half dozen versions of a thousand-plus page bill, chock full, as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibi points out, of deliberately obscure references to other legislation. Nobody can authoritatively claim to have read, much less understand all of it. And that's just the way insurance companies and the president like it. HR 676, the Enhanced Medicare For All Act, which does provide universal coverage at reasonable cost, comes in at under thirty pages.

To begin with, there are no less than three versions of the public option. The first is an imaginary public option first conceived by Political Science grad student Jacob Hatcher in 2001. It was to postpone the death of private insurance companies by forcing them to compete with a publicly funded insurer open to all comers which would drive their prices downward. This imaginary public option has never been written into law, and is not under consideration in Congress this year. It lives pretty much in the minds of the public and the lips of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, MoveOn.Org and many others. It's in the mouth of Howard Dean, who says it will be just like Medicare, only available to everybody. To distinguish it from the President Obama's version, it is usually called "the robust public option."

The second version of the public option is not imaginary, it is all too real. President Obama explicitly outlined its contours in his health care address earlier this month. Unlike the expansive and inclusive imaginary public option championed by MoveOn.Org, the president's public option will be stingy, means-tested, socially divisive, actuarially unsound and doomed to failure, unless its objective is simply to discredit the word "public" in the term "public option." The president has said it will be limited to 5% of the nation's population, those Americans too poor to afford the cheapest insurance available on his regulated "insurance exchanges" which won't be fully implemented anyway till 2013. Those making more than a very small wage will be ineligible for the president's version of the public option, and those who currently get insurance from their employers, no matter how skimpy the coverage, how high the co-pays and deductibles, will also not qualify. Those who receive relatively good (or maybe not so good) coverage from their employers will pay a special tax to support both the public option and the subsidies the government will pay to enable others not quite poor enough for the public option to fulfill their legal obligation to buy shoddy insurance from private vendors.

In a social culture where Americans have been taught to despise poverty and the poor, even when they themselves are poor and near poverty, this will be bitterly and inherently divisive. It will provide economic incentive for the working poor to look down on and resent whatever benefits those even poorer than themselves receive. It turns medical coverage for the poor into stigmatized welfare subsidized by the near-poor, and all to the continuing profit of insurance companies.

And since the pool accessed by the public option will be relatively older, poorer and thus more chronically ill, it will not be economically viable in and of itself, must less of the size needed to compete with private insurers and drive their prices downward. The president's public option is of course, buried in multiple versions of thousand-plus page bills that he allowed to be drafted by no less than five House and three Senate committees. The draft bills themselves, as Rolling Stone's Matt Taibi tells us, are chock full of obscure references to other legislation, so to get a full grasp of the proposals one would have to read at least 6 thousand pages of constantly changing stuff.

It's hard to put forward a benign reason for this level of obfuscation, when the president specifically promised that his health care legislation would be drawn up in the bright sunlight of public view, as he put it, "on C-SPAN." The only logical reason for allowing so many lengthy and obscure versions of his own health insurance legislation to be written is to frustrate public scrutiny, and to hide the degree to which lobbyists for Big Insurance, Big Pharma and Big Medicine actually wrote the thing. These interests have long been embedded in the Congress, where the head lobbyists are former legislators and their top staff, and current staff look forward to the same career path. The participation of these types would have been much harder to conceal in any drafting of the bill that the White House convened. By comparison, HR 676, the Enhanced Medicare For All Act comes in just under thirty pages.

The only good thing one can say about the president's version of the public option is that even he is not firmly attached to it, and does not regard it as essential to his package. That's actually good news.

Beyond the imaginary "robust public option" of MoveOn.Org, and the divisive, destructive public option of the presdient, there is a third public option, a very real one. It;'s HR 676, the Enhanced Medicare For All bill, sponsored by John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich. Unlike the mostly imaginary "robust public option" of MoveOn.Org, it actually exists and ordinary people can read and understand it. Unlike the president's public option, which does not take effect till 2013, a fact still ignored by most of the mainstream media, HR 676 can be put into effect almost immediately. The first Medicare back in 1965-66 took only eleven months to send out the first cards and pay the first medical bills.

The White House of course, is not listening to the public outcry for Medicare For All. For example, a group of Oregon physicians calling themselves the Mad As Hell Doctors put up a web site that included an email-the-president page. After the White House received only about 5,000 emails in the first few days, it elected to block emails coming from the Mad As Hell Doctors as spam. Never mind that tracking polls as late as this June indicate majority support among the public for the simple extension of Medicare benefits to everybody.

And although the progressive caucus in Congress continues to wistfully describe its imaginary version of the public option as a line in the sand, it is neither lining up votes for a promised HR 676 floor vote, nor are they demanding that caucus members support amendments to let states to pursue their own versions of single payer in the near future. Congress is being set up to accept anything with the name "public option" and be done with it, even the president's cynical and divisive proposal. The die is cast. The Obama proposals, written by the health insurance lobbyists may pass, but they're not worthwhile. The president's version of the public option, if it stays in the bill is doomed to fail, and the MoveOn version never existed. The only possibility for the real public option, Medicare For All, this year is on the state level. That door will be opened or closed by the Congress this year.

It happens that occasionally, highly profitable industries in which many people make their livings are beyond reform. Slavery and child labor are two examples. Kinder and wiser slavemasters, shorter hours and occasional school for the kiddie workers would not do the trick. Both these institutions had to go. The time for private health insurers, who exist only to collect a toll for standing between the sick and their medical care is almost up.

The Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus can partially redeem their sorry capitulation to the president and Big Insurance by insisting that states be allowed to go their own way on single payer, the only real public option.

5 Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/13/AR2008111303287_pf.html

5 Myths About an Election of Mythic Proportions
By Chris Cillizza
Sunday, November 16, 2008; B03

The 2008 presidential election ended less than two weeks ago, but the mythmaking machine has already begun to churn. President-elect Barack Obama transformed the face of the electorate! The Republican Party will be a miserable minority in Congress for the next century! Cats and dogs are now living together! Below we explode the five biggest myths that have already sprung up around the election that was.

1. The Republican Party suffered a death blow.

There's no question that losing six Senate seats and 24 House seats (not to mention the White House) wasn't a step forward for the Grand Old Party. But there are two good reasons to believe that Republicans will be back on their feet sooner than many people expect.

First, much of the Republicans' permanent political class has concluded that electing Sen. John McCain as president would have amounted to applying a Band-Aid to a gaping wound. Given the state of the party -- bereft of a signature new idea and without many fresh faces -- plenty of Republican operatives have come to subscribe to what I'd call the Ra's al Ghul theory of rebuilding: Ghul, a villain in the movie "Batman Begins," advocates destroying the city of Gotham to rebuild it from the ground up. "It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die," he says -- a sentiment echoed by many Republicans these days, who argue that hitting rock bottom was the only way to allow new faces and ideas to emerge.

Second, historical electoral patterns suggest that Republicans could pick up a passel of Senate and House seats in 2010 -- the first midterm election under President Obama. Every president (save one) since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934 has lost seats in the House in his first midterm election. The exception? George W. Bush in 2002, when Republicans picked up six House seats and two Senate seats -- a historic anomaly widely credited to the world-changing events of Sept. 11, 2001.

2. A wave of black voters and young people was the key to Obama's victory.

Afraid not. Heading into Election Day, cable news, newspapers and blogs were dominated by excited chatter about record levels of enthusiasm for Obama among two critical groups: African Americans and young voters (aged 18-29). It made sense: Black voters were energized to cast a historic vote for the first African American nominee of either major party; young people -- following a false start with former Vermont governor Howard Dean in 2004 -- had bought into Obama in a major way during the primary season, and they finally seemed on the cusp of realizing their much-promised potential as a powerhouse voting bloc.

Or not. Exit polling suggests that there was no statistically significant increase in voting among either group. Black voters made up 11 percent of the electorate in 2004 and 13 percent in 2008, while young voters comprised 17 percent of all voters in 2004 and 18 percent four years later.

The surge in young and African American voters is not entirely the stuff of myth, however. Although their percentages as a portion of the electorate didn't increase measurably, Obama did seven points better among black voters than Sen. John F. Kerry did in 2004 and scored a 13-point improvement over Kerry's total among young voters.

3. Now that they control the White House and Congress, Democrats will usher in a new progressive era.

Not likely. At first glance, the numbers do look encouraging for proponents of a new New Deal era in government: Obama claimed at least 364 electoral votes and more than 52.5 percent of the overall popular vote, while Democrats now control at least 57 seats in the Senate and 255 in the House.

But look more closely, and you see a heavy influx of moderate to conservative members in the incoming freshman Democratic class, particularly in the House. Of the 24 Republican-held districts that Democrats won in 2008, Kerry carried just three in 2004. Democratic victories on Nov. 4 included Alabama's 2nd district (where Kerry took 33 percent of the vote) and Idaho's at-large seat (where Kerry won just 30 percent). In fact, according to tabulations by National Journal's Richard E. Cohen, 81 House Democrats in the 111th Congress will represent districts that Bush carried in 2004.

The fact that roughly a third of the Democratic House majority sits in seats with Republican underpinnings (at least at the presidential level) is almost certain to keep a liberal dream agenda from moving through Congress. The first rule of politics is survival, and if these new arrivals to Washington want to stick around, they are likely to build centrist voting records between now and 2010.

4. A Republican candidate could have won the presidency this year.

I doubt it. In the hastily penned postmortems of campaign '08, much of the blame for McCain's loss seems to have fallen at the feet of the candidate and his advisers, who (so the narrative goes) made a series of lousy strategic decisions that wound up costing the Arizona senator the White House. There's little question that some of the choices McCain and his team made -- the most obvious being the impulsive decision to suspend his campaign and try to broker a deal on the financial rescue bill, only to see his efforts blow up in his face -- did not help. But a look at this year's political atmospherics suggests that the environment was so badly poisoned that no Republican -- not Mitt Romney, not Mike Huckabee, not even the potential future GOP savior, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal -- could have beaten Obama on Nov. 4.

Why not? Three words (and a middle initial): President George W. Bush.

In the national exit poll, more than seven in 10 voters said that they disapproved of the job Bush was doing; not surprisingly, Obama resoundingly won that group, 67 percent to 31 percent. But here's an even more stunning fact: While 7 percent of the exit-poll sample strongly approved of the job Bush was doing, a whopping 51 percent strongly disapproved. Obama won those strong disapprovers 82 percent to 16 percent. And Bush's approval numbers looked grim for the GOP even before the September financial meltdown.

Just one in five voters in the national exit polls said that the country was "generally going in the right direction." McCain won that group 71 percent to Obama's 27 percent. But among the 75 percent of voters who said that the country was "seriously off on the wrong track," Obama had a thumping 26-point edge.

Those numbers speak to the damage that eight years of the Bush administration have done to the Republican brand. It's a burden that any candidate running for president with an "R" after his -- or her -- name would have had to drag around the country.

5. McCain made a huge mistake in picking Sarah Palin.

No subject is more likely to break up a dinner party early than the Alaska governor McCain chose as his running mate. Everyone not only has an opinion about her qualifications (or lack thereof) but also feels it necessary to share those opinions with anyone within shouting range.

Love her or loathe her, the data appear somewhere close to conclusive that Palin did little to help -- and, in fact, did some to hurt -- McCain's attempts to reach out to independents and Democrats. But just because Palin doesn't appear to have helped McCain move to the middle doesn't mean that picking her was the wrong move.

Remember where McCain found himself this past summer. He had won the Republican nomination, but the GOP base clearly felt little buy-in into his campaign. A slew of national polls reflected that energy gap, with Democrats revved up about the election and their candidate and Republicans somewhere between tepid and glum.

Enter Palin, who was embraced with a bear hug by the party's conservative base. All of a sudden, cultural conservatives were thrilled at the chance to put "one of their own" in the White House. In fact, of the 60 percent of voters who told exit pollsters that McCain's choice of Palin was a "factor" in their final decision, the Arizona senator won 56 percent to 43 percent.

For skittish conservatives looking for more evidence that McCain understood their needs and concerns, Palin did the trick. It's hard to imagine conservatives rallying to McCain -- even to the relatively limited extent that they did -- without Palin on the ticket. And without the base, McCain's loss could have been far worse.

Which myths did we miss? Let the conversation begin!

chris.cillizza@washingtonpost.com

Chris Cillizza covers the White House for The Washington Post and writes "The Fix," a political blog, on washingtonpost.com.

Cash-poor Obama says no to Reid

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13485.html

Cash-poor Obama says no to Reid
By: John Bresnahan
September 16, 2008

Earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made a personal appeal to Barack Obama: Help me grow the Democrats’ Senate majority by sharing some of the $77 million you’ve got in the bank.

Obama’s campaign said no.

Although Democratic insiders say a better deal could still come, the Obama campaign so far has agreed only to let Senate Democrats use Obama’s name — as well as those of his wife and running mate — in mail and online fundraising pitches. The campaign has planned no joint fundraising events with House or Senate Democrats, and insiders say none is likely to be held before Election Day.

In rejecting a direct request from his Senate leader, Obama has put a fine point on the financial pressures he’s feeling as the presidential race turns toward the fall.

Obama raised a record-setting $66 million in August, leaving his campaign with about $77 million in cash now. Because he has turned down public financing, he can keep raising money through Election Day. John McCain, having accepted public financing, can’t do that — but he already has the $84 million in public money in his campaign coffers.

More importantly, McCain will get substantial help from the Republican National Committee — which has dramatically outraised its Democratic counterpart — and the Republican Party’s state and local committees.

Reid and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer had hoped at one point to get as much as $10 million from the Obama campaign. With 23 GOP seats up for grabs this year — versus only a dozen Democratic seats — Senate Democrats see a once-in-a-generation opportunity to pad their majority with as many as four to seven new seats.

But to do that, they’ll need money, and lots of it. While the DSCC still has a huge financial advantage over its GOP counterpart, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the geographic overlap between competitive Senate seats and the tight presidential race means the McCain campaign and the RNC will be dumping tens of millions of dollars into battleground states with competitive Senate races. This will likely help down-ballot GOP candidates and incumbents.

Matthew Miller, the DSCC communications director, did not respond directly when asked about the majority leader’s discussion with Obama.

“We work closely with the Obama campaign on fundraising and on field operations and political organizing,” Miller said. “We have a great relationship with them.”

Miller noted that Obama has done two e-mail and two direct-mail pitches to donors on behalf of the DSCC this cycle, while Biden did one earlier this month.

The Obama campaign did not have a comment at press time.

One Democratic source familiar with the intraparty dispute over money said that fundraising e-mails and direct-mail pitches “are helpful, but we really don’t care about that. We need more help than that.”

Fights over money are nothing new for Democrats.

Schumer and then-Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel engaged in a long battle with DNC Chairman Howard Dean last cycle for funding for get-out-the-vote operations. After initially refusing to help, Dean eventually approved $5 million for House and Senate Democrats, although Emanuel and other Democratic strategists later said that more money would have made the 2006 Democratic victory even bigger.

Democrats on Capitol Hill have grumbled for months that it has been hard to orchestrate campaign events and appearances with the Obama campaign. One Democratic strategist said the campaign frequently turns down requests to have Obama appear with a Democratic incumbent or challenger, and that the events that do happen come only after some “very heavy lifting.”

In Obama’s defense, Democrats note that the nominee’s long primary fight with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York cut in to the time Obama otherwise would have had to mount a general election campaign. And, they say, he’s so popular among Democrats that his campaign has been overwhelmed with more requests for appearances than it can possibly grant.

But having opted out of public financing, Obama also has had to spend significant time fundraising that, in the past, the Democratic candidate has used purely for politicking.

Impending Electoral Disaster

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/15/impending-electoral-disaster-ny-nj-mn/

Impending Electoral Disaster: NY, NJ, MN, PA, OH, MI
By Truthteller

Barack Obama is not the “map changer” CNN and all the discredited Democratic blogs claimed he would be; he is a supercilious underachiever who promises to color the entire nation red, not blue. He is tied with McCain in Minnesota and Pennsylvania; he is trailing McCain in Ohio AND MICHIGAN; he is CLINGING to a lead in New Jersey; and women in New York state are abandoning the Democratic ticket, thereby catapulting McCain-Palin within striking distance of Obama-Biden in a state Gore and Kerry won by 25 and 17 points respectively: portentous numbers, these, but the Democratic Party refused to listen when we warned them about this during the primary season. Democrats, I guess, want to lose. Indeed, they seem to enjoy it.

So now Obama must invest precious and finite resources in states such as New Jersey and New York. And instead of campaigning in Arkansas, Nevada, Florida or Louisiana, he will hold events in Minnesota, a state that should be solidly Democratic in the current political climate. He may even have to campaign in New York now that McCain is within five points of the underperforming Obama. A Democratic strategist quoted in the New York Post article I cite above summarizes this state of affairs succinctly. I quote:

“If it winds up being tight in New York, that means McCain wins the election nationally,” said a prominent Democrat familiar with some of the polling data.

I hope Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, Donna Brazile and all the venal bloggers and operatives who manufactured support for Obama online are satisfied. For once McCain wins, and he will win, it will be time for real Democrats who enjoy winning elections to reform OUR presently defunct Party apparatus from within and from without. We have worked too hard for this Party to allow them to squander opportunity after opportunity in order to satisfy the warped desires of a small band of elitist mediocrities who again and again take those of us who comprise the Democratic base for granted.

“Obama Implodes in Georgia”

http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/12/obama-implodes-in-georgia/

“Obama Implodes in Georgia”
By Bud White
September 12, 2008
Barack Obama, Bloggers, Florida, Georgia, Howard Dean, Ohio, Pennsylvania, general election

One of the arguments many Obama supporters made against Hillary was that she did not support Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy. Obama embraced the 50-state strategy to garner the support of the netroots and other activists. In a mydd diary posted this January, Obama, with his usual humility, was quoted as saying:

I think that we’re shifting the political paradigm here. And if I’m the nominee, I think I can bring a lot of folks along on my coattails. You know, there’s a reason why in 2006, I made the most appearances for members of Congress. I was the most requested surrogate to come in and campaign for people in districts that were swing districts, Republican districts where they wouldn’t have any other Democrat.

A narrative was developed in the blogosphere that Obama, unlike Hillary, would be able to touch the hearts of red state conservatives and turn them into Democrats. Hillary was too polarizing, it was argued, and she would be fighting for Kerry’s states plus 1.

It was mandatory at dailykos to believe that Obama was a map-changer. A diarist from North Dakota named Ab2kgj, in a post which would be funny if it weren’t so painful, suggested that Obama had a real shot at grabbing that state:

I’ll start with ripping a part of McCain’s base right out from under him. I live in North Dakota, and I have a feeling that we will be more of a swing state than people realize. Up here in nowhereland, the reason that Republicans do so well is because of “family values,” and an automatic 15 point bump in the polls. I gotta tell ya though. I see change in the air, because we also can smell phonies a mile away, and John McCain calling us “his friends” doesn’t seem to cut it for the sensible, middle of the roaders up here.

Regardless of what Ab2kgj sees in the air, Obama is not going to win North Dakota, but that fact didn’t stop the Obama campaign from expending millions in red states.

The Obama campaign has always known that they would have a hard time winning both Ohio and Florida, the recent path to the presidency. Campaign manager Plouffe:

said Ohio and Florida start out very competitive — but he stressed that they are not tougher than other swing states and said Obama will play “extremely hard” for both. But he said the strategy is not reliant on one or two states.

Talk of map-changing was utilized by Obama in the primary campaign as a tactic to hide his real weakness with blue-collar voters. Obama and his team have shown disdain for this core group of the Democratic Party, and Obama’s “hope” message fails to offer them a compelling reason to vote for him. Anglachel explains their hostility this way:

In the minds of the liberal elite, the problems and failures of the progressive agenda could be laid at the feet of bigoted whites, the “Archie Bunkers” of the North, and the “Bubbas” of the South. And there lies the strategic fault line of the Democratic Party, the willingness of a significant portion of the party, and I’m willing to wager the majority of the party power brokers, to see the electoral problem as how to minimize the damage of the Bunkers.

Not only has Obama insulted these Democrats who live in the greater Appalachia region with accusations of being bitter and bigoted, some of his supporters inferred that voters’ resistance to Obama was because of racism. But the real problem is that Obama does not appear to offer solutions to their economic problems. Howard Fineman believes that part of Obama’s troubles now stem from the fact that he does not articulate a clear, concise economic message:

It is not enough to be for change – everybody is, or is trying to be. To make it stick, Obama needed, and needs, to put forth an easy-to-grasp grand proposal, one that would encapsulate what his central message. That tagline? That he is dedicated, body and soul, to advancing the economic interests of hard-working, average Americans. He has the makings of such a proposal – his tax cuts for low and middle-income families. But he has yet to package that, or anything else, in an easy-to-grasp, hard-number plan for voters. Instead, he’s got more of a laundry list than an actual rallying cry.

Turning their backs on the rust-belt, Obama’s team, as recently as June, looked to deep-red states:

“You have a lot of ways to get to 270,” Plouffe said. “Our goal is not to be reliant on one state on November 4th.”

Plouffe has been pitching such a new approach to the electoral map in calls and meetings, according to several people who discussed the conversations on the condition of anonymity because they were meant to be private. Plouffe confirmed the descriptions in the interview.

Plouffe and his aides are weighing where to contest, and where chances are too slim to marshal a large effort. A win in Virginia (13 electoral votes) or Georgia (15 votes) could give Obama a shot if he, like Kerry, loses Ohio or Florida.

Although it appears Virginia is still competitive at this point, Georgia is now off the table. A new poll by InsiderAdvantage says that “Obama Implodes in Georgia,” and:

Poll Position survey of likely registered voters in Georgia indicates a steep decline for the Barack Obama campaign and likely explains why the candidate is moving resources out of Georgia and into other states.

Q. If the election were held today, would you vote for:

John McCain: 56%
Barack Obama: 38%
Other: 2%
Undecided: 4%

Obama’s collapse in Georgia has been sudden and dramatic. McCain is in the process of solidifying his base, but the demographics of this collapse do not bode well for Obama, and we should expect smaller but real shifts towards McCain in the more competitive states; that has always been the danger of over-extending your resources into unwinnable states:

InsiderAdvantage’s Matt Towery: “This is a huge slide from what had been, in our prior surveys, a relatively close race. The reason is simple—Obama lost serious ground in virtually every demographic.

“At first glance it would seem that Obama is headed for no better than the low 40 percentile level achieved by John Kerry in 2004. But let me warn observers that in both our national tracking and surveys in other states, the biggest change has been a near parity between the two candidates among the youngest of voters.

“Should that group return to Obama and the African-American vote end up where we expect it to be, the race could be closer in November. But as of now Georgia is no longer a “leans McCain” state. As of this survey, Georgia is in the McCain column.”

Obama’s shrinking map is not a shock to Hillary supporters, but it’s ironic now that Obama will have to turn to Ohio, Florida, and, particularly, Pennsylvania to attempt to squeak out a victory, places where he performed poorly in the primaries and to the voters he and his campaign have continually insulted.

Obama clinches Democratic presidential nomination

http://wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/obam-j05.shtml

Obama clinches Democratic presidential nomination
By Patrick Martin
5 June 2008

Senator Barack Obama won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination Tuesday as dozens of superdelegates—congressmen, senators, governors and party officials—rushed to endorse his candidacy on the final day of the primary campaign.

Obama split the last two primaries with Hillary Clinton, winning Montana and losing South Dakota, but the number of delegates at stake in those two lightly populated states—31—was dwarfed by the more than 200 uncommitted superdelegates who began to swing decisively to Obama as he approached the total of 2,118 delegates required for the nomination.

A joint statement issued Wednesday by four top Democratic Party leaders—party chairman Howard Dean, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Joe Manchin, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association—called on all still-uncommitted superdelegates to declare their presidential preference by Friday.

ABC News reported Wednesday evening that Clinton would officially drop out of the race and endorse Obama by that deadline. She deferred any such concession in her address to supporters Tuesday night after the polls closed in South Dakota.

The struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination was the most protracted in recent US history. Obama took a decisive lead among Democratic convention delegates in the last three weeks of February, when he won 11 consecutive primaries and caucuses. Clinton won nine of the final 14 primaries, but was unable to overcome the margin of more than 150 delegates that her opponent had accumulated.

Clinton entered the campaign with huge advantages over her half-dozen rivals, including far greater institutional and financial support, but proved to have been fatally weakened by her vote in October 2002 to authorize the war in Iraq. Her decision to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq reflected a double miscalculation: overestimating the power of American imperialism, and underestimating the degree of opposition to the war that would emerge among the American people.

Obama’s campaign was not in any genuine sense an “antiwar” campaign, although he appealed to popular hostility to the war in Iraq and constantly linked Clinton and Bush with his refrain that Iraq was “a war that should never have been authorized and never been waged.”

The Illinois senator represents a section of the American ruling elite that has concluded that the invasion and conquest of Iraq was a strategic debacle and that a significant change in posture and personnel is required to salvage the interests of American imperialism in the Middle East and internationally. These layers do not oppose military action as such, but regard the Bush administration’s single-minded focus on winning a military victory in Iraq as unwise and ultimately disastrous.

Long before Obama became a household name, filling stadiums and attracting small contributions by the millions over the Internet, his candidacy had attracted the support of a significant section of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, including figures like former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Clinton national security adviser Anthony Lake.

They were drawn to Obama not so much by his critique of the Bush administration—which was not particularly vigorous, even by the toothless standards of the congressional Democrats—as by the symbolic effect that the election of the first African-American president would have in terms of reviving illusions, both internationally and within the United States, in the democratic pretensions of American capitalism.

With Obama’s nomination effectively secured, the American media has now gone into overdrive to peddle such illusions. The television networks have devoted endless hours to glorifying the great achievement of American democracy in nominating an African-American to lead the presidential ticket of one of the two major bourgeois parties for the first time in US history.

There is no doubt that such illusions are currently widespread, and not only among minority workers and young people of all racial backgrounds, who are genuinely appalled by the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration’s eight-year record of war, reaction and social decay.

But the significance of Obama’s nomination, as well as his election on November 4, should that occur, cannot be judged on the basis of such superficial considerations as skin color. Despite the incessant claims of the media and of their Democratic Party supporters and apologists, Obama no more represents the interests of black and minority people than Hillary Clinton represents the interests of all women.

Both Obama and Clinton are political representatives of the American ruling elite, the small financial aristocracy which controls all the economic and political levers within US society, including the two officially recognized “major” parties and the mass media.

Obama is a fervent defender of the profit system and has the backing of some of the wealthiest individuals—including billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who this year became the single richest man in America, surpassing Bill Gates of Microsoft.

Like Senator Obama, Mr. Buffett is an intelligent man, and he is not backing the Illinois Democrat because he seeks a radical transformation in American society. He supports Obama because he recognizes, as do the more thoughtful sections of the ruling elite, that at least a significant cosmetic change is required in American political life to forestall an upheaval from below.

The Obama nomination is not the product of a popular insurgency against the Democratic Party establishment or of a mass movement from below, as some of Obama’s more self-deluded supporters on the liberal left now proclaim. The role of the masses in the Obama campaign is best demonstrated by the rallies like that held Tuesday night in St. Paul, Minnesota—the people serve as extras in a well-developed, highly skillful marketing campaign. The purpose of this campaign is to refurbish American capitalist politics without touching its rotten foundations.

Obama is a willing and, to a relatively high degree, conscious instrument of this campaign. This was clearly demonstrated in both the circumstances—starting with the flag pin on his lapel, once the subject of media attention—and the content of his speech Tuesday night declaring himself the victor in the struggle for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama attacked his presumptive Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, over his “stay-the-course” policy in Iraq, but he couched his critique of the war in nationalistic terms. The Bush-McCain policy, he said, “asks everything of our brave men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi politicians,” as though it was Iraq exploiting the United States, and not the reverse. He cited the cost of the war for the American people, but not the far greater cost inflicted upon the Iraqi population by the American invasion and occupation, which has virtually destroyed Iraq as a functioning society.

At the same time, the Democratic candidate further parsed his supposed commitment to bring an end to the war, declaring—in implicit rejection of any rapid pullout of troops— “I won’t stand here and pretend that there are many good options left in Iraq.” He added, “We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in, but start leaving we must.” At some points in the campaign, Obama has suggested that all US combat troops would be pulled out in his first year in the White House. This has been whittled down to a vague pledge to “start leaving,” a formulation that opens the door to an occupation of essentially indefinite duration.

Any US troops pulled out of Iraq would be available for military operations in other parts of the world, he made clear, particularly in Afghanistan, where he said, “It’s time to refocus our efforts.”

He asserted the goal of reviving the world standing and position of the United States: “We must once again have the courage and the conviction to lead the free world. That is the legacy of Roosevelt and Truman and Kennedy.” In other words, the Democratic presidents who led the United States in World War II, the Korean War and the early stages of Vietnam.

Obama continued this emphasis on revived and renewed American militarism in his speech Wednesday morning to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the principal pro-Israel lobby in Washington. He declared that he would never negotiate with Hamas and other Islamic and nationalist groups that refuse to recognize the state of Israel.

“There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations,” he said, adding, “Contrary to the claims of some, I have no interest in sitting down with our adversaries just for the sake of talking.”

He criticized the Bush administration and Senator McCain on the grounds that the war in Iraq had strengthened Iran, the most formidable opponent of Israel in the Middle East. While repeating his support for diplomatic engagement with Iran, he said, “I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel.”

Press reports indicated that the 7,000 people attending the AIPAC conference gave Obama a far warmer reception than McCain, who addressed the same gathering two days earlier. Obama prostrated himself before the Zionist lobby, saying, “Israel’s security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable.”

Any Mideast peace agreement, he said, must “preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

As for Iran, the Toronto Globe & Mail correspondent at the AIPAC meeting commented, “Sen. Obama seemed almost as hawkish as Sen. McCain or current President George W. Bush.”

Obama told AIPAC, “The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.” He added, in language that was vague but undeniably ominous, “I will do everything in my power—everything, everything—to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

An Obama presidency would not represent a fundamental break with the politics of American imperialism, but rather its continuation in a new form. The first black president will prove as determined to uphold the interests of the US ruling elite as the first black secretary of state, Colin Powell, and his successor Condoleezza Rice, who is also African-American.

It is not skin color, but class position, which is the decisive political criterion. It is necessary to reiterate this fundamental Marxist truth under conditions in which all manner of left liberals will seek to reinforce illusions in Obama and, through him, in the Democratic Party and the profit system as a whole.

Typical in this regard is the latest editorial in the Nation, hailing the outcome of the primary campaign as “a historic moment for Obama, for the Democratic party and for the American experiment. For the first time since the founding of the republic, a major party has nominated an African-American man for the presidency.”

The editorial gushed about “the most remarkable fact of this race: That in a country where women and most African Americans were denied the right to vote in 1908, a woman and an African-American man split the highest-ever turnout in a presidential nomination contest in 2008... For most of its history, America has been an incomplete democracy. But, for the past five months, it has struggled to deliver on the promise of a more perfect union.”

The magazine concluded with a paean to the Democratic Party, the party that for a century defended slavery and racial apartheid in the South: “History will record that the Democratic party, which in the middle passage of the 20th century committed more freely and more fully than the Republican party to freedom’s cause and the struggle to shatter those glass ceilings, began to harvest the fruits of it past commitments in the first months of 2008.”

The truth is that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are both instruments of the American ruling elite, whose differences are tactical rather than fundamental.

Driving an Obama administration will be the ongoing and ever-deepening crisis of American and world capitalism, and the efforts of the US ruling elite to defend its world position and its dominance at home by every possible means—from the honeyed words of the Democratic presidential candidate to police-state spying and war.

McCain Warns Against Hasty Mortgage Bailout

Robalini's Note: Here is what is important to note in this article:

McCain's proposed total relief offer so far: $0
Obama's proposed relief offer: $10 billion
Hillary's proposed relief offer (described as"aggressive federal intervention"): $30 billion
Amount Fed has proposed to prop up banks (so far): $400 billion

(Presumably, the $400 billion is okay by McCain, as it would be used for "preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy.”)

So the most "left-wing" proposal of the three remaining candidates for prez pays the bankers over the working and middle class 13 1/3 to one. And Obama has the spread 40 to one.

There's a term for this: class warfare.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/us/politics/25cnd-mccain.html

March 25, 2008
McCain Warns Against Hasty Mortgage Bailout
By JOHN SULLIVAN

Drawing a sharp distinction with the Democratic presidential candidates, Senator John McCain, warned Tuesday against hasty government action to solve the mortgage crisis, saying “it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers.”

In an address focusing on domestic issues following his visit to the Middle East, Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, did not propose any government bailout.

“Government assistance to the banking system should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy,” Mr. McCain said, speaking before a business group in Santa Ana, Calif.

His comments came a day after Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton called for aggressive federal intervention to help troubled homeowners, including directing $30 billion to states to help homeowners at risk of foreclosure. Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic opponent, Senator Barack Obama, has similarly called for active federal intervention, including a $10 billion relief package to prevent foreclosures.

As the mortgage crisis has rippled through the economy, it has thrust itself to the forefront of the presidential race. But Mr. McCain’s remarks on Tuesday represented a stark tonal shift from the increasing calls for helping homeowners, as he faulted not only borrowers who engaged in risky lending, but suggested that some homeowners engaged in dangerous financial practices.

“Some Americans bought homes they couldn’t afford, betting that rising prices would make it easier to refinance later at more affordable rates,” he said.

Mr. McCain argued that even during the ongoing crisis, the vast majority of mortgage holders continued to make their payments.

“Of those 80 million homeowners, only 55 million have a mortgage at all, and 51 million homeowners are doing what is necessary — working a second job, skipping a vacation and managing their budgets to make their payments on time,” he said. “That leaves us with a puzzling situation: how could 4 million mortgages cause this much trouble for us all?”

Mr. McCain split the blame between the rising housing bubble and the use of confusing and complex financial arrangements, which he said were badly understood even by financial managers. He said initial losses, coupled with the lack of transparency, has caused a “crisis of confidence in the markets.”

“Capital markets work best when there is both accountability and transparency,” he said. “In the case of our current crisis, both were lacking.”

Any government assistance must be accompanied by measures to ensure the problems are not repeated, Mr. McCain said. He said homeowners and lenders must be clear from the outset about the terms and obligations of any mortgage.

“We must have greater transparency in the lending process so that every borrower knows exactly what he is agreeing to and where every lender is required to meet the highest standards of ethical behavior,” he said.

Mr. McCain did not rule out a bailout, instead saying any such aid should be temporary and “no assistance should be given to speculators.”

“Any assistance for borrowers should be focused solely on homeowners, not people who bought houses for speculative purposes, to rent or as second homes,” he said.

Democrats criticized Mr. McCain’s approach, arguing that it would not do enough to address the financial problems facing Americans.

“Instead of offering a concrete plan to address the crisis at all levels, McCain promised to take the same hands off approach that President Bush used to lead us into this crisis,” Howard Dean, the Democratic National Committee chairman, said in a statement. In his speech, Mr. McCain did not provide specifics about any immediate plans to deal with the crisis, saying he was “prepared to examine new proposals and evaluate them based on these principals.”

He also called for a meeting of the nation’s top mortgage lenders, asking them to pledge support for customers and homeowners.

“Working together, they should pledge to provide maximum support and help to their cash-strapped but credit-worthy customers,” he said. “They should pledge to do everything possible to keep families in their homes and businesses growing.”

Fla. presidential primary re-do unlikely

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080313/ap_on_el_pr/primary_scramble

Fla. presidential primary re-do unlikely
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer
3-13-8

Florida Democrats on Thursday proposed a vote-by-mail presidential primary to solve the high-stakes delegate dispute while acknowledging the plan's chances are slim.

Democrats in Florida and Michigan have been struggling to come up with an alternative to ensure their delegates are seated at the national convention this summer after the party punished them for holding early primaries. The pressure to resolve the issue has increased amid the protracted fight for every delegate between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Karen Thurman, chairwoman of the Florida Democratic Party, offered a mail-in/in person proposal for voting and urged state leaders, the national party and the presidential candidates to sign on. Under the plan, all of Florida's 4.1 million Democrats would be mailed a ballot. They could send it back, or cast a ballot in one of 50 regional voting centers that would be set up. The election would end June 3, a week before a Democratic National Committee deadline to name delegates.

The estimated cost is $10 million to $12 million.

Asked if the plan will be implemented, Thurman said, "I have a feeling that this is probably closer to not, than yes."

Members of Florida's congressional delegation reiterated their opposition to the plan, saying, "We do not believe that this is a realistic option at this time and remain opposed to a mail-in ballot election or any new primary election in Florida of any kind."

Thurman will review comments from Democratic leaders and make a decision by Monday on whether to proceed with the re-vote. But she acknowledged that Obama has had concerns and the Democratic National Committee won't support a proposal unless both candidates also back it. She said there's a serious question over whether the state could legally verify the signatures of a privately run election.

"If this becomes something that we can't do, then we can't do it," Thurman said.

The Democratic Party is talking with the secretary of state's office about whether elections officials would be able to verify ballot signatures, but Republicans, who control the legislature, have opposed any state involvement and legal questions have been raised.

"The state of Florida should not be involved in certifying or mediating intraparty squabbles," said House Speaker Marco Rubio.

Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, however, has said he isn't opposed to the state helping verify signatures as long as no taxpayer money is spent and state and national parties haven't already worked out another solution.

The Justice Department would have to pre-approve any plan for a re-vote in Michigan or Florida to ensure that voting rights aren't being denied because of race or an inability to speak English. The department has 60 days to make a determination, but Justice spokesman Peter Carr said they provide expedited review whenever possible.

Officials at the Democratic National Committee said they don't foresee any problem with the Bush administration reviewing the Democratic plans. The Florida Democratic Party also expressed confidence that it won't be a significant hurdle to its vote-by-mail proposal.

"Fortunately, this is a very inclusive process, and we will file the appropriate paperwork," the party said in a statement, also noting that ballots in Florida will be printed in English, Spanish and Creole.

Clinton won Florida and Michigan, although she was the only major candidate on the ballot in Michigan.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told CNN that he was in Florida Wednesday and has been calling members of the congressional delegation to encourage them to cooperate. He said he'd like to find a way to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates and not leave the issue until the convention.

"The best option is whatever we can get the candidates to agree with, which puts a vote back in the hands of the people of Florida and Michigan. And that's going to be not so easy to do," Dean said.

Obama told reporters traveling on his campaign plane Thursday that although he has concerns about mail-in voting, "we're going to abide by whatever the DNC decides."

"We're not gonna make the final decision on it, and I'll abide by whatever rules the DNC lays out," he said.

Obama's national co-chairman, former Sen. Tom Daschle, said it wasn't a good idea.

"For a lot of reasons, I think that it's not going to be a plan that will be adopted," Daschle said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The Clinton campaign made it clear that it strongly prefers a state-run primary to mail-in voting during a meeting with Michigan Democrats Thursday, according to a campaign official speaking anonymously about the private talks. People involved in the private meeting said the Clinton advisers favor the state-run primary because there would be less likelihood of problems such as fraud and ballot counting than with a mail-in vote.

Four Michigan Democratic leaders uncommitted to either candidate discussed options for a do-over Thursday with both the Clinton and Obama campaign leaders. Democratic National Committee member Debbie Dingell, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Sen. Carl Levin and United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger are in that group trying to develop a new plan with input from both sides.
___
Associated Press Writers Nedra Pickler and Charles Babington in Washington and Dennis Gale in Sioux Falls, S.D., contributed to this report.

Dean Urges Do-Over Voting in Fla., Mich.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5igrYLRrHG3P6lIbs2E7pSH0bxhvgD8V8AKUO0

Dean Urges Do-Over Voting in Fla., Mich.
By JOAN LOWY
3-6-8

WASHINGTON (AP) — The former head of the Democratic National Committee doubted Thursday whether chairman Howard Dean would be able to get approval for do-over presidential nomination contests in Florida and Michigan.

"It'll be a hellacious battle," said Don Fowler, a former DNC chairman who sits on the party's rule-making committee.

Before the primaries started, "Howard Dean had enough votes to get most everything he wanted. Now that this thing has gone as far as it has and the lines have formed according to candidates, I'm not sure how that vote would shake out now," said Fowler, who has endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Nonetheless, Fowler said, something has to be done, "the rules be damned," to seat delegates from states Democrats have to and can win in the general election. "We're going to forfeit those two big states? What kind of fools would we be," he said.

Officials in Michigan and Florida have shown renewed interest in holding repeat nominating contests, and Dean has urged party officials in both states to come up with plans for how that can be done so their delegates can be counted at the national convention in late August.

"All they have to do is come before us with rules that fit into what they agreed to a year and a half ago, and then they'll be seated," Dean said Thursday during interviews on network and cable TV news programs.

Dean said the parties will have to pay for new contests.

"We can't afford to do that. That's not our problem. We need our money to win the presidential race," he said. The DNC offered to pay for an alternative contest in Florida last summer but was turned down, officials at the party say.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, another of Clinton's supporters, also called for a new Florida primary, but paid for by the national party. Nelson and Dean spoke by telephone Thursday evening and Dean reiterated that the DNC will not pay for a new primary.

Cost may be a barrier. During a meeting Wednesday night among House Democrats from Florida and Michigan, Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida relayed estimates that another primary would cost the state between $22 million and $24 million, a vote-by-mail contest would cost at least $8 million and the bill for a caucus would be about $4 million, said Hastings spokesman David Goldenberg.

In Michigan, the cost could be as high as $10 million, depending on the type of contest, according to Democratic officials. Liz Boyd, a spokeswoman for Democratic Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, said Thursday evening that nothing had been ruled out but it was beginning to appear as if the cost and logistics may be insurmountable.

Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said Thursday he would sign a bill for a new Democratic primary — legislative approval is required — but only if it was a last resort and only if the national party pays for it. But that seems unlikely, given Dean's insistence that he won't pay.

Top officials in Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign and Florida's state party chair all now say they would consider holding a sort of do-over contest by June. Officials in both states previously had insisted that the primaries held in January should determine how their delegates are allocated.

Clinton said she'd wait to see what proposals are put forward.

She won both contests, but no delegates. The results were meaningless since the elections violated national party rules. The DNC stripped both states of their delegates for holding the primaries too early, and all Democratic candidates — including Clinton and rival Barack Obama — agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama's name wasn't even on the Michigan ballot.

"I think it would be a grave disservice to the voters of Florida and Michigan to adopt any process that would disenfranchise anyone," Clinton said at a news conference Thursday. "Therefore I am still committed to seating their delegations, and I know they are working with the Democratic Party to determine how best to proceed."

She said it would be especially unfair to punish the 1.7 million Floridians who voted in the Democratic primary since the Republican-controlled Legislature and the state's Republican governor changed the date.

"They clearly believed that their votes would count, and I think that there has to be a way to make them count," Clinton said.

Obama said Thursday that the DNC should decide how to settle the dispute.

"I think it's important to make sure that people of Michigan and Florida feel as if they're part of this process and that they're heard. And we've just decided that we're going to play by whatever the rules the DNC has set forth," he told ABC News. "That's what we've done from the start.

"And I'll leave it up to the Democratic National Committee to make a decision about how to resolve it. But I certainly want to make sure that we've got Michigan and Florida delegates at the convention in some fashion," Obama said.

He said the DNC also should decide how to pay for any new contest.

Florida and Michigan moved up their contests to protest the party's decision to allow Iowa and New Hampshire to go first, followed by South Carolina and Nevada.

"The rules were set a year and a half ago," Dean said. "Florida and Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn't need to abide by the rules. Well, when you are in a contest you do need to abide by the rules. Everybody has to play by the rules out of respect for both campaigns and the other 48 states."

Associated Press writers Jim Davenport in Columbia, S.C., Tim Martin in Lansing, Mich., and Brendan Farrington in Tallahassee, Fla., contributed to this report.

Democrats Need to Hear From Florida and Michigan

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julian-e-zelizer/democrats-need-to-hear-fr_b_90335.html

Julian E. Zelizer
Democrats Need to Hear From Florida and Michigan
Posted March 6, 2008
Read More: 2008 Election, Democrats, Dnc, Florida, Howard Dean, Michigan, Breaking Politics News

Democrats have a big problem on their hands. As a result, they need to redo the Florida and Michigan primaries. Today, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said that party leaders in both states need to design proposals for holding new nominating contests.

The Democratic National Committee stripped both states of their delegates when they moved their votes earlier in the schedule. Senator Clinton won in both states. But most of the Democratic candidates -- including Senator Obama -- had withdrawn their name from the ballot in Michigan. Based on a pledge, none of the candidates conducted campaigns in Florida, although some of Clinton's opponents claim that she violated the agreement by making a few appearances in the Sunshine State before the day of the vote.

Now the context has changed. Super Tuesday did not decide the contest. Democrats are facing a brutal contest that will last into the summer convention. Senator John McCain is grinning as he watches the Democratic bloodbath. The irony that an embattled Republican Party managed to unite around a candidate relatively quickly and Democrats are fighting each other tooth and nail is hard to ignore.

Neither faction in the Democratic Party can argue that the primaries will produce a decisive winner. To be sure, the delegate count favors Obama. He has done extraordinarily well in small states, especially those that depend on caucuses, as well as in several battle ground states like Missouri. At the same time, Clinton won the popular vote in almost all of the large states: California, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Texas.

The situation won't be clarified in the months ahead. Obama will likely win in Wyoming and Mississippi while Clinton has an excellent chance of taking Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico.

This is why a new vote in Florida and Michigan is essential. Democrats have no choice. Obama's supporters sometimes complain that holding a new vote in those states would be akin to changing the rules in middle of the game. Yet the decision of the Democratic Party was a poor one, and bad rules sometimes need to be corrected. Obama supporters have themselves made this argument when warning against having "superdelegates" decide this contest. The rules, as created in the 1980s, empower superdelegates to make this kind of choice. Moreover, it seems odd that a candidate whose campaign has promised to create a better political system would be happy if voters in Florida and Michigan were silenced.

At the same time, counting the votes that already took place would not be fair. Obama did not have his name on the ballot in Michigan and he did not campaign in Florida. The results simply do not reflect a genuine contest. If Clinton wins this campaign by relying on the votes that took place, the selection would cause just as much bitterness as if those voters are left out. Democrats should also stick to the conventional process in those states to avoid any claims that the process was changed to favor one or the other candidate.

Democrats have two excellent candidates to choose from. Even though the contest has been rough and Republicans quickly united behind a formidable candidate, there is still reason to believe that the high enthusiasm for both candidates bodes well for the party. All the more reason to get this decision right. And if the contest does come down to superdelegates, they need to at least see what voters in Michigan and Florida are thinking before making their decision.

Democrats can't afford to let votes not be counted. After all, Democrats were the party burned in the 2000 election when the Supreme Court stopped recounts from taking place in Florida. The bitterness that resulted from that decision remains with the party until this day.

For all these reasons, let's bring Florida and Michigan back into the picture. That should be something that all Democrats should be able to unite on.

Julian E. Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s," which will be published this spring by Harvard University Press.

Daily Kos: CIA Engineered Controlled Opposition?

http://progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=196&topic_id=5821&mesg_id=5825

Daily Kos: CIA Engineered Controlled Opposition?
Thursday August 09th 2007

Is it possible Markos Alberto Moulitsas Zúñiga, leader of the “Kossaks,” that is to say followers and fawners of the Daily Kos, is a CIA operative? Francis Holland, posting on the My Left Wing messageboard, details Moulitsas’ relationship with the CIA:

“Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, owner of the DailyKos website, now admits that he spent six months in the employ of the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2001,” writes Holland. “In a one-hour interview on June 2, 2006 at the Commonwealth Club, Moulitsas, also known as ‘Kos,’ admitted that he was a CIA employee and would have ‘no problem working for them’ in the present.”

“I applied to the CIA and I went all the way to the end, I mean it was to the point where I was going to sign papers to become Clandestine Services,” Moulitsas admits in the interview. “And it was at that point that the Howard Dean campaign took off and I had to make a decision whether I was gonna kinda join the Howard Dean campaign, that whole process, or was I was going to become a spy. (Laughter in the audience.) It was going to be a tough decision at first, but then the CIA insisted that if, if I joined that, they’d want me to do the first duty assignment in Washington, DC, and I hate Washington, DC. Six years in Washington, DC that makes the decision a lot easier.”

Moulitsas considers the CIA “a very liberal institution,” never mind the agency, according to John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief in Angola (see my John Stockwell: The Third World War video), is responsible for killing more than six million people.

This is a very liberal institution. And in a lot of ways, it really does attract people who want to make a better, you know, want to make the world a better place…. Of course, they’ve got their Dirty Ops and this and that, right but as an institution itself the CIA is really interested in stable world. That’s what they’re interested in. And stable worlds aren’t created by destabilizing regimes and creating wars…. I don’t think it’s a very partisan thing to want a stable world. And even if you’re protecting American interests, I mean that can get ugly at times, but generally speaking I think their hearts in the right place. As an organization their heart is in the right place. I’ve never had any problem with the CIA. I’d have no problem working for them

Is it possible Mr. Moulitsas does not have a problem with the documented fact the CIA’s predecessor, the Overseas Secret Service, imported Nazis to work for the soon to be created CIA under General Reinhard Gehlen? “Gehlen was far from the only Nazi war criminal employed by the CIA. Others included Klaus Barbie (’the Butcher of Lyon’), Otto von Bolschwing (the Holocaust mastermind who worked closely with Eichmann) and, SS Colonel Otto Skorzeny (a great favorite of Hitler’s),” writes Mark Zepezauer (The CIA’s Greatest Hits, Odonian Press, 1994). “There’s even evidence that Martin Bormann, Hitler’s second-in-command at the end of the war, faked his own death and escaped to Latin America, where he worked with CIA-linked groups.

Or that the CIA financed the P-2 Masonic lodge, connected with the Vatican and the Mafia, and enthusiastically supported Operation Gladio, the “strategy of tension” terrorist “stay behind army” effort in Europe, responsible of train station bombings and assassinations, run by former SS Nazis? Is it possible Mr. Moulitsas supports the CIA effort to create shell banks such as the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, accurately characterized by former CIA director and current Sec. Def. Robert Gates as “the Bank of Crooks and Criminals International”? Does Moulitsas support the idea of MK-ULTRA, a program designed to test “radiation, electric shocks, electrode implants, microwaves, ultrasound and a wide range of drugs on unwitting subjects, including hundreds of prisoners at California’s infamous Vacaville State Prison,” as Zepezauer notes? Or what about the CIA getting into the heroin business with the Corsican Mafia, paving the way for highly profitable drug importation operations in Central America and Afghanistan, money used not only to enrich the “investment” (in death and misery) bankers but also used for the CIA’s black budget? How liberal is it to engage in assassination, genocide, and plotting the overthrow of governments in Iran, Guatemala, Indonesia (where more than 500,000 people were put to death, many of them due to CIA drafted “death lists”), and dozens of other countries?

Of course, the CIA long ago penetrated the “liberal” as well as the “conservative” corporate media in America. “Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal and James Copley of the Copley News Service. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, The Miami Herald, and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with The New York Times, CBS, and Time Inc.,” writes Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein (Rolling Stone, Oct. 20, 1977). “From the Agency’s perspective, there is nothing untoward in such relationships, and any ethical questions are a matter for the journalistic profession to resolve, not the intelligence community.”

Indeed, it would appear Markos Moulitsas finds nothing “untoward in such relationships,” if we are to believe his above quoted comments.

Finally, Moulitsas’ relationship with the CIA makes perfect sense, as Daily Kos appears to be yet another political front operation tasked with cracking the whip over “progressive” Democrats and marching them off to support the Bilderberger Queen Hillary Clinton and her probable running mate, Barack Obama, both on record as supporting the neocon plan to reduce the Muslim world to a smoldering wasteland, albeit with stylistic policy changes. It is no secret the CIA has long stage managed the controlled opposition and Moulitsas’ admitted relationship with the agency should be considered a coup de grâce, an effort designed to reduce the “progressive” Democrat opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the impending attack to be leveled against Iran as little more than an empty and absurd rhetorical slogan.