2008 election

I’ve been skeptical and critical of the Obama campaign, but I must admit I’m pleased to see the movement they’ve germinated really taking root and driving them ahead. With another three primary wins under their belt tonight, and the upcoming state of Wisconsin — once though to be a “showdown” — now trending towards another decisive victory:

Clinton’s campaign is going to be up against a March 4th last-stand having won nothing in a month. Ohio and Texas are still favorable, but will they really buck the big O’mo for three more weeks?

And this is undeniably cool:

410,000 individual donors. A lot of those are $5 from people at a rally or online, but the breadth of the buy-in is pretty spectacular. This is what political junkies have talked about for a long time. The fact that they candidate to pull it off is an political cypher beloved by a decrepit establishment is a little bit of a surprise, but it does seem that Obama and his team have manages to pull off the big task: building a grassroots movement while simultaniously charming the pants off the national media.

Barring any major shakeups not in their favor (e.g. not more people quitting the Clinton campaign) I think the Obama gang should be able to ride through March 4th to enough of a delegate lead that a superdelegate choke-out is no longer socially possible. Mathematically it’s always an option, but most of these superdelegates have a pretty high profile, and they have a strong tradition of following the popular will.

UPDATE: Kos/Atrios on the lack of leadership. I don’t know how to diagnose the problem (“the consultant class” feels too vague and simple), but the inability of prominent Democrats to actually get infront of the Public is crippling.

Jerome read it in the stars that the race is Hillary’s to lose. Maybe he’s right. I still think a lot can change between now and Thanksgiving, and I hope to hell that it does.

The 2008 political cycle has thus far been a near universal bummer for me. Nobody seems to be responding to the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. People think this for all sorts of reasons, sure, but the universality of dissatisfaction suggests a real consensus on the part of the Public that, in the words of Dwane Allisandro Comacho, “shit’s bad right now.”

The Republicans are almost comically trying to one-up one-another with the severity of their proscriptions and solutions for the nation’s ills. Nuke Iran! Double the size of Gitmo! Identify all illegal immigrants! It’s mostly ridiculous fearmongering, but at least it’s responsive. Democrats, in contrast, are running a laconic race so far, afraid to disagree with one another, largely unwilling to suggest that anything is really all that wrong, or that anyone could be at fault.

And if that remains the theme, then yeah, HRC has the upper hand. I’m not one who says she’d be a terrible candidate or even a bad president. She can win, and even with her culturally oblivious crochety old man schtick and moronic notion of “ending the occupation” while still “keeping 10s of 1000s of US troops in Iraq,” she’s better than any of those angry white men on the opposite side, and a clear improvement over what we’ve got going on now.

But it sure would be nice if one or more of these people actually displayed some sense of urgency and a belief that they could, you know, measure up to the task of leadership. I still have some hope that the grim desperate pressure will force someone’s hand and break the race open, but given the tone of the news coverage and the complete and utter lack of any real spark or initiative on any of the campaigns so far, that hope is dwindling.

I'd like to note that on the Spartans tip, while the Army hasn't taken the step of encouraging homosexuality, they have fully-embraced the rubric of small-unit-cohesion as a motivation for fighting. My man Lande studied this as part of his inquiry into Carnal Sociology. Told me all about it.

Basically, as opposed to patriotism or nationalism, which are much more spotty and fallable motivators, if you get a group of solders to really care about one another (by keeping 100 to 150 of them in close social contact through formative physical and emotional experiences) and you have a command and control apparatus that can then place that group in a situation where they must kill to survive, they're remarkably and reliably effective.

John Stewart brought his A-Game against McCain, who does well in this format. They maintain an affable and friendly rapport, but Stewart's responses to McCain's talking points are something every Democrat who wants to have a voice on this issue should grok. This is how it's done.

McCain starts filibustering in the second segment -- probably because he realizes that his best chance is to not let Stewart talk -- which is a little annoying. Also, Stewart could have done a better job of returning to the issue of "metrics and timetables" when McCain started talking up the "new strategy," because even if you accept the proposition that the Surge really counts as a new strategy (most honest military observers contend that a 10% increase in troop strength will have little to no impact, which is what we are a seeing) you have to wonder when and how you'll know if it's working or not.

Still, this is something every Democratic contender should study.

Interesting stuff from Johnny Sunshine.

I very much like the message of "doing stuff is better than waiting," and I suspect we're going to see a lot more of this internet-enabled "candidates getting up close and personal with individuals" over the next year. I'll be neat to watch this unfold. Kudos to Camp Edwards for an innovative campaign tactic that, whaddyaknow, actually does some good in the world too.

Adding: they seem to be the most intent of all the major campaigns on emulating the Dean model. DeanCorps (which this is clearly a copy of) was a pretty successful program in 2003-04. The major difference is that the Dean campaign didn't generate it from the top, but you have to start somewhere. It will be intriguing to see if the Edwards campaign is able to stimulate independent activism (probably can do), and then whether or not they'll be able to nurture, develop and scale it (much harder).

A while back, I got the url democrobot.com, based on a conversation with Jon Berger and Eric Klotz about how there aught to be a digg.com for political news. At the time it was sort of trendy, and not especially needed (this was in early 2006 IIRC).

I think the time for such a site may be drawing near. The relationship between the established blogosphere, the newsmedia, and the major Democratic political campaigns is becoming increasingly symbiotic. Many major bloggers walk the line well, but quite a few don't. Trust is on the decline as people play favorites without acknowledging their biases, and/or take professional gigs with no disclaimer.

Add that to a campaign season which seems to have a very strong top tier, and you have a very different scene than 2003-04, when the internet fueled disruptive insurgent candidacies. At this point, online communications are a fully-integrated integrated part of the political establishment, and that includes much of the widely-read blogosphere. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it's not like before.

However, at the same time, there are a large number of new/upstart citizen journalism projects which will produce a large volume of (relatively) independent campaign journalism. There's also a much greater chance that staffers will post anonymously about the inner workings of some campaign operations in more obscure fora. There will also be a glut of low-quality audio and video content to sift through. This is all new.

The sifting is what's needed. That's where democrobot might have a purpose. If you added in Zack's old "PPipes" idea of aggregating progressive/Democratic mailing-list messages, you'd have something that would be pretty interesting, and pretty useful too.

I clearly don't have a lot of bandwidth to take on additional projects, but it might not be all that much work to get up and running. We'll see.

This is a smart move; electable is the word that comes to mind.

She should be getting it out on YouTube.

This is exceedingly clever work:

Barak Obama is an excellent performer, on par with Reagan and Clinton before him. He's got a lot of people who are quite excited about him running for the White House in 2008, and he would most likely make a great and interesting candidate. However, I find that I distrust him.

Why? Because he's a cypher, in his own words "a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." What leads to my distrust is not that he's unwilling to take a stand on any issue of substance, or that he has a habit of reiterating right-wing stereotypes about Democrats -- although those are annoying -- it's that he's deliberately and consciously crafting himself as a vessel for unfulfilled political desire, a non-reciprocating repository for the Public's most heartfelt hopes. I find it impossible to believe that this is not a matter of calculation, and I find it to be quite a turn-off.

In essence, his position amounts to "I'm Barak Obama, and I endorse my popularity, and want to support your belief in me to do Good Things." It's a smart, risk-averse tactic to take for now, and he's perhaps a convincing enough player to pull it off through most of the pre-primary heat. As I said, an Obama for President campaign would be a sure hummdinger, but I find this makes me nervous and pessimistic about his potential as a leader. I don't want yet another actor president.

With Democrats set to take over the congress in 2007, there's obviously a lot of interest and wonder in the prospect of impeaching President Bush. I'm not a fan of this idea.

There are several reasons why I don't think it's especially great goal to pursue which I'll list, but I want to point out that the idea that impeachment is "off the table" is clearly bunk. It's in the constitution so it's on the table, the question is whether or not this is something that should be pursued specifically. I think not.

Why? Well here's a list of my reasons:

• President Cheney: you can't impeach them both at the same time, and the notion that major policy changes can be brought about this way seems wrong. We're not impeaching our way out of Iraq. It's rather more difficult I'm afraid.
• Vengeance Is Ineffective: while there are strong legal arguments, and a streak of boy scout civic duty, my read is that much pro-impeachment sentiment is motivated by a desire for revenge, to strike back for all the harm Bush has caused. I understand this and I feel it myself, but it makes me think twice. What's the practical outcome we're looking for?
• There Is No Absolution: related to my feeling on vengeance, I also think a lot of impeachment boosters see this as a chance for the nation to absolve itself for the mistakes of Bush. I also understand this motivation, and feel the desire to clean up our reputation too, but I think its simplistic and naive to think that a single act will do this.
• It's Costly: time and energy spent on this won't be spent elsewhere, and undertaking this as a strategy will generate significant opposition and inevitable backlash.

All this leads me to a cost/benefit analysis that says setting out with the explicit goal of impeaching the president is not a good idea. I think investigation, oversight, testimony and hearings are in order, but I also think that repudiating the Bush Legacy is a much bigger thing than punishment.

Putting the Bush Legacy down is the work of decades. Setting impeachment as a goal (rather than allowing it as a consequence of this wider effort) is a grave error.

There's a possible course of events in which congressional hearings and grassroots activism build support for this over the next six months to a year, and impeachment actually becomes a national consensus. I think this is unlikely, and impossible to manufacture, but it would be a good thing in this context, especially considering how it would play in with the 2008 election.

However, if you're looking for tactics, holding mass anti-war rallies is probably going to be more effective than agitating for impeachment.

Politics is the Art of controlling your environment. It's an emotional process, but ultimately it is about outcomes, not how you feel.

We're headed square into the jaws of another presidential primary season. Bowers begins the roundup process, and it's looking like a lackluster affair all around.

I don't know what if any part I'll take in this. Probably not much other than to commentate, maybe do some stuff to try and alert my friends and family that John McCain and Rudy Guiliani are both pretty undesirable as presidents.

The other thing I want to do is try a little issue advocacy. I think using a similar process to the artistic cycle I outlined below, one could create a series of persuasive political message pieces that, in absence of an exciting campaign, might get the juices flowing.

Some topics I'd like to address:

• Ending the occupation in Iraq, and generally why our foreign policy should be to diversify ownership of the 20th Century empire we built.
• Free health care for everyone, because goddamnit it's time.
• Pushing the Public and State to evolve and become more like the internet: free, open, transparent, inclusive, connective.

These ideas are not represented very well by any of the candidates at this point. Realpolitik says the #1 thing is winning, and I think there's an even chance of that, but I also think those chances improve if the eventual nominee is powered by an authentic decentralized network.