Procrastinet

even if obama had gotten all of edwards' votes, he still would've lost to shrill hil. that's depressing.

My theory:

After the attacks in 2001, Al Gore invents a time machine so that he can warn the Democrats and enable them to lay the groundwork to stop the emerging Republican facism in 2008. (Without screwing with space/time too much, a course.)

Breathless, he stumbles into the White House in late 2000, and urgently pulls the top staff into a meeting. "Okay, you guys, in 2001, a guy named Osama is going to attack New York, and in the chaos afterward, the military/industrial complex is really going to take the country by the cahuungas. You absolutely have to mount a powerful campaign with a popular and credible opponent in 2008."

The staffers go off in a corner and and huddle, and a after a few minutes of hubbub, come back to future-Gore.

"Okay", they say, "we're kind of split, but it looks like we're either going to nominate Hillary Clinton or some guy named Obama."

At which point future Al Gore sighs, pours a bourbon, and heads back to a comfortable chair on a front porch in Tennessee.

The truth is out there.

(As are double quarter-pounders with cheese and no onions.)

Hi, RJ.

So I did what you asked and listened to the SC speech. I don't see what there is to get so worked up about. It was fairly vapid and reminiscent of Chris Rock's take on political applause lines-"all babies must eat!" He used a lot of strawman arguements, his usual recycled LBJ lines, and stole his best line from the UFW and/or Bob the Builder. His one specific proposal- stop tax subsidies for outsourcing- will be too little, too late.

Further, I dislike the anti-intellectual, vaguely proto-fascist tone of his rhetoric. By continually claiming that political devisiveness is the biggest problem, he is really arguing, intentionally or not, that those who are smart enough and aware enough to disapprove of other's politics are what's wrong with the country. Let's all just hold hands and hope. Don't think, that leads to divisiveness, just hope.

Not that any of this matters. The DLC will correagraph a dramatic brokered convention at which the Clinton/Obama ticket will be announced to much tearful fanfare.

I see what you're saying, though I (obviously) find it a little over-cynical. Rather than being anti-thought, I take the unity rhetoric as railing against the easy, patterned divides that keep us from thinking. The us/them mentality precludes thought significantly more than the kumbaya/hope mentality. You don't have to analyze anything - if "they" are for it then it's bad, if "we" are for it then it's good.

If you stop pitching every issue as us/them ("democrats hate our country"/"republicans hate the poor"... well, okay, except some republicans really do hate the poor...) then you can actually look at the issues from a non knee-jerk, non-cynical "how will this play to my base" angle. The politics of division are the brainless, Fox News politics that the GOP have used as a fulcrum for most of their recent successes (most particularly the '04 election).

I'm interested to see what national policy that isn't based on demonization of the opposition (domestic and foreign) would look like.

You wanted to see what politics not based on demonizing the opposition will look like?

http://www.gocomics.com/rallcom/2008/02/02/

When you are fighting demons, demonization is called for. "They," the imperialists and authoritarians, sucking up to the corporations and the military industrial complex, are against us, whether "they" run as Democrats or Republicans. The politics of division might include Fox news, but the politics of unity gave us the Patriot Act and two wars full of atrocities and war crimes. Bush, Hillary and Obama are all war criminals, his warm fuzzy rhetoric not withstanding.

By the way, congrats on your show opening.

HA - thanks.

I'll check out that link.

Our psychological balance is much as it was in 1985, when we sat in the Duke gazebo and harangued about the government repressing the 100mpg carburetor. i.e., I'm willing to listen and nod sagely and believe at least a fraction of it.

So yes, "they" are hopelessly in thrall of the plutocrats, corporations and capital. I do still believe, maybe naively, that there is a fundamental difference between the two parties - the Republicans are a pure capitalist machine veiling itself in sham patriotism and social repression. The Democrats, to my eye, mean well and don't usually actually know how to get done what "us" would like them to get done. They're in thrall to their own factions, but I find their factions significantly more tolerable.

Anyway, most of this is moot as the coming financial meltdown will wipe away most of the current paradigm within the next couple years. Capital is a bacteria which has had a red bloom and is now having a massive die off...

So there. I can still buy into some wacky shite of my own.

[throws down a strange hand gesture with two fingers raised and two fingers tucked under the thumb...]

- R

I would just parse your above comment a little more precisely. By the Democrats, if you mean the rank and file, then yes you are right about them meaning well. If you mean the Clinton and Obama, etc. democratic leadership, then no, you are wrong. They are just as much in thrall to the corporate interests as the Republicans. I say this not out of speculation, but because that is what they openly said their objective was back in the '80s when they set up the DLC- to suck off the same corporate teat as the Republicans, and pander to the same reactionary twits as Reagan did.
And, none of this is "wacky shite," nor is it due to psychological (im)balance. Political difference, apparently.

Aren't you glad you found me on Facebook, so I can repay your hospitality by identifying your hero as a war criminal? :)

Oh, and about the 100 mpg carburetor. I don't remember making that arguement, but I don't doubt that I did. It has been pretty well documented though that the oil and car companies have lobbied the government to keep fuel efficency standards in the US much lower than those in Europe or Asia.

I'll even give you Hillary on the war criminal count, since she was in the Senate and voted to authorize the Iraq war. Obama, while only in the state senate, was already eyeballing national office and was consistently speaking out against the war and against the authorization.

So, unlike Clinton, he did *not* fall into the trap of Democrats having to vote for every Hawkish move so they don't get painted as pantywaist peaceniks. No, he wasn't in the senate. But his public stand, on the record, was anti-.

I guess I'm more jaded about the prospect of getting political power in this country without pandering to the reactionary twits. There are lots of them (vis: 2000/2004) and this is, nominally, a democracy, which means we need 1% more of them than the other guys get if we're going to do even the crippled amount of good that we can do...

Obama is a war criminal because he has consistently voted to fund the war. This both makes him an accessory-after-the-fact to the initial illegal and immoral invasion, but also guilty of every atrocity that he has helped pay for since, such as the recent carpet bombing of parts of Baghdad. He has voted for every hawkish move he could, and because of this inconsistency between his stated views and his actual voting record, make me suspect he would have voted to authorize the war had he been in the Senate. It is a lie, promoted by the Dem leadership, such as Pelosi and Ried, that because they did not have a veto proof majority after 2006, that the Dems in congress could not end the war. All they needed to do was not vote for continued funding, and the war would have been over. But they, including Obama, didn't want to lose the presidency in 2008 on the charge of not suporting the troops, etc, so they have continued to prolong the war. Very similar to what Nixon and Kissenger did to prolong the war in Vietnam for political advantage. Obama voted to continue the killing, thus has blood on his hands.