Prairie Weather

Not another word about Hillary. This says it all.

In "Why I Like Hillary:  She's a Bloodthirsty Monster," Ken Silverstein has been making some positive statements about Hillary that got him a pile of wrathful responses from anti-Hillary readers of his columns at Harper's.  He reprints one response from a reader who wishes to remain anonymous.  The letter perfectly expresses this Prairie Weather's view of Hillary Clinton, Bill, and bygone boomer politics. 

I think, as is often the case with political leaders, people are using Hillary Clinton as a random “projection field” for their own read on how the system should work. That is to say—as I think I’ve mentioned to you before—the strongest segment of Clinton’s base seems to me to be the people who want to re-fight the battles of the 90s: to punish the Republicans at the polls, to strong-arm them in Congress, to dilate on all the noble liberal motives that were thwarted by Gingrich and company. While I sympathize with and in some ways share these impulses, I also think they’re spectacularly ill-suited to this political moment, when even stout conservative partisans concede that they’re likely to lose ground in both the House and Senate, and the Democrats have the wind at their backs.

Put in simplest terms, I think Obama understands this moment in a way that Hillary doesn’t (and cannot afford to) understand. Hillary’s skill set, like that of her husband, works only when she can present herself as beleaguered, hemmed in by irrational opponents who deride her personally. It’s true that I find such politics distasteful—both the dumb-ass pursuit of centrist Democrats pushing a Republican agenda in power as though they were some kind of violent cohort of secular socialist revolutionaries, and the no-less-oafish effort to depict conservative political power as a dark mystical force that can be defeated only by an authentic battle-tested victim of the right’s predations (or a bloodthirsty monster, if you will).                                                                                                                  
What’s frustrating in all this is that it seems almost beside the point to object to Hillary’s candidacy—which I most emphatically do—on grounds of her policy positions. There’s her purist posturing on the health-care mandate she all but single-handedly destroyed in 1993; her pandering on the “gas tax holiday”; and—worst of all in my book—her hollow symbolic pose as a fire-breathing populist when she actively backed all sorts of worker-damaging policies in the White House, from the ratification of NAFTA to the repeal of Glass–Steagall.                                                                                                                     
A lesser but still baleful strain of her ideology is what a friend of mine calls “pedo-centric liberalism”: the effort to define liberal governance as an extended exercise in kiddie protection. Hence, her epically time-wasting hearings in the Senate (abetted by that equally self-regarding thug Lieberman) on the graphic content of videogames; hence, her long tutelage at the child-fetishizing feet of Marion Wright Edelman. I’ve got nothing against kids per se, mind you—it’s just that their recruitment as “poster children” in the effort to resuscitate liberal politics diminishes both them and whatever remains of liberal thinking and legislating in these dark times. It’s also empirically untrue that this generation of children is in some grave moral peril thanks to the digital gadgets they covet. There’s no shortage of real problems—like trade, energy policy, the real costs of environmental upgrades, a national industrial policy—that the Dems haven’t even started to address in any elementary fashion. As Roger Waters said, leave those kids alone.

At the end of the day, I don’t give a shit whether candidate A or candidate B has a self-image as a fighter, a reformer, a hope-pusher, or what have you. I just care about their ability to deliver some semblance of economic equity while forthrightly acknowledging that imperialism in the service of daft efforts to re-engineer parts of the world and systems of belief we know nothing about is a really, really bad idea. (Don’t get me started on Hillary’s mind-bending efforts to reel back her 2002 vote on the Iraq use of force resolution without conceding it was a mistake.) Obama, while no angel himself, stands a far better chance of delivering on some of these basic agenda items, by virtue of record, temperament and—most of all, I think—his salutary impatience with the dorm-room tenor of Boomer politics. Also—no small thing, this—he’s shown a striking ability to bring more people into the party. Hillary at best mobilizes a pre-existing Dem base that is, in all sorts of demographic measures, shrinking. If you cleave to the sentimental notion that the Dems should be the party of the ordinary people’s interests, counterposed to the G.O.P.’s standing as the party of money and business, then you want candidates at the top of the ticket who can use a broader voting base to fight the influence of today’s robber-baron class.

Anyway, this is all pretty much academic, since Obama’s going to be the nominee, barring a Michigan-Florida floor fight that would basically destroy the party. I have no doubt that Clinton, bloodthirsty monster that she may be, is contemplating such a measure—just as I have no doubt that, should she go through with it, John McCain would have the presidency locked down by the time the Democrats leave Denver.

That "pedo-centric liberalism" should raise a few hackles.  But the writer has nailed it.   Perhaps one might add that American pedo-centrism may just be another symptom of our desire to remain children ourselves all our lives. Not just aging kids with youthful, vitamin-buttressed bods, but with the kind of immunity from accountability we give our children.  These are not the people you want to lead the fight against "the influence of today's robber-baron class." 

It would be nice to have a leader who's  progressive, adult, open-minded and (please god) not a liar.

No matter what happens in the fall, if Mr. Obama goes on to win the nomination, he will be remembered as the candidate who beat the Clintons. ...NYTimes ...

He got a lot of help from the Clintons themselves and from anti-Bush voters of all three major political affiliations.

Avoid these weeds unless you're a dedicated political botanist, okay?

Five Thirty Eight dot com lays out the minutiae of power shifts within the Democratic party that are interesting, to say the least.  How are Clinton and Obama doing in the tough Congressional districts across the country, the districts "with a freshman Democratic member of Congress* but that voted for Bush in 2004"? 

In fact, Clinton is a winner.  On the whole, Clinton has done better in the more important Congressional districts while Obama has done better in states with competitive Senate races and is way ahead in states with gubernatorial elections coming up.

It's worth keeping track of the shifts in power in these House and Senate seats with the help of the work done by Five Thirty Eight.   There really is some substance to Clinton's claims that she has a broader base of power.  But these things change.  Superdelegates have already been switching their allegiance in substantial numbers.  In the same way, whole districts can and doubtless will shift as one or another candidate gains in national prominence and respect -- or just looks like a winner.  Following these shifts gives us a sense of the kind of support a Democratic president -- Obama -- can count on in the next Congress.
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*Five Thirty Eight muddles terms here.  Too many of us are saying "Congress" when we mean the House of Representatives (as distinct from the Senate).  Congress is both houses.  Looks like Five Thirty Eight means "freshman Democratic member of the House."

DOD official "repudiated" over role in trials

In a rebuke, a military judge has disqualified a key Pentagon general from any role overseeing the Guantánamo trial of Osama bin Laden's driver, saying he doubted the general's impartiality in the case.

The judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, ordered the Pentagon's general counsel to assign a new official to oversee the trial in place of Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W.Hartmann, the Defense Department's legal adviser for military commissions.

The decision is a key one. In addition to overseeing the prosecution, Hartmann also had the power to decide how much would be spent on defense experts, travel and staff that might be need by Hamdan's four-attorney legal team, including a staff psychiatrist.

Allred issued the 13-page ruling Friday, a little more than a week after lawyers for the driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 36, of Yemen, called witnesses to testify that during nearly a year as legal adviser Hartmann had pressured for swifter, more numerous prosecutions at the commissions.

Hamdan's trial is presently slated to open June 2 as the first full U.S. war crimes tribunal since World War II.

The outcome of this tribunal should be very interesting.  The "disqualification" of Hartmann is an embarrassment to the Pentagon and to the administration in its last days.  With a constitutional lawyer in the White House after January, we may finally learn the extent to which the current administration has been responsible for serial violations of both the Constitution and international law.  Hartmann, an advocate for swift trials weighted against justice, is just another of the serial violators.

The appalling logic of the "surge"

One of several perverse elements of the U.S. presence in Iraq is that the presence itself is, at least in part, a cause of violent conflict in Iraq. The big achievement of the past 18 months, after all, has been to convince many Sunni insurgents to stop allying with Al-Qaeda in Iraq. But the alliance with AQI only commenced in the first place because Sunni Arab groups wanted to take up arms against the American occupation and were seeking allies in that cause. Now our guns are aimed at the Sadrists because they want us to leave. And naturally, we can't leave until we've achieved "victory" defined as killing everyone who wants us to leave. ... Matt Yglesias in The Atlantic ...

It's all about timing

Frank Rich thinks Obama is a pretty smart politician, but not that smart.  Timing has a lot to do with it.

Mr. Obama hardly created this moment, with its potent brew of Bush loathing and sweeping generational change. He simply had the vision to tap into it. Running in 2008 rather than waiting four more years was the single smartest political decision he’s made (and, yes, he’s made dumb ones too). The second smartest was to understand and emphasize that subterranean, nearly universal anticipation of change rather than settle for the narrower band of partisan, dyspeptic Bush-bashing. We don’t know yet if he’s the man who can make the moment — and won’t know unless he gets to the White House — but there’s no question that the moment has helped make the man.

Well, okay.  His timing has been damn good.  And he can spot a political trend a mile off, use it to his (and our) advantage.

For five years boomers have been asking, “Why are the kids not in the streets screaming about the war the way we were?” The simple answer: no draft. But as Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais show in “Millennial Makeover,” their book about the post-1982 American generation, that energy has been plowed into quieter social activism and grand-scale social networking, often linked on the same Web page. The millennials’ bottom-up digital superstructure was there to be mined, for an amalgam of political organizing, fund-raising and fun, and Mr. Obama’s camp knew how to work it. The part of the press that can’t tell the difference between Facebook and, say, AOL, was too busy salivating over the Clintons’ vintage 1990s roster of fat-cat donors to hear the major earthquake rumbling underground.

Obama has the good fortune to be running against a group of moribund rightwingers who are convinced the old swift-boat tactics are good for another round.

...Tt’s even better news that so many pundits and Republicans bitterly cling to the delusion that the Karl Rove playbook of Swift-boating and race-baiting can work as it did four and eight years ago. You can’t surf to a right-wing blog or Fox News without someone beating up on Mr. Wright or the other predictable conservative piñata, Michelle Obama.

This may help rally the anti-Obama vote. But that contingent will be more than offset in November by mobilized young voters, blacks and women, among them many Clinton-supporting Democrats (and independents and Republicans) unlikely to entertain a G.O.P. candidate with a perfect record of voting against abortion rights. Even a safe Republican Congressional seat in Louisiana fell to a Democrat last weekend, despite a campaign by his opponent that invoked Mr. Obama as a bogeyman.

A few conservatives do realize the game has changed. George Will wrote last week that Mr. Obama was Reaganesque in the stylistic sense that “his manner lulls his adversaries into underestimating his sheer toughness — the tempered steel beneath the sleek suits.” John and Cindy McCain get it too, which is why both last week made a point (he on “The Daily Show,” she on “Today”) of condemning negative campaigning. But even if Mr. McCain keeps his word and stops trying to portray Mr. Obama as the man from Hamas, he can’t disown the Limbaugh axis of right-wing race-mongering. That’s what’s left of his party’s base.

Face it.  Obama is the first candidate in years -- maybe decades -- who is listening.  He knows how to use what he learns.  Like the most skilled politician, he knows timing and the underlying appeal of e pluribus unum. 

That's  something no presidential candidate has caught onto in more the four decades.  The Republicans, desperate for power and respectability after the Nixon debacle, thought the way to power was through division.  Their support came from a shrinking demographic, their power fueled by the largest portion of the nation's wealth.  Their leadership has been imperious, paranoid, and secretive.  McCain, an old-timer, is stuck in a time-warp with "the Limbaugh axis of right-wing race-mongering. That’s what’s left of his party’s base."

The Democrats have moved away from right and the divisiveness.  Their energy comes increasingly from progressives, younger voters, disenchanted moderate Republicans, the educated, the technocrats, the social activists, and the old left.

...  As long as the likely Democratic nominee keeps partying like it’s 2008 while everyone else refights the battles of yesteryear, he will continue to be underestimated every step of the way.

How Barack Obama became a skilled politician

He made all the right choices.  Smart and right.  The article in Sunday's New York Times lays out the paths Obama chose after law school.  It becomes clear right away that he was a natural politician, but one blessed with good judgment and people skills. 

He ran for Congress; he led a successful voter registration drive; he was invited to join the University of Chicago Law School.  He was picked up by a civil rights law firm whose partners and associates gave him entree into the world of Democratic activists and access to people who became some of his most important supporters.

“It was the ultimate good-guy network,” Don Rose, a longtime Democratic political consultant, said of the law firm, and the choice sent a signal that Mr. Obama was “allying himself with the independents, which is what you have to be if you’re going to be elected from the Hyde Park area.”

Inevitably, of course, the same network of people also had members like Weathermen Ayers and Dohrn, both of whom also taught at the University of Chicago, and, of course, Louis Farrakhan.

The Times article goes on to describe his first -- failed -- attempt to represent the district in Congress and his increasingly centrist (or perhaps independent) positions.  He stood against the Iraq invasion at a peace rally in Federal Plaza where he spoke.   But his unwillingness to condemn all war was not entirely popular.

The speech, friends say, was vintage Obama, a bold but nuanced message that has become the touchstone of his presidential campaign: While he said the Iraq war would lead to “an occupation of undetermined length with undetermined costs and undetermined consequences,” he was also careful to emphasize there were times when military intervention was necessary. “He has made it a mission to use language so it doesn’t alienate or castigate people with other points of view,” explained [one] friend ...

Having tried to play it down the middle on the Palestine-Israel issue, he's now carefully leaning towards Israel and losing some support because of it.  One Middle East scholar who expected more of Obama has been critical.

“I’m unhappy about the positions he’s taken, but I can’t say I’m terribly disappointed.” He added: “People think he’s a saint. He’s not. He’s a politician.”

Many of us would rather Obama's position were less favorable to Israel.  But most of us know that's political suicide in the US.  Better to avoid confrontation now.  Better to wait until one's political position is strong enough to take a more principled stand.  But it will be one of the test issues in this campaign and, if he wins the presidency, in his prospects for a two-term presidency.

Clinton's little engines that won't admit they couldn't

You may not like Hillary Clinton much, but you have to grant she's not stupid.  So why is she hanging on so tenaciously?  McClatchy's report on a "desperate Clinton arguing on" may reveal the answer.

Clinton campaign strategist Geoff Garin and communications director Howard Wolfson, speaking to a breakfast meeting with reporters, repeated recent Clinton campaign assertions that the delegate majority is 2,209 to shoot down speculation that Clinton would drop out of the race after her expected defeat of Obama in West Virginia on Tuesday. Previously, Democrats had said 2,025 delegates would be needed to win, a number Obama is likely to reach on May 20, after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries. ...

... Clinton also is lagging in the pledged delegate count and is short on campaign cash. Still, her advisers laid out a strategy in which her path to the nomination depends on wooing working-class, rural whites and seniors and pushing for the seating of delegates from Michigan and Florida.

Gee, if you were Garin or Wolfson and your credibility as indispensable campaign strategists was on the line, you'd want to play this out to whatever looks like a win for you, if not for your candidate, wouldn't you?  Just move the goal posts again.  Twist the DNC's arm.  Declare West Virginia a swing state.  Play that frayed race card one more time.

Isn't is possible that Wolfson and Garin -- guys who've taken one of the most "inevitable" presidential candidates and helped to turn her into an embarrassed and discredited loser  -- want to play this out until they can make themselves look good enough to be hired again? 

T'hell with the Clintons (they've goofed over and over again).  Geoff and Howie want a future.

So. Now what happens with Florida and Michigan?

Excerpt from a discussion this morning on NPR's Diane Rehm show with Doyle McManus, LA Times; Katty Kay, BBC; and Roger Simon, Politico.

Diane Rehm:  What happens on May 31st when the Democratic party Rules Committee hears challenges to the decision to take away Florida and Michigan's convention delegates? 

Katty Kay:  The truth is, we don't know yet what happens.  There does seem to be an agreement on the Michigan delegates...

Diane Rehm:  ...What kind of an agreement?

Katty Kay:  The deal is to split them 69 for Hillary Clinton and 59 for Barack Obama.

Diane Rehm:  Why?

Katty Kay:  It gives her the majority, which she got in Michigan.  But it also recognizes the fact this his name was not on the ballot.  He picks up all of those people who voted "uncommitted."  That mythical person out there that the opponents said you had to vote for!  He picked up... I think it was 39% that voted uncommitted in Michigan?

Roger Simon:  Yes.

Katty Kay:  And so he's actually getting a little bit more than 39% in proportion of the delegates.  It recognizes that he was not on the ballot but it also recognizes that she had a victory in Michigan.  What we haven't got yet -- though we hear it's happening and there are discussions underway -- is what sort of resolution happens in Florida.  The key about Florida is that Barack Obama really needs to reach out to Florida Democrats.  He needs to show that he 's willing and that he's going to try to have them seated at the convention.  Because he has a problem with many of the constituents in Florida.  He has a problem with Jewish voters.  He has a problem with Latino voters.  He didn't campaign in Florida.  He didn't win the election down there.  I think he now feels he's in the position -- because he's looking likely to be the nominee -- that in victory he can be magnanimous. 

Roger Simon:  I would not be too optimistic about the Rules and By-Laws Committee actually accepting any of these compromises.  What we're talking about is a group of four prominent Democratic National Committee members in Michigan working out a compromise which they say is workable.  The problem is:  the Rules and By-Laws Committee is the group that punished these states in the first place.  The states have done nothing to solve the problem for which they've been punished.  Both states are absolutely unrepentant about what they did.  In fact, the Michigan delegation is sort of in-your-face about it.  They keep sending these insulting notes to the Democratic National Committee -- the Rules Committee --  saying, "You didn't punish New Hampshire!  How can you punish us?  Here's our compromise and you take that."  Well, there's really no rationale to accept any of these compromises.  The fact is, Florida and Michigan went too early, were stripped of their delegates, and now they're saying, "Seat us anyway!"  If the Rules and By-Laws Committee goes along with this -- and they might -- how will they maintain any kind of order in 2012?

Katty Kay:  Except that Howard Dean has said publicly that he wants those delegates seated at the convention.  And the only way to do that is to come up with some sort of compromise which does go against the rules and which Florida and Michigan signed onto and then broke.  Everybody accepts that.  But for political expedience, it might be worth circumventing the rules.  And the question is going to be, does Howard Dean have the clout over the Rules and By-Laws Committee to force them to accept that.

Doyle McManus:  As Katty said earlier, Barack Obama -- who by then, we think, will be the presumptive nominee -- has a powerful incentive to do something nice for Florida.  My guess would be a bit of Kabuki in which the Committee punishes and Barack Obama intervenes to "commute the sentence." 

Roger Simon:  "At the convention," though, does not necessarily mean May 31st at the Rules and By-Laws Committee meeting.  Everyone recognized that these delegations would eventually be seated because we all expected to have an early victor and it wouldn't make any difference.  Seating them in such a way as to give one candidate the advantage -- Hillary Clinton is hopeful they'd be seated in such a way as to give her the advantage -- is probably something much more controversial.   There are two problems.  Not only the problem we talked about but that both contests, beyond being banned, were flawed.  As has been endlessly repeated, nobody  campaigned in Florida, there was only one major name on the ballot in Michigan.  How, then, do you look at those results and say, "Yes, let's take these results"?

Diane Rehm:  So what would happen at the convention if neither delegation were seated?

Doyle McManus:  Both of those states... Democrats in both of those states would be very cheesed off.   We'd spend a lot of the convention talking about that instead of talking about what the Obama campaign would like us to talk about.

Diane Rehm:  But wouldn't it risk alienating those voters with the 44 of 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House?

Doyle McManus:  That's right.  That's why those delegates will be there.  They may be there with 50% of their votes counted or 66%.  But they'll be there.