Month: January 2008

Wherein David Axelrod Blows A Gasket

by dday

I’ll be brief because I’m blogging this from my iPod. Barack Obama finished a good-sized rally where he kind of lost the crowd in the middle but ended well. It was pretty much the same stump speech we’ve heard; I’ll elaborate later. But as we were leaving, we spied Obama campaign manager David Axelrod and asked him about Bill Clinton’s very odd comment that he personally saw Culinary Union bosses threatening to stop workers from voting for Hillary.

Axelrod lost it. He said, “I don’t believe it, and if Bill Clinton actually saw that, he can take it to the NLRB. This is the rankest form of voter intimidation I’ve ever seen.” And with that, he stormed off.

It felt like being on Hardball for a second.

(for my money, if Clinton does claim he saw a union supervisor threatening to violate voter rights, then he should take it to the NLRB.)

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The Big Dog In North Las Vegas

by dday

So we’re in the Obama press area awaiting his arrival (in about an hour, I’m told). We just got back from a Bill Clinton event in North Las Vegas at a local YMCA. There were about 150-200 people there. Bill came out and said he mostly wanted to take questions, and then proceeded to talk for about 45 minutes (hah!). It was a solid speech, completely extemporaneous, talking about the challenges we must face in the next four years and how his wife is best able to face them. Specifically he honed in on subprime mortgages and the trouble with Big Shitpile (“people who have never missed a mortgage payment will lose their homes” because the banks will need to refinance to recoup their losses from bad investments), America’s stature in the world, and building a clean energy future (“Nevada is perfect for this – the wind blows and the sun shines, and we can capture all of that”). He highlighted Hillary Clinton’s “consistent record in public life of making positive changes,” including school reform in Arkansas, improving foster care and increasing adoptions as first lady, and the creation of SCHIP (“You need to know how the President responds to failure – with Hillary, it was SCHIP.”) It was a substantive, reasoned, and worthy case for his candidate. Here’s a paraphrase from my notes:

Obama says we need to turn over a whole new leaf, we must begin again. He has explicitly argued that prior service is a disability in picking the next President. Hillary wants to put the country in the solutions business. We must come together by doing. The purposes of politics is to live your hopes and dreams by making changes in people’s lives. Vision and inspiration is important, but so is perspiration and delivery. The ultimate test of our service is who’s delivered for the American people.

Which is an excellent case to make. He also said that he claimed he was in his hotel in Vegas last night, and a bunch of members of the Culinary Worker’s union came up to him and said that they weren’t going to listen to their union and they would caucus for Hillary. Which is fine. Then, he claimed, a shift supervisor or someone in a position of authority came up and said, “If you do that I’m going to change your schedule so you can’t be there to caucus tomorrow.” It’s a pretty amazing allegation (a union boss is going to threaten and intimidate the voting rights of workers in front of a former President?), and Todd from MyDD and myself have some calls in to Hillary’s press people to get some clarification. There’s no way to really independently verify it, but it strains credibility to believe that it went down the way President Clinton said.

I do want to highlight this other moment. Among the mostly substantive questions that he eventually took from the audience, Clinton was asked where his favorite places were to travel. He took this softball, began a meandering audio travelogue of all these different places he’s been, rambling like an old uncle telling a story with seemingly no end, and then he told this amazing story about this woman in Rwanda who met the man who killed her son and how she forgave him, and he wrapped it up by saying we can all learn some lessons from every place we visit, and he went back over every place he named and gave some vital lesson that came out of it. It was like watching Michael Jordan do some behind-the-back, double-reverse, doesn’t-even-know-where-the-basket-is, eyes-closed and it goes in anyway bank shot. It was almost poetic. That’s Clinton’s real gift, to weave what he called “the story of America” and bring these arcane policy issues into some kind of immediacy for people, making it real to their lives.

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Even DFH’s Are More Genteel There

by digby

Eve Fairbanks from The New Republic reports from South Carolina:

“Already tired of Hardee’s, I stopped to grab lunch today at the Rosewood Market Organic Restaurant in Columbia. Crunchy yuppies are the same everywhere on earth: The Drew’s All Natural dressing, the Newman’s Own products, the lavender soap, the bulk quinoa. The one difference showed up on the store’s magazine rack. There was Outside, Yoga Journal, all the standard fare, including Psychology Today, whose cover featured a pseudo — ‘naked’ couple — with nipples and everything else scandalous cleverly covered up, of course, along the lines of Britney’s pose for Bazaar. But even so, on every issue in the store, somebody had lovingly stuck yellow post-it notes over the woman’s bust and crotch.”

I think it’s sweet. They didn’t remove it from the shelves as they might do at a Walmart. They just covered it up. It would have been really creative if they’d stamped a fig leaf on each of the post-its.

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On The Ground In Vegas

by dday

We just arrived on the Strip about 20 minutes ago. We’ll be at campaign events for Obama and Clinton tonight, and out at the caucus sites tomorrow (Mittens Romney will be out at a caucus site at 7:30am, so that could be fun).

I find it instructive to watch the local news reports on caucus eve. Despite what you’d think, there’s been about 3 minutes of coverage of the caucuses in the last half-hour. They’ve actually devoted more to the local women’s roller derby team than the caucuses. (ah, local news). One station had an end-of-the-newscast story where the reporter showed a bunch of pictures of the candidates to people on the street and asked them to name them. It wasn’t pretty.

When people say they don’t know who’ll show up to these caucuses, I believe it. It doesn’t seem as central to the local scene as, say, the Danny Gans show.

One thing I did notice on the news: Nevada’s unemployment rate is up to 5.8%, the highest rate since April of 2002. I’ve heard that it’s been a bad winter in Las Vegas, which may impact the desire of people to caucus if it means missing their shift at the casinos. (By the way, the casinos made $25 billion last year, so they’re not exactly hurting; but the employees aren’t doing all that well.)

Obama and Clinton both have ads up; Clinton’s has this old NFL Films music on it, and it’s a little surprising that they went el cheapo on the score.

More later…

Huckabee The Extremist

by tristero

Just as I suspected, Michael Huckabee has close ties to Christian Reconstruction, the far right theocrats whose ideas I blogged about during last year’s Blog Against Theocracy:

Back in 1998, when he was still serving as governor, he helped write “Kids Who Kill,” a short book purporting to analyze the outbreak of school shootings by teenagers. His coauthor was George Grant, a well-known militant Christian reconstructionist author, activist and educator. That same year, the libertarian Reason magazine published an exposé of reconstructionism titled “Invitation to a Stoning,” which identified Grant and quoted him on the movement’s ambition for “world conquest.” Scorning the moderation of other conservative Christians, Grant explained, “It is dominion we are after. Not just a voice … not just influence … not just equal time. It is dominion we are after.”

Of course, Huckabee must have had no illusions about Grant’s baroque worldview, since it is clearly reflected in their book. The school shootings were mere symptoms of American civilization in decline, they thundered, with communities “fragmented and polarized” by “abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism.” (Unlike his coauthor, Huckabee was too nice to call for the execution of gays. He merely wanted to place them in detention if they tested HIV-positive.)

And this is for starters. Salon also published today a round up of Huckabee’s connections to far right christianists. It’s a sobering list.

I’ll say it again: Huckabee is not a joke and he has no business being one of the frontrunners of a major political party. That he has come this far is extremely ominous. If he were to get the nomination, it would be a terrible catastrophe even if he were to lose, as he almost surely would, the presidential race. Why? Because Christian Reconstruction will take one more giant step towards the mainstream.

In 1964, Goldwater ran and lost on a program so extreme that many of us simply laughed at him. Extremists, however, took heart that they had come so far into the mainstream. Today, Goldwater’s extremism is the dominant mainstream attitude in this country.

Don’t kid yourself. Huckabee and his ilk play for keeps. It may take another 40 years, but as long as normals continue to underestimate and dismiss christianism with a superior snicker instead of fighting back as hard as possible, the most repulsive notions of the religious right will further dominate our discourse. This is a war; christianists are acting like it is. And the rest of us are laughing ourselves silly at the very idea that such ignorant phonies and weirdos could be that dangerous.

Don’t kid yourself. They’re no longer considered even half as ignorant, phony, or weird by the American mainstream as they were even 15 years ago. They have come a long way while we have just smirked.

And there’s been far too much smirking, that’s for sure.

Your Intrepid Reporter

by dday

So I (not Digby; the “d” at the beginning and the “y” at the end throws me sometimes too, I know) am headed to Las Vegas in the morning to drink in the sights, sounds and smells of the big city on the eve of the caucus. It’s not quite Edward R. Murrow at Dunkirk, but what can you do. My bud Todd Beeton of MyDD fame and I will be out at the closing Obama and Clinton events Friday night (Edwards is in Vegas in the early morning and then moving on to Oklahoma, so sorry folks; actually I did see big John address hundreds in downtown LA this afternoon and you can read about it here), and at selected caucuses Saturday morning (probably those at-large casino ones, just to see what the deal is). I’ll be checking in when I can.

A short thought for you: Hillary Clinton is running to change the President; Barack Obama is running to change our politics; John Edwards is running to change the country. Discuss.

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Supporting The Troops

by digby

… for a price.

Say did you know that these wealthy ex-generals expect to get paid to use their name for veterans charity? Apparently they do:

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, was paid $100,000 to endorse a veterans charity that watchdog groups say is ripping off donors and wounded veterans by using only a small portion of the money raised for veterans services, according to testimony in Congress today. Gen. Franks’ involvement was revealed as members of Congress questioned Roger Chapin, who operates Help Hospitalized Veterans and the Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes Foundation, charities that congressional investigators say spend only 25 percent of the money they raise on projects for wounded veterans. […]
“General Franks was paid $100,000 to lend his name. We understand he developed misgivings and asked that his name be taken off,” Congressman Waxman said…
Chapin said it was “an insult” to suggest that Gen. Franks or Gen. Diehl had “sold their integrity.”

Did he give the money back?

I’m not blaming Franks for being involved with a rip-off charity, he probably knew nothing about it. After all, it was just another paycheck to him.

But is it common for top Generals to expect a paycheck to raise funds for Veterans? I thought the Republicans were all about volunteerism.

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Matthews Is Sorry

by digby

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Message Guru

by digby

Well, sadly, it appears that it’s not good enough that the Reagan myth is being stoked in a Democratic primary. It looks like we’re going all in and adopting George W. Bush rhetoric now:

From TNR:

For those who haven’t followed this issue, Obama has said he would consider raising the cap on the payroll tax, in order to put more money into the Social Security system. Presently, individuals only pay Social Security taxes on roughly the first $100,000 of their income. It’s a defensible measure on its own terms, since it would actually make the program’s financing more progressive. Under the current system, a CEO pulling in several million dollars a year pays no more Social Security taxes than a profsesional making $100,000. It would also, as advertised, improve the program’s long-term finances. But in pressing his case, Obama has adopted the same right-wing frame — of a Social Security crisis too politically perilous for most politicans to address — that President Bush and the Republicans used when they tried to privatize the program. Although that effort failed, the fight is recent enough — and myth of a Social Security crisis prevalent enough — that merely echoing the language is enough to jeopardize the program (which, for the record, is most definitely not in crisis). And Obama should know better.
In this mailer, however, it’s Clinton’s rhetoric that’s worrisome. It attacks Obama because “Nevada families need to keep more of their hard-earned dollars — not less…” and “We need a President that will help hard-working families keep more of what they earn…“Feel like you’ve heard that before? You have. Whenever Democrats propose a measure that would result in higher taxes, that’s the argument the Republicans make. It doesn’t matter how little money is involved — or whether, as is often the case, it’s only the wealthy who will be paying more. It doesn’t even matter if, rather than imposing a new tax altogether, the Democrats are simply proposing to allow a recently enacted tax break to expire.

It’s actually worse than that. It’s repeating that stupid Bush mantra, “it’s your money!”

THE PRESIDENT: If they have less money in their pocket, they may not come here. And so I worked with the Congress — I want to thank Congressman Ehrlich, when he was in the Congress, now Governor Ehrlich. We cut taxes on people. It’s your money to begin with, by the way. You’ve got more money to spend. And when you have more money to spend, it increases demand for a good or a service. And when that demand increases for a good or a service, somebody has to produce it.

And so the tax relief went for everybody, not just the favorite few — everybody got tax relief. And it helped the economy. It also helped small business. You’re going to hear from some entrepreneurs here. And, by the way, most new jobs in America are created by small businesses. We’re happy to have the Home Depot job, don’t get me wrong. (Laughter.) But the truth is, most new jobs are started by the entrepreneurs. And so you’re wondering why we’ve got small business owners here, because I want you to hear from them. I want you to hear what it means to have a little more money in your pocket.

Granted, Clinton’s mailer doesn’t sound like it’s aimed at fifth graders but after listening to that crap over and over again for eight years, to use those phrases plays directly into the underlying conservative notion that lowering taxes is the best thing government can do to help them have more money in their pockets. Even worse, it plays in to the idea that everybody in this country should identify with the “problems” of those with means.

I once heard a caller on Rush say he only made $30,000 a year, but he was glad to see his wealthy boss get a big tax cut because it meant the company might do better and then he might get a raise. The 250 million dollar man told him he was brilliant for understanding how the economy is supposed to work. That’s some brainwashing.

Aside from not wanting to see social security become a campaign issues at all, I also disagree with raising the payroll tax because I know that it will actually affect a lot of middle class people in expensive states like California who would be seriously impacted — particularly while this housing crunch and state fiscal crisis persists. I think it’s a non-starter and unnecessary to even talk about, particularly since we have many, many more pressing problems that need addressing. But that’s not a good reason for Clinton to use right wing phrases that were specifically designed to keep people from ever approving the money necessary to advance progressive government programs.

She, of all people, should know better. In 1993, it was pulling teeth to get a tepid tax increase on the wealthy passed even with a Democratic majority and “the deficit” boogeyman a primary issue in the campaign. I would have thought they’d learned something by that. If you don’t get a specific mandate for new programs and “paying the bills” the Republicans will hamstring Democrats forever on this issue with just this kind of short sighted talk. They may anyway, it’s a tough nut to crack, but part of leadership is figuring out ways to get people to take a different look at things when a political window opens up, not automatically trying to eke out some little advantage on the margin by using the other side’s tired tropes.

Bush is a huge failure and movement conservatism is disorganized for the first time in decades. Now it the time to make new arguments. People know things have gone wrong and they are turning to Democrats to see if they have any better and different ideas for the first time in a long time. I don’t actually think these independents and disaffected Republicans want to hear warmed over George W. Bush bullshit, but if that’s what they get, they’ll end up voting Republican. Why wouldn’t they?

This is how the conservative movement wins even when it loses. If Democratic candidates will keep repeating their propaganda for them, they can just take a breather, infuse their movement with a much needed fix of victimization and martyrdom, count their money for a few years and then pick up right where they left off.

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The Right To Vote

by dday

Patrick Leahy just endorsed Barack Obama, and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee had this to say about this flap over the “at-large” precincts in Nevada being set up for shift workers at the casinos.

Leahy also came out strongly against the ongoing lawsuit in Nevada, where the state teachers union and some Clinton backers are trying to shut down the special caucus locations for Las Vegas Strip workers. “If you’re shutting people out from the nominating process, you’re going to be discouraging people all the way down,” Leahy said. “And that’s not the approach we want to take in the United States.”

John Kerry also came out very strongly against this tactic at TPM Cafe yesterday.

For too many years, American politics has been divided between two types of people: those who want more people to vote, and those who want fewer people to vote. Just last week, the Bush-packed Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the kind of law we’ve become all too familiar with these last years: an Indiana law putting more roadblocks in the way of people who simply want to vote. (Talk about a not so subtle reminder of why some of us filibustered Sam Alito’s nomination two years ago this month.)

Well, it’s troubling to me that now we see another kind of effort to keep people from voting in Nevada. But this time, it’s not the Republicans trying to limit the vote, it’s a fight within our own Party […]

Here are the details. Last March, the Nevada Democratic Party came together and put together the rules of the caucus. Because of the high number of casino workers in Las Vegas, and because those workers have to work on weekends, the Democrats of Nevada decided to have special, at-large caucus sites in certain select areas (like right on the Vegas Strip) to give those working people a chance to make their voices heard. The Culinary Workers Union, who represents the workers, celebrated the move.

Suddenly, a mere days before the caucus, we now see a lawsuit to shut down those at-large sites and deny the casino workers their right to vote. Three of the plaintiffs voted for the very plan they’re now trying to block – reasonable people have guessed they’re changing their minds presumably because just a few days ago the Culinary Workers Union endorsed Barack Obama.

Here’s the bottom line. I understand people gut it out to win on Election Day. But certain tactics make victory pyrrhic – empty – hollow – and it’s not worth winning if you lose what really counts in the process. And you know what, if the Culinary Workers had backed someone besides my choice in this race – Barack Obama – I’d still say it’s right for every candidate to make sure these workers get to vote.

Many have claimed that the Clinton campaign is not behind this effort by the teacher’s union, but the fact that Bill Clinton lost his shit on a news reporter who tried to bring this up should throw some cold water on that suggestion.

Mr. Clinton turned the tables on Mr. Matthews, whom the former president asserted had taken “an accusatory tone” by claiming a link to Mrs. Clinton’s operation. “Your position is that you think the Culinary Workers votes should count: A–it should be easier for them to vote than anybody else in Nevada that has to work on Saturday. That’s your first position. Second, when they do vote their votes should count five times as much as everybody else. That’s what the teachers have questioned. So if that’s your position, you have it. Get on your television station and say it…. ‘All I care about is making sure that some voters have it easier than others and that when they do vote, when it’s already easier for them, their vote should count five times as much as others.’ That is your position,” Mr. Clinton said. “If you want to take that position, get on the television and take it. Don’t be accusatory with me. I have enough to deal with.” […]

At one point during the exchange with the TV reporter, (Oakland) Mayor Ron Dellums tried to physically pull Mr. Clinton away, but the former president held his ground.

UPDATE: There’s video:

I have to say that, of all the misunderstandings and misinterpretations and smears by surrogates and everything in this primary, the concerted strategy of disenfranchisement, a tactic at odds with the core values of the Democratic Party in the 21st century, is the most troubling. This is not a media creation or something blown out of proportion or the result of an emotional reading of the impact of race or gender. This is about the right to vote. The Nevada State Democratic Party set these caucuses up in March. The DNC approved them. The state board approved them. I’ve been privy to similar processes in the California Democratic Party, and they are a transparent, open, small-d democratic process. If the teacher’s union or their representatives in the NSDP wanted to object to this they had ample opportunity to do so nine months ago.

We have to make the right to vote sacrosanct. The defining feature of our political lives in this century is the Florida recount, and the voter suppression tactics used prior to Election Day. Republicans successfully manipulated the vote and mau-maued the media into defusing the controversy. There is no glory in any Democrat using the same tactic to win a primary or a general election.

Barack Obama has given us all pause with his comments about President Reagan (The charitable interpretation is that he’s simply building on St. Ronnie’s hagiography by trying to get some reflected glory for himself; I don’t think good progressives should be legitimizing that false portrait). But Obama has been a stalwart on voting rights; in fact, it’s one of the rare moments in his Senate career where he boldly led.

Jane Hamsher is correct that this attack on Obama from the Politico is unfair. The FEC cannot implement the provisions of legislation Obama pushed through because Obama (among others) placed a hold on Hans Von Spakovsky, a horrific pick to be a commissioner of the FEC. Obama has been very good on voting rights, and it’s ridiculous to hold him accountable for Bush’s propensity to pick as regulators people who don’t believe in the mission of the agency they are supposed to run.

Abrogating the right to vote in any form or fashion is not a road that Democrats should ever go down. The Obama campaign hasn’t been particularly energizing for progressives, but on this he has it absolutely right, and the teachers are trying to punish his supporters in Nevada simply for being his supporters. That is wrong. And the Clinton campaign shouldn’t want to get a victory that way.

Update from Digby:

This post is by DDay, not me. I don’t necessarily disagree with it, but since I’m being accused of being inconsistent and delusional, I thought I should point it out.

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UPDATE from dday: The at-large caucuses will go on. Also this idea that the Culinary Workers are bullying their members into supporting their endorsee is pretty much not true. There appears to be, far from coordination, a good deal of confusion about these caucuses among the Hispanic community (there’s no word in Spanish for “caucus”), and it isn’t even a slam dunk that many of these employees will be allowed to caucus by their employers even with the events at the hotel (which I believe is a violation of federal labor laws). The caucus system is far from perfect, but the point I was trying to make was that inclusion over exclusion should be the general rule.