Accidental Blogger

On the same day that Obama’s campaign gathered new wind on its back, thanks to a sweeping victory in South Carolina, another Caroline came through for him.

Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy has endorsed Barack Obama, comparing him to her father.

A President Like My Father

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.

Meanwhile a report in the L.A. Times  echoes much of what we have been saying here about the Clintons in recent days.

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I’ve been on the fence over whether I prefer Hillary or Obama, and have been generally leaning in the "I don’t care, they’re more or less the same to me" direction.  That’s part of the reason I continue to be so strongly pro-Edwards.  But this makes me think that there are some good reasons to be anti-Hillary.

In an attempt to retain some control over the process and keep the
various states from accelerating their primaries into last Summer, the
Democratic National Committee warned Michigan and Florida that if they
insisted on advancing their primary debates, their delegates wouldn’t
be seated and the campaigns would be asked not to participate in their
primaries. This was agreed to by all parties (save, of course, the
states themselves).

With no one campaigning, Clinton, of course, won Michigan — she was
the only Democrat to be on the ballot, as I understand it, which is
testament to the other campaign’s beliefs that the contest wouldn’t
count — and will likely win Florida. And because the race for
delegates is likely to be close, she wants those wins to matter. So
she’s fighting the DNC’s decision, and asking her delegates — those
she’s already won, and those she will win — to overturn it at the
convention. She’s doing so right before Florida, to intensify her good
press in the state, where Obama is also on the ballot. And since this
is a complicated, internal-party matter that sounds weird to those not
versed in it (of course Michigan and Florida should count!), she’s
adding a public challenge that, if the other Democrats deny, will make
them seem anti-Michigan and Florida.

BUT, it’s maybe not as clear-cut as Ezra makes it out to be.  Yes, Obama and Edwards weren’t on the Michigan ballot because they agreed to this — but Hillary’s not the only one on the ballot in Florida: Obama also is.  So while this political maneuver is extremely sketchy, it’s hard to see where the two are really all that far apart.

UPDATE: Ruchira points out in the comments that Edwards, too, is on the Florida ballot.  The fact that Hillary was the only one on the Michigan ballot, and is now asking for those votes to count, still seems problematic.  But the fact that all three are on the Florida ballot undercuts that, though to what extent is unclear to me.  In any event, I don’t think the delegates from Michigan and Florida are what’s going to matter — what matters is that Clinton’s move now gives her an advantage in Florida, and the votes in Florida are going to matter to the extent that the press decides to make Florida matter.

As I indicated in an earlier post, some Democratic elders are concerned about the unseemly tenor of the Clinton campaign – particularly the sight of an ex-president publicly brawling with his wife’s political opponent. The Clintons have the support of many back-room party apparatchiks on their side. But several well known senior Democrats in elected and cabinet positions have come out publicly in support of Obama and others have angrily questioned the tactics employed by Hill and Bill. Some prominent Democrats who have either endorsed Obama or expressed their concern about the behavior of the Clintons are:

• Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont
• Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachussets (supposed to have called Bill Clinton on the phone to make his displeasure known)
• Senator John Kerry of Massachussets
• Former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey
• Senator Tim Johnson of  S. Dakota 
• Senator Kent Conrad of N. Dakota 
• Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska
• Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri
• Former Senator and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of S. Dakota (now a national campaign chairperson of the Obama campaign)
• Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona 
• Robert Reich, Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration (See Reich’s blog entry on this matter)
• Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina

We haven’t yet heard from Jimmy Carter or Al Gore but I doubt that either is very happy with the way the Democratic primary campaign is unfolding.  Perhaps what they are really scared of is this.  [link: Sujatha]

As a big Paul Krugman fan, I’m a bit disappointed by the tendentiousness of his attacks on Obama.  Krugman may be right about the Social Security "crisis" rhetoric and the importance of health care mandates, but his attempts to say that Obama was praising Ronald Reagan are just flat-out wrong, and rely on a deliberately obtuse interpretation of the remarks.  Obama was saying that Reagan was able to unite disparate groups with his narrative of optimism and strength, even if the actual policies consisted of deficit spending and class warfare against the poor.  And the particularly dishonest thing about Krugman in this debate is that he said something very similar in his 1994 book Peddling Prosperity, which I read cover to cover at the time because my introductory economics textbook was so unbelievably dull. 

"In 1981 Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan uttered a startling pronouncement: ‘The Republicans,’ he declared, "are now the party of ideas."…By 1980, however, the rightward shift of American  politics had put Moynihan’s positions well to the left of center, so this was a self-punishing admission.  Why would Monynihan say such a thing?  Because as an unusually bookish politician, a former Harvard professor who prided himself on his intellectual honesty, Moynihan felt compelled to admit the impact of conservative ideas on American social thought, above all economics.  His generosity was refreshing and also ironic; for it came just at the moment when conservatism was simultaneously seizing real power and losing its soul, experiencing a process of intellectual and moral debasement."  — Paul Krugman, Peddling Prosperity, pp. 23-24

Krugman’s 1994 narrative is pretty much in keeping with what Obama was saying in his Reagan remarks.  What gives Paul? (and Hillary?).  Do you guys really think Obama was praising Reagan, or was he making a "refreshing" observation about Reagan’s combination of political success and intellectual and moral bankruptcy that very closely echoes what you both have said at various times?  Sheesh.  (And I write all this as a financial backer of Edwards, BTW).

Correction; it was an Oil Dance.  With oil prices hovering between $90 – $100 a barrel, George W. Bush recently visited his family friends in Saudi Arabia to sweetly jawbone them into lowering prices. It hasn’t worked yet. Eager to please the Saudis, Bush even participated in a sword dance with his princely hosts. The dance is not exactly a spirited show of athleticism. The participants appear to mostly sway from side to side in a leisurely manner while schmoozing. To his credit, GWB looked just a bit embarrassed. While watching the video, an uncomfortable thought crossed my mind. With Saudi Arabia’s less than stellar record on human rights, as reported by our own State Department, is Dancing With Swords a good headline for the leader of a democratic nation? 

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

During the year the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, known as the religious police (Mutawwa’in) harassed, abused, and detained citizens and foreigners of both sexes. These incidents were most common in the central region, including the capital of Riyadh, and relatively less frequent in the eastern and western regions of the country. However, there was an increase in reported religious police abuse in the Eastern Province and Jeddah.

The government sentenced criminals to punishment according to its interpretation of Shari’a. Corporal punishments provided by law included public execution by beheading, amputation, lashing, and other measures deemed appropriate by the judicial authorities. According to HRW, judges routinely issued sentences of thousands of lashes as punishment, often carried out in public. HRW reported that the beatings lead to severe mental trauma and physical pain, and the victims do not receive medical treatment.

During the year the press reported approximately 38 executions. The government executes individuals who have been convicted of murder, apostasy, narcotics-related offenses, rape, and armed robbery. Twenty of these executions were for crimes related to illegal drugs. There were no executions for apostasy during the year. The authorities punished repeated thievery and other repeated offenses by amputation of the right hand and left foot. The government also punished people for various offenses with lashings, including for alcohol-related offenses or for being alone in the company of an unrelated person of the opposite sex. According to press reports, lashings were generally administered with a thin reed by a man who must hold a book under his arm to prevent him from lifting the arm too high. The strokes, delivered through a thin shirt, are not supposed to leave permanent damage but are designed to leave painful welts that bleed and bruise. According to the NGO National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), there were unauthorized and excessive lashings in the women’s prisons.

On September 9, a Nigerian man had his right hand amputated after he was convicted of stealing in the Great Mosque in Mecca. He was found guilty of "committing the crime of pickpocketing."

On the other hand, doing a silly dance in an effort to keep the nation’s economy well lubricated is a far better foreign policy move than attacking an oil rich country under false pretense.

Marc Cooper over in Huffington Post on tonight’s Democratic debate in S. Carolina.

(I left the following comment on another blog on a related topic, I am re-posting it here with minor changes.)

"As things stand today, Hillary Clinton will probably win the nomination. There are just not enough older "liberal" baby boomers who can jump this last hurdle (of race) of their discomfort yet to vote for Obama. Edwards would have been an acceptable second choice but he is not winning.

Give the Clintons credit. They not only can speak from both sides of their mouths, they can also posture from both sides of the power divide. Today in Nevada, even before the caucuses were under way, the Clinton camp (personified by Bill Clinton) played the classic victim by accusing Obama supporters of voter suppression!"

The above comment was generated in part by this report from Nevada – Saturday’s venue for  the Democratic caucus.

Bill Clinton today accused the union backing Barack Obama of illegally blocking its workers from backing his wife in an orchestrated campaign of "voter suppression" in Nevada’s Democratic caucuses.

Mr Clinton, who spent 90 minutes at the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas today shaking voters’ hands, was told by several workers that their union, which has backed Mr Obama, has told them they could not register to vote unless they supported the Illinois senator.

Mr Obama was endorsed by the Culinary Workers’ Union, the biggest and most powerful trade organisation in Nevada. It carries particular clout in the casinos along the Las Vegas Strip.

Mr Clinton said: "They [the workers in the union] were told to sign up by Wednesday, and told it had to be for Obama, and if they had not signed up, that they had to wait until November to wait for Hillary." He told The Times: "It’s really interesting that on the eve of Martin Luther King day we are seeing voter suppression.

Brilliant! Don’t just accuse your African American opponent of voter suppression, an age old tactic against minority voters, but also evoke Martin Luther King Day.  Many saw this as preparing for a possible unfavorable outcome for Hillary and pre-emptive vilification of Obama.

Mr Clinton’s comments came before news of his wife’s victory, and would clearly have been part of the campaign’s post-vote spin if the former First Lady has been defeated.

The brass knuckles politicking that Bill Clinton has undertaken on behalf of his wife is raising eyebrows within the Democratic Party. Some influential party members  do not want to see an ex-president getting into the mosh pit of campaign politics duking it out like an ordinary politician.   

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