Active passivism

The legend goes that Gandhi when asked about passive non-violence responded that he does not call for "passive" anything, but rather active non-violence. The netroots, perhaps because they are easily embarrassed by such plainly-spoken pap, seem to choose the more sophisticated approach of active passivism (how else can one describe the timid pragmatism of placing all of one's eggs -- i,e., "activism" -- in the Democratic Party?)! So we hear from Chris Bowers (MyDD :: Democrats, Activists and Ending the War):

Direct Activism. There is already a decent amount being done on this front, including mass protests, the "virtual march," and occupying offices. In my opinion, however, virtually all of this will be unsuccessful either in pressuring Democrats to do more or in convincing the progressive base that not enough is being done, unless it is tied to a single legislative plan of attack. What I mean is that this activism needs to be geared toward pressuring reps to pass the Murtha plan, and to rewrite the AUMF. If the direct activism is out of synch with the legislative drift, it is hard to see how the former can impact the latter.



One problem with this is that dramatic activism, such as occupying congressional offices, does not tend to be done on behalf of gradualist policy, such as rewriting the AUMF or the Murtha plan. I actually got into an argument about this with someone as Dailykos yesterday, who was arguing on behalf of occupying congressional offices but simultaneously arguing against the Murtha plan because it didn't go far enough. It strikes me as self-defeating for anti-war activists to engage in activism opposing a plan to end the war. My dream would be direct activism of all sorts targeted against Democratic members of Congress who are not supporting Murtha's plan and / or the rewrite of the AUMF. However, I am not particularly confident that is going to happen.



I also worry that one of the reasons the left does not want to engage in activism on behalf of the gradualist plans to end the war is because, in the event that the plans fail to pass, they don't want to be tarnished with those failures themselves. Better to be tagged with a plan that occupies the moral highground but that never had any chance of passing, than with a compromise plan that had a real chance to pass but did not.

To summarise:

• Impacting "legislative drift" is the primary goal and all activism needs to be tied into "pressuring reps" towards this goal, in particular this goal identified by a single proposal.
• Anything else is "dramatic", not just direct. A "gradualist policy" is the vehicle of choice and a particular plan is the expression of that.
• The impulse to engage in any activism other t han the prescribed one, gradualism, is mere righteousness, as opposed to the allegedly feasible gradualist goals.

There is a way out of this self-inflicted wordsmithing paradox. If your conclusions seem more self-serving than accurate, its possibly that your assumptions are wrong. For example, the goal of direct activism can be anti-war without having to support a particular anti-war plan. It is the assumption of the supremacy of gradualism that creates the perceived conflict between direct activism and opposition to a particular gradualist plan. Similarly, it is not righteousness (the desire to occupy a moral high-ground) that necessarily motivates such activism. Instead, it could be the realisation of the limits, if not futility, of active passivism or gradualism. After all, gradualism has not, by the author's own admission (and search for a suitable tactic in the post under question), met with much success in this matter.



That the vaunted compromises of gradualism are unsatisfactory is reflected in the laments on the lack of attention from the party machine to the base, and the desire to somehow end "the grace period".



Chris Bowers writes (in the same piece):

However, I am not particularly confident that is going to happen.

And that is the crippling limitation of the espoused gradualism. We are advised to finesse our way towards our ultimate goals, but as LeftItch folk wisdom goes, nobody ever finessed their wanking into real sex (though in this case, perhaps the opposite is true, for the Democrats have made a hobby out of fucking the base over). We are leftists! The probability that anything worthwhile that we desire is going to come about, at the time of conception of our goal, is quite slim. What makes it happen is our activism, and what fuels that is the strength we draw from our "moral high ground". What gives us confidence that something might happen is the efforts of those who acted before us when there was not much confidence regarding the same effect. Or as the guy said, black people didn't get the right to vote by voting. Well, I have drifted a bit, I am afraid. So be it.

The Democratic Incredibles

One can hope that the species will at some future date attain a sustainable level of wisdom, and at that point, explanations will perhaps be available for the formation and resilience of cults. Until then however, we shall remain nonplussed by such anomalies as the blind faith, found in some segments of the liberati, in a politician like Barack Obama. Markos quotes (Daily Kos: No traction for anti-war Democrats? Hogwash) Des Moines Register's David Yepsen:

[E]verybody wants out of Iraq and bashes the war. The question is finding a credible way to do it, and Democrats are having trouble agreeing on a plan.

And responds:

Does Yepsen really think that Obama's Iraq message is materially different than Vilsack's used to be? The difference being that Obama has credibility on Iraq. Vilsack had none.

The question that is begged is: Obama's credibility in the eyes of whom? Certainly not those interested in the record and historical analysis. Writing for the Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford gives ample evidence of the weathercock that is Obama (Barack Obama and the Winds of War):

One year after his bland and idea-less speech on Iraq to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (see Obama Mouths Mush on War, December 1, 2005), Obama returned to mush more of the same to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. The U.S. should begin to move towards a phased redeployment of American troops from Iraqi soil, he told the business-oriented crowd. Since the objective reality on the ground in Iraq and in U.S. public opinion had changed dramatically in the intervening year resulting in Democratic capture of the House and Senate Obamas failure to substantively revise his previous, timid prescriptions actually amounts to a turn to the right.

In contrast to Sen. Feingold’s proposal that U.S. troops “redeploy from Iraq” by mid-summer, and Congressman Jack Murtha’s proposal that Washington “immediately redeploy U.S. troops consistent with the safety of U.S. forces,” Sen. Obama calls for “a phased redeployment of U.S. troops from Iraq on a timetable that would begin in four to six months…. Such a timetable may not need to begin in 2007, but begin it must.”

It gets worse! Apparently in an attempt to go mano-a-mano with Hillary (The responsibility of ineffectuals) on the macho lecturing front, Obama, as Ford notes, scolds the Iraqis:

“To reach such a solution, we must communicate clearly and effectively to the factions in Iraq that the days of asking, urging, and waiting for them to take control of their own country are coming to an end. No more coddling, no more equivocation."

One way to measure his credibility is to see how well Obama's triangulation corresponds to the wishes of his constituents, and fortunately, Ford gives us the answer:

Just two weeks before Obama delivered his pablum-filled Iraq speech, his constituents across the Illinois voted overwhelmingly to stop the war and “immediately begin an orderly and rapid withdrawal.” In Chicago, the ballot measure passed by a whopping 80-to-20 percent. Similar results were tallied in suburban Cook County, Evanston and Oak Park – wherever the measure was on the ballot.

The voters, from both political parties, are way ahead of Obama and his fellow senatorial shufflers. Nationwide, more than 70 percent of Democrats – the people who nominate the party’s presidential candidates – favor an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. To lead, Obama would have to run to catch up.

It should come as no surprise to us then that Obama voted NO on the Kerry troop deployment amendment (Senator Obama on Troop Redeployment Amendment). Here is Project Vote Smart's synopsis of the amendment:

Vote to adopt an amendment that requires the President to withdraw troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007 and states that some forces shall remain in Iraq to train Iraqi security forces, conduct counterterrorism operations and protect U.S. personnel and facilities.

Leave alone attempts at credibility, Obama appears to have underestimated the public in what is edible on the matter of Iraq. Perhaps in 2008, the public shall return the favour and mark their ballot: Eat me!

In it only to win it?

One more thing needs to be added to the previous post. You can call yourself a leftist, liberal, or progressive in the [decreasing] order in which you are threatened by the right's stigmatisation of us. But you cannot call yourself any one of these things if you are concerned with nothing more than winning, at the end of the day. We are the minority, by the very nature of things. No "50 state strategy" or "frame" is going to change that. And that status is something that we should embrace gladly, for it means that we are pushing the limits of human socio-political thought (ethics, morality, liberty, and all those words and ideas that we should find no embarrassment in).

Without doubt, it is necessary to truck with various creatures and entities in pursuit of furthering our ideas. But it is a pathetic betrayal of principles to drown in such compromises, to the point where we are able to write that someone's height or similar factors are legitimate targets because of some alleged attitude of the person. We oppose discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual identity, race (and I would assume other factors such as height) based on fundamental principles. And these principles are what we are willing to abandon in order to dismiss a candidate who is principled because his presence does not suit our agenda.

We might as well go the whole hog then! Republicans, much more worthy targets than Kucinich, have candidates who are Italian American, or Catholic, or women, or black (for Presidential and Senate races). Why not employ anti-Catholic, racist, sexist criteria too, to shoot these people down?

An embarassment of cliches

As is the case with teenagers of all ages, a MissLaura (Daily Kos: The Two Faces of Dennis Kucinich) is embarrassed by the expressions of adults. The particular bit from Kucinich that turns her pink with shame:

"Fear," he said, causes us to be "disconnected from our ability to make peace with our brothers and sisters" and stunts our spiritual, emotional, and social growth.

If this is fodder for embarrassment, one fears the worst if and when MissLaura encounters orators such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King! For a generation of online activists that came of age during (and as part of) the Dean debacle, this is rather surprising sensitivity! Or is such sensitivity the result of the scream that displaced Munch's creation in popularity?

And if Kucinich's sort of clear communication is "New Age pap" the opposite of that must be high erudition and we are offered some examples:

He was effective at answering right-wing frames, as when asked about the financial burdens of social programs.

Frames, in case you are not yet in receipt of your Journal of Bad Pomo, 2006 edition, is the new buzz word, the new "paradigm". As Georges Seurat might have said, it's all about the frames and you put the monkeys in the right frame and they ring the right bell, or rather pull the right lever. The opposite of New Age indeed.

Here is another one:

There is a significant role for such issue-oriented candidates and campaigns.

Alas this reassuring promise, that such old fashioned ideas as "issues" still have a significant role, is a fleeting one. The question arises immediately:

With long-shot candidates, though, the fundamental question is what role they fill in the race as a whole.

Every line provides further relief from New Age pap. The above for instance educates us that the fundamental question with regard to candidates is what role they play in a race. This perhaps will be taught to future generations as the "Democracy as a Race" Frame. And when poor old Kucinich is evaluated using this hard-nosed criteria, he is found much wanting, due to the alleged conviction he holds that "he can win". This makes Kucinich a "candidate-centered" ... candidate? Just like the others we suppose, who are less susceptible to such criticism, for they spout less New Age pap (and more "my God is an awesome God" analysis), and enjoy lesser disadvantages:

That being the case, the effectiveness of his individual advocacy, the New Agey stuff, his height, all become relevant - because he's made it about him.

So, let us follow this logic to its natural end. Hillary Clinton is clearly out too, for she is a "candidate-centered" candidate who has made it about herself, and her gender becomes relevant. Obama? Candidate centered. Out: because his half-blackness becomes relevant. And so on.

(There is, one might as well add, no evidence provided to sustain the claim that Kucinich has "made it about him[self]").

When Nader ran for President, among the various complaints against him was that he could have done it within the process. Participated in the Democratic primaries. The hollowness of such pleas is made obvious by the treatment of Kucinich, exemplified by the above.

A liberal dose of authority

Each new day brings news of growing discontent among particular subgroups in the right-wing coalition. From Paul Craig Roberts to old man history Fukuyama himself, conservatives have not just distanced themselves from the hideous pestilence that now rules over us, but also, in the case of some, offered stinging criticism. Despite this fissure, it is true that a large part of the party faithful on either side think and act if not in terms of power at least in terms of misplaced loyalty or hope. Under the title "Why Giuliani is Winning" we find on MyDD this exposition of the above point with regard to the Republicans:

Like a lot of us, he thinks that Republicans base their political judgment on issues, ie. gay rights, abortion, national defense, taxes, etc. He makes the same mistake that a lot of Democrats make, assuming that conservatives think the way that we do. They don't. They are authoritarians. Gay marriage, abortion, taxes, national security, none of it really matters to them. What they are looking for is an authoritarian to look like he's taking charge, and the way an authoritarian takes charge is to attack liberals and stomp on people who aren't like them.

Authoritarians! Take charge by attacking liberals! Stomp on people who aren't like them! Hold me back before I do something wild!

MyDD, with all its contempt for "single-issue" thinkers, and its unflinching focus on Iraq (as the mother of all issues? if you will forgive the pun), had this to write about Democratic candidate (the only "issues" candidate at this point) Dennis Kucinich:

Yea, he's mostly been right about Iraq

Their conclusion about Kucinich?

This is a trophy candidate who doesn't deserve a second chance

Ah yes, indeed! No stomping of liberals who aren't like us, here, folks! Keep it moving. It's all about the issues!

Minority retort

For centuries, Divide and Conquer has been an effective strategy of the powerful, and nobody does it better than our very own GOP. Those seeking evidence need look no further than the erosion of the union vote. There are some limits, however, to how much you can get an individual or group to act against their own interests. Unsurprisingly therefore, there was much skepticism when the irrepressible right-wingers embarked on appropriating the black vote. The wedge (apart from a rather lame "what have they done for you lately?" argument) was to be "family values". Seeing their own jaundice reflected in their fellow believers, they appealed to general revulsion against a myriad of "social issues", primary among them the permissibility of two XY-chromosomoids to get it on. Nobody, including our friends at MyDD, are buying it (More Evidence Blacks, Jews Won't Soon Jump Ship from Democratic Party):

Of course non of the poppycock about Jews and African-Americans switching their allegiances from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party was proved to be founded in reality. According to exit polling from 2004, John Kerry received about 88 percent of the African-American vote and 74 percent of the Jewish vote...

But whence the introduction of Jews into this picture? That comes from the fact that Jews in general resisted similar seductions from the party of bigotry. However, there is a difference: the wedge, in the case of Jews, is one grounded in reality -- the issue of Israel. As MyDD's own quotation of Gallup shows, Jewish support for Democrats (thankfully) does not correlate (tightly) to their position on Iraq:

The greater opposition to the war is not simply a result of high Democratic identification among U.S. Jews, as Jews of all political persuasions are more likely to oppose the war than non-Jews who share the same political leanings.

The corollary to this is the possible alterations in Jewish opinion in response to further isolation of Israel (as the level and number of atrocities mount) and any possible progressive influence on the Democratic party that could swing it away from its current pandering attitude (we refer you to Hillary Clinton). The community hotshots are already halfway across the line, and for that I refer you to Lieberman, Dershowitz (who is turning loonier by the day) and Friedman (What was it? Given war a chance?). And since we are talking black and Jews, I will even throw in a Eli Weisel: "racism as such has vanished from the American scene".

The responsibility of ineffectuals

The insightful young turks who gave us live coverage of the DNC earlier, through which we learned that Kucinich is a "trophy candidate", have dialed it down a bit sadly. Downright sober, in fact:

Liveblogging the Carson City AFSCME Forum

To lead, Stephanopoulos asks Clinton about her position on Iraq, why her vote wasn't a mistake. Clinton states that she has "taken responsibility for" her vote, that no one should be let off the hook for their vote.

That's awfully commendable of old Hillary to take responsibility, sort of like old George does when one of his pet projects fails. Now, C-Span, in its slightly more radical coverage, provided details from Hillary on Iraq and responsibility. A view that can be summarised thus:

It's the Iraqis stupid! That's right, boys and girls. Hillary is mad at the Iraqis for being irresponsible about this whole matter of getting themselves killed in the hundreds of thousands. She is tired, comrades, of "our boys and girls" doing all the hard work. No worries: she has a solution. Let's cut off their funding she kindly submits! That will teach them, yeah! Getting raped, starving, losing your entire family... not that much fun any more is it? Here's the good lady:

My legislation will also say to the Iraqis: Enough! We are not going to fight your battles, we are not going to send our young men and women in. You have to be on the front lines of your own defence. And as far as I am concerned, people ask me, "Why don't you just cut money for American troops?". I want to cut money for Iraqi troops. [applause]

Think you can stomach it? Watch it at C-Span (caution: the link is to an annoying RTSP URL which is how C-Span links it -- actually its worse but I shall spare you the details). Found a better link.

Of brats and supermen...

Children are easily puzzled by this bit of mathematical trickery: three typically late tenants surprise the landlord by paying their $100 rent (each) on time. Eager to encourage this behaviour, the landlord hands $50 to one of them, to be shared equally by all three. The recipient, a clever fellow, pockets $20, and splits the $30 remaining between himself and the other two tenants. Now for the puzzle: Each tenant has effectively paid $90 thus making the total $270. The dishonest chap has $20 in his packet bringing the total up to $290. What happened to the remaining $10?

Centrist "pragmatist" Democrats, it seems, are equally gullible where we to substitute, in the puzzle above, "$10" with "Florida votes". Where, they question, did the few votes that cost Gore Florida in 2000 go? Their answer: To Nader, of course!

Here is Crooks and Liars:

Whether or not he wants to accept responsibility for it, Nader's campaign arguably did contribute significantly to Bush's ultimate placement in the White House.

They go on to quote the San Francisco Chronicle:

[..]"To an awful lot of people, Ralph Nader appears to be threatening, once again, to play the role of a spoiled brat whose purpose in life appears to be … electing Republicans by draining off votes from Democrats,'' said (Phil) Trounstine, who heads the San Jose State Center for Policy and Research.

Nader's presidential aspirations are viewed by many as evidence that he is on "an enormous ego trip with potentially destructive impact,'' Trounstine said.

Nader's is the subject of a searing new documentary, "An Unreasonable Man,'' which chronicles his early work as a consumer advocate and the turn in his career toward presidential politics. In the film, critics lambaste Nader, the author of "Unsafe at Any Speed,'' for abandoning his consumer advocacy, and suggest he is the ultimate egotist.

Does one assume such blatant hand-waving and ad hominem constitutes a surrender on the part of the expositor? That might be hasty in this day of Bush-Rove-DoubleSpeak. So, let us take these children seriously! Perhaps we should remind that the title "An Unreasonable Man" is from George Bernard Shaw:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

One need travel no further than the website for the documentary to find the attribution to G.B.Shaw. Now, Shaw, I am afraid (for the chroniclers of all things San Franciscan), is talking about a Superman, not a brat, while laying down some maxims for revolutionists. Revolutionists, not bloggers like you and me. Centrist Democrats one is left to surmise, identify with the more conservative Chesterton on the matter of revolutions.

Only in a place of pretend democracy and a time when draft-dodger question triple-amputee veterans might we come across such a fantastic notion that an individual participating in a democratic process is an "egotist" and a "spoiled brat" -- spoiled by dedicating an entire lifetime to a wide range of causes a tiny bit larger than blogging, perhaps?

The dismissal of democracy is unsurprising, for the illogic is not an insult of Nader alone, but of the public (the public being the democracy is of and for, if such things still make sense) as well. For the assumption is that Nader voters would have flocked to Gore were it not for the vile snake-charmer brat.

Insulting the public is to be the national sport, after all. Iraq and 9/11? Why not. WMD? Sure! Mushroom clouds! Capabilities and plans for WMD program activities! If all that is grist for the mill at a time we "no longer worry" about bin Laden, why not "potential destructive impact" of an egotist brat as a pretext to perpetuate the actual destructive impact of a duopolistic system tending further right at each juncture (the symptoms of which being the likes of Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman, as also such ugliness as Welfare Reform).

The mundane truth is that Nader is a mirror to the spoilt brats. His lifetime of activism an unreasonable intrusion of potentials on the actuality of a life behind a keyboard and a lifeless party.

A paralysing loss of memory

Our comrades at MyDD quote the New York Times (see below) with distaste, in a post titled Perhaps it's Time for The New York Times to Retake Congress 101:

Yet after six weeks in power, the Democratic-led House and Senate have yet to agree on a final bill. The obstacle is the same one that stymied Republicans time after time when they had control: paralyzingly thin margins in the Senate.

Jonathan Singer, of MyDD, lays bare the silliness of the NYT's reasoning that six weeks of power should suffice for the Democrats to produce and pass the relevant bill. What Singer and the NYT fail to note is that the Republicans were not much stymied by "thin margins" when they were in control. Let us review just a few of the greatest hits:

• The threat of the nuclear option against Democratic attempts at filibuster
• The "compromise" of the Gang of 14, result: confirmation of both Roberts and Alito (the latter of Concerned Alumni of Princeton fame, the concern being the grave danger of women entering the august institution)
• Extension of tax cuts, the so called Patriot Act
• The Torture Bill of 2006
• And that wonderful bit of midnight legislation: The Terri Schaivo Act

WireTap magazine sums it up rather neatly (along with providing other examples of the output of the wondrous 109th):

It could be argued that if the 109th Congress wasn't entangled in so many schemes, scams and sex scandals, it might actually be able to meet more and do a better job of helping the American population withstand a full frontal assault on their rights and checkbooks. But that would be jacking into the type of hyperreal matrix that talking heads and other media hacks love to fortify in lieu of stating the obvious, which is not so glamorous or complex.

The reality is this: The 109th Congress is far from a clot of "Do-Nothing" politicians. Having secured a majority in both houses and a strategical collusion with the executive branch, they have done something no other Congress has managed to do in American history: Give the president of the United States power and abilities -- to monitor, to prosecute, to incarcerate, to torture, to kill -- that approach those of the most totalitarian regimes in recent memory. It may not be 1948 or 1984 anymore, but the new millennium, with the help of America's elected representatives, is primed to look more and more like a pre-millennial dictatorship than ever. And for that, you can thank the fighting 109th, the most defeated Congress in American history.

See also: Matt Taibbi "Worst Congress Ever".

Obama and Lincoln: Kristol clear!

It is not entirely surprising that the younger Kristol stands accused of mugging reality liberally, but this bit (quoted and critiqued at Crooks and Liars) fails to back up the charge:

KRISTOL: We’re electing a war president in 2008. If I can go back to Obama and Lincoln for just one second, Lincoln’s “house divided” speech in 1858 was a speech saying we cannot live as a house divided on slavery. And he implicitly says we’ll have to fight a civil war if necessary on this.

Obama’s speech is a “can’t we get along” speech — sort of the opposite of Lincoln. He would have been with Stephen Douglas in 1858. Let’s paper over these differences, rise above politics and all get along.

C&L are understandably offended by the obvious strangeness of the suggestion that a black man would not fall on the anti-slavery side. The analogy Kristol is after, however, seems different and fairly sound: Lincoln went to war to unite the house on a principle (well, at least so the conventional story goes, and we shall adhere to it for this affair). If Kristol's summation of Obama's rather different attitude does not suffice, here is Obama's own web site:

Americans are tired of divisive ideological politics, which is why Senator Obama has reached out to Republicans to find areas of common ground. He has tried to break partisan logjams and take on seemingly intractable problems. During his tenure in Washington and in the Illinois State Senate, Barack Obama has accumulated a record of bipartisan success.

Lest we have lost track, a reminder: these are disturbing days. Illegal wars. Systemic corruption. Erosion of rights. To mention just three significant crises we live amidst. These one could parsimoniously presume are what Americans may be tired of. Ideology sounds like a 4-letter word only because of the way politicians like Obama use it. Without an ideology you stand on nothing. And that perhaps makes it possible to reach willy-nilly and make deals.

A Blogger's Apology

The saga of the blogger meltdown at Edwards HQ has taken a turn for the worse. Token street cred blogger #2 has now exited the building, causing much consternation among the rest of the blog world. In multiple posts ([1], [2]) the lads at MyDD have taken great umbrage to all the apologising, including that by Democratic candidates. Why cannot politics imitate the normalcy of the blog world, they bemoan! Digging deep into Greek etymology, Chris Bowers writes:

If you go back far enough, the etymology of the word "politics" derives from the Greek word polis, which simultaneously refers to a city and a sovereign governing body. It is in this way that politics can thus be seen not just as governance, but as the inevitable process of creating a means of working out relationships between a group of people who decide to live together. It is thus bitterly ironic that a process that is, at its deepest root, about finding ways for people to live together has become infested with utterly inhuman expectations and behavioral norms.

[...]

When we attack people for going off message, for not being 100% consistent with everything they have said in the past, or for saying something that others could potentially construe as offensive, we are attacking people for doing what pretty much everyone in the entire country does as a matter of course in our daily lives. We all do it, yet somehow in our contemporary political and media world we are eager to crucify people who do so in public.

[...]

People think that most politicians don't say anything meaningful because, well, most don't say anything meaningful for fear of going off message, contradicting themselves at some point down the road, or pissing anyone off.

Now these are the young gents who disdain all "single issues" in favour of electing Democrats. And as the Google-bombing and the colourful opinions demonstrate, tactics are the means to that end. We have therefore, Jerome Armstrong (of MyDD -- one of the big boobs?!), "live blogging" at the DNC meeting covering presidential candidates:

Kucinich: I lost all respect for Kucinich when told his Iowa supporters to caucus for Edwards the day before the caucus, and then went on to be contest the entire primary season. Kucinich lets you know he's married, and has mentioned his wife's name Elizabeth over a dozen times in his speech. Yea, he's mostly been right about Iraq, but this is a vanity candidate that doesn't deserve a second chance. At least he didn't segue into singing poetry like he did at the CA Democratic convention in '03.

Kucinich of course being the only candidate (and perhaps only member of Congress) who says meaningful things without worrying about "going off message". Compare against Obama with his "awesome God", Edwards on Iran, Hillary on pretty much everything. Unfortunately Kucinich's tactical action disqualifies him for any respect, reducing him to a trophy!

As an old adage here on LeftItch goes, you can only straddle the horns of the donkey for so long. The time has come, it seems from these laments, to choose between principled positions, or tactic and bluster. Principles don't put food on the table, as Patrick Ewing famously observed, and bluster has its merit. Choosing bluster is a smart move -- principles are tough beasts -- but if they be your thing, you have to be able to punch back at more than just a hapless ex-single congressperson who is "mostly right".

Left speechless

Here's how it happened: to beef up his net cred Edwards hires two bloggers. Blogging being what it is, it is not too long before someone digs up some colourful opinions by said bloggers from the past. Cue opportunist religious nut to jump in and threaten the pretty boy from Carolina (read the details at ABC News). Enter the rest of the blogosphere until we have MyDD -- don't get your hopes up, there be no big boobs to be had there -- challenging the "religious left" to counter the attack from their fellow fairy-tale believers:

MyDD :: Step Up, Religious Left

It's time for the religious left to step up and stop letting these bigots speak for them.

Yes indeed. But then again, when the non-religious left has this guy speak for them, or at least making the loudest noises, can you blame the religious left for lying low? It is not often that a fool comes around who can make us feel sympathetic and almost in agreement with a leader of the Christian right.

Full props nevertheless to the two ladies!

Barack: black enough?

Out in Amish country it is possible a few lucky souls have escaped the endless coverage of wunderkind Obama, but their ignorance is not to be blamed on the right-wing, which has grasped at the merest of straws (Did you know that his middle name is Zarqawi?) in valiant effort to discredit the young man. Crooks and Liars are peeved:

Crooks and Liars » Ann Coulter, Up To Her Usual Tricks

In reference to Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Coulter said that "the first black president should be an American black, and a Republican."

[...]

Stanley Crouch in the November 2, 2006, New York Daily News that "Obama did not — does not — share a heritage with the majority of black Americans, who are descendants of plantation slaves."

Dare I note that Coulter's statement, taken as a prediction (and ignoring the "American" part, which one has to learn to silently drop when parsing conservative text), is probably on the money? Young Barak, according to reliable anonymous sources, is not even a black dude. Henry Louis Gates is all the rage these days with his DNA analysis of Oprah's roots. In so doing, the Oprah fanboy has found his own ancestry including white people on more than one line. So, yeah, in that sense, perhaps we have already had a black president? And the Crouch fellow... he makes a class point doesn't he?

Neither Coulter nor her comrades will know truth if it popped out of their Adam's apples, but as the old saying goes, even two broken rights can clock in, every now and then.

[ Link ]

Flip Flop Flap

The smart fellas at ThinkProgress seem to have caught ye olde Maverick McCain in rapid reversal. Here is what they offer in evidence: They demonstrate that at first the man, nay saint, held:

MCCAIN: Took us a long time to get in the situation we’re in, and to say that — and somehow assume that in a few months, that things are going to get all better I think is not realistic.

Only to shortly thereafter opine:

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say it’s all in. How long are you going to give it to work?

MCCAIN: I think in the case of the Iraqi government cooperating and doing what’s necessary, we can know fairly well in a few months.

One can legitimately question whether one needs to deal fairly with hypocrites, but assuming one should, it need be noted that the Maverick has not really contradicted himself above. There is a slight difference between the first statement (which says things will not get better in a few months) and the second (which says that we can know if things will get better). The difference is probably a bit more significant than the old coot's positions on agents of intolerance.

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