Jun 11, 20080

Conservatives Complain GOP’s Earmark Plan Doesn’t Go Far Enough

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As House Republicans unveiled their economic agenda today, conservatives expressed disappointment that it does nothing to address earmark reform now and instead calls for an “immediate moratorium” in the future. The document was drafted to lay out the GOP’s agenda in January 2009 if Republicans reclaim control of the House.

Earmark critics, however, say that view is completely unrealistic. They think a total ban on earmarks must be instituted today because the chances of Republicans taking back the House are slim. “We need to lead by example and differentiate ourselves,” a conservative staffer told me. “The economic agenda today will allow earmarks this year and the next if Republicans do not win the House. No fundamental change from the status quo.”

The struggle over earmarks is reflected in the differing views of two GOP leaders: Republican Study Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Tex.) and Policy Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.). The Hill reported the conflict earlier this week with Hensarling demanding action now and McCotter opposed to a “one-size-fits-all ban.” In a memo released this afternoon, Hensarling reiterated his support for a ban. He could press the issue by bringing it to a conference-wide vote.

As I reported on RedState last night, the GOP’s economic agenda includes many conservative proposals, including a flat tax, free-market health care, entitlement reform, balanced budget and energy production. Yet earmarks remain a sticking point despite Minority Leader John Boehner’s attempt to reach a consensus.

Conservatives don’t dispute the laudable policy goals included as part of the economic agenda — many developed by the Republican Study Committee. But that’s no excuse to take a pass on earmark reform today. Although it remains a divisive issue for Republicans, Hensarling should keep fighting for a ban on pork-barrel projects. Boehner faces no easy task bringing the GOP together, but he should view this as an opportunity for the GOP to distinguish itself from Democrats in advance of November’s elections.

Hensarling’s memo to Republican Study Committee members is below.

Dear RSC Colleague—

Conference Leadership has just unveiled its Economic Reform Agenda. Incorporated within that agenda are all of the relevant points of the RSC’s 8-point Action Plan save one. For those who worked so hard on the RSC plan, I congratulate you. I believe it was an important contribution and catalyst to the Conference’s plan, and I ask that you thank Leader Boehner for incorporating most of our Action Plan.

The portion of the plan not included, as of now, is the call for an immediate and unilateral earmark moratorium to be enacted today. As you have heard me state before, without action today, I fear the American people will never learn our party has called for a moratorium, while the Democrats stand for business as usual on pork-barrel spending. I know there are a number of legitimate issues to be resolved, and I hope we can resolve them soon.

For your information, some press reports concerning the RSC’s role in this situation are misleading. To make it clear, most of our membership believe it will probably prove necessary to discuss and resolve this issue at a special conference to be scheduled soon. What is accurate, as described by CQ Today, is that, “Boehner and Hensarling were working to find ways to persuade more Republicans, to join them in taking a ‘no earmarks’ pledge.”

We will speak more of this at today’s meeting, and I again thank you for your help in this effort.

Yours respectfully,

JEB HENSARLING

Chairman of the Republican Study Committee

As House Republicans unveiled their economic agenda today, conservatives expressed disappointment that it does nothing to address earmark reform now and instead calls for an "immediate moratorium" in the future. The document was drafted to lay out the GOP's agenda in January 2009 if Republicans reclaim control of the House. Earmark critics, however, say that view is completely unrealistic. They think a total ban on earmarks must be instituted ... Read More

Jun 10, 20080

REDSTATE ROUNDTABLE #12: Is It Time To Bring Back Temperamental Conservatism?

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Dan McLaughlin: One of the criticisms being made against the various permutations of a new GOP agenda being circulated these days is that they are too small-bore, too modest and detail-oriented to compete with the broad “Hope and Change” themes of Barack Obama’s campaign. (See Patrick Ruffini’s critique).

At the same time, there’s a school of thought that says that George W. Bush has run into troubles in his presidency precisely when he was too ambitious, whether in his promotion of democracy in Iraq or his unsuccessful attempts to get Congress and the public behind sweeping reforms of Social Security and immigration policy, macro-initiatives that died a death by a thousand cuts from opponents on all sides. Critics have charged that the GOP under Gingrich and under Bush has abandoned Burkean modesty and incrementalism and bought into the rhetoric of revolution, which it then predictably fails to deliver for many of the same reasons why the Democrats have failed over the years to sell things like radical health care reform and gays in the military.

With Republicans likely to be playing defense on domestic policy over the next few years, I’ve been wondering if maybe it’s time, for tactical reasons, to give more weight to what I think of as temperamental conservatism over ideological conservatism - to argue at every turn for smaller, more modest reforms as opposed to sweeping plans to junk the tax code, abolish Cabinet-level departments, etc. On health care, for example, there remains a lot of public desire for change, but huge apprehension about radical change - and we may well be best situated to oppose a massive plan by Obama if we are offering more modest alternatives.

So, I open the floor: should the GOP agenda seek to reclaim the initiative of broad, bold, visionary, “choice not an echo” change of the Goldwater/Reagan/Gingrich variety? Or should we be positioning our party more as the party of sober adult leadership that knows the limitations of our system?

Thomas Crown: How’d that work out for the Party between 1932 and 1980?

Thomas Crown: Let me add something to that:

Much of the answer to your question depends on your goal and your perception. If your desire is to make a run at winning, and if you believe that there’s a potential majority constituency that will vote for conservative governance, then you play long ball. You risk a blowout in either direction — Goldwater ‘64, Reagan ‘80 — so that you have the chance to govern. If you believe that there’s no potential majority constituency for conservative governance (but you believe there’s a strong minority in favor of it, or at least of its leavening effects), then there is no chance to win unless you change your message to what the majority wants. You’re then either stuck with trying to win for winning’s sake (divorcing the GOP from conservatism), or running to hold a strong minority position, but never having the reins of power.

I’m simplifying interesting things like GOTV, donor response, etc., but I’m doing this during part of my nominal lunch break, so there.

The problem with that second state — you assume that there’s no majority market for conservative governance among real, actual voters who actually vote, and don’t just say they will — is that you’re not really going to win either way. I think the Democrats are full of horse-poo on most issues, but they internalized Goldwater’s dictum pretty well, with an unspoken a priori assumption: [If voters want a Democrat for office and] if you give them a watered-down Republican, they will go with the real Republican every time, because they believe that the Republican is at least being straight with them. Or something. Now, of course, if they want a Republican, you’re only going to beat the Republican if you’re prepared to be the Republican he’s not.

I would posit that this is why the GOP got its rear end handed to it in 2006: It’s not about stem cells (an issue that divided the caucus) or spending (something the Democrats do much of, too) or Iraq, or immigration, or any particular issue: It’s because the Democrats went into Republican-leaning districts and found Democrats who sounded, and presumably would act, like Republicans, while Republicans were perceived as not acting like Republicans. But that was a win at the margins. They haven’t won by being lefties across the board, they’ve won by supplementing lefties with a lot of nominal righties. There’s a reason why Kitten is running as a transcendant figure, rather than the anodyne liberal he is: Nationally, the majority market for liberalism still isn’t there. Which in turn means that, for all of the tearful navel-gazing in which the Right has been involved these last two years, the Democrats haven’t won and indeed probably won’t, at least in the only national referendum we have.

And if they don’t win that, as they well realize, they don’t win. We don’t either, but unless they can get past a veto, they’re stuck.

By contrast, the alternative outcome is the Republican situation from 1932 to 1980. Two, count them, two Congresses. Sixteen years of Republican governance at the Presidential level, eight of which were marred by one of the most bizarre, and damaging constitutional events in our history. A casual presumption that the Democrats were the ruling party. The ingrained belief that government was there to solve problems at every level. The New Deal. The Great Society. Irreparable damage to the Federal system, and a judiciary it took two and a half decades to (mostly) clean up. And Republicans ran as mild Democrats to get there. I’m not remotely clear that the loyal opposition either opposed anything, or even slowed anything down.

If the GOP exists merely to advance the GOP, regardless of ideology, the best tack to take is to find what the Democrats are selling, and sell it better. If it exists for some other reason, we do it no service by being Democrats-lite.

Ben Domenech: I think it depends greatly on the definition. If “temperamental conservatism” means Gov. Jindal, then I think it absolutely has a future. But Jindal still packaged his adult leadership, responsible reform message in a way that reached across typical political lines without sacrificing its true conservatism. As the NYTimes points out, this is a reformer who has gone from ethics and governmental reform to anti-stem cell research, pro-voucher, pro-tax cut policies - while hardly a group of issues that avoid headlines, this isn’t revolutionary new ground for conservatism.

The packaging and the product has to correspond, and it has to have an appeal that is far beyond Washington’s normal detail-focus. I think that the long lists of policy proposals designed to satisfy every interest group always lose to a form of political leadership that is simple, appealing, easy to understand, and has a message that cuts across lines of race and class. It comes down to: here are a few ideas. Here is why they will work, and why our opponents’ ideas will not. I tend to think it’s not the necessary “boldness” of these ideas that matter, as much as finding the ones that cut across the widest range of the population. Which is why I laugh a little bit, despite Ruffini’s cogent analysis, that the first issue on his list is earmark reform. Ah, yes, that’s what’s holding us back.

I think the answer to your question may be as simple as this: these days, it’s bold to be an adult.

Thomas Crown: I don’t think we’re disagreeing; perhaps I misunderstood Dan’s question (and if so, I apologize). I understood the question to be whether we should continue, however presented, with swinging for the fences, or whether, to botch the metaphor beyond all reason, we should try to hold the Democrats to a base at a time.

Dan McLaughlin: What I am not suggesting we consider is let’s-propose-a-small-new-entitlement-instead-of-a-big-one thinking. That way definitely leads to Bob Michelsville. What I am suggesting is more in the nature of choosing increments of progress rather than constantly going for the moon… let’s take some examples.

HEALTH CARE: Big proposals: Health savings accounts for all. Eliminate preferential tax treatment for employer-provided care. Radical overhaul of Medicare.

Small proposals: allow insurance to be purchased across state lines.

TAXES: Scrap the tax code, kill the IRS. Abolish corporate taxes.

Small proposals: Create an alternative optional simplified tax system.

Down the line, there are more modest ways to get a foothold for conservative ideas. They may be the way to go right now.

Pejman Yousefzadeh: Part of what makes it difficult to answer this question is the fact that a return to moderate, temperate conservatism of the Burkean variety does indeed involve bold and radical change.

It is difficult–if not impossible–to overstate the effect of the advent of the welfare state and the New Deal coalition. Not only did it bring about a massive increase in the size and scope of government, but it also created expectations for a continued increase in government. I have said it before and will say it again: Much of the appeal of Big Government is the fact that a call for governmental “solutions” constitute a Pavlovian response to a whole host of public policy problems. Is crime rampant? Take guns off the streets! Is there a health care crisis? Make the government give us health care! Is there an education crisis? Spend more money! You actually have to think to get to the small-government/free market solution to these problems but you can just press a button and emit a big government answer with no cogitation whatsoever. The appeal of that is enormous.

The same thing, by the way, applies when it comes to originalist jurisprudence and fights against judicial activism. Originalists denounce judicial activism but are themselves called activists for their desire to see a whole host of “living Constitution” decisions reversed. The originalist response gets lost in the noise; if you are going to return the country to a state where originalism is respected, you are going to have to reverse some decisions. Scalia, of course, tries to avoid this fight–though he gets dragged into it–by leaving a lot of precedent alone. But Thomas gets slammed for his willingness to hold nothing sacred.

Bear in mind as well that the politics of “doing something” go over a lot better with the public than the politics of being the next Calvin Coolidge. That, plus the need to take some actual action to return the country to a Burkean state means that in order to be a Burkean, one must be broad, bold and visionary.

Dan McLaughlin: That last sentence, Pejman, has been at the core of conservative disappointment for the last 27 years. I’m not saying we should surrender the idea of dismantling a lot of the Big Government machinery root and branch, but it is extremely hard work politically and ends up leading us into a lot of losing battles.

The Social Security fight continues to weigh heavily on my mind. I still think it was the right thing to do, and was just abysmally mishandled by the White House in general and the communications shop in particular. But I also recognize that a lot of the electorate just wasn’t prepared for anything that sounded like radical change to Social Security - and if we want real change, we need to be moving in a long series of increments that will build the functional constituency for each successive step.

Pejman Yousefzadeh: Interestingly enough, I think that a lot of the agenda that you laid out in your previous e-mail coincides very nicely with my belief that in order to be a Burkean and to return the country to a Burkean state, one must be broad, bold and visionary. So I think we agree more than we disagree.

As for the Social Security fight, that should not have been undertaken without a crack at tax reform coming first. That would have been an easier–or at least, more electorally appealing–fight and it would have had more of a chance of building up the appearance of greater political capital at the end of it.

Kevin Holtsberry: I fervently believe that a philosophical commitment to small government is a minority position in this country. Conservatives succeed when they convince voters that Big Government hurts them through higher taxes, wasted money, corruption, substandard service, less choice, etc. It is about effectiveness not ideology. Liberal Democrats have succeeded in convincing far too many Americans that they can get government to solve huge problems while Republicans have raised significant doubts about whether they can be trusted in the areas of competence and integrity.

I think one effective way to stop or slow some of these grandiose liberal plans is to remind people just how incompetent government can be. We need to keep pointing out that these programs always cost more, do less, and have nasty unintended consequences. This makes us the party of realism and of prudence. Universal health care may be well intentioned but it is the height of naivete to believe we can simply mandate it without serious problems.

In this vein, it is easy to imagine smaller proposals as a part of this recognition of the limits of government.

Thomas Crown: We have to convince people that incrementalism works, first. I’m not remotely convinced they know it or believe it. You can blame the social conservatives for a lot, but a lack of voter education is not one of them. By contrast, small government and fiscal conservatives have simply presumed, despite all evidence to the contrary, that everyone basically agrees with them, and that there’s no need to teach.

What that leaves us is a polity that believes in big, robust solutions to problems of any kind, and that if we effect a half-measure today, we’ll just have to go all the way later, so why not just speed things up? The enormous, disproportionate cost of these huge responses, and the human misery and cost that we have to endure before, during, and after we fix them, is lost on most. Hence the demand for universal health care (”But it’ll be different from Canada and Britain!”)

The massive, soul-deadening effects of the welfare State, for example, were largely not seen as connected to welfare except at a gut level that most folks won’t voice for fear of being called racist; and any attempt to solve the former by fixing the latter ran into enormous opposition that took thirty years, millions of lives, and God alone knows how much money to overcome. And that’s about the only successful education effort on government largesse I can think of, made possible in large part by middle class reactions to inner city crime, some (good) stinginess, and decades of work by the conservative movement. The lessons from that have not precisely made it into the population at large.

Robert A. Hahn: We can implement a small-government agenda and appeal to the “expectations for government solutions” segment at the same time. We do it by stealing an idea from Bill Clinton, and taking advantage of the fact that the “problems” people want solutions for are always changing.

Bill Clinton had a new government program every week. But they were nits. He’d learned his lesson about big, sweeping reforms with GaysInTheMilitary and LetMyWifeReformHealthCare. He replaced those with symbolism over substance. “Put 100,000 cops on the street.” Sounds good, costs little. And it expired in two years, leaving the cities with the problem of keeping the salaries funded after that. Clinton had lots of programs that were funded to the tune of five or ten million over ten years. “Clinton to spend $10 million on smiles for children.” “Clinton to spend $5 million on happiness for the handicapped.” It was a headline-a-day, on the cheap.

We could do that, while quietly making other things go away. Our problem has been a one-way “cut government” approach. We want to kill Barney and Big Bird. We never have a $5-million-over-5-years program to talk about at the same time. This allows the media to crucify us as a bunch of Meanies. Instead we could be buying 100,000 ballpoint pens for The Chill’run.

Dan McLaughlin: One of the criticisms being made against the various permutations of a new GOP agenda being circulated these days is that they are too small-bore, too modest and detail-oriented to compete with the broad "Hope and Change" themes of Barack Obama's campaign. (See Patrick Ruffini's critique). At the same time, there's a school of thought that says that George W. Bush has run ... Read More

Jun 9, 20080

Obama’s Economic Speech And A Step Beyond Bush

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Obama Kicked-off his two-week “Change That Works For You” tour with an economic speech in Raleigh, North Carolina today. And as Todd points out, Obama and the larger progressive movement is doing a good job reminding people of the McCain-Bush similarities. But today’s speech text also has some positive signs that Obama will work to hold the larger conservative governing philosophy responsible for our economic circumstance, not just George Bush:

We did not arrive at the doorstep of our current economic crisis by some accident of history.  This was not an inevitable part of the business cycle that was beyond our power to avoid.  It was the logical conclusion of a tired and misguided philosophy that has dominated Washington for far too long.

George Bush called it the Ownership Society, but it’s little more than a worn dogma that says we should give more to those at the top and hope that their good fortune trickles down to the hardworking many.  For eight long years, our President sacrificed investments in health care, and education, and energy, and infrastructure on the altar of tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy CEOs - trillions of dollars in giveaways that proved neither compassionate nor conservative.

And for all of George Bush’s professed faith in free markets, the markets have hardly been free - not when the gates of Washington are thrown open to high-priced lobbyists who rig the rules of the road and riddle our tax code with special interest favors and corporate loopholes.  As a result of such special-interest driven policies and lax regulation, we haven’t seen prosperity trickling down to Main Street.  Instead, a housing crisis that could leave up to two million homeowners facing foreclosure has shaken confidence in the entire economy.

I understand that the challenges facing our economy didn’t start the day George Bush took office and they won’t end the day he leaves.  Some are partly the result of forces that have globalized our economy over the last several decades - revolutions in communication and technology have sent jobs wherever there’s an internet connection; that have forced children in Raleigh and Boston to compete for those jobs with children in Bangalore and Beijing.  We live in a more competitive world, and that is a fact that cannot be reversed.    

But I also know that this nation has faced such fundamental change before, and each time we’ve kept our economy strong and competitive by making the decision to expand opportunity outward; to grow our middle-class; to invest in innovation, and most importantly, to invest in the education and well-being of our workers.

We’ve done this because in America, our prosperity has always risen from the bottom-up.  From the earliest days of our founding, it has been the hard work and ingenuity of our people that’s served as the wellspring of our economic strength.  That’s why we built a system of free public high schools when we transitioned from a nation of farms to a nation of factories.  That’s why we sent my grandfather’s generation to college, and declared a minimum wage for our workers, and promised to live in dignity after they retire through the creation of Social Security.  That’s why we’ve invested in the science and research that have led to new discoveries and entire new industries.  And that’s what this country will do again when I am President of the United States.

Full text here.

As millions of Americans start tuning into our political process for the first time, it’s crucial that they hear detail about which underlying causes brought us to this mess in the first place - it’s not enough for people to assume that George Bush’s incompetence sunk everything. Politicians come and go, but the bogus assumptions about “tax cuts,” “privitization” and “free markets” have endured long past Reagan. It’s good to see a Democratic nominee talking concretely about the good things our government can accomplish.

Update [2008-6-9 16:54:25 by Josh Orton]: As diarist sricki notes, Obama also mentioned his intention to partner with Elizabeth Edwards on his health care plan. Elizabeth, as we remember, chose initially to endorse Clinton’s plan over Obama’s.

Tags: Barack Obama, Election 08 (all tags)

Obama Kicked-off his two-week "Change That Works For You" tour with an economic speech in Raleigh, North Carolina today. And as Todd points out, Obama and the larger progressive movement is doing a good job reminding people of the McCain-Bush similarities. But today's speech text also has some positive signs that Obama will work to hold the larger conservative governing philosophy responsible for our economic circumstance, not just George Bush: We did not arrive at the doorstep of our current economic ... Read More

Jun 9, 20080

Important Primaries in Virginia Tomorrow

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Tomorrow, June 10, there are two important primaries in Virginia that deserve progressive netroots attention. Both races feature candidates with strong local and national netroots support.

First, the 11th CD pits Gerry Connolly, who Howie Klein has correctly called “a Zell Miller/Joe Lieberman type Democrat,” against Leslie Byrne, a progressive Democrat who is supported by essentially the entire Virginia progressive netroots.

This morning, Jim Webb — who Leslie Byrne was instrumental in helping during the early days of the “Draft James Webb” movement in 2006 — wrote the following about tomorrow’s primary:

Leslie was one of my earliest supporters in 2006.  She and I share certain fundamental beliefs — that America’s leaders must be accountable to its people, that our economic system must give everyone a fair shot at success, and that our foreign policy choices must be governed by thoughtful strategic goals.  Like me, Leslie was an early warning voice against the war in Iraq.

[…]

During our campaign’s toughest moments, Leslie remained loyal to our effort and to the importance of these shared beliefs. And so when she decided to make a bid to return to Congress, I was determined to show her the same loyalty and support.

[…]

The 111th Congress will face considerable obstacles.  Leslie Byrne has the courage and the experience to help us win those fights. I am looking forward to seeing her defend our common principles on the House floor. Please join me in helping Leslie become the next U.S. Representative from the Virginia 11th today.

In contrast, Howie Klein writes the following about Gerry Connolly:

…Connolly’s record conforms to the worst stereotypes of the corporate Democrat and threatens to cost the party a long-awaited takeover. Connolly has been mired in questions about his employment with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), one of the worst of the major defense contractors, his cozy relationship with business developers and his general affinity for what most of us would call pay to play politics.

Connolly’s most egregious offenses against the progressive agenda are only recently coming to light, largely due to his own hypocrisy on the Iraq war. Connolly, who was a proud “moderate” until the moment he declared for the House, has taken to touting his anti-war credentials by claiming that he’s “been against the Iraq war from the beginning” and that he plans to “hold CEOs criminally accountable for wasting taxpayer’s dollars.”

So, why is this a problem? Well, it’s an issue because Connolly’s employer, SAIC, is one of the most secretive defense contractors in the world. Think about that: Connolly works for a war profiteering company that not only cheer-led for Bush’s unjustifiable invasion but that makes much of its money by cheating taxpayers.

In short, the 11th CD is an easy choice for progressives, and we strongly urge a vote for Leslie Byrne.

As to the 10th CD, that’s another winnable district, with nationally recognized health care expert and strong progressive Judy Feder running against Bush rubber stamp Frank Wolf.  In 2006, Feder gave Wolf the toughest race he’s seen in a quarter century.  This time around, Feder has started earlier, is raising more money (already over $1 million, one of the top Democratic challengers in the nation), and is going after Wolf aggressively.   But first she has to get past a primary against “Blue Dog Democrat” Mike Turner tomorrow.  I strongly urge that, if you live in Virginia’s 10th CD, you join every U.S. Senator, Congressman, Virginia Delegate, and labor union that has chosen to support a candidate in this race and support Judy Feder for Congress.

Tags: Virginia, VA-10, VA-11, leslie byrne, frank wolf, judy feder, gerry connolly (all tags)

Tomorrow, June 10, there are two important primaries in Virginia that deserve progressive netroots attention. Both races feature candidates with strong local and national netroots support. First, the 11th CD pits Gerry Connolly, who Howie Klein has correctly called "a Zell Miller/Joe Lieberman type Democrat," against Leslie Byrne, a progressive Democrat who is supported by essentially the entire Virginia progressive netroots. This morning, Jim Webb -- who Leslie Byrne was instrumental in helping during the early days of the "Draft James ... Read More

Jun 9, 20080

Has Feminism Lost Its Focus?

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That’s what Linda Hirshman argues in the Washington Post. And, not surprisingly, I think she’s wrong.
FYI: There will be a live discussion about the article here at 1pm today. Join in.
Full disclosure: Linda interviewed me for this article. I’m quoted in the second-to-last paragraph. I really enjoyed speaking with her — it was clear […]

That’s what Linda Hirshman argues in the Washington Post. And, not surprisingly, I think she’s wrong. FYI: There will be a live discussion about the article here at 1pm today. Join in. Full disclosure: Linda interviewed me for this article. I’m quoted in the second-to-last paragraph. I really enjoyed speaking with her — it was clear during the interview that we have very different visions of what feminism should be, and we pushed back against each other quite a bit, but it was ... Read More

Jun 9, 20080

Still Friendly To Lobbyists After All

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Barack Obama has stated that he will not take money from PACs or federal lobbyists and that PAC and lobbyist money would also be banned from the Democratic National Committee now that Obama is the presumptive nominee and can institute such changes.

However, (1) former lobbyists, (2) unregistered lobbying firm partners and (3) state lobbyists can still give money. In addition, both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will continue to take money from PACs and lobbyists and the Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee is a registered federal lobbyists.

Source. This is a Republican National Committee press release that I found on Google News. Of course, the RNC is expected to take Obama on with press releases criticizing his positions and there will be some who roll their eyes in non-surprise at this press release. But of course, if you can’t dispute the actual information found in the press release, then it really doesn’t matter who the source is, now does it?

Recall as well that despite Obama’s boasts that he does not take money from oil companies–mostly because corporate contributions are illegal–he does, however, take money from oil and gas company employees, a take that was in the six figures as of two months ago.

If I had my druthers, of course, none of this would be that big a deal. Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner point out that money contributions do not so much influence political stances as they reward a stance that has already been taken. As such, one does not give money to a candidate in order to try to get that candidate to vote a certain way. Rather, one gives money to a candidate in an expression of support that comes as a consequence of that candidate having taken a particular position. This never struck me as being anything to write home about, but since Obama insists on attacking John McCain for his connections to lobbyists, it is only fair play to point out that the Obama campaign has been rather busy doing lobbyists favors as well.

Barack Obama has stated that he will not take money from PACs or federal lobbyists and that PAC and lobbyist money would also be banned from the Democratic National Committee now that Obama is the presumptive nominee and can institute such changes. However, (1) former lobbyists, (2) unregistered lobbying firm partners and (3) state lobbyists can still give money. In addition, both the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the ... Read More

Jun 8, 20080

How to talk to non-supporters about Obama

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This post is for people planning to volunteer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign this summer and fall. My goal is to help you be more effective in communicating with voters like me, who don’t care for Obama.

I know that the Obama campaign has scripts and training sessions for its volunteers, and those worked well in the primaries.

Now you have to reach out to Democrats who weren’t buying what Obama was selling in the primaries. It seems to me that many Obama supporters respond in a counter-productive way when they encounter people who are not sold on the candidate.

In this diary, I will offer two basic principles to guide your conversations with non-supporters.

Then I will cover types of comments you may hear from resistant Democrats when you are doing GOTV for Obama. Those are all based on things I have heard people say (not comments I have read on blogs).

I will give examples of what I consider ineffective and constructive responses to those comments.

Follow me after the jump if you care to hear more.

I am not an expert in political communication. However, as a precinct captain for John Kerry in 2003/2004 and for John Edwards in 2007/2008, I talked with hundreds of Democrats in my precinct and around the Des Moines area.

Because of certain features of the Iowa caucus system, it was important for me to remain on good terms with non-supporters, who might be able to help me win my precinct. So I feel my perspective may be useful for Obama volunteers.

Before I get into specific dialogs you may have with non-supporters, I encourage you to embrace two “big picture” principles related to GOTV for the general election.

First: Try to “respect, empower and include” the Democrats who will not be excited about Obama.

To do this, it helps to be a good listener and have some empathy for their point of view, even if you strongly dislike the candidate they preferred. The candidate they supported lost, and now they have to come to terms with that and vote for the man who derailed their dream. Don’t rub it in their faces.

Second: Remember that voter contacts are not about winning an argument. They are about finding ways to get on the same side as the person you are talking to.

If you talk to someone who seems to have a totally irrational dislike for Obama, take a deep breath and remember that your guy won the nomination.

Repeat after me: your guy won the nomination.

You do not need to prove this person wrong. You have nothing to gain from attacking this person’s first choice. Obama needs this person’s support in the general election, and you are Obama’s ambassador.

So resist the temptation to say that Hillary ran a disgraceful, dishonest, race-baiting campaign, or that Edwards is a phony loser.

You will find these conversations easier if you can change the subject from something you disagree about (e.g. Obama’s qualifications or skills) to something you agree on (e.g. how frightening it would be to have more conservatives on the Supreme Court).

As I mentioned above, some Obama supporters tend to respond to critics in a counter-productive way. Here are a couple of real-life examples.

A few months ago I ago I had some e-mail correspondence with an Obama fan who was perplexed by my dislike of his candidate. I sent him a message listing a bunch of things that bug me about Obama and his campaign strategy. Here is part of the reply I got in return:

I actually feel bad for you, I really do, and I do NOT mean to be even the least bit demeaning, or snooty (no matter how it may sound — I really don’t ).

Because I think you are missing out on a unique time in US political history.  Seriously.  Obama is a candidate who, no, is hardly perfect, but has (1) inspired millions of young people, minorities, Indies, etc. to be involved in the political process, when they were not before; (2) been an incredibly inspirational figure and has generated excitement and hope among millions more; and (3) is our best chance in decades — yes, literally decades — to win, and to possibly even win big, and form a working majority for progressive change so issues like health care, energy dependence, ethics reform, etc., etc. will finally be addressed.  For those reasons, he’s very special, a once-in-a-generation candidate.  It’s too bad you are missing out, and not seeing what so many, many, many others are seeing.

Saying you feel sorry for someone because she (unlike millions of more insightful people) cannot recognize Obama’s fantabulous awesomeness is not a good outreach strategy.

I spent a week in the hospital in February, and a close family friend who is a doctor called regularly to check on my progress. It drives this guy crazy that I do not like Obama, even though I’ve assured him that I would vote for Obama in the general. Every time he called me when I was in the hospital, he ended up changing the subject to Obama. Didn’t I understand that Obama is the most gifted politician of our lifetimes? One day he even called back later to apologize.

Once people tell you they will vote for Obama, stop trying to convert them into true believers. Just thank them for their support and let them know how important every vote will be this fall.

Also, be aware that bashing the other candidates is a big turn-off even for some people who voted for Obama and prefer him to Clinton.

Now, I’ve tried to come up with comments you may hear from voters who don’t like Obama, along with some ways you can get on the same side as these voters.

“He’s so inexperienced”; “He doesn’t seem very qualified”; “I wanted to see a woman president”; “Couldn’t he have waited another few years? He’s barely done anything in the Senate yet.”

Get ready to hear this from older voters, especially women over 50 who backed Hillary. If they have worked outside the home, they have seen this movie before: the younger, charismatic man gets the job (or the promotion, or the account), while the older, more qualified woman gets passed over.

These people are just as disappointed by the way things turned out as you would be if the superdelegates had handed the nomination to Clinton after Obama earned it. They liked Bill, they like Hillary, and they thought she would do a great job. They are frustrated that millions of voters picked the hot shot over the smart, hard-working woman. In their minds, Hillary deserved the nomination, but voters picked someone less prepared for the job.

To add insult to injury, many of them now believe that they will not live to see a woman president.

Ineffective responses to these voters: telling them that Hillary isn’t more qualified than Obama, that it would be disastrous to have the Clintons back in the White House, that Hillary’s sense of entitlement is offensive, or that Hillary deserved to lose after running a sleazy, racist, deceitful campaign.

More inclusive and respectful responses:

I understand where you’re coming from–I know I would have been really disappointed if my candidate had lost the primaries. I hope we can count on your vote, because we can’t afford to have any more Republican judges on the Supreme Court.

You know, I’ve been on board with Obama for a long time, but my [mother/neighbor/cousin/colleague] was a huge Hillary supporter. I have a lot of respect for some things she has done in the Senate, and I think she has great work ahead of her after we beat the Republicans this fall.

The first example changes the subject from whether Obama deserved to beat Hillary to something you and this voter can agree on: it would be disastrous to let John McCain appoint Supreme Court judges.

The second example validates this voter’s feelings about Hillary and reminds her that Hillary’s work is not done, even though her presidential aspirations will never be fulfilled.

If you can’t truthfully say that you respect anything Hillary has done in the Senate, I recommend that you read markw’s diary on “Four Reasons I Support Hillary.” A friend of mine who was once a confirmed Hillary-hater changed her views after she learned about Hillary’s work on behalf of children with autism and other special needs.

If you are a woman, you might borrow some ideas from this excellent diary by noweasels. I have reworked the last couple of paragraphs of her diary:

Although Clinton wasn’t my first choice, I hope she knows that a lot of women in my generation were glad to see her run. It made me feel empowered to see that a woman had a real chance of winning the presidency.

That approach validates this voter’s feelings and reminds her that Clinton achieved something by running, even though she didn’t win.

I guarantee it will get you further than saying you’re sick and tired of feminists telling women they should have voted for Hillary.

“I’m worried he’s just too green for the job”; “I wanted someone who wouldn’t need on-the-job training”; “I don’t need a rock star for a president.”

People who preferred one of the second-tier candidates may feel that Obama didn’t deserve to win the nomination. They are frustrated that the media shut out their candidate and reduced the campaign to a two-person celebrity competition. These are the Democrats who laughed when I used to joke that those “HOPE” yard signs with the sunrise “O” logo should have said “HYPE.”

Ineffective response to this kind of voter: saying that Obama is a “once-in-a-lifetime candidate,” who was simply more compelling, exciting, or inspirational than Joe Biden or Chris Dodd or Bill Richardson.

Instead, I recommend acknowledging that many people share their doubts:

Well, I like Obama a lot. I know a lot of Democrats [don’t think he’s ready/wanted someone else], but I think if we get him elected, he’s going to surprise a lot of people.

I have a lot of respect for [Biden/Richardson] and would love to see Obama pick him for VP or Secretary of State.

Chris Dodd would be a great Senate majority leader.

Yeah, I know a lot of people feel he ran too soon. He’s got a lot of experienced people around him, though. I think he is smart enough to know where to look for the expertise he doesn’t have.

These comments show empathy and remind voters that their preferred candidate still has a political future under a President Obama.

Another response that might help you connect with this kind of Democrat:

Obama was my first choice, but I think we had a really strong field. [Or: Obama wasn’t my first choice either–we had a really strong field.] I saw some of the debates, and I always felt like everyone on the stage could do a decent job as president, especially compared to the losers on the Republican side.

Now you have changed the subject from whether Obama was the best candidate to something you agree on (the Republican alternatives were horrible).

“What has he ever done besides talk?”; “He’s really good at saying nothing and getting people all charged up about it”; “I know he can deliver a speech, but what’s he actually going to do if he gets in there?”

This may mystify you, but some people who hear Obama speak walk away unimpressed. That would include my friend who was undecided between Obama and Edwards until Tom Harkin’s steak fry in September, which convinced her that Obama had no idea what needs to be done. Or my friend whose reaction to Obama’s “Yes we can” speech (the night of the New Hampshire primary) was, “He said absolutely nothing.”

When I was in the hospital, I had CNN on a lot, which led to some political conversations with the nursing staff. One nurse’s aide said she’d like to know when Obama is ever going to do something besides give speeches.

Ineffective response: remind this person that millions of Americans find Obama’s speeches very inspiring, so inspiring that they have gotten involved in politics for the first time in their lives.

That will work about as well as telling people they should go out and buy every record that tops the charts, or that the Oscar for best picture should go to the movie with the biggest box office. They know Obama has this effect on people, but they listen to him and they just don’t get it.

I couldn’t agree more with a point kid oakland made in a diary a few months ago:

In my view that is a crucial question that every candidate for elected office must be able to answer in clear, simple declarative sentences: what will the voters get when they vote for you?

My honest assessment is that Senator Obama has gone as far as he can with the imagery and demographics associated with his campaign: youthful voters lined up around the block to demand change and express hope.

It’s time to add another approach. Barack Obama needs to practice retail politics. He needs to understand that some of his weakest demographics are those where a message of change will not resonate, will not win votes.

During the last month or so, Obama has been talking a little more about policies in his speeches. Still, his volunteers need to be able to tell skeptical voters what “change we can believe in” means. Be prepared to hand out some position papers or at least talk about some specific policies he would enact:

The media tend to be pretty superficial, but he has done a lot you probably haven’t heard about. Did you know that he has worked on laws to protect children from lead poisoning?

One thing that impressed me was his [energy/education/tax reform] plan. (Then talk about why you support Obama’s specific plans in that area.)

I also thought that newyorknewyork had a great suggestion in a recent diary about phonebanking for Obama:

You can use this with ANY issue that comes up:

Let’s face it, Obama and Clinton’s policies are 95% identical.  So `who has the best policy’ is not really that important.  It’s who is most likely to be able to IMPLEMENT that policy that really matters.

Then you can explain why you think Obama’s approach will help him implement the policies that are pretty much the same as what Hillary was offering.

“Oh yeah, let’s all be friends and play nice with the Republicans–that is really going to work”; “He is going to get eaten alive.”

Obama’s post-partisan rhetoric drives some Democrats crazy. They think that if he’s sincere, he must be incredibly naive to imagine that he can get everyone to coalesce around some kind of common-sense, unity agenda. These are the Democrats who laughed when Hillary mocked Obama’s rhetoric during a rally in Rhode Island. They thought she was using humor to make a valid point.

Many of these people are offended that Obama implies both parties are equally to blame for our political problems. What rock was he living under during the 1990s, when the Republicans played dirty, never sought compromise in good faith and even abused the impeachment process?

Some of Obama’s rhetoric suggests that he thinks reaching out to Republicans is more important than fighting to enact Democratic priorities. That makes some Democrats wary, and it didn’t help that Obama has avoided the spolight during some of the key Senate battles of the past year (such as over Iraq supplemental funding bills and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act).

Ineffective response: Tell these people that both parties are to blame, no party has a monopoly on good ideas, and/or we’re in a political rut because too many people are cynical.

If you look too young to have been politically active during the 1990s, I would particularly caution against suggesting that hyper-partisan Democrats are just as bad as hyper-partisan Republicans.

You would do better to remind these voters that Obama has been a team player for our side:

Yeah, I’ve heard some people call him Republican-lite, but I just don’t see it. He worked his butt off campaigning for Democrats all over the country two years ago. (If Obama campaigned for any Democrats in your state or region in 2006, be sure to bring that up.)

I get what you’re saying. One thing I do know is that if the Democrats can get some good stuff through Congress, Obama isn’t going to veto it like McSame-as-Bush would.

Well, even if Obama isn’t as liberal as I would like sometimes, I know he would appoint good judges, which is more than I can say for McCain.

It never hurts to remind fire-breathing Democrats that the Supreme Court hangs in the balance right now.

“Screw him. He talks about hope and then turns around and calls the Clintons racists.”

As angry as you may be about Hillary’s campaign tactics, many of her supporters are just as angry at Obama. The way they see it, the Obama campaign set out to brand the Clintons as racists in order to get a political edge among blacks and white liberals. Meanwhile, the media gave Obama a pass on his supporters’ comments that denigrated Hillary, sometimes in sexist terms.

Ineffective response: Taking the bait and telling this person why the racial polarization is all the Clintons’ fault, or nitpicking to say that Obama himself never directly called Hillary a racist.

Don’t waste time arguing with these people. They’ve been watching the same campaign that you have. You will never convince them that Hillary is “deeply, grievously, morally wrong.” I would try something like this:

It’s too bad that our primaries got bogged down in [identity politics/finger-pointing about racism]. I liked it better when they were [hashing out the issues/fighting about their health care plans]. I know it was divisive, but I think Democrats will be able to come together now. At least I hope so, because I don’t want another four years of McSame-as-Bush.

Now you have put yourself on the same side as this voter: you regret the racial polarization that accompanied our primaries.

You may wonder why you should validate the concerns of people who weren’t offended by Hillary’s campaign. Please remember that Obama can’t win the general without the overwhelming majority of Clinton supporters voting for him. It doesn’t help your candidate to ascribe the worst possible motives to people who backed Hillary in the primaries. Don’t take my word for it: kid oakland has also made the case for respecting the reasons some people preferred Hillary.

On a related note, if you talk to someone in the LGBT community who is still mad about the Donnie McClurkin debacle, do not try to convince this person that Obama was just pragmatically recognizing the widespread homophobia in the black community. Also, I wouldn’t bother showing them Obama’s open letter to LGBT voters, which he released after winning 10 primaries in a row.

The voter you’re talking to probably believes that Obama threw gays under the bus when he stood to gain politically, then paid lip service to their concerns once he felt confident he was winning the nomination. I suggest showing empathy for this person’s anger:

Truth be told, I wish he’d never scheduled that event. It wasn’t in character for him–he’s got a strong record on equality issues. I hope you’ll vote for him anyway, because all of our civil rights are going to be flushed down the toilet if McCain puts more right-wing judges on the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court is your trump card. Don’t be afraid to play it.

“He is going to get killed in the general”; “Sorry, America is not ready to elect a black president”; “Yet again the Democrats were too stupid to nominate someone who could actually win the election.”

The dustup over Reverend Wright’s comments and the results of the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries reinforced many Democrats’ belief that Obama is a weak candidate for the general election.

Ineffective responses: Accusing this voter of tolerating racism or making excuses for racists. Also, I wouldn’t start an argument by telling this voter his or her preferred candidate would have done even worse. (Find me one Deaniac who will admit that Kerry won more states than Dean would have.) Bringing up Clinton scandals or the Edwards $400 haircut is not going to inspire this person to help Obama.

Remember: your guy won the nomination. Be gracious toward supporters of other Democrats.

Try something like this instead:

Well, Bill Clinton was behind in the polls in the summer of 1992. I think Obama will make up ground when people get to know him better, but no one’s going to hand it to him. I’m out here [or: I’m calling you today] because we need all hands on deck. Can we count on your vote at least?

Democrats have been so energized this year, with huge turnouts all over the place. I think we will be able to bring this one home. I hope you’ll be able to help us too.

I saw a poll where more people said they wouldn’t vote for someone over 70 than said they wouldn’t vote for a black man. Have you seen McCain lately? He looks really old, and he sounds old too.

I think we can get enough people to vote for Barack. Look how well he’s done in a lot of states that never elected a black man to anything before. Even I was surprised.

Note: When I was a precinct captain for Edwards, it was extremely alienating to hear a few Obama supporters accuse me of favoring Edwards because he was a white male. (I am not talking about bloggers, I am talking about Obama supporters I talked to in the “real world.”) Do not make the same mistake if you are talking with former Edwards supporters. Some of them might be willing to volunteer for Obama themselves, but not if you make them feel like they will be looked upon as racists.

“He is going to sell out progressives”; “He’s just another corporate Democrat”; “What has he actually done to end the war?”

People who backed Edwards or one of the second-tier candidates are most likely to express this kind of sentiment about Obama.

Ineffective responses: Arguing that Obama is much more progressive than the candidate they preferred, bashing Edwards or Dodd for voting for the authorization of the use of military force in Iraq. You gain nothing from fighting this battle.

You might try giving some examples of progressive causes Obama has supported, or of beloved liberals who have endorsed Obama, but I think one of these approaches would make more headway:

I hear what you’re saying. I hope we can count on your vote at least. I think Obama is going to do better than you expect, I really do, but the main thing is to keep John McCain out of the White House. This guy has voted for every Bush judge and is terrible on [choice/the environment/labor issues/whatever].

Well, I believe he is sincerely committed to ending this war. I know what you mean–maybe he could have done more in the Senate. It’s hard when Bush is sitting right there with his veto pen. I guess the bottom line for me is I’ve got young [kids/nephews/grandkids/students], and I would hate to think that we’ll still be in Iraq when they grow up because we elected a guy who wants to keep us there for 100 years.

This diary is getting quite long, so I’ll end with one last piece of advice.

If you are so angry at the Clintons that you cannot have a respectful conversation with Hillary supporters, then I encourage you to volunteer for the Obama campaign in some capacity that does not involve direct voter contact. Not every volunteer has to do phone-banking or canvassing.

I’m talking about those who harbor “a hatred towards [Hillary] that is difficult to imagine let alone describe.”

Bring some home-made meals to your local Obama headquarters. Offer to do data entry, stuff envelopes or sort literature for the door-knockers. If you have a spare bedroom, offer to house an Obama volunteer or field organizer. They will appreciate your efforts, and you can feel morally superior that you did not “debase” yourself by asking a Clinton supporter to vote for our nominee.

As for the majority of you Obama fans, please do your part to help our nominee mend fences with Democrats who don’t like him.

Tags: Barack Obama, GOTV, volunteering, 2008 elections, president (all tags)

This post is for people planning to volunteer for Barack Obama's presidential campaign this summer and fall. My goal is to help you be more effective in communicating with voters like me, who don't care for Obama. I know that the Obama campaign has scripts and training sessions for its volunteers, and those worked well in the primaries. Now you have to reach out to Democrats who weren't buying what Obama was selling in the primaries. It seems to me that ... Read More

Jun 8, 20080

Veepness Stakes: Securing the Clinton Bloc

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“girls in trying to have the same kind of intensity and manic energy of boys become aggressive and sometimes violent.” - Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen, June 7th, 2008 on Twitter

“… In a series of studies involving hundreds of participants since 2005, my colleagues and I have found systematic social and financial backlash against even mildly assertive female executives. … [W]omen are perhaps the only “low status” group whose members systematically and every bit as harshly show prejudice toward fellow members. …” - Cathy Tinsley, June 1st, 2008 in the Washington Post

Someone was telling me in earnest the other day that Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) should be the VP pick because, and I am not making this up, she’s younger and prettier than the other women being discussed, and endorsed Clinton — so shouldn’t that make her a great person to appease the Clinton supporters?

Other points were offered in her defense, but if someone argued in favor of adding a Black candidate to the ticket on the basis of ‘well, their skin’s a lot lighter than the other people of color that we considered,’ that would pretty much be the end of seriously paying attention to what they had to say. And rightly. Not to say the two things are directly equivalent, either. Just that where racist arguments are generally recognized right away, sexist arguments can be slipped by in even progressive circles, among people who insist that they’re feminists, without usually causing much embarassment.

And yes, that’d be the Blanche Lincoln, who voted with Republicans on FISA and the estate tax, and was delisted from EMILY’s List for casting anti-choice votes in the Senate.

When I argued the other day that people with bad records on gender issues should be automatically ruled out, it was exactly that sort of tokenism I was suggesting should be avoided. I didn’t argue that Clinton should be picked, or even that another woman should necessarily be picked, but that someone should be selected that showed respect and consideration towards the issues that are important to her supporters. Issues that include, but are definitely not limited to, reproductive justice.

Young and Pretty

Is it really a sexist argument that a woman should get bumped to the front of the job queue for consideration because she’s younger and prettier? Yes. It’s a problem that handicaps women just as they get to an age that, for men, would often come with greater appreciation of a person’s lifetime of accomplishment and in many cases lead to the assumption of greater responsibilities.

Older men are dignified and respectable. Older women, eh, they’re dried up, look like someone’s mother, should be kept out of sight.

As linked above, here’s blogger and labor organizer Nathan Newman on the fight to organize against age discrimination in Las Vegas casinos:

Fight for Dignity: Early on in Vegas, the casino owners wanted to stick the youngest waitresses on those tables, so if you aged a few years as a cocktail waitress, you often found yourself consigned to siberia in the casino. Or worse, you had the best positions handed out by supervisors based on who would do “favors” for them.

At least they couldn’t be fired just for getting old because of the basic union contract — and this was true before age discrimination legislation was passed in Congress — but the indignity of sex discrimination in all its forms was harshly at play for Vegas cocktail waitresses.

So they organized.

They first had to kick the butts of their own then-male labor leaders back in the early 1970s to take the issue seriously, but the union took up the cause and forced changes into the union contract. From that day forward, all “stations” in a casino would be bid on based on seniority. The best spots would go to the waitresses with the longest tenure, no favoritism or age discrimination allowed.

That is what unions get you– the right not to be told you are too old to be presentable in public. The right not to have a supervisor play favoritism and demand you degrade yourself in order to feed your family.

Not for Sale: In unionized casinos, a rich high-roller can buy himself the fanciest penthouse in the hotel. He can buy the fanciest food. He can buy almost anything.

But when he sits at the craps table, the one thing he can’t buy is that the woman serving his drinks be replaced by the youngest girl in the house. …

At the same time, women also face the problem of being dismissed more readily than men of similar accomplishment and age for being ‘just a pretty face.’ In one workplace, I’ve heard women discuss being glad when they got old enough to start being treated like a person instead of like a woman.

It might sound, if you’re looking for what the feminist position is on women’s appearances, that you can’t win for losing.

Funny, that’s about how it feels to women.

I know it’s a hard thing to do, because I even catch myself doing it sometimes, but it’s important to try to avoid judging people based on our perceptions of their attractiveness. It’s something second nature to all of us. It happens at a level of consciousness we often seem to hardly be aware of. Fight against it, anyway.

When I was a girl, I spent a lot of time people watching with an older female relative. A regular comment of hers was “would you look at that“, the ‘that’ referring to someone she thought was just appalling looking. Sometimes it applied to men, but usually she was talking about a woman. Too ugly. Too slutty. Too attention-grabbing. Too counterculture. Too slovenly.

(Slovenly? Yeah, unkempt, messy, untidy, etc. Consider that there’s no popular female counterpart to the icon of the absent-minded professor. A woman who’s careless about her appearance is just sloppy. Or maybe gay. A guy who doesn’t care might even be considered ultra-masculine, to a certain point. Whereas a guy who cares too much, maybe he’s gay. And how horrible. Criminy.)

Her voice is still some part of my running internal dialogue — judgemental and cruel and insulting — it has become my own voice. I hear myself thinking those things; her thoughts from so many years ago thinking me, as they say.

I may have to keep reminding myself that it’s wrong to judge people that way for the rest of my life, and every time I do, I will feel that I’ve failed as a person to be sufficiently compassionate. The only thing I have as an option to overcome it is to try my hardest not to give voice to those thoughts so that others won’t assume from my example that it’s an acceptable way to evaluate and treat people. And I’ll tell you, I will feel an incredible sense of accomplishment if at the end of my life I can say that I helped end that form of prejudice with me.

Dan Quayle

We don’t live in a society that would tolerate a VP pick from any disadvantaged class of people that would be the (fill in the blank) version of Dan Quayle. It’s unfortunately true that the behavior of the first people past the post matters for how the rest are perceived.

That’s an artifact of a blatantly bigoted culture: no one thinks that White men are incompetent to run anything because Dan Quayle (or George W. Bush, come to it) was an incompetent schmuck in constant need of an oral pedectomy. He had wide latitude to screw up because there wasn’t anyone judging him as a proxy for his race or gender or orientation.

The standard for VP should be someone who’s qualified to be president.

Both Clinton and Obama were so obviously qualified that either of them outshine several nominees in my lifetime. A VP pick that was as plainly capable and engaging as either of them would speak volumes of the nominee’s confidence. Quayle, on the other hand, failed that test even by the estimation of many in his own party at the time, so if you’re suggesting people who drop to the Quayle bar (where many in the party would incline to disqualify them on the basis of competence or issue representation,) expect to irritate people.

We are not Republicans here, who nominate dunces just to challenge the mettle of our political advisors.

If a pick also brings greater diversity to the ticket, that’s tremendous, but no one wants to be transparently pandered to. Yes, we’re the party that wants greater representation for everyone. Yet the motive for that is a belief that bigotry isn’t only immoral and cruel, it’s stupid: excluding women, gays, people of color and the disabled from political and economic power also deprives society of valuable talent.

No one wants a candidate that, at a crucial time, takes away from promoting that essential truth. Democrats are a political party with plenty of good talent specifically because of our commitment to inclusion. Let’s have our VP pick reflect that.

Not Just About Women

Again, getting a woman, any woman, on the ticket, isn’t necesarily great from a feminist perspective. Getting a male Clinton supporter who’s bad on women’s issues, also ridiculous.

Consider the extremes: Elizabeth Dole isn’t a feminist because she’s a woman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger isn’t a feminist because he’s married to Maria Shriver. Other glosses on this are insulting because they ignore the substance of feminist criticisms and concerns.

There were also feminists, to look at it from another angle, who supported Edwards because they consider an anti-poverty, anti-corporate greed stance to be to be important to their larger political aims. And because committed feminists had a more nuanced view of the primary than ‘we must support the female candidate,’ you can be sure that Clinton’s supporters in general had a far greater set of issues than gender essentialism.

Now, Clinton has the benefit of being endorsed by much of the party and many constituencies, which makes her a unique case for consideration. While I don’t think this means that she has to be the vice presidential nominee, it means that she has a far more credible claim than many potential picks to be able to bring in votes. Not just votes from one state, or one region of the country, either; she’s proven she can get votes all over.

Clinton might not even want the job. I can see a number of reasons why she’d be better off staying in the Senate, and I’m sure you can, also. Considering that she’s promised to help campaign for Obama for the sake of the party, without having even been offered the position as far as any of us know, her presence on the ticket might not be needed to secure her voters.

But she also carries the disadvantage of having voted to go to war with Iraq. Even many of us who supported her considered this to be a liability; the war is no longer popular with the American mainstream, and it’s even less popular with Democrats. As a running mate for Obama, it runs counter to the message of his campaign.

I think that unless Clinton were the pick, and only then because of the obvious popular support she’s garnered, supporters of the Iraq war in 2002 should be disqualified from consideration.

Over at FireDogLake, Christy Hardin Smith also brings up another consideration of many Rust and Mining Belt Democrats who flocked to Clinton, which is that they like to know what they’re getting out of a candidate. They want someone they know, and that they feel knows them. They’re conservative in the sense of being distrustful of new things.

That doesn’t make them bad people. It doesn’t make them ignorant. In their experience, change has usually meant more hardship. Indeed, there are a lot of policy areas over the last few decades where the precautionary principle would have served the nation better.

Because it’s so recent that disadvantaged groups started winning higher office in any significant numbers, it also means that most of the politicians they feel they know are White. And certainly, all the politicians they feel they know in this contest. As Christy notes, Obama has already started to work to win them over and give them that level of comfort with him. His Appalachia tour was a great start.

It might be argued that a regional pick is absolutely necessary in order to win these voters over, but I disagree.

Take two examples: Clinton hadn’t lived in Arkansas since 1992; then she went and became a Senator from New York, a state that’s (in some people’s minds) infamously blue, and racked up a fairly liberal voting record, but they liked her a lot when she came back through 16 years later. Gore was not only a Senator from Tennessee, but the son of a Senator from Tennessee and a lifelong Baptist; if his own state had voted for him not 8 years after leaving to become the vice president, he might now be in the end of his second term as president.

Regional essentialism is no more useful than gender essentialism. Clinton, for whatever reason, was able to spark a sense of empathy with these voters that Gore couldn’t just eight years ago. There was a feel to how she came across that they like, and something about Obama that they weren’t willing to try on the first go around. For some of them, it might have been race, though that issue is not confined to any geographic region. But it might have also been that they were looking for a hard to define cultural resonance; the sort that Republicans spend a lot of time faking in order to lie to people about where their sympathies lie.

Obama’s got a few months to make his case to Rust and Mining Belt voters, and it might help to have a VP candidate that they can feel more of a cultural connection to.

Who Would I Suggest?

Erm, no one. Certainly not strongly enough that I feel like making a public issue of it. I’m far more interested in laying out a basis for evaluation, though perhaps more accurately, a screen for rejection.

We’ve been picking presidential candidates on the basis of race and gender considerations for as long as there’s been such a thing as the United States. In fact, even farther back, when the thirteen colonies operated under the Articles of Confederation.

Those considerations, until quite recently, were that you’d better be a White guy.

Since, as is true of every other arbitrarily defined type of human being, being White says basically nothing about your compassion, your competence, your intelligence, your diligence, your grace under fire, etc., that’s landed us with some real stinkers. The premise of affirmative action has always been that a person’s quality isn’t defined by their body type and we could prove it if we gave more people more opportunities, the premise of those who’d fight it has been that White males comprise all the talent; which argument looks stupid now?

It’s incredibly uplifting that two people who wouldn’t have even had the right to vote a hundred years ago, give or take, were the two strongest contestants to be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party this year. They were both deemed acceptable standard bearers for the mainstream of the party’s policy positions over any number of White guys. More, considering all the barriers Obama worked hard to overcome in his life, I’m glad that a man of his accomplishment and worth decided to run for office as a Democrat, so very proud that our party made him our nominee.

For many of us who come from prejudice-saturated backgrounds, it will be a joy to vote for him in November and be able to say, ‘maybe it can end with me.’

And on the day I cast my vote for Obama and look at the name beside his on the ticket, I’d like to be, if not necessarily as uplifted as all that, at least not disappointed. I’d guess many of the rest of her voters feel the same.

Tags: barack obama, hillary clinton (all tags)

"girls in trying to have the same kind of intensity and manic energy of boys become aggressive and sometimes violent." - Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen, June 7th, 2008 on Twitter "... In a series of studies involving hundreds of participants since 2005, my colleagues and I have found systematic social and financial backlash against even mildly assertive female executives. ... [W]omen are perhaps the only "low status" group whose members systematically and every bit as harshly show prejudice toward fellow ... Read More

Jun 7, 20080

McCain Adviser: McCain’s Tax Plan ‘Will Bring The Budget To Balance By The End Of His First Term’

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Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) rhetoric on the budget has become increasingly muddled in recent months. McCain has gone from pushing a balanced budget by 2012, to a balanced budget by 2017, to a “who cares” approach. A brief timeline:

– “McCain pledges to balance the budget by 2012, not by increasing taxes, but by vetoing […]

Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) rhetoric on the budget has become increasingly muddled in recent months. McCain has gone from pushing a balanced budget by 2012, to a balanced budget by 2017, to a “who cares” approach. A brief timeline: – “McCain pledges to balance the budget by 2012, not by increasing taxes, but by vetoing all pork barrel spending, and curbing outlays for Social Security and Medicare.” [Fortune, 2/19/08] – “McCain’s overall goal is to balance the budget by the end of ... Read More

Jun 7, 20080

SEIU Convention: Post-Convention Round-up

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I’m back from Puerto Rico and continuing to process the SEIU convention. Wanted to get you all up to date with the other things that went on down in San Juan.

  • SEIU was kind enough to hook us bloggers up with a meeting with Donna Edwards. Dave Johnson posted it over at his blog Seeing The Forest. It was great to be able to sit down with Donna. She is just as smart and savvy as you’d expect and it was very interesting to hear her take on both her 2006 and 2008 runs. On 2006, she said she entered the race as late as she did only because she had calculated how much time she could afford to be out of work. She was running in 2006 to win and believes she did win, but she also feels that having run in 2006 made her a better candidate in 2008. Also, she feels it makes her even more prepared to actually enter congress. Donna is the first of many second-time challengers we’re hoping finish the job in 2008 and listening to her talk about it got me even more pumped for the 08 successes of Darcy Burner and Charlie Brown to name just two.

    Dave’s takeaway from our meeting:

    She says the wind of change is out there, a demand for change is building. She says regular people have to run for office to start building a farm team for change. Regular people have a story to tell, and the more we run regular folks, the more opportunity there is to tell the public where we have to go. The power of the moneyed interests that want to keep us where we are is incredible so we have to empower regular people to tell their stories.

    She said she talked to a number of people, telling them they should run, and finally decided to run herself. “But why didn’t I say that first?” She wants all of us to say that first. (Not that Donna should run, but that YOU should run.) Progressives need to create a farm team to run for office.

    Indeed.

  • Watertiger NYC has an excellent post up at FireDogLake about the dissent from within the SEIU from the reform SEIU faction within the union that I referenced in my post on Monday.

    The “Reform SEIU” coalition of locals, however, believes that Andy Stern is concerned more with consolidating power than in protecting workers’ interests, and that Stern and the SEIU’s Executive Board have taken credit where credit ought not to be due. Paul Kumar, Director of Government Affairs with the UHW West is one of Stern’s detractors. The UHW-W is not opposed to coordinating locals and utilizing the power of the SEIU to obtain better working conditions and benefits for its members. The UHW-W wants a unified health care industry.

    What the UHW is opposed to is, according to Kumar, “workers being robbed of their own power by a philosophy of accommodation” to corporate interests. Kumar sees Stern’s “results-oriented” style as antithetical to the democratic process. Having witnessed a series of incidents in which members have lost control and a voice in the decision-making process, Kumar is dubious, at best, about SEIU’s intentions. To the UHW, their self-interest has been sacrificed in the name of affiliation.

    To address this rift in the union, Stern has put forth a “Unity’ resolution at this Convention, which he asserts is intended to “keep us honest about the union’s mission.” [Note: as of this writing, the Resolution passed without amendment.]

    As you can imagine, the UHW saw the unity resolution as a political ploy. Sal Roselli, president of California local United Healthcare Workers-West, spoke on the floor of the convention to address the unity resolution and urged abstention but also spoke passionately about where there is real unity — among the members, their brothers and sisters, and when it comes to making progressive political change. It’s worth watching:

  • Andy Stern blogs over at HuffPo about SEIU’s plans for Obama’s first 100 days:

    We now have a historic opportunity. When we elect a pro-worker president and win a pro-worker majority in Congress in November, we’ll have an incredible opportunity to change the direction of this country. We’ll finally have a progressive majority. And that will mean real change in working people’s lives.

    But we’re not leaving anything to chance. At our convention this week in Puerto Rico, rank-and-file SEIU leaders made an incredibly important decision. During the first 100 days of the 111th Congress, we’re going to dedicate 50 percent of our staff and resources to passing priorities for working families like the Employee Free Choice Act and health care for all. That also means making more than 10 million phone calls to members of Congress, engaging 50 percent of our members, and raising $10 million dollars to hold Congress accountable in 2009.

More in the coming days as I catch up with all that I saw and heard.

(disclaimer: SEIU paid for me to travel to San Juan to cover the convention)

Tags: seiu convention (all tags)

I'm back from Puerto Rico and continuing to process the SEIU convention. Wanted to get you all up to date with the other things that went on down in San Juan. SEIU was kind enough to hook us bloggers up with a meeting with Donna Edwards. Dave Johnson posted it over at his blog Seeing The Forest. It was great to be able to sit down with Donna. She is just as smart and savvy as you'd expect and it was very ... Read More