A Half-Full Kristol

I agree with Education Dude that Bill Kristol erred by not acknowledging in his op-ed the serious disparities between blacks and whites under numerous indicators of well-being. In addition to the education statistics cited by Education Dude, African Americans lag behind whites in income and access to healthcare and are arrested and incarcerated at rates far disproportionate to their size in the general population.

Certainly, a way to reduce this inequality is to explicitly target disadvantaged African Americans with government assistance. But this goal can also be achieved through race-neutral government action. The government can reduce poverty, poor education, and injustice in the legal system in a color-blind way (say by infusing money into inner-city job and education programs and eliminating the crack-cocaine/powder-cocaine sentencing disparity). African Americans will be disproportionately helped by such measures and racial inequality will be reduced. When Kristol speaks of a “results-oriented” approach, I hope he is thinking of such measures.

-Law Dude

A Half-Empty Kristol

I had an incredibly visceral reaction to Bill Kristol's pronouncement that, for the younger generation in America, racism isn't an issue. Perhaps the tremendous rhetorical and cultural integration of the under 30 crowd signals that sort of telos, but our political institutions tell a completely different story. My specific expertise is in urban education - hence my moniker - wherein the "achievement gap" between white and black students remains remarkable. So, while cultural discourse tells one story, our institutions tell a different one, notably a story that is fraught with the same divisions as those of earlier American generations. We cannot let folks get away with this sort of nonsense.

-Education Dude

Conservatives and Obama

Good piece from the Chicago Tribune's Chapman. Pretty interesting stuff from a conservative guy. I'm fascinated by the divide in conservative reporting after the "race speech." There are even signs of dissent on Fox News.

-Education Dude

Life Imitates Two Fairly Liberal Dudes pt 2

Excellent article on when politicians should be blamed for the actions of their surrogates. Choice quote:

"And it's worth knowing that Hillary's top political adviser, Mark Penn, has spent the campaign delivering preposterously self-serving spin, since he'd presumably continue to deliver preposterously self-serving spin in a Hillary White House. "

This article supports our previous argument that it is ridiculous to claim that Hillary is the victim of sexist attacks when she is criticized for the actions that Bill takes on the campaign trail.

-Law Dude

This is not going to turn out well….

The New York Times reported today that that Pakistan’s newly democratically elected government seeks to negotiate a truce with militants in the country’s tribal areas. The last truce between the Pakistani government and these militants resulted in the creation of a safe haven for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters, resulting in increased violence in Afghanistan.

If the Pakistani government moves forward with this plan, the U.S. is faced with some unattractive options. The U.S. can continue providing aid to Pakistan as a reward for the transition of power to a democratically elected government, despite that government following a policy directly counter to U.S. interests. Or the U.S. can make aid contingent on the U.S. being able to engage in predator attacks on suspected militants in this region, thereby risking destabilization of the democratic Pakistani government.

There are no easy answers to this situation. How a Presidential candidate would respond would provide valuable insight into the judgment he or she will exercise as commander and chief. I hope that the media asks the candidates what they would do in Pakistan.

-Law Dude

Finally Someone Is Saying It ...

Politico's VandeHei and Allen have a mythbusting piece out today: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=D1491726-3048-5C12-0099B6F95FDE6303

The myth?  That there is any planet in this universe of the next on which HRC has a chance of winning the candidacy that doesn't mean:

"An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else."

Are there still hotel rooms left in Denver??

-Education Dude

Handicapping the Richardson Endorsement

He couldn't have done this before OH/TX?!  With that out of my system ...

I actually think there's a positive interpretation to the Obama camp rolling out this endorsement now.  I've heard folks say that Richardson's cred in the Latino community beyond his home state is questionable, so maybe the impact on TX's strong Latino community would have been minimal.  Plus, given the fact that it seemed like the Gov was leaning in the Obama direction for a while, the endorsement was sort of like keeping "one in the chamber" in case some stuff went down.  And stuff decidedly went down.

So, while not positioning this endorsement before some states where Richardson's voice might have had a bigger impact, this timing actually demonstrates how remarkable the Obama campaign functions vis-a-vis long-term strategy.  I think that as much as anything else bodes well for a presidency.  Especially given the recent talk about McCain's lack of vision at TPM (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/184584.php) and elsewhere.

-Education Dude

Dem’s and GOP’s Flawed Iraq End Game

Both Obama’s and Hillary’s strategy of removing combat brigades from Iraq as quickly as possible is flawed. Republican critics contend that such withdrawal will result in a full-scale civil war or a resurgence of Al Qaeda in Iraq. While the Al Qaeda claim is far from a certainty (over the past two years, even Sunni extremists have rejected Al Qaeda in Iraq, making me skeptical that Al Qaeda could ever establish a base in Iraq that could threaten American interests), a full-scale civil war in Iraq is probable if the U.S. was to begin a rapid withdrawal next January.

Yet, these critics fail to articulate how the U.S. can ever exit Iraq without the ignition of a Civil War or at the very least, a forfeit of the security gains from the surge. While McCain’s 100 years in Iraq statement was taken out of context (and it is disingenuous for the Democrats to continually hammer him on this point), no Republican critic of withdrawal can point to a realistically short time line where we can withdrawal without severe consequences. It is possible that the same violence that would result from a withdrawal in 2009 would occur if we withdrew in 2014 or 2019. As we’ve argued, the opportunity cost of remaining in Iraq for five years without expanding the size of our military has been harmful to our foreign policy interests, and the opportunity cost of remaining in Iraq indefinitely would be devastating.

Thus, the next President’s plans for Iraq should be as follows:

1. To plan for a withdrawal of U.S. forces.
2. To implement this withdrawal if the Iraqi government is unable to meet political, economic, and security benchmarks within a reasonable period of time.

If these benchmarks are met, then the U.S. would presumably be able to engage in a phased withdrawal that would not result in mass Iraqi bloodshed. If these benchmarks are not met, then the U.S. can credibly claim that the U.S. took all reasonable steps to ensure a peaceful Iraq, yet Iraqi political leaders valued sectarianism over peace. It is essential to U.S. foreign policy that the world not blame the U.S. as a sole cause of a Civil War that would devastate Iraqi civilians even more than 5 years of war.

-Law Dude

Meta-Analysis of the Obama Speech

Reactions to this morning's Obama speech vary, but there's a lot of agreement that it was perhaps the most ambitious political speech of a generation. Andrew Sullivan reacts here, a good collection of reactions here, and others throughout the blogosphere.

The negative critique seems to focus around the fact that the speech may have injected a dose of racial discourse into a candidacy that seemingly transcended race. In the best scenario, however, this liability becomes a huge opportunity. The reaction from the NYTimes above is perhaps the most illustrative ... in the piece an Indiana woman is highlighted:

“There’s a large black church here in Indianapolis,” she mused, “and I just can’t believe the minister talks like that.”

The piece ends with that observation, but the implicit message is that this woman has NO IDEA that the minister of that church quite possibly (probably?) does talk like that. This is a damning reality to confront, wherein the conversation around race in this country emerges as both obtuse and obscured. We can speak in generalities about race relations and create rhetorical tricks that whitewash actual racial tensions, but the bottom line is that many Americans remain willfully ignorant of their neighbors' actual beliefs and experiences. How many white folks have been to a black church on Sunday? How many black folks really understand the complex views many white folks have of the plight of black Americans? This is a scary notion to confront, but at least Obama is challenging us to approach it.

That's the net positive here. I read Obama's speech today, and I was filled with emotion and - for lack of a better term - hope. His candidacy has already won the hearts to many, but engaging folks in this conversation is intellectually challenging (A Sullivan actually has a reader offering a Faulknerian commentary of the speech). When before was our generation encouraged by a leader to do something truly difficult? Further, when we were actually emboldened and excited to embrace such a challenge? Gary Kasparov - the Russian chess champion cum politician - was on Bill Maher's HBO show several months ago, and he painted a rich, intricate picture of Russia's political dynamics. One of Maher's other guests remarked that "he's playing chess while we're all playing checkers." The message was that American politicians rarely give our populace enough credit to engage in discourse that contains shades of gray. This has always been my critique of the democratic party: whereas conservatives are comfortable painting the world in black and white (pun intended), liberals are committed to a world view that contains shades of gray. Are complicated ideas harder to communicate, hence politicize? Of course. But abandoning such ideas relegates our political discourse to stagnation. The amazing thing to me is that Obama didn't condescend to us today. He made things MORE complicated, and we should thank him for that. More politicians should challenge us in this way.

-Education Dude

Race and the Race

A few months ago, before normal Peruvian citizens could be expected to have a nuanced understanding of superdelegates (if anyone remembers whose blog mentioned this, please remind me, I think it was Ben Smith's), I had a conversation that is now coming back to haunt me.  I was having a beer with a good friend who played a role in the first Clinton administration, and I told him that I was supporting Obama.  His personal preferences are irrelevant, but he opined that voting for Obama, for a lot of white folks, was going to be like "getting tickets for the ballet."  It's something you brag about a cocktail parties but never get around to really doing.  I laughed, but I was pretty dismissive.  Then, my extremely progressive white parents, and my far-from-progressive white uncle, ended up voting for Obama in the New Jersey primaries, further solidifying my belief that we had transcended race.

Fast forward to mid-March, and I'm having second thoughts (see: Ferraro, Wright, etc).   And it's Geraldine Ferraro's fault.

Folks are right to point out that it wasn't Ferraro's initial insinuation that is so baffling ... rather, it's her bewildered insistence that she doesn't understand why what she said was so wrong.  Whenever I hear her on a talk show now, I can't help but think of my great aunt saying things like, "But, you realize he's a black, right?" (That's right folks, using the indefinite article.)  All of us have had an experience like this with an elder relative, and we roll our eyes and go back to whatever we were talking about before the soft-racism train left the station.  On the one hand, we can dismiss Ferraro as a crazy old lady ...

Here's the thing, though.  If this sort of race-baiting wins HRC the nomination, it will vindicate all of these tactics AND the beliefs that underlie them.  If we support that, another generation of idealistic Americans will have acquiesced to identity politics, and today's ramblings of an old lady become the staples of another generation's cultural lexicon.  Don't underestimate this.  I know you're idealistic now, 20 and 30 somethings, but so were your parents when they were getting high and protesting Vietnam. 

So I've started to wonder, am I just living in a post-race, post-identity politics bubble?  If that's the case, I think a large share of my generation inhabits that bubble, and guess what?  We're the ones giving $5 a pop to candidates after e-mail solicitations.  So, while the "politics of the past" may end up trumping the post-race utopia today, I'm starting to come around to the fact that this could be devastating for the democratic party long-term.  And frankly, I'm okay with that assuming the long-term result is either: A) a Democratic party that truly eschews racial divisions, or B) a viable solution outside of that party.  Unless you want to keep patting yourselves on the back for watching "The Wire" on DVD, my friends, let's make sure that we expunge this nonsense from the primary.  And if we don't, we should seriously reconsider clicking "Buy It Now" the next time a Democratic party candidate floods our inboxes.

-Education Dude

More Than a "War on Terror"

Time Magazine’s Mideast Blog cites an Oliver Roy op-ed that argues that the U.S. overreacted to 9/11. According to the blog, “[W]hatever happens in Iraq, whatever choices the next American president makes about George Bush's military commitment in that country, al-Qaeda will not take power and establish an Islamic state in Iraq.”

Certainly, Al-Qaeda and radical Islamic terrorism is the greatest short-term threat to American interests. Given the relatively low costs of engaging in acts of terrorism, another attack on U.S. soil is sadly almost inevitable during our lifetime. Yet, exclusively focusing our foreign policy around attacking Al-Qaeda will do serious disservice to our long-term interests. The protracted war in Iraq arguably led to North Korea’s development of a nuclear capability, as they likely believed that the U.S. was too distracted to pose a credible threat for military retribution. Since 9/11, China has quietly expanded their weapons capability and now possesses the ability to destroy our satellites. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan within the next 30 years is far from implausible. The U.S. will then be faced with a choice of defending the island against an enemy with far more military capability than our opponents in every modern war since Vietnam or ceding the island and likely ceding our sole super power status.

Given these largely challenges, the U.S. should reconstitute our foreign policy to balance our short-term need to protect the country and our allies from terrorist attack with our long-term military interests. To do so, I suggest the following shifts in our foreign policy:

1. Reenergize the so-called “Bush Doctrine.”

If a country harbors a radical Islamic organization dedicated to using terrorist tactics to harm our interests domestically or abroad we should use military force against them. Afghanistan, despite its poorly funded reconstruction, still serves as a strong example of how military force can be effectively used within the context of the so-called “war on terror” to destroy radical Islamic havens and deter regimes from harboring "terrorists." Absent such official sanction of terrorist bases, the U.S. should do no more than use limited military force to surgically attack radical Islamic targets. Under this theory, the U.S. would never have invaded Iraq.

2. Continue to expand domestic counterterrorism measures.

Despite the relative ease for someone intent on taking his own life in order to kill others, the U.S. should continue to focus bringing our domestic counterterrorism capabilities up to speed.

3. As soon as practicable, withdraw a significant amount of forces from Iraq and/or significantly expand the size of our military.

Since engaging in the war on Iraq, the United States has ceded all credible deterrent threats against our enemies. The opportunity cost of continuing our presence in Iraq without a corresponding increase in our armed forces prevents the U.S. from reacting quickly to emerging threats. And it is also clear that the fight in Afghanistan is being unnecessarily prolonged due to resources that have been diverted to Iraq.

4. Develop long-term military capabilities that can deter China from taking aggressive moves in the South Pacific.

While I’m no expert on military technology, it seems that the lessons our military planners are taking from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is to develop capabilities to prevail in asymmetrical conflicts against weaker enemies will to use guerilla tactics. The U.S. should not pursue this goal while ignoring long-term threats that have the potential to cause widespread destruction within the U.S. For example, the U.S. should develop countermeasures to protect our satellites and as a contingency, the capability to conduct warfare in the absence of help from satellites.

While the U.S. should not give up the “war on terror” completely, our leaders must recognize that more frightening long-term challenges await if we continue a myopic foreign policy focused only on winning asymmetrical conflicts.

-Law Dude

Life Imitates Two Fairly Liberal Dudes- links related to last week's posts

Prison Nation - NYTimes editorial citing money wasted bc of U.S. incarceration rates

Obama Rejects Being Clinton's Number Two - hope he sticks to that story if Hillary wins the nomination

Larry David's Red Phone - Law Dude says hilarious, Education Dude says sexist and hilarious.

Hillary-Obama 08? Think again.

On today’s Meet the Press, Hillary supporter Governor Rendell debated Obama supporter Senator Daschle. During the debate, Rendell repeated the Clinton campaign’s assertion that superdelegates should support Hillary even if she loses the popular vote, pledged delegates, and state primaries. He also repeated Clintons’ apparent willingness to have Obama on the ticket as Vice President.

As noted in a previous post, if superdelegates override popular votes to secure a Hillary nomination, mass protests may erupt. At the very least, Obama supporters would not enthusiastically support the nominee and many would stay home on election day. The only way to blunt this outcome would be for Obama to run as the vice-Presidential nominee. Thus, practically, Hillary would have no option other than to ask Obama and to pray that he accepts a place on the ticket.

Obama must reject this request. Securing party unity does not justify becoming a party to a mass repudiation of popular will.

-Law Dude

TNR Must Read

The New Republic's Jonathan Chait turns in a MUST READ on why this protracted race is bad for democrats (http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ba30ff16-a5af-4035-a883-cf15ffee406c), providing balance to our earlier post on Reed's piece.  Definitely read the whole thing, but here's one of several money shots:

"Pennsylvania is a swing state that Democrats will almost certainly need to win in November, and Clinton will spend seven weeks and millions of dollars there making the case that Obama is unfit to set foot in the White House. You couldn't create a more damaging scenario if you tried."

He also makes the point that what HRC is doing to BHO is in no way representative of the kind of hammering in the general, because McCain's fall mudslinging won't be reinforced by someone from within the Dem party.

Debate more than Healthcare and Iraq

I’m surprised I beat Education Guy to this, given that the Wire is one of his favorite shows, but the Wire writers put together a very powerful critique of the war on drugs here. They convincingly condemn the costs of the war on drugs — in terms of the direct expense of keeping 1% of our population and on the opportunity cost of directing law enforcement efforts at petty drug crimes and not at more serious offenses. They conclude:

If asked to serve on a jury deliberating a violation of state or federal drug laws, we will vote to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented. Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war. No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens.

While jury nullification is a unique attempt to solve this problem, I would doubt the Wire writers’ article will prevent a single conviction. After publishing this article, no sane prosecutor would allow one of the writers to sit on a drug offense jury. Similarly, prosecutors may ask prospective jurors whether they are opposed to convicting anyone of a drug crime. Unless large numbers of citizens are willing to lie in order to get onto juries, jury nullification is not going to be an effective means to change our nation’s drug policies.

I think the Wire writers recognize that this problem should instead be addressed in the political arena, but they see the failure of politics to yield any positive changes to our drug policies. They rightly note, “There aren't any politicians — Democrat or Republican — willing to speak truth on this.”

I would add — no politician Democrat or Republican — has been forced to speak truth on this issue. If there is another debate before Pennsylvania, let’s hope that it does not devolve into a rehashing of the same issues — extensive debate on the minutia on the marginal differences between the health care plans and the steps they will take to get out of Iraq (full disclosure: although I never supported going into Iraq and I support a sensible withdrawal, making detailed plans about leaving a year before taking office does not sound particularly responsible). Instead, let’s force candidates to take stands on issues like the war on drugs. By answering such questions we will know whether a candidate is willing to take an unpopular stand in order to do what is right.

-Law Dude

Re: An Argument for This to Keep Going ...

Bruce Reed at Slate turns in a pretty compelling reason to applaud this race continuing. (http://www.slate.com/id/2185187/). I'm not sure I agree with this, though:

"Contrary to the conventional wisdom, the biggest beneficiaries of a protracted battle for the nomination are the two contestants themselves. Primaries are designed to be a warm-up for the general election, and a few more months of spring training will only improve their swings for the fall."

I don't agree that more batting practice will outweigh the detriments of hitting each over the head repeatedly, but watching history unfold is entertaining. Aspiring politicians, sharpen your pencils, you won't get another one like this ...

-Education Dude

See you in Denver

Education Dude’s last post outlined 3 possible outcomes to the election. In the second, Hillary Clinton has less pledged delegates but takes the nomination through the support of superdelegates. Assuming the failure of the preposterous argument that Florida and Michigan primaries should yield pledged delegates, Education Dude’s second scenario is the only way for Hillary to take the nomination despite having fewer pledged delegates. This scenario is fundamentally an affront to democratic principles. Given the likelihood that Hillary will also trail in popular vote and states won, a Hillary nomination on the backs of superdelegates would be a travesty worthy of protests rivaling the 1968 Chicago convention.

Hillary argues that superdelegates should be free to vote for whom they think will be the best candidate, regardless of the outcome of state primaries. Her theory is not outside the bounds of Democratic Party rules. The approximately 794 superdelegates are unpledged delegates with no formal restrictions on whom they may vote for.

If superdelegates decide to vote for a candidate without regard to popular votes held in previous primaries, superdelegates hold enormous power. Their votes make up approximately 39% of the 2024 votes needed to win the nomination. While Democratic members of Congress and sitting Democratic governors are superdelegates, the vast majority of superdelegates are not presently accountable to an electorate. Most are either former office holders or party officials who may never have held elected office.

A natural consequence of this argument is that the votes of superdelegates may decide the nomination. A candidate who has won the popular vote, won the most state primaries, and won the most pledged delegates may nonetheless lose the nomination if he or she is not supported by most superdelegates.

If this scenario occurs, the voices of the millions of Democrats who voted in primaries and caucuses would be nullified by a small group of mostly unelected officials. The unfairness of the outcome is obvious, and it is mindboggling that such a scenario is advanced by a candidate of a party whose members previously decried the results of the 2000 election as nullifying the will of the voter.

While many Democrats condemn the 2000 election because the candidate who lost the popular vote won the White House, this outcome is far more fair than following Hillary’s superdelegate theory. Within the Electoral College system, electors are tied by tradition or state laws to vote for the candidate supported by their state. On the other hand, under Hillary’s theory, superdelegates would have no such restrictions, and the votes of ordinary citizens would be rendered irrelevant. If Hillary can convince superdelegates to support this theory and her candidacy, despite overall losses in pledged delegates, popular vote, and state primaries, then all American voters should be offended. Then I’ll see you in Denver.

- Law Dude

Two more months of this?

Honestly, that's sort of how I think a lot of folks must feel this morning, particularly after McCain clinched (although maybe the imminent endorsement from our extremely unpopular current President can blunt that).

The storyline of last night will be interpreted and reinterpreted, but the bottom line seems to be that HRC controlled most of the news cycles in the days prior to Ohio and Texas, and a ton of previously undecided voters broke heavily for her in those states as a result. And, per the post below, most of the talk was negative regarding BHO (see the Canadian NAFTA blunder and the talk surrounding the 3AM commercials). What's not news about this is that going negative can work. However, the results HRC got will reinforce those tactics, and this could get a LOT more negative before the Ds have a candidate. Still, to cleanse ourselves of what's sure to be an onslaught of HRC spin, let's remember that her camp had to win both TX and OH to stay sort of competitive in the delegate count, and a couple of weeks ago we were talking about high double digit margins in both states.

I don't think we're going to dabble in delegate math, since TPM (talkingpointsmemo.com) and others are far more sophisticated in that arena, but the skinny seems to be that if the grounds shifted last night, it will be only slightly in HRC's favor, and given the wacky TX caucus, it's possible that BHO could add to his lead.

The way I see it, there are three possible scenarios for the rest of this thing, and they all have to do with momentum (thanks to Ben Smith and Marc Ambinder for some of this):

1) The post-coital glow of TX and OH wears off, and things return to status quo ante-Tuesday, leaving BHO with the formidable delegate lead and a supposed announcement of having raised something like $50MM in February. The momentum continues in his direction, he continues to win states, and he enters the convention with a still large lead (even if PA does end up breaking for HRC). Obama wins.

2) The momentum shifts, HRC starts a streak of victories, picking off some states she wasn't expected to win (WY?) and wins PA. Most delegate math would still have her trailing mathematically, but streaking into the convention with a bunch of wins could change the superdelegate psychology. Clinton wins.

3) The momemtum fluctuates. This is actually a scenario we haven't seen in 08, because BHO has steadily gained on HRC in national polls since the beginning of January. It's anybody's call if this happens, but it seems unlikely to me, given the fact that there aren't any huge contests until PA. Things like fundraising announcements and minor scandals (ala Canada NAFTA) just don't dominate the national psyche the way real contests do, and they wear thin after a few news cycles. It would take either one major thing OR a coherent sequence of minor things to shift the conversation over and over. Don't discount the Clintons when it comes to cooking up a strategy like this. Edge Clinton, but mostly unclear.

Sympathizing With the Right

Law Dude's last post reminds me of something that has been nagging at me lately, namely the fact that a lot of Obama supporting Democrats are finding an unlikely source of sympathy with Republicans of the Gingrich era. While Democrats were basking in the Clinton years -which, unfortunately, became but a political sorbet for two courses of Bush - the right took every opportunity to lambaste the Clinton camp's heavy-handed tactics. Dem reaction to this landed somewhere between willful ignorance and blissful tolerance. But the 2008 Dem primary season has flipped this on its head, and the growing corps of Obama Dems see the formerly heralded Clinton machine in a different light.

The closest thing to this, insofar as I can tell, is watching your favorite wide receiver get traded to a rival in your team's division. You loved his speed down the field, but now that he's on the other side of the ball, he insists on exploiting your team's slow secondary (sorry for the expanded sports analogy, I'll try to keep those to a minimum). Anyway, this is how a lot of folks feel about Bill Clinton right now. Invigorating the party for eight years and withstanding a pretty silly, politically motivated impeachment? Great! Taking on critical global development and public health issues post-White House as a senior statesman? Awesome! Aiming to stomp out the Obama flame? Hold on there, Slick Willie. (Remember when we used to call him that?)

In any event, it will be interesting to see how this affects the Clinton legacy in the long run. It's silly to opine on what that might look like before we even have an '08 Dem candidate, but at this point it's pretty clear that whoever the nominee ends up being, either Dem who wins in '08 has the potential to relegate the Bill Clinton presidency to a pretty short paragraph in high school history books. (Note: a potential HRC presidency's effect on the Bill Clinton "first gentlemanship" treatment in the history books notwithstanding.)

-Education Dude

Not Supporting Sen. Clinton and Sexism

Supporters of Sen. Clinton often argue that she is being mistreated by the media and the public because of overt sexism. Robin Morgan’s Women’s Media Center article forcefully makes this argument: http://www.womensmediacenter.com/ex/020108.html.

While some individual arguments may have merit, overall, this article shows the ease to which individual, valid critiques of Hillary can be spun as sexist attacks. For example, she argues:

If Hillary was being criticized for Bill's infidelity (something that has nothing to do with this campaign), I would agree. But Hillary's campaign made a decision to have Bill act as her surrogate and campaign for her in South Carolina. He was in the state almost constantly for the week before the election, while she was rarely there; he essentially gave her concession speech. Hillary's campaign clearly made the decision that Bill should take a more visible role in the state because of Bill's previous popularity with black Americans and the number of blacks in the state. That decision and generally using Bill to make campaign speeches for her, makes it completely valid to criticize Hillary for actions Bill takes on the campaign trail. Bill has said some pretty harmful things during this campaign (ie "Jesse Jackson won in 1984 and 1988, just like Obama did;" "it's a fairy tale that Obama opposed the Iraq war."); when he's acting as her spokesman, then I can't see how it's sexist to criticize Hillary for his words. That said, to Hillary's credit, her campaign has done a better job of making sure Bill stays on message after the South Carolina debacle.

For the record, I do not support Hillary for three reasons.

1) Her vote for the Iraq war.

There’s not much more to add to previous observations that this vote lacked either judgment or political courage to stand up for her true convictions.

2) Campaign tactics in South Carolina and her failure to own up to them.

Bill’s behavior cited above gives credence to the notion that the Clintons will do whatever it takes to win, regardless of serious incidental harm to others (in this case to a potential democratic candidate in a general election).

3) Her arguments that the Michigan and Florida primary votes should count towards her delegate count and that superdelegates should support her even if she has fewer delegates, won less states, and loses the popular vote to Obama.

These positions are utterly indefensible. From a party that argued (improperly, in my opinion) that George W. wasn’t a valid president because he lost the popular vote in 2000, it is absolutely amazing that Hillary could essentially argue that the results of fairly held primaries (i.e. every primary other than FL and MI) across the country don’t mean anything, whereas the votes of 800 or so superdelegates should determine the nomination.

I suspect that many people who oppose Hillary, oppose her for similar reasons. I challenge anyone to tell me how any of these reasons are sexist.

-Law Dude

Why we're here

We want to talk about policy and politics. For those of us who were reared in the cultural gray area that allowed us to miss the substance of Reagan while having our political cherry popped by eight years of a Clinton presidency, the election of 2008 has generated an unprecedented change in our young generation's posture toward politics. The candidate we voted for has never made it to the White House. Our parents invoke "Jack" and "Bobby," but decades span between those figures' deaths and our births. We have seen an array of underwhelming political figures who have caused us to wonder if a typology - that of the transformational figure - died along with those exemplars of the 60s. Sure, we have found inspirational figures elsewhere, but we've struggled to get the bad taste out of our mouth since convincing ourselves to care about John Kerry in 2004 after spending four years complaining about the great train robbery that was the election of 2000.

So, that's not to say we're going to spend most of our words shilling for Sen. Obama's candidacy, which seems to be the modus operandi of anyone who throws around the words "change" and "transformation" these days. Rather, we want to highlight in this introductory post the impact that a figure like Obama can have on a generation of sentient beings who have been denied the pleasure of being invigorated by a political figure. Our peers are more likely to cite Steve Jobs as a visionary than anyone for whom they've cast a ballot. They're more likely to seek a job in social enterprise than embrace a public sector that has for years been dominated by hackery (at best). Here we seek to capitalize on that energy and harness the momentum (there's that word again!) that the current political season has created not around a particular candidate, but around the political fervor of a generation.