Month: August 2008

Protest Politics

by digby

I haven’t been able to keep up with all the protests outside the convention, but here are a couple of posts, about them, the second with footage. I haven’t seen any pepper spray action, but I can attest to the fact that the anti-abortion forces are all over the place and that the police don’t seem to be as concerned by them as they are other protesters.

There are trucks with pictures of fetuses on them driving around and lots of middle aged men holding up photos of bloody masses while screaming about how we shouldn’t even be allowed to vote. They are ubiquitous.

I wonder what would happen if a bunch of anti-war protestors showed up in Minneapolis with huge posters of dead and maimed Iraqi children? Do you think the police and the crowds would be as tolerant? How about pictures of dead children whose parents didn’t have health care or dead children who died of diseases for which stem cell research may have a cure?

Somehow I doubt it. Graphically showing the death of fully formed humans if they are outside the womb is considered in bad taste and unnecessarily provocative. They would probably consider it disturbing the peace.

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Class Act

by digby

From Wes Clark:

Dear Friend,

I’m in Munich right now, but I can’t tell you how ready I am to
head to Denver and join my fellow Democrats.

The Democratic Party is ready to lead and address the many
challenges ahead, and Barack Obama is the leader we need for our
country and to help humanity meet today’s global challenges.

We’re a party loaded with talent. Like many of you, I’ve been
thrilled by the speeches at the Democratic National Convention
so far. Hillary Clinton was great last night. Her strength, her
character, her call for unity. Her speech just proves once again
that she is a great American and has many years of distinguished
public service ahead of her.

And what an inspiration Ted Kennedy was, as was Nancy Pelosi,
our Speaker of the House. Brian Schweitzer, the history-making
Governor of Montana and Mark Warner, a business executive,
distinguished former Governor and soon-to-be a remarkable U.S.
Senator.

Tonight, I’m looking forward to catching the speeches of our
honored former President Bill Clinton and our vice-presidential
nominee Joe Biden. We are so fortunate that these two
outstanding men are Democrats.

And then there’s tomorrow. Our Party is so fortunate at this
time in history to be nominating Barack Obama. After Michelle’s
incredibly warm and personal speech on Monday, any American can
see the strength of character in their family. It’s clear that
when the Obamas become first family, they’ll definitely bring
change to America.

I can’t wait to hear Senator Obama’s words in person. He’s
warned us not to expect that he can duplicate the electricity
from his memorable speech in 2004, but I think he’s just being
wise to play down expectations. He has proven to be a remarkable
human being with incredible judgment, an outstanding sense of
direction, and unmatched communication skills. I fully expect to
be inspired, as I was in 2004.

I’m proud to be a Democrat, and I’m proud to ask you to pull
together with me. It’s time to help elect our candidates to
every office. From mayors to governors, from state legislators
to Congress. And especially to come together behind Barack
Obama.

Barack is going to be the leader of a great team of Democrats in
this election campaign. And he’s going to become a great
American President.

I believe he has the skills and resolve to strengthen America’s
security, rebuild America’s economy, and restore Americans’
faith in the future.

Our challenge is clear. We must win in November.

Biden Night

by digby

I’ve been taking part in a poll done by the National Journal all week. They asked us which of the following things Biden should do in his speech:

Tying McCain to the Bush administration

Criticizing McCain on national security

Boosting Obama’s national security credentials

Criticizing the Bush administration

Tying McCain to Bush/Criticizing Bush/Criticizing McCain on security

I said he should speak to middle class anxiety and talk about conservative failure. He did that and I thought it was the best part of his speech. (I’ll comment on some of the disturbing aspects of the foreign policy rhetoric another time…)

I haven’t been able to discern any overarching theme and I’d have loved to see more Republican bashing, but overall I still think it’s been a good convention for the Democrats and not because the so-called rift has been healed. (It’s always been almost impossible for me to imagine that even Democrats would be that self destructive after being out of power for eight years and facing a party with a -4% approval rating.) It’s been a good convention because the “civil war” storyline actually ended up revealing that the Democratic leadership, for all their faults, has far more firepower than the tired freakshow the Republicans are going to throw out next week. The young generation, from Obama to Beau and the older generation from Bill and Hillary to Joe are all politicians of stature compared to the D-list of oddballs (even by Republican standards) who will be on the stage in Minneapolis — Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Huckabee, Lieberman etc.

That’s why the GOP is working so hard to turn the Democrats into empty suits. While they were blowing all credibility during this long period of conservative dominance the Democrats built a strong national team in terms of political talent, appeal and experience. These Dems really shouldn’t have any trouble beating that rag tag mob of leftover wingnuts. God help us all if they don’t.

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Rulz

by digby

It’s a village law that whatever rules are normally applied to politicians are never to be applied to Bill Clinton. A sub-section of that law is that whenever he adapts to their laws, they will immediately be changed. Here’s another case in point, from Boehlert.

I know that it is fashionable among the cognoscenti to hate Bill Clinton, it has been since he came on the scene. But rank and file Democrats still love him and they were happy to see him tonight. Like Hillary, he’s the ultimate pro, and he has a legacy to protect and a wife who is one of the most important people in Democratic politics still. There was never any chance he and Hillary would replay 1980. It’s never been their style.

He did something important tonight by reminding Americans that he too was derided in 1992 as being too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief, which to all but a few die hard wingnuts, looks pretty ridiculous in retrospect. In doing that he laid the mantle of his own credibility as president on Obama, which despite the cable babblers who’ve never gotten it, is substantial to the American public.

I hear that he’s going to be campaigning alongside Barack in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania and that’s smart. Say what you will about him, he’s still a helluva politician.

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Political Paps

by digby

I have always liked Spike Lee as a director and was even indirectly involved in one of his most important films. But he is no politician or diplomat — I can say that from personal experience. Why he is consulted every five minutes for his learned opinion on the state of the Democratic party, when there are thousands of people in that hall, is sadly obvious. Apparently, the media thinks that because the country likes celebrities they also think they have some insight into politics.

He may be a fine artist but his abrasive personality and political opinion aren’t particularly representative of anything but a typical Hollywood diva.

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Convention Blogging

by dday

I’m liveblogging the convention from the California delegation over at Calitics, so instead of cross-posting, you can check it out over there.

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Report Like It’s 2002

by tristero

The headline is reassuring, if you care whether your tax dollars are being used to fund war atrocities. It says U.S. disputes 90 civilians killed in Afghan airstrike. To put it mildly, that is utterly misleading, in a way oh so reminiscent of 2002/2003. Here are the first nine paragraphs of the article:

Convincing evidence” indicates a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan last week killed 90 civilians, including 60 children, a U.N. fact-finding human rights team said Tuesday.

The U.N. team said its findings were based on interviews with eyewitnesses.

The Afghan government, which also investigated Friday’s incident, announced Sunday it had concluded that more than 90 civilians, most of them children, were killed. The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said 15 Afghans were wounded.

“The Afghan people and the Afghan government have lost their patience,” said Humayun Hamidzada, a spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“We cannot see our children being killed in our villages or the killing of innocent people, and our hope and strong request is to reach a new agreement with the international community which clarifies all the conditions, so that in the future, the fight against terrorism should happen in the boundary of law, so that civilians are not affected,” he said.

Kai Eide, special representative of the secretary-general for Afghanistan, released a statement saying a U.N. assistance mission team met Monday with the district governor, local elders and residents of the Shindand district of Herat province, in western Afghanistan.

“Investigations by UNAMA found convincing evidence based on the testimony of eyewitnesses and others that some 90 civilians were killed,” Eide said.

Fifteen women and 15 men were among those dead, and 15 other civilians were wounded in the airstrike, the team said.

Afghan ministers on Monday demanded a review of international troops within its borders.

Then, there’s a report that an unnamed military official expressed “doubt about the high death toll.” Maybe it’s 30, the US official asserts, without any evidence. Then:

Eide, in his statement, provided details of the results of the attack.

“The destruction from aerial bombardment was clearly evident, with some seven to eight houses having been totally destroyed, and serious damage to many others. Local residents were able to confirm the number of casualties, including names, age and gender of the victims,” he said.

Eide said residents from a number of households in Nawabad village confirmed that foreign and Afghan military personnel came into the area.

“Military operations lasted several hours, during which airstrikes were called in,” he said, quoting the residents.

But if you’re in a hurry, all you’ll see is that headline. And think there might be some doubt.

Impostor
by Dover Bitch

Beyond the usual pleasure of reading one of Digby’s dispatches, I was happy to read this morning’s anecdote about the Hillary supporter who was ready to work hard to get Barack Obama elected.

Though I’ve been greatly annoyed by the relentless reporting of the “rift” in the party, when Hillary gave her fantastic speech last night, I started to wonder if the media’s inflation of the magnitude of the perceived internal war might actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Clinton so skillfully connected this election and its consequences to the history, sacrifice and struggle of American women for equality and fairness, I began to think maybe John McCain did the Democrats a favor with his ads fanning those flames. Clinton’s Harriett Tubman reference last night was brilliant.

I also thought about Hillary’s campaign and how different the outcome might have been had she taken Rachel Maddow’s advice early on and focused her attention on John McCain and the GOP, instead of trying to take down Obama.

But, as Digby wrote this morning, the media narrative is like a piece of Ikea furniture. The holes are already drilled, the dowels already measured out and there’s only one way to put it together, no matter how painful it is to assemble it into its catalog-photo orientation. And in the end, of course, there are obviously a few screws loose.

For the loosest screws, we can always turn to Fox News, where they set the bar low yesterday, explaining that Michele Obama’s speech actually re-enforced her negative image — that is, when you replace her words with completely different words. This will be fun to do with McCain next week. (“The glimmerings of democracy are very faint in Russia America today, and so I would be very harsh.”)

Steve Benen notices today that other media outlets aren’t replacing Clinton’s words with their own, they’re just ignoring them completely and inviting “body language experts” to demonstrate that she was essentially lying.

On the evening of June 28, a few hours after Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared together in Unity, N.H., for their first post-primary joint appearance, CNN devoted quite a bit of airtime to “body-language experts.”

At one point, one of the “experts” argued that the position of Hillary Clinton’s navel carries great political significance: “She angles her belly button toward him. She’s treating him with respect. She has her hands in a fig leaf position, which tends to be a passive position, really turning the power over to Obama. We face our belly buttons and the core of our body to people we like, have affinity toward and people we respect. And she’s doing it.”

It was, to my mind, some of the worst on-air political “journalism” — I use the word loosely — I’ve ever seen from a major news outlet. And yet, CBS News this morning did the exact same thing.

I’m disappointed. I was expecting to wake up and learn that anonymous sources leaked word that wasn’t even Hillary last night, but an impostor. Maybe even Barack Obama in a Hillary costume.

I have the undeniable proof right here:

Village Fair

by digby

I know this will not come as news to any of you, but there is something truly wrong with Maureen Dowd. She obviously wrote most of today’s column before she heard the speech — or maybe she was just in her usual demented fugue state and couldn’t separate fiction from reality again. Whatever the case, this column is far more indicative of her own obsessions and commitment to the little psychodrama playing inside her head than anything approaching relevance to actual humans.

The only question is whether she still has the juice to change the narrative of last night to reflect her Bizarroworld take on events. I would say that it’s even money that by the end of the week we’ll be hearing certain quarters of the media parrot her, if only because the “Dems are in disarray” theme is such a compelling nursery rhyme for puerile gasbags. (And others, like Dowd, have a twisted and unhealthy obsession with Clinton and will welcome any opportunity to nurse their delicious loathing.)

Still, the consensus among the gasbags in real time appears to have been (I only got to see the replay later on CNN) that Clinton was successful and that the much anticipated spitting in Obama and his supporters’ eye had not happened. Indeed, with the exception of a couple of the GOP shills, everyone agreed that she could not possibly have done any more. (But, of course, the pundits all said that Al Gore won those debates in 2000 in real time too…)

I don’t know who Dowd has been talking to, but there is likely a bit of Heisenberg principle involved when it comes to the delegates. Sure, I’ve seen a few examples of both Clinton and Obama diehards being obnoxious. But it has been very, very rare. Unlike Dowd, nobody recognizes me and I don’t spend time hanging with professional political operatives with axes to grind. I walked miles in that Pepsi center and around downtown Denver yesterday, eavesdropping on conversations of ordinary attendees and her convention is not the convention of the rank and file.

For instance, I was riding on a tram yesterday with a delegate from the midwest who was festooned with Hillary buttons. I asked her if she was excited about the speech to come and if she expected it to be controversial. She said that she hoped Hillary felt free to bask in the glory a little bit but that she knew she would come through for Obama. I asked her if she was going to vote for her in the roll call and she said she was sent there by people who voted for Clinton and she wanted to cast that vote. But she also said that as soon as he was announced the winner she was going to take off all of her Hillary buttons and put on her new collection of Obama buttons, which she pulled out of her bag to show me. I asked if she would work to get him elected and she chuckled and said, “of course I will, I’m president of the Democratic Club!”

The media see people like her as exotic birds or amusing chimps playing in the trees and consider them decoration for the real event — the careerist posturings and gossip of the elite insider class, which they present as what these rank and file delegates — committed Democratic activists and grassroots workers — think about all this. For them, this is really just one big Georgetown party, displaced from “their town” by necessity in order to keep the serfs happy. The only story that interests them is the story they tell each other about themselves.

I think that Hillary’s speech was quite obviously a success among Democratic voters and probably among a few Republicans who had to give her some grudging respect for simply being a good politician. Whether that translates into votes among the holdouts on the Democratic side, I don’t know. (It’s possible that some of those people were never voting for her, but rather voting against Obama.) But judging from the reaction in that hall last night, I would guess that rank and file supporters on both sides are ready and willing to bury the hatchet and go forward to bury McCain.

What the village gasbags like Maureen Dowd will do is equally predictable — they will continue to tell riveting tales about themselves and their friends and call it political reporting.

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Hillary Night

by digby

Clinton did a great job last night, as I expected. She’s a pro.

Her supporters were ecstatic in the hall, cheering and crying. I was standing with a group of Obama supporters who were skittish beforehand, obviously because of the media hype. They too were thrilled with her speech, spontaneously clapping and high fiving the big applause lines. Lots of love for Hill tonight from Dems of all stripes.

I’m sure Jack Cafferty and Chris Matthews won’t stop flogging the dead horse until somebody finally stages an intervention for their uncontrolled Clinton addiction, but I would hope that the rest of the gasbags could give it a rest for a while. (McCain shills, not so much.)

She had many good lines tonight, but the one that really sticks is this one:

“I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

It’s a very effective line and a generous one. She showed leadership there by explicitly challenging her most ardent followers to look beyond her. That’s not easy for politicians to do.

I also think this campaign may have been a crucible for her in that she rediscovered her feminist roots. An awful lot of progressive women did. It wasn’t so much because of a commitment or loyalty to Hillary Clinton herself but rather an unexpected and stunning realization that sexism still runs so close to the surface in our culture. Hillary didn’t lose because of sexism but her campaign certainly exposed it. And it’s had an effect on a lot of women. Certainly, last night, some of Michelle Obama’s biggest applause lines had to do with women’s equality (and it didn’t just come from Hillary supporters.) Clinton’s grandest achievement in this campaign may have been to raise that awareness — and hopefully she will use her position as the most powerful woman in the US Senate to advance the cause.

As a personal aside, I have a telling anecdote to share about the evening. I was waiting at the elevator at the Pepsi center with Julie Bergman Sender, who is shooting a film of the convention, when we were rather brusquely pushed aside by a couple of security guys and told to wait. A large entourage of big men in black suits came marching down the hallway and I thought, this has to be somebody really, really important like Al Gore or Bill Clinton. After all, politicians are casually hobnobbing all over the place this week. Only the biggest names have this kind of security.

It was Steny Hoyer.

Why would he need that kind of security in the friendly environs of the Democratic National Convention, of all places?

Oh wait …

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