"The sheriff is a ...."

Chet alerts us to this New Republic article by John Judis which basically says Obama is winning the Democratic nomination because he is black and therefore "historic":

. . . having realized that Obama was going to be a genuine rival for the nomination, she and her campaign decided to go negative on him. They did the usual thing politicians do to each other: They ran attack ads taking his words somewhat out of context . . . But there a was difference between her doing this to Obama and McCain's doing it to Romney--a difference that eluded Clinton, her husband, and her campaign staff. . . . Obama, too, was, and is, history--the first viable African-American presidential candidate. Yes, Hillary Clinton was the first viable female candidate, but it is still different.

Chet and Bob Somerby and lambert and others are criticising this article for its explicit sexism.
But I want to note something I find even more disturbing about this article.
Implicit in it is the idea that Obama's candidacy is enough -- that making Obama the Democratic nominee would give America an egalitarian stamp of approval, demonstrable proof that America isn't racist anymore, no siree, but of course actually electing him is unnecessary, in fact unthinkable, oh no, that would go too far.
Judis writes about Obama as though he is an historical artifact:

Race is the deepest and oldest and most bitter conflict in American history--the cause of our great Civil War and of the upheavals of the 1950s and '60s. And if some voters didn't appreciate the potential breakthrough that Obama's candidacy represented, many in the Democratic primaries and caucuses did--and so did the members of the media and Obama's fellow politicians. And as Clinton began treating Obama as just another politician, they recoiled and threw their support to him.

It is a subtle message, but clear -- that Americans can all feel like they're struck some kind of blow for equaity just by supporting Obama's candidacy, with no need to actually elect him as President
In fact, Judis explicity lets everyone off the hook with the blithe statement that to win in November Obama would have to "capture enough of these white working class voters" -- and of course those no-account "working class" types wouldn't be worrying about proving themselves not to be racist so they can just go ahead and discriminate, that's OK and its all Obama's fault if he can't get their votes ....
In fact, the implicit attitude toward Obama in this article reminds me of Samuel Johnson's attitude about women preachers:

"Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."

Just as the sexism displayed by many in the media and by many pundits and bloggers has sickened me over the last couple of months, so also will the racism we are already seeing, particularly from people like Judis who don't think they are racists at all.

Reality check

Ian Welsh comments about the risk that Obama is taking in pushing way the bloggers and the so-called Second Tier campaign groups:

. . . Obama had best win, because he's telling a lot of people (not just bloggers) "I don't need your help". And when you look at state rather than national polls, y'know what, he's currently losing to McCain. When you tell people to shove it, you don't need their help, failure is not an option.
Say what you will about Clinton, but I don't know anyone who thinks she'd be choking off money to independent small-d groups, or freezing out constituencies she doesn't control. The blogosphere went mostly Obama, but Clinton kept her outreach.
*shrug* I'll support Obama, of course, and tell folks to vote for him, and so on. So will every other prog-blog, even the hard-core Clintonistas. But he'd better win or he won't have a lot of friends to cushion him in his fall from grace.

What will the Obama campaign do to get people like Ian Welsh onside?
And Avedon Carol and Lance Mannion and James Wolcott and Bob Somersby and Lambert and Paul Krugman and, I think, Digby,and all of the other hundreds of thousands of people who heard Obama's speeches and decided to support Hillary, or at least who kept saying they could support either?
These people aren't going to leap onto the bandwagon. They don't see Obama as the Second Coming and, having been burned in 2004 by the shut-up-and-don't-criticize-Kerry meme, they will speak up this time if they think Obama is handling some issue badly. I hope someone in his campaign will be reading what they say -- they could prove to be Obama's most important reality check

Little Saddams

The priceless part of this story is that the US military is just creating a bunch of neighbourhood Saddam Husseins, and they don't even seem to realise it:

. . . doing business with the gunmen, whom the U.S. military has dubbed Sons of Iraq, is like striking a deal with Tony Soprano, according to the soldiers who walk the battle-blighted streets, where sewage collects in malodorous pools.
"Most of them kind of operate like dons in their areas," said 2nd Lt. Forrest Pierce, a platoon leader with the 3rd Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment. They shake down local businessmen for protection money, seize rivals for links to the insurgency and are always angling for more men, more territory and more power.
For U.S. soldiers on the beat, it means navigating a complex world of shifting allegiances, half-truths and betrayals.

Wow -- just wow

75,000 Rally in Portland for Obama:



And here are some of the comments at the Washington Post blog:

I am 47 years old and have never been so excited about a presidential race. Obama brings vision, change, and a love of America with all it has to offer from his one in a million perspective. I truly believe that we are looking at not only history in the making but at the next president of the United States

Holy cow!! I watched the rally on CNN and they didnt span the crowd once. Well, it doesnt change anything I bet, the American people can see through the media smoke screen. Go BO our moment is now

The crowds at Obama rallies are truly impressive--people from all walks of life, all demographic groups. He is a leader who inspires us to be a better, more united nation. Most politicians talk about what they want to do when they are elected-- he talks about what we the people will do together with his leadership. Obama really can transform the electoral map-- moving beyond the slice and dice politics of the past couple of decades.

This guy almost have more power than the president. If he runs the country the way he has run his campaign, America will be a force respected around the world again.

Oh, I hope Hillary is wrong -- I guess I'm afraid she's right but oh how I hope she is wrong. I hope Obama is the kind of leader that America deserves to have.

Wingnut Creed

The Editors at Poor Man on Tweety's argument with the right-winger who kept screeching "he's an appeaser" about Obama, without actually knowing what that meant at all:

It’s all like this. Everything is just like this. Some blank young person who has memorized a 5″x7″ index card of focus group-approved phrases, yelling, yelling, yelling over everyone. And you can say what you want, and be as right as you want, but he’s going to keep yelling, and yelling, and yelling until you get sick of it, and at the end of the day everybody knows that Barack Obama goes to secret Muslim church. Everything is like this. An election won’t fix it. This rules the world.

When I had wingnuts infesting my comments, I observed they would just keep parroting the same phrases over and over, regardless of context or relevance.
I guess its easier than thinking.

BFF? Not so much

I see what skdadl means -- while the New York Times is burying the news about the Saudi-US deal about "civilian nuclear technology" -- whatever that is -- other non-US media are headlining it - VOA News - Bush in Saudi Arabia for Nuclear Deal.
I also noted this illuminating paragraph about US- Saudi relations now, as said by John Alterman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies:

'This relationship has been unalterably changed partly by the events of September 11, partly by what's happened in Iraq, partly by a Saudi sense that the United States isn't nearly as competent as they thought,' said Alterman. 'And while there is no alternative to the United States, there is suddenly a need to hedge against U.S. incompetence. That changes the whole way these meetings go, and it changes what happens when the U.S. president says I really need you to do this.'

Hmmm - the rest of the world is taking steps to protect itself from US incompetence -- so who is actually holding who's hand now?

Great line of the day

Tom Englehart writes Welcome to the Age of Homeland Insecurity:

. . . Osama bin Laden and his scattering of followers may be credited for goading the fundamentalist leaders of the United States into using the power in their grasp so ... stupidly and profligately as to send the planet's "sole superpower" into decline. Above all, bin Laden and his crew of fanatics will have ensured one thing: that the real security problems of our age were ignored in Washington until far too late in favor of mad dreams and dark phantoms.

Via.

Hillary fights on -- and makes points

Hillary says -- its the map, not the math.

"I believe I will win; I believe my opponent could win."

Just like the Canadian popular vote doesn't matter in our first-past-the-post constituency system, so also the US popular vote doesn't matter either, its the electoral votes.
Here are the latest electoral vote maps.





Here's some state-by-state analysis.
Now, I don't believe that women will stay home, however disappointed they may be if Hillary is not nominated -- Hillary has said she will work her heart out for Obama and I believe her.
And its a long time until November, and maybe Obama can inspire enough new voters in those red sttes to turn them blue -- provided they actually turn out and provided all the GOP voter repression laws actually allow their votes to count.
But even Cokie Roberts makes sense.

You can't pick your battles, only your side

Federal Judge Rules That Students Can’t Be Barred From Expressing Support for Gay People:

“Standing up to my school was really hard to do, but I’m so happy that I did because the First Amendment is a big deal to everyone,” said Heather Gillman, a junior at Ponce de Leon High School and the plaintiff in the case . . .
According to students, problems began in September of 2007 when a lesbian student tried to report to school officials that she was being harassed by other students because she is a lesbian.
Instead of addressing the harassment, students say the school responded with intimidation, censorship, and suspensions . . .
Ponce de Leon High School’s principal David Davis admitted under oath that he had banned students from wearing any clothing or symbols supporting equal rights for gay people. Davis also testified that he believed rainbows were “sexually suggestive” and would make students unable to study because they’d be picturing gay sex acts in their mind. The principal went on to admit that while censoring rainbows and gay pride messages he allowed students to wear other symbols many find controversial, such as the Confederate flag.

Another example of the unsought battles that turn ordinary people into heroes.
These 16-year-old students didn't want to be adversaries with their school administrators, but once the battle was thrust upon them, they didn't back down. As I have said before, "You don't get to pick your battles, you only get to pick your side":

Great line of the day

Alison quotes Police psychologist Mike Webster:

I am embarrassed to be associated with organizations that Taser sick old men in hospital beds and confused immigrants arriving to the country. Frankly I find it embarrassing.

Disneyland? Forget it.

This is very frightening

After being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was taken to the Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, Va., where he ended up in a barracks with 75 other men, including asylum-seekers who told him they had been waiting a year. . .
Luis Paoli, a lawyer hired by the Coopers, said there was no limit on detention while waiting for an asylum interview. But even after officials agreed the asylum issue had been a mistake, Mr. Salerno was not released.
“Now an innocent European, who has never broken any laws, committed any crimes, or overstayed his visa, is being held in a county jail,” Ms. Cooper wrote in an e-mail message to The New York Times last Wednesday, prompting a reporter’s inquiries.
Less than 24 hours later, immigration officials intervened and arranged to deliver Mr. Salerno to Dulles, where last Friday he flew to Rome.

But I guess injustice is OK as long as it happens to brown people:

“We have a lot of government people here and lobbyists and lawyers and very educated, very savvy Washingtonians,” said Jim Cooper, Ms. Cooper’s father, a businessman, describing the reaction in his neighborhood, the Wessynton subdivision of Alexandria. “They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn’t happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans.”

Will people like this ever elect Barak Obama as president, knowing that he would put a stop to this kind of BS?

Shorter

Shorter Harper:

Welcome to Hurbris North

Ancient history

Anything that happened to your parents is history. If it happened to your grandparents, its ancient history. And if it happened to your great-grandparents, its palaeolithic.
Glenn Greenwald writes about John McCain's Vietnam-based view of war:

John McCain is the ultimate embodiment of America's hoary, Vietnam era 'stabbed-in-the-back' myth. We should fight wars with massive bombing campaigns and unleashed force, unconstrained by excessive concerns over 'collateral damage' and unimpeded by domestic questioning. That's how we could have (and should have) 'won' in Vietnam and how we'll 'win' in Iraq.

What McCain hasn't realized is that, to anyone under 40, Vietnam is history. To anyone under 20, its ancient history. By trying to re-fight this war, he's just demonstrating just how old he really is.
America hated Vietnam because they were sucked into fighting it. They hate the Iraq War because they were tricked into fighting it. In both cases the public was right, not wrong -- both these wars were criminal acts, illegal in international law, and the American people were right to be disgusted with what their government was doing.
Politicians like McCain and Bush prattle on about how they just love democracy, but when the public makes a judgment they don't agree with, it never seems to cause them to question their own position. Instead they just write off the public as stupid or cowardly or both.

The mom song

YouTube - The Mom Song Sung to William Tell Overture: \

Come the revolution?

I knew there was something euuhhh! with Matt Stoller's Obama Magic post and Chris Bowers' Obama Transformation post and then dday's Obama Nation post but the best I could think of was "Haven't I heard this tune before, about mandates and faith-based politics?"
There's been some pushback here and, indirectly, here, but nobody's listening to Hillary-bloggers just now.
Avedon has a sinking feeling that just won't stop sinking about:

...all the people trying to find ways to feel good about the way the progressive movement is being made irrelevant

and points us to Ioz:

...[Bowers] makes the error of any good Bolshevik foot soldier: he presumes that the revolution is designed to benefit people like him.