Month: September 2012

DREAMer on stage tonight

by digby

Some excellent news on the DREAM front. I had heard that the DNC was not eager to feature them at the convention and wrote a rather nasty post about it, but lo and behold, this young woman is scheduled to speak tonight between 9 and 10 est:

Benita Veliz

My parents brought me to the US when I was 8 years old on a tourist visa, form Mexico. The visa expired after one week but we remained in the country. We have lived in San Antonio, TX since. I am 23 years old. My grandmother is an American citizen. I’ve never been married. I don’t have any children. I went straight from high school to college and then to work. The only family I have left in Mexico is on my mother’s side and I have only seen them once or twice in my life, as a young child.

She had been scheduled for deportation in March. I’m guessing President Obama’s executive order stopped that from happening.

Here she is:

This country needs brave people like her. If she’s not an American then neither am I.

Update: Here’s an interesting story by Elise Foley at Huffington Post about the No Papers No Fear Riders at the DNC.

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A fundamental clash of values and worldview

by digby

The mildly derisive tone of this piece gives away Politico’s disgust with the Democrats’ combativeness on women’s issues. The GOP may have done this for decades, but that’s their role. The Dems are supposed to be squishes so we can all get along:

Here’s a guide to what the list of speakers reveals about the Democratic Party:

Uncompromising support for abortion rights

The party platform and the list of convention speakers – which includes NARAL Pro-choice America’s Nancy Keenan, Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s Cecile Richards, birth control activist Sandra Fluke and some of the strongest abortion rights supporters in Congress – makes clear the Democratic Party is now as uncompromising as the GOP on the issue of abortion rights.

It’s not just the heavy presence of abortion rights supporters and the absence of abortion opponents on stage that proves it. Just look at the evolution of the party platform over the past three conventions. The language respecting “the individual conscience of each American on this difficult issue” and that “we welcome all our members to participate at every level of our party” vanished in 2004. The language about making abortions “rare” disappeared in 2008.

The Democratic Party now, in its 2012 platform, “strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to make decisions regarding her pregnancy” and will “oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right.”

The bastards!

If this is actually the case, I say Huzzah! Being willing to “compromise” with people who refuse is the biggest suckers game in town. And abortion rights was the earliest battlefield for the GOP scorched earth strategy. At the time everyone felt that it was just a bunch of whiny beeyotches complaining about the icky and that in order to win we needed to find “common ground.” It was one big Sistahood Soljah.

If they’ve finally learned that this is a very real, fundamental clash of values and worldview, by God it’s about time.

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The best of the American spirit?

by digby

Michelle Obama’s speech last night got rave reviews. (If you didn’t see it, you can watch it here.) It was a very well written and well-delivered speech, personal and yet political, subtly showing the differences between the Obama worldview and the Romney worldview.

Last night at the Democratic convention, Michelle Obama defined “the very best of the American spirit” as “teachers in a near-bankrupt school district who vowed to keep teaching without pay.”

That’s actually not the best of America. It’s desperation. I get what she was saying, but it’s a sad comment on our time that (for different reasons) both parties embrace the “spirit” of teachers working for free.

The Republicans talked a lot last week about the US turning into Greece. In this way, we already have. The bankers and the government are going to take it out of the hides of the workers:

Greece’s international lenders have suggested measures including increasing the maximum working week to six days.

It is one of several unofficial proposals to liberalise the labour market and increase government revenue, contained in a paper seen by the BBC.

The proposals were not included in the original bailout agreement signed with the Greek government.

Inspectors from the EU, IMF and European Central Bank, known as the troika, are due in Greece this week.

They are writing a report, due in October, that will decide whether Greece receives its next instalment of bailout funds.

Greece needs the next payment of 31.5bn euros ($39.6bn; £24.9bn) to allow it to continue servicing its debts.

Proposals in the document from the troika included:

Setting a single rate statutory minimum wage
Reducing regulatory burdens
Making work schedules more flexible
Setting a minimum daily rest of 11 hours
Eliminating restrictions on the minimum and maximum time between morning and afternoon shifts.

It’s still about the meritocracy

by David Atkins

Writing this post late Tuesday night after being on the floor of the convention. Need to get up again in a little under five hours, but wanted to share two quick thoughts.

First the good news. The positive energy on the floor of the arena wasn’t fake. It was real. It’s quite clear that Democrats actually care about and like these candidates, by and large. The speeches were positive and on point, the video presentations moving, and it all touched on a consistent emotional narrative. Remember that this is what Republicans usually do much better than Democrats. But not this year. This year the emotional narratives are much stronger on the Democratic side, which is fairly remarkable given nearly four years of a Presidency marked by technocracy and obsessive compromise-seeking. That’s partly due to advances in the skills of Democratic rhetoricians, and partly due to the desperate, mendacious meanness of the modern Republican message. On the electoral side of the equation, the convention gives me confidence that the President’s team knows what it’s doing.

The bad news is that as emotionally compelling as many of the speeches were tonight, the key themes almost all centered around equal access to opportunity. Over and over again, the theme was that success should be available to those who work hard. Michelle Obama celebrated her father who went to work every day despite physically devastating illness just to pay for her college education, and even took out loans to make it happen. She said that it mattered less how much you made, and more how hard you worked.

And all I could do at certain points was sigh and shake my head.

No. As inspiring as I’m sure those points sound to most people, they’re problematic. We shouldn’t live in a society where a man with multiple sclerosis must work long hours just so that his bright young daughter can attend college. We should not be a society where long, hard work merely affords the opportunity at success. We shouldn’t be a society that worships people who work 50-60 hours a week at the expense of leading a decent life with time to actually raise a family and develop pursuits and interests.

We need to be a society that does much more than provide equal access to our deeply unjust and flawed pseudo meritocratic system. We need to be a society that guarantees basic dignity for all people, a society that understands that luck is just as big a factor in most people’s success as hard work, and a society that understands that there is more to human life than simply destroying one’s life and soul to maximize some corporation’s profits.

We can’t expect our leaders to come out and say these things right now. That conversation must percolate upwards, at first from those who are considered “unserious” and have the opportunity to shift the Overton Window. But we do need to begin having the conversation that undermines the notion of the meritocracy itself. Big thanks are due to Chris Hayes for getting that conversation going.

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I could hardly get through this without dissolving into fits of giggles, but suffice to say that Chuck Todd et al are depressed because the campaign is so “joyless”:

“Until the candidates restore joy, it’s impossible for us to be joyful,” NBC News senior White House correspondent Chuck Todd told POLITICO. “The campaigns are trying so hard to manipulate us, to work the refs, to withhold access. If these candidates were comfortable, the campaign might be joyful to cover.”

I’m sure there’s some truth in all that. But it’s a pretty joyless time so expecting a rock show probably isn’t very realistic. It’s a shitty time in America and our politics reflect that.

But for some of them, I think it’s really just that they deeply yearn for a president who does stuff like this:

As for campaigning, perhaps President Obama could shake things up by landing in stadiums on Marine One as George W. Bush used to do. They loved that:

As music blared from stadium loudspeakers, Marine One, the presidential helicopter, carrying Bush, his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, and first lady Laura Bush, landed in left field, dusting some of the 10,000 cheering supporters with dirt from the warning track. Bush emerged to the theme of the movie Top Gun.

Update: Josh Holland’s gathered some more complaints from the press. Apparently the restaurants in Charlotte routinely put too much lemon in the bearnaise sauce.

Teddy Pwns Mitt

by digby

This was pretty good:

Everybody keeps saying that Mitt’s a good debater. Ok…

by digby

Occupiers and Organization at the DNC Convention

by David Atkins

Being a progressive credentialed at the DNC Convention in Charlotte is a funny experience. The police presence here is massive and increasing every day, with multiple cities having lent the city of Charlotte a large number officers. Traffic is highly controlled, streets are blocked off, barricades are everywhere, and swarms of officers on foot, on bicycle, motorcycle and cars permeate the entire area for many blocks around the Convention Center. It all seems preposterously unnecessary, though I suppose the modern age of car and suicide bombs combined with a vitriolic political climate makes at least some of this inevitable. Nonetheless, the entire Convention does feel very locked down and undemocratic. As a first time delegate and sometime rabble rouser, it feels weird to be credentialed in business casual, on the inside of the barricades looking outward. I’m used to the opposite experience, to being on the outside crashing the gates inward. And I have strong sympathy for anyone still attempting to do so.

It is in this context The Occupy movement is currently protesting the convention with a crowd of less than 100. The complaints range from drones to the financial sector, from the environment to Bradley Manning. While a little message focus couldn’t do any harm, these are all valid complaints: these are injustices that the Democratic Party isn’t doing much of anything to address. The Party can use some shaming on these fronts.

Yet the Occupiers have made a couple of big mistakes here. First, they are nearly invisible, barricaded away behind police lines, unable to get more than a few blocks from the Convention Hall. I was curious to see them and had to find out from others where they even were.

So blame the police state conditions for not allowing free speech, right? Except…no. Right outside the convention hall, on the sidewalk just feet from the delegate barricade with blaring bullhorns, are a large number of anti-choice psychos with outsize graphic aborted fetus posters. I asked a police officer to explain the discrepancy, and the answer was simple:

The abortion people got permits a long time ago. The Occupy people didn’t.

Not surprised. I suppose that Occupiers could argue that one can’t change the System while playing by the System’s rules. And yet, if the goal is to be a systemic disruptor, the rules-playing anti-choice crowd is actually doing a much more effective job with much more jarring and unified messaging. It’s hard to disrupt anything if you can’t get close enough to disrupt it.

Which brings us to the second mistake: disruption. Lacking feasible alternatives due to lack of planning, the Occupiers decided to shut down a key intersection around the NASCAR museum. That in turn led to the police barricading the museum and the surrounding area.

Only problem was that there was a Planned Parenthood rally happening outside the museum right at the same time. The Occupiers in turn led to the shutdown of the Planned Parenthood rally, much to the disappointment of the pro-choice activists in attendance. So in a way, the Occupiers created their disruption: by severely annoying pro-choice feminist allies in the movement, and helping the theocratic patriarchal agenda of the anti-choice crowd more than they themselves were able to do.

If Occupy wants to make a real difference, it has to do much better than this. Organization is powerful. Organization is useful. Organization is not an evil in and of itself. It’s a tool that can be used for good or evil.

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Dreaming of a broken GOP: dream on

by digby

Ed Kilgore has a great post up today about something I’ve been noticing as well — the argument that the only way to break the gridlock is for the Republicans to win:

In a Bloomberg column, Ramesh Ponnuru makes an argument for Mitt Romney’s election that you are going to hear a lot more of soon: it’s the only way that partisan gridlock in Washington can be broken. The basic theory is that Republicans will not change from their current savage ideological course (which will actually get more savage if they lose this election they think themselves destined to win) and are very unlikely to lose enough congressional support to reduce their veto power over legislation. So if you want something new to happen, a President Romney and a Republican-controlled House and Senate (presumably using reconciliation to do whatever they want without Democratic support) are the only ticket.

Here’s Ponnuru’s response to those (including the President) who have suggested an Obama victory will humble Republicans:

Republicans famously failed to react to their drubbing in 2008 — after which, let’s recall, Time magazine was running cover stories on their impending extinction — by softening their line on anything. Why would they react that way after an election that goes better for them? Especially when they will be looking forward to the gains that the party out of the White House typically makes in midterm elections.

Not to mention the nomination of a real conservative, not some flip-flopping wimp like Romney, in 2016, eh?

That’s exactly right. In spite of what Democrats across the land are trying to sell right now, it’s highly unlikely that the Republicans are going to magically “moderate” in the face of defeat this time out. When have they ever done that? And it’s even less likely now with the make-up of much of the congress being from the far right. It’s not reasonable to think they are going to lay down their arms just because that squishy Mormon from Taxachussetts screwed the pooch.

As Kilgore quips, Ponnuru’s advice to mataphorically lie back and enjoy it is really a Sopranos style threat:

So as a cap to four years of political hostage-taking, a final general election pitch from Republicans this year is to hold the next four years hostage as well: give us total power to begin implementing our agenda and start dismantling this silly, expensive New Deal/Great Society system and this European-style progressive tax code, or nothing at all happens. We’ll get our way eventually, so why not get started now?

But I bring this up because I’m not just hearing this from Republicans, but from some liberals as well. They put it like this: if the Republicans have the White House and the congress, the Democrats will stop their agenda just as the Republicans stopped Obama. It’s Obama being in the White House that’s made the Democrats so willing to sell-out their own agenda. To that, I have to say again: when have they ever done that? It’s just not how they roll.

Now it’s true that they stood in the way of Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme, but Bush was a weak second term president and Republicans themselves weren’t clamoring to touch the third rail while Iraq’s civil war was blowing up around them. And I have seen nothing since then that leads me to believe the Democrats would be able to control the agenda from the opposition the way the Republicans have done it. There are far too many of them who buy into the Wall Street Worldview and/or believe that bipartisanship is an end unto itself. I doubt very seriously that they would hold the line from the minority.

Kilgore points out that it’s the commentariat that is most longing for a break in the gridlock, many of them sounding like the jaded European elite of he 20s, and like them opening up the discussion to some very unpleasant anti-democratic notions. He concludes by saying that regardless, the dynamic is going to be different after the election. He notes:

Even if there is no perceived “mandate,” the President’s hand will be greatly strengthened in the negotiations over how to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

Indeed. Unfortunately, I just saw Dick Durbin tell Andrea Mitchell that he knows for a fact that the president is going to use Simpson Bowles as a template in the 2nd term, so that strengthened hand is a very dubious advantage.

Blogger take-over from within

by digby

Hey lookee here:

Meet a pair of California DNC delegate brothers who want a more progressive party

They look alike, they talk alike, and though they’re not twins, they are united in a mission: move the Democratic Party farther to the left.

Delegates David Atkins of Ventura and Dante Atkins of Los Angeles say they’ve always had political inclinations. David said they were “always excited to get our sample ballots from the time we were 12 years old. And we would go and mark them up. It was hilarious.”

The pair started writing their opinions online about a decade ago, then got involved with Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. Since then, the duo has been working within the party itself, trying to embody what Dean described as the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” David expresses frustration at what he calls “old school” local party structure that rarely champions progressive values.

Dante said it’s not just the local party — there are “too many” Democrats at all levels who believe that “where they need to be is the mushy middle.” He dismisses that as “Republican Lite.”

But the pair are happily trying to change hearts from within, joining fellow California delegates at the Democratic National Convention.

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it …

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