reflectivepundit

Obama’s Populism and the Media

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Although it is not difficult to point to missed opportunities and mistakes in Senator Clinton’s campaign, New York Times columnist Gail Collins is right in concluding that “even the original Bill Clinton would have a hard time beating him [Senator Barack Obama].” Collins suggests that, “If things don’t go well for Hillary over the next few weeks…I hope she understands. She’s done fine. And she’d probably have won the nomination walking away if Barack hadn’t picked this moment to mutate into BARACK!”

Barack, the individual, has become BARACK, the ism of change. While most, if not all modern day candidates for high offices make populist appeals to enlist support, Senator Obama has been most successful in this respect in the current presidential campaign.

And here the mass media of communication play a crucial role. In the case of Senator Obama, the mainstream media have provided him with a hospitable stage to spread his message.

So, is Senator Obama a populist?

Obama: The Audacity of Hype?

By David Epstein

Barack Obama’s run for the White House is premised on his image as a transformational leader, one who will move the country beyond partisanship and enact sweeping changes.  He promises to be more than a mere politician, to unify the electorate and their representatives, and to remake national politics at a fundamental level.

Given the boldness of these claims – and Obama’s recently conferred front-runner status by the media – it is reasonable to inquire as to their foundation.  After all, no president in history has been able to accomplish what Obama promises, and those elected more on image than policy expertise and leadership have not had stellar results.  Is there anything in Obama’s political history that would lead us to believe he can succeed where all others before him have failed?

Certainly his tenure in the U.S. Senate gives very little support.  He has been a cautious senator so far, hewing to the Democratic party line on most votes and keeping his sweeping rhetoric in check.  After criticizing the Iraq War harshly from the safe confines of the Illinois State Senate, for example, his voting record on Iraq over the past three years is virtually indistinguishable from Senator Clinton’s – they voted identically on all 27 Iraq votes in 2007, except for two that Obama missed – including a number of votes in favor of further funding the war effort.

And his voting record overall is generally quite liberal.  Although the recent National Journal report showing him to be the most liberal of all 100 senators in 2007 was something of an aberration (he was 16th and 17th most liberal the previous two years), his has been a consistently left-leaning voice during his time in the Senate.  Not that there’s anything wrong with such a record – arguably, he is representing his reelection constituency, just as he did while a state senator – but it is a bit at odds with his promises to cross party lines and work hand-in-hand with Republicans.

Indeed, perhaps his best-known moment as a senator up until now was his dust-up with McCain when the senior senator from Arizona somewhat artlessly accused Obama of reneging on a promise to work together on ethics reform, after Obama backed down from joining a bipartisan task force on the issue and endorsed the Democratic version of ethics reform instead.  Again, Obama’s actions may well be justified, but this episode is a reminder that in national politics big issues are played for partisan advantage, and bipartisanship is usually more ephemeral than durable.

Which brings us to Obama’s tenure in the Illinois State Senate.  The debate up until now has focused solely on Obama’s use of “present” votes, which under the rules of the state senate are equivalent to “no” votes.  The point is not the constitutionality of this tactic, as some have claimed, but rather the potential to hide controversial stances from constituents, and here an analysis of all votes cast during the 2001 and 2002 session shows that Obama used this tactic more even than most of his colleagues.  In fact, he voted “present” 8th most out of 66 senators, including on parental notification before a minor could obtain an abortion, an action which drew the ire of the National Organization of Women.

But beyond this, voting records can reveal much about a legislator’s political predilections, and here as well Obama’s record does little to bolster his image of a bipartisan bridge-builder.  Analysis of all 1,428 recorded Illinois Senate roll call votes, using scaling techniques now common in political methodology, shows Obama had a consistently partisan voting record.  In particular, he was the 6th most liberal of all 66 senators, 10 times more likely to vote against Republicans than with them.

Even more discouraging is his cosponsorship record.  Bill cosponsorships are opportunities for legislators from opposite sides of the aisle to announce their willingness to work with each other, signals that they share a common agenda and will work together to get things done.  But bills which Obama sponsored had fewer than one Republican cosponsor, on average, out of 36 Republicans in the Senate: hardly a recipe for creating a post-partisan politics of inclusiveness.

Which still leaves open the question: on what record is Obama running?  He is, in effect, promising not only to do something which previous presidents have never done, but which he has never done either.  Absent a compelling argument to the contrary, why should the public believe that the Republicans will suddenly shed their partisan skins and join with a President Obama, working hand-in-hand with the Democrats to solve our nation’s problems?  What if he offers his hand, only to see it rejected?  What if Republicans use televised health care hearings to demagogue the issue and paint the Democrats as inveterate Socialists?  What if they filibuster key elements of his agenda in the Senate, as they did in 1993-94?  Is there a Plan B?  These are the key questions of the Obama candidacy, and they have yet to be asked, let alone answered.

Nader's Running Again!?!

By David Epstein

Now we get a report that Ralph Nader is running for president again. I've got a great idea. Why don't lots of people who would otherwise vote Democratic vote for him again? That worked really really well last time, didn't it? He sure proved his point that it makes no difference who's elected president anyway, didn't he? I mean, if it's not RALPH NADER as president, then the rest are all pretty much the same, right?

Seriously, I still don't understand why this guy is allowed back in polite society (on the left, at least). We may never recover from the damage he did last time. If he got negative votes this time around it would be too many.

Ralph Nader: Handing Republicans the White House--Again?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
A few weeks ago, Ralph Nader established his 2008 Presidential Exploratory Committee and announced that he aimed at raising $10 million before deciding whether to enter this year’s presidential race. I thought at the time that I would surely make a donation, if I wanted a Republican to succeed George W. Bush as president. After all, even a small percentage of votes in favor of a minor candidate can determine the outcome of a close election. In 2000, this was the case in Florida, where Al Gore would have won outright with the majority of Nader votes. The Supreme Court would not have made the decision in favor of Bush. In short, there is reason to believe that Ralph Nader and his supporters were instrumental in handing the presidency to George W. Bush.

 

And now Nader and his supporters are at it again. There are reasons to criticize the two major parties, their office holders and office seekers. Nader, like everyone else, has the right to do so. But there is no reason for Nader to enter the presidential race once again, unless he wants to increase the chance, perhaps even the likelihood, of the Republican nominee becoming President Bush’ successor.

The Good Old Boys and the Gender Thing

By Brigitte L. Nacos
When the New York Times reported the other day about a female golfer suing a public golf course on Cape Cod for gender discrimination, I was hardly surprised. What Elaine Joyce experienced as a member of the Dennis Pines course was deemed newsworthy only because she is a champion amateur golfer who is fully capable to compete with the guys—and playing from the men’s tees. Yet, she had to fight for playing with the guys on weekends and, more recently, was denied to compete in “men only” club tournaments. Yes, the Professional Golf Association (PGA) allowed Michelle Wie, an exceptional teenage golfer, to participate in several PGA tournaments—but that gimmick made for media hype and drew larger TV audiences. Out in the every day world of golf, there are plenty of the guys who insist on and get away with their gender privileges in terms of male only boards, men-first weekend tee times, men’s grills, etc. While once lily white golf clubs eventually opened up and extended men only privileges to male minority members, they continued to resist the same changes with respect to female golfers. 

When the chips are down, many white males are more inclined to welcome male minorities into their club rather than women. Just as they enfranchised African-American males many decades earlier than their female compatriots.

And this brings me to this year’s primary competition between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. As the results in the Wisconsin primary showed, the trend of white males voting overwhelmingly for the African-American male candidate and not for the white female intensifies. It is hard to believe that most of these guys examined the positions, characters, and electibility of the two rivals carefully before casting their ballot based on such information. Carl Bernstein said on CNN last night, “we have all these exit polls, which are terrific, but voting is mystical. It's a mystical act and deep down, people are voting, and we don't know exactly what motivates them, but a lot of it has to do with their perceptions of character, and they have a feeling.”

I, too, believe that, wittingly or unwittingly, a whole range of conclusions and emotions enter into the act of voting—including deep-seated societal prejudices. I do not doubt that racial prejudices cost Senator Obama votes in the primary season and may hurt him more in the fall election if he is the nominee of his party.
But exit polls in Wisconsin and elsewhere have revealed what has entered increasingly into the voting decisions of white men at the expense of Senator Clinton: the old (and middle-aged and young) boys’ gender thing.

 

What Are Super Delegates For?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

The post-1968 reforms of the presidential selection system were designed to break the control of party bosses over who became the nominee of their party. By instituting binding primaries, the decision was put into the hands of elected delegates pledged to the candidates they represented in caucuses and primaries. Following the nomination of George McGovern in 1972 and Jimmy Carter in 1976, the Democratic Party reformed the earlier reforms by creating unelected super delegates to their nominating conventions—party leaders, such as members of congress and holders of state offices—who are free to vote for the candidate of their choice. The idea was to prevent the selection of a nominee without ties to and support of party officials. At present, super delegates control nearly a fifth of the total delegate-pool at the Democratic nominating convention. Given the close race between Senators Clinton and Obama and the possibility of super delegates holding the key to the nomination, it is hardly surprising that the rationale of super delegates is being questioned and their roles and obligations are scrutinized.
Senator Clinton and her supporters insist that super delegates are part of the established process and supposed to make their independent decisions. Obama supporters, who believe that their candidate will have the support of more delegates elected in caucuses and primaries, want super delegates to support the winning candidate in their respective states. The super delegates were created as something like a check in the hands of the party establishment. It wouldn’t have made sense at all to establish this category of delegates with the stipulation that they vote for the candidate winning in their home states.

One can argue that the addition of non-elected super delegates was a partial return to the pre-1968 system. But the rules of the game should not be contested or changed in the midst of a heated primary competition. The Clinton side is right on this. Super delegates were created with the expectation that they would bring their own judgment to the selection of the Democratic Party’s selection process.

Senator McCain Votes Against Waterboarding Ban

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate followed the lead of the House in approving in a 51-45 vote a bill that prohibits the CIA from using waterboarding and other so-called aggressive interrogation techniques against terrorists and suspected terrorists. Not surprisingly, President Bush has said that he will veto any bill that would restrict such limitations on the CIA. For many observers, it was far more surprising that the likely presidential candidate of the Republican Party and one time champion of torture opponents, John McCain, voted against the bill.

Actually, as I wrote in an earlier blog, Senator McCain, who is regularly praised as “straight talker” by the media, began a while ago to change his anti-torture tune. While he lectured his former rival Matt Romney on the evils of waterboarding during one of the presidential candidates’ debates, he backed Michael Mukasey as attorney-general in spite of the now AG’s refusal to recognize waterboarding as torture and thus as illegal.

That was obviously only the beginning of his flip-flopping on this issue. Commenting on the latest McCain departure from his once high road stand against torture, The Huffington Post’s Hanna Ingber Win concludes, ”So much for Sen. John McCain being a man of principle who stood up to the Bush Administration and fellow Republicans. Turns out, he too is just another politician hungry for votes.”

Indeed.

P.S. Thanks to Ed D. who e-mailed the image below--one that does not need a caption

 

Hillary Bashing: It’s About Male Supremacy, Stupid

By Brigitte L. Nacos
I am appalled by the relentless attacks on Hillary Clinton from right and left and in-between—from males but also from females who seem as eager as the macho guys to land knock out punches. The former first lady is not a saint but neither are her male competitors in the race for the presidency. Yet, none of the former and present male Democratic and Republican contenders have been the targets of constant stereotypical swipes and attempts in character assassination as the former first lady has endured day-in and day-out. The line-up of attack dogs seems determined to prevent what wacko Ann Coulter called on NBC’s TODAY SHOW the other day a “girl president” in the White House. For the good old boys and their female collaborators the current presidential campaign is not in the first place about the economy or Iraq or immigration: It’s about the preservation of male supremacy, stupid! These insecure guys cannot stomach the idea of a woman in the White House. I simply do not believe them when they claim that they can support a female presidential candidate—but not this woman.

Mentioning “Carl Bernstein's disgust at Hillary’s ‘thick ankles.’ Nixon-trickster Roger Stone’s new Hillary-hating 527 group, ‘Citizens United Not Timid’ (check the capital letters), Comedy Central’s ‘Southpark’ featuring a storyline in which terrorists secrete a bomb in HRC’s vagina, and many other examples, Robin Morgan, co-founder of The Women’s Media Center, wrote recently,

“This is not ‘Clinton hating,’ not ‘Hillary hating.’ This is sociopathic woman-hating. If it were about Jews, we would recognize it instantly as anti-Semitic propaganda; if about race, as KKK poison.  Hell, PETA would go ballistic if such vomitous spew were directed at animals. Where is our sense of outrage—as citizens, voters, Americans?”

McCain Will Succeed Bush Unless Democrats Unify--Soon

By Brigitte L. Nacos
During his victory speech on Super Tuesday, Senator McCain appealed to his conservative critics to cool it and get behind his candidacy. Now, with Mitt Romney out of the race, McCain will address the Conservative Political Action conference in Washington,D.C. later this week as what most observers believe to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. And although his most vocal and obnoxious conservative opponents, such as radio hosts Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Laura Ingraham, do not show signs of tempering their anti-McCain rhetoric, nobody doubts that the vast majority of Republican hard-line conservatives will sooner or later line up behind McCain. Since the Republican race is all but over, the GOP have plenty of time to bridge the gap between their feuding factions.

Can McCain and the Republican Party succeed? I believe so—unless Senators Clinton and Obama, the two Democratic contenders, refuse to bloody each other in the now likely long intra-party competition that may be decided only at their party’s nominating convention. Now is the time for cooler heads among Democrats to figure out how to mitigate the hostility between the most zealous activists in the Clinton and Obama camps. Better than 70% of Clinton and Obama supporters like both candidates and are prepared to cast their ballot in November for the eventual nominee. But if most of the other 25% or so continue to ignore their shared goals and feud over their differences, McCain will win.

Behind the Warning of a New Terrorist Attack on U.S.

By Brigitte L. Nacos
Well before the first exit polls about “Super Tuesday’s” primary contests and long before the first results were available, the director of national intelligence Mike McConnell warned that al-Qaeda was improving its capability to attack the United States again by producing militants, including new Western recruits, capable of blending into American society and attacking domestic targets. According to Mark Mazetti of the New York Times, the intelligence boss told the Senate Intelligence Committee that “Al Qaeda is gaining strength from its refuge in Pakistan and is steadily improving its ability to recruit, train and positioning operatives capable of carrying out attacks inside the United States.” Furthermore, the Times learned from an intelligence source that this threat estimate “was based in part on new evidence that Qaeda operatives in Pakistan were training Westerners, most likely including American citizens, to carry out attacks.” 

I couldn’t help but think of McConnell’s warning earlier in the day as I listened to Senator McCain’s victory speech during the night, when he promised to defeat the enemy abroad and at home. Traditionally, the majority of Americans has considered Republicans in the White House and in the Congress as tougher than Democrats, when it comes to terrorism in particular and national defense in general. Thus, it is entirely possible that another round of publicly pronounced terror threats by high officials in the homeland security community in the run-up to the November election will benefit the eventual Republican presidential nominee, most likely Senator McCain, the most hawkish of them.