Life Imitates Comedy

A few months ago Dennis Perrin wrote a satirical ad for John McCain:
NARRATOR: Barack Obama's friend Bill Ayers once belonged to a group that bombed public buildings. But how many people did Ayers actually kill? Based on the evidence, the answer is ZERO. That's right -- not a single dead body. Sorry Senator Obama. If you want to be president, you'll have to find a more violent group of friends.

John McCain. He's killed before, and he'll kill again.


Now, we have Ehud Barak campaigning against Avigdor Lieberman on precisely those grounds: 'When has he ever shot anyone? When has he ever held a rifle?'

Obama’s Mandate: Why “Going Slow” is a Recipe for Going Nowhere Fast

Less than 24 hours after Barack Obama won the presidency with a greater share of the popular vote than any candidate in 20 years, talking heads from all quarters (including his own) began the mad rush to contain the tremendous popular energy that had infused his campaign. On November 5th, Robert Gibbs, a senior advisor to the campaign, told the New York Times that the masses of people across the country who spontaneously took to the streets in celebration of Obama's victory need to have "a realistic expectation of what can happen and how quickly.” William Galston of The New Republic, in a rather strange piece, argues that the economic crisis effectively precludes Obama from taking any effective action to remedy the crisis' effects on working Americans. Scott Winship, also of TNR, in one of the denser (as in more stupid) articles I've seen post-election, argues that since the Dems have a lesser margin in the House and Senate today than they did in 1992, 2010 could well see another "Republican Revolution" and its ensuing Contract on America.[1] Paul Krugman writes an effective riposte to such technocratic gibberish: "John McCain denounced his opponent as a socialist and a “redistributor,” but America voted for him anyway. That’s a real mandate."

The comparison of Obama and Clinton has become nothing less than a mantra among those seeking to convince the former to play ritardando. "Remember Hillarycare!" they mouthe with solemnity. The narrative is as follows: Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 promising sweeping changes (universal health care, federal anti-scabbing legislation, and a federal freedom of choice act, etc) and the end of Reaganism. He tried to move too fast, however, and gave the Republicans an opportunity which they took in 1994. Unfortunately, he had to spend the rest of his time in office battling a hostile congress (tear, cue violin.)

Very little of this narrative has anything to do with reality. Beginning with the end, it ignores the boatload of quite unsavory things Bill Clinton did accomplish during his presidency (the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, NAFTA, Don't Ask Don't Tell, the destruction of welfare, the assault on Yugoslavia, etc). Based on this record, one would have the impression that Clinton worked quite happily with a Republican congress.

Beyond this, the core of the narrative is, quite simply, a fantasy. Bill Clinton did not move quickly to enact the progressive promises of his campaign. As Vincente Navarro, the "token leftist" of the Clinton's health care taskforce reminds us in a crucial article, "President Clinton made his first priority a reduction of the federal deficit (a policy not even included in his program), approved NAFTA (against the opposition of the AFL-CIO, the social movements, and even the majority of the Democratic Party), and committed himself to perpetuation of the for-profit health insurance system." If anything, Clinton brought on the Republican Revolution not by moving too quickly to the Left, but by executing a sharp turn to the Right.

Navarro's analysis rings true in several ways. First, Clinton's own staffers admit it. In the same article quoted earlier about the Obama campaign trying to dampen expectations, we find a curious admission from Paul Begala, one of Bill's senior advisors. Begala recounts Bill's reaction to his advice that the candidate needed to cool his backers' expectations:

“I remember talking about this to him in the closing days of the campaign,” Mr. Begala said. “And he started saying, ‘We didn’t get into this overnight and we’re not going to get out of it overnight.’ ”

“So I remember him talking about it and doing it — and it didn’t have any effect on the citizens,” Mr. Begala said. That was one reason, he said, that Democrats lost control of Congress two years later.

This rather extraordinary admission invites no comment from the Times' reporter, who is apparently intent on sustaining the goals of the Obama team.

Begala's comment is vindicated by an electoral analysis of the 1994 Congressional elections. Hailed by the Republicans as a mandate for a return to Reagan, the election illustrates the deadly effect Clinton's triangulation had upon his base. Voter turnout among those making $22,000 (2007 dollars) or less a year dropped sharply, by 21%. A drop in African American voting rates. And a drop in voting rates for women. Democratic turnout was down in every part of the country except the Mid-Atlantic and the Far West, where gains were minute. By turning sharply away from the positions which had fueled his campaign, Clinton drove a nail into his own political coffin. If Obama wishes to avoid a similar fate, he would do well to ignore the advice of the "go slow" crowd.

What Obama does or doesn't decide to do, however, is far less important than what those of us on the ground decide. Based upon the conduct of his advisors and his selection of Clintonite DLC hack Rahm Emmanuel for Chief of Staff, he's already made his decision. What is urgently needed now is for all of us who celebrated Tuesday night to turn a deaf ear to the go-slow liberals both inside and outside of Obama's administration and get down to the hard work of rebuilding the American Left.


[1] Less relevant to my argument, but perhaps more entertaining, is Ramesh Ponnuru's delusional fantasy that the American electorate is best characterized as "center-right."

The Death Knell of Conservatism, Episodes 943 and 944

Conservative editor and windbag William Kristol. I think they gave him nitrous oxide before the shoot to keep that shit eating grin on his face the whole 7 minutes.

Oh How They Love Each Other

Joe Biden: "I don't think there's a prejudiced bone in John McCain's body."
John McCain: "I hate the gooks," McCain said yesterday in response to a question from reporters aboard his campaign bus. "I will hate them as long as I live."

McCain Tries to Put Out a Fire He Started

Vote Nader

Ruling Class Media Turns Against the Republicans

Finally! Though it's been evident for about two years now that there's been a major shift of ruling class support away from the Republicans (who've fouled things up not a little for the American Empire), I've been quite disappointed so far this election cycle with the timidity of ruling class attacks on the conservatives. Remember Mark Foley in 2006? Why haven't the institutions of ruling opinion begun trotting out the skeleton's in the Republican closet yet this time around? While I don't have an answer for that, I think it is has finally begun.

CNN has regularly been carrying "Fact Check" segments where it subjects McCain campaign claims about Obama to empirical verification, where they typically come up quite thin. The latest regards Obama and gun control.

McCain's campaign hasn't helped itself by going on the attack against the ruling class media, calling the New York Times "a pro-Obama organization that every day attacks Sen. McCain, attacks Gov. Palin, and excuses Sen. Obama.” The irony here is that there is a rational kernel to McCain and co's conspiracy theories of the liberal media. The media's owners have made a real shift to the Democrats, and the Republicans are finally beginning to pay.

Why Obama Will Win

Whatever the US ruling class wants to gain out of this election, it sure as shit isn't this.

Sarah Palin: Anti-woman trogolodyte

Here is one of the more appalling nuggets discovered about McCain's VP: as Mayor of Wasilla, she oversaw the policy of having rape victims pay for their rape kits (that can run as high as $1000). See multiple sources here and here.

The fact that the Obama camp can't muster any kind of response is simply disgusting. The Democrat's are showing themselves to be impotent to this neanderthal. The election is still theirs to lose, but if the so-called "party of the people" cannot figure out how to win in November, the coffin in which the Republicans should have been buried might see a different occupant.

The New York Times and the End of White Guilt

Having just moved to Newark, New Jersey, I recently found myself confronted at a newsstand with this week's New York Times magazine's Profound Quandary: "Is Obama the End of Black Politics?" Since Obama secured the nomination, this kind of article has been appearing in every pesudo-intellectual magazine in the country.

I loathe these writings with an intensity I find hard to describe. What makes them such, vile, foetid pools of intellectual sewage is the barely contained celebratory air over the supposed death of the "Civil Rights Generation"-style politics (i.e. holding America responsible for its racism) present in every one of them. The NYT piece is merely the culmination of an underground party that's been going on in White Middlebrow America for the last few months, the invitation to which reads "The Guilt is Over!" (The card, it should be noted, is signed by Barack himself.)

The piece itself is unremarkable in its banalities. Lots of quotes from conservative Black mayors, like Newark's own Cory Booker, exalting their own supposed novelty and relevance. A profound ignorance of the history of Black politics (seemingly a job requirement for being hired by the NYT). And of course, a great deal of feigned chin-scratching over "what this all means now."

One item that jumped out at me from the article was author Matt Bai's tortured attempt to demonstrate Black economic progress. In a classic case of the proof disproving itself, Bai writes "According to an analysis by Pew’s Economic Mobility Project, almost 37 percent of black families fell into one of the three top income quintiles in 2005, compared with 23 percent in 1973." First of all, who ever uses a category as utterly arbitrary, and confusing, as "top three economic quintiles" unless they are trying to pull a fast one? I can picture Bai at his desk, working late into the night, trying desperately to find some articulation of the statistics that can make Black economic progress seem impressive. Second, and most importantly, the stat, while appearing to suggest something like a twofold growth in Black income parity, actually reveals the tremendous gap that still exists. The top three economic quintiles should represent 60% of the population. Yet Bai's example shows that Black folks constitute almost half of the proportion they should of these brackets. Hardly something to celebrate.

Glenn Ford of the Black Agenda Report does an excellent job taking apart the specific logic of Bai's article, so I'll point readers there for more. In closing, I just want to note the article's denkverbot on any of the actual issues facing Black America today. The Black Gulag isn't mentioned. The mortage companies' swindling is no where to be found. Likewise for Katrina. And Black poverty is whitewashed. These issues are the real reason that, when I walk down 125th street in Harlem, I see street vendor after vendor selling shirts juxtaposing Dr. King and Obama. Black America doesn't celebrate Obama because they think he's going to leave Civil Rights politics behind, but because they hope he will complete them.

Adolph Reed on Obama

Adolph Reed is, in the words of my advisor, a smart cat. His collection Class Notes, one of my first introductions to modern Marxist polemic, contains brilliant chapters on the rise of Louis Farrakhan, the myth of "blackantisemitism" (one word), and above all, his devastating critique of the ebony tower, "What Are the Drums Saying Booker?" Of late I've been lamenting his failure to produce anything noteworthy on the Obama phenomenon. His only contribution to the debate that I'd seen before today was an essay for the Progressive (sic) "Obama No," for which the sole point of substance is that Obama is an opportunist (not exactly a surprising thing to accuse a politician of).

Today, however, I checked the Black Agenda Report and found that my dolor over Reed's lack of output could now end. He's posted a very long essay on Obama that goes right for the jugular. It's masterful in how it situates Obama within the larger retreat of the organized Left. My favorite passage is below (on Obama being praised for being "politically unorthodox" with his Father's Day speech):

this is the "Obama we want to see more of," the one who takes positions that are "unorthodox" and "not politically safe." Since when has it been unorthodox or unsafe politically to malign black poor people in public? Who the fuck has been doing anything else for at least twenty years?

Mumia Abu-Jamal on Ralph Nader

Irony of ironies: Clinton calls for help with personal debt

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read this CNN.com headline : "Clinton wants help with her campaign debt". Apparently Clinton is over $20 million in debt because she had to donate heavily to her own campaign and is now asking supporters to lend a hand to help her recover before the late August deadline. In a video appeal, Clinton's campaign wrote:

“By helping us pay off our campaign debt, you’re not just helping Hillary elect a Democratic president and grow our majority in Congress. You’re making it possible for her to work as hard as she can on the issues we care about.”

Are you shitting me?

What unity looks like to Obama's campaign

According to the AP, at a Detroit, Michigan event, the Obama campaign denied two Muslim women wearing hijabs seats behind the candidate because of the 'sensitive political climate.'

Presidential Candidates Respond to Castro's Resignation

McCain: "I hope Castro dies."

Obama: "If the Cuban leadership begins opening Cuba to meaningful democratic change, the United States must be prepared to begin taking steps to normalize relations and to ease the embargo of the last five decades."

Clinton: "The United States must pursue an active policy that does everything possible to advance the cause of freedom, democracy and opportunity in Cuba."

So, aside from McCain plainly stating that he wants Castro to meet Karl Marx post haste, the Democratic candidates are chomping at the bit to allow the grubby little fingers of their business backers into a country that has remained a thorn in their foot for nearly 50 years. Here's a great article from the ISR discussing how and why we defend the gains that Cuba has made under Castro - their amazing health care system shown in 'Sicko' for example - while criticizing the fact that Castro has not created a workers state nor was it the goal of the '59 revolution.

The Problem with Organized Labor

This news has been breaking recently, noting that this election the AFL-CIO will commit around $53 million to "electing a pro-worker president" and "six pro-worker seats in Congress."

That is to me, dear readers, disgusting. Using statistics from the AFL-CIO website, we can find the highest-ever recorded membership count for the "nation's Union Movement" as 14,070,000 members. This means that even if private sector unionization were at the 1974-5 rate (which I would bet it is not - most numbers put it at around a stunning 8% today), this would amount to $3.77 million per member spent on the Presidential Election. I can't make this up (nor would I, if I wanted to).

What's worse, the union is committing 200,000 "regional organizers" to the task, which no matter how you slice it, means 200,000 less people organizing for the rights of workers across the country. I'll remember that the next time the national union claims understaffing as a reason for not supporting a wildcat strike.

The workingpeople of this country deserve better than $53 million for the hope that a President might listen.

Sometimes Dems Make it Easy

The authors on this blog can easily be, and often are, berated by mainstream liberals for our unflinching criticism of the Democratic Party. With catchphrases like "the graveyard of social movements" (imagine what we call our significant others, with pet names like that!), it's no wonder that in both 2000 and 2004 the three of us constituted three more votes for G.W.

But sometimes, the Democratic Party makes our jobs easy. One of those times was when two of the authors were thrown out of Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)'s office during a rally because our Palestinian flag "made the issue too real for constituents." Another one of those moments was when Howard Dean attempted to remove my friend from a dinner and Q&A session despite the fact that my friend had been instrumental to bringing Dean to Cornell. His crime? Being associated with a group of hair-brained radicals who dropped a banner demanding Dean take a stand on the Iraq war.

And then there's this newest development. University of Florida police officers tasered a student for asking too many questions. Interesting is that while the University of Florida President has apologized for the incident (which makes sense, since UCLA got slammed for similar actions), the Kerry orgainzation has made, to my knowledge, no comment about the incident, or even the shutting-off of the student's microphone when he asked about black voter disenfranchisement, which provoked the incident.

The conclusion here? Like Michael Moore, true activists or lefties asking real questions are personae non gratae from the Democratic Party. While I understand the draw of the Party in the 2008 elections to voters tired of eight years of Republican autocracy, and am happy to organize with these people here and into the future, I think we can do much better.Publish Post

Cracks at the Top Bear Bitter Fruit for Immigrants, Corporate America

Lacking a bill from Congress, President Bush tossed a red piece of meat to his rabid nativist base by declaring some new executive initiatives to deal with our apparently ‘hemorrhaging’ borders. The primary measures, brokered between the department of Homeland Security, the Department of Labor and the White House, focus on the enforcement aspect of the immigration compromise divide ( as opposed to the modern slavery of ‘guest worker’ –wing ). This means more Homeland Security and Border Patrol agents increased prosecutions of employers who hire undocumented workers specifically through the use an online Social Security database that checks for false numbers. Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff argued that even with the increase in agents, the government will not be able to punish all employers. But, fret not Tom Tancredo, because Chertoff is confident that he argued that “high-impact, high-visibility enforcement would act as a deterrent.” Hmm, Mike, what could these ‘tactics’ look like? Does the multi-state, Gestapo-style raid of the Swift meatpacking plants of last December strike a chord? In this ‘success’ of immigration enforcement 1,297 people were arrested by ICE while only 274 face charges. It is clear that ‘enforcement’ means the state-led terrorizing of Latinos, be they citizens or not. The story of one resident of Marshalltown, Iowa two months after the raid warrants quoting to show how devastating to families involved:

“When José Mora tucks his 7-year-old niece into bed at night, she often asks, "Where's my mommy?" He doesn't want to say that her mother is in a Des Moines jail awaiting a hearing that could result in her being deported to Mexico. "I say only, 'Your mother might be coming home next month,' " says Mora, who won't discuss the child's legal status. Mora, 41, who has three children, took in his two nieces before Christmas. Their father, Mora's brother-in-law, was deported to Mexico after a Dec. 12 raid at a local meatpacking plant.

The trump card of this plan, the online Social Security database, is believed to have an error rate for citizens estimated as high as 11%. Let’s see, so, if you’re keeping tabs, that means that 11% failure of one initiative on people with documents and slightly more than 20% of the people in raids are actually charged. To me, those seem to be pretty abysmally low odds for ruining people lives.

However, the implications of this action by Bush and Co. cut to the heart of not only the fissures in the Republicans, but between both ruling parties. As far as the Republicans are concerned, Bush has become a pariah. His low approval rating and arrogant actions in Iraq and his inability to pass ‘comprehensive immigration reform’, whatever the fuck that is have gotten him in hot water with his party. But, as the initial responses by the ag-industry, leading Republicans, and Democrats to the announcement of these initiatives show that he hasn’t for some reason Bush is making a last ditch effort of sorts to reconnect with his xenophobic base, from whom he must have been much more estranged than I would have thought.

To me, the most revealing aspect is the outcry from Corporate America. Chertoff himself admits that "there will be some unhappy consequences for the economy out of doing this." How unhappy, you might be asking yourself. As unhappy as if someone stole your birthday? As unhappy as if you got dumped and your dog died? Well, to humor you all we should ask Laura Foote Reiff, co-chairwoman of the Business Immigration Group: "It's going to be awful; the harvest is going to be awful... People will feel it when they go grocery shopping, when they read in the newspaper that we're importing our meat from China." Ooh, a little anti-China sentiment to boot.

As much as I enjoy to such a bourgie bastard squirm, an admission by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez cuts to the core of the issue: "We do not have the workers our economy needs to keep growing each year. The demographics simply are not on our side. Ultimately, Congress will have to pass comprehensive immigration reform." Clearly the persecution, flight, and general absence of the nearly 2.5 million estimated agricultural workers without documents will have a devastating impact on the ability of agribusiness to pick this years’ harvest. When all seemed lost to the poor growers, in steps the reliable B-Team of US capitalism to save the day. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein decried this move as a “catastrophe… The crisis is that crops will not be harvested.” Not, we need to protect families from being divided and people from being wrongfully detained and deported. That would be too much.

While it is too early to see what the Democrats will propose, their initial reactions not only reveal their loyalties (Big Business) but some of the important inter-workings of US capitalism. One reason that the US has one of the longest undisturbed constitutional governments in history is largely due to the fact that there are two parties, which clearly have their differences, but ultimately when there is a crisis with one party, the other is ready and willing to step up to the plate. For instance, the abrupt end of the ‘Republican Revolution’ at the mid term elections last November where the Republican’s disgusting handling of Iraq led millions of voters to see the election as a referendum on the war and the party that most visibly conducted it. Though the Democrats have done NOTHING to bring the war to an end, this blow to their corporate backers has to have severe repercussions. The question is how far are the Dems willing to alienate their liberal and progressive base in order to please the bosses?

More 'Immigration Reform' rumblings from Capitol Hill

After the defeat of the draconian, pro-business and racist anti-immigrant legistlation in Congress in June, Congress is trying to ratchet up the pressure on undocumented immigrants in a piecemeal fashion. Currently education and agricultural exceptions are being considered. Nearly 1 million high school students are in the US because of, in the words of IL Senator Dick Durbin, "The sins of their parents" for which they shouldn't be blamed. In other words, promising students that they can stay if they attend college or join the military, but that their parents are criminals who will continue to be targets for ICE raids, departation, and separation from their children.

On the other hand, after approving $3 billion more for border security, by far the largest federal law enforcement agency, due to labor shortages in the agricultural centers like California, North Carolina and Michigan, the United Farm Workers, conservative Republicans like Senator Larry E. Craig of Idaho, and Senator Dianne Feinstein are spearheading the bipartison thrust to expand the guest worker program.


This remake of the bracero program, described as a system of "legalized slavery" by Lee G. Williams, the US Department of Labor official in charge of the programT, has widespread bipartisan support and as you might have noticed in the Youtube Democratic debates, was never mentioned by any candidate.

Obama waves a big stick at terrorists

6,000 more troops to Afghanistan and billions more to fight terror outside of Iraq as well as promises to strike inside of Pakistan if the government refuses to get in line.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IH03Df02.html