Say Hear is page that patches together voice messages from people who want to say why they’ve voting for whom. Interesting to click around.

I just wrote in my vote for Obama. Somewhere back early this year I explained why I favored Obama. I liked what I said then, but can’t find it now.

What Colin Powell said about Obama being a “transformative figure” comes close.

What Martin Luther King said in his I Have a Dream speech comes closer, and perhaps says all that needs to be said. This is the line:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

If Obama wins on Tuesday, that dream will have come true.

Slept between the last post and this. Just took a shower and sat down at the computer. Here’s my brain dump before I move on to projects where I can make more of a difference.

Obama won, but not by a huge margin. The difference is between future and past. McCain looks like Bush, cont’d. I don’t think he will be, unless he vacates the office and Palin takes over, which is a frightening prospect. Still, that’s what he represents. Obama does represent Change, and something more: purge — the need to flush out the last administration and bring in a new one. I think more people want that than don’t.

If Obama wins, the best thing he can do is bring in Bill & Hillary as transition team advisors. They learned a lot of stuff the hard way, and Obama’s gonna need all the help he can get.

If Barack Obama is elected President on November 4th, it will be in large part because of the sophisticated way his campaign has communicated with the American public.

I was in Michigan this past weekend, and drove past the “North Oakland County Victory Office” of the McCain Campaign, just west of Pontiac, twenty miles north of Detroit. A placard near the street read “Get your McCain-Palin lawn signs here!” The building looked like a small bait shop, set back from the road, in the middle of a big parking lot with few cars. No one seemed to be there. On a Saturday afternoon. A month before the election.

This could have been a reaction against the McCain campaign deciding to give up on Michigan late last week. But when compared to what I’m reading about Obama’s organization, the two campaigns are running entirely different ground games. A few examples of what Obama’s been doing:

Here’s an ad that the bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley made in support of Obama. It’s in heavy radio rotation in Virginia:

Here’s a report from the Fulton (MO.) Sun, about the Obama campaign’s use of TTY devices to call hard-of-hearing voters.

Here’s a link to the iPhone Obama Application (pictured at right), which sorts contacts by state (putting battlegrounds at the top), and makes it easy for individuals to find their way to campaign events, make calls on behalf of Obama, or get details on the candidate’s take on particular issues.

The Obama campaign bought a tv channel on the Dish Network. Channel 73 will be playing all-Obama programming through the election.

Here’s some reporting on the campaigns from fivethirtyeight.com; a couple of bloggers have visited both campaigns’ offices throughout Colorado and Missouri. Key section:

Let’s be clear. We’ve observed no comparison between these ground campaigns. To begin with, there’s a 4-1 ratio of offices in most states. We walk into McCain offices to find them closed, empty, one person, two people, sometimes three people making calls. Many times one person is calling while the other small clutch of volunteers are chatting amongst themselves. In one state, McCain’s state field director sat in one of these offices and, sotto voce, complained to us that only one man was making calls while the others were talking to each other about how much they didn’t like Obama, which was true. But the field director made no effort to change this. This was the state field director.

The McCain offices are also calm, sedate. Little movement. No hustle. In the Obama offices, it’s a whirlwind. People move. It’s a dynamic bustle. You can feel it in our photos.

Finally, for those who think Obama’s been too reticent to hit McCain hard: think again. Much of the more aggressive and negative stuff is happening on a subterranean level (although that’s about to change with a national ad on McCain and the Keating Five). Spanish language commercials (radio and tv) are running in New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada tying McCain to Rush Limbaugh, saying he has “dos caras,” or “two faces.” This morning I heard a report featuring a call from a Virginia Obama-supporter to an undecided voter. It began with a reminder that John McCain would be the oldest President ever elected. The caller then brought up the specter of McCain’s death, talked about Sarah Palin’s embarrassing interview with Katie Couric, and then asked the person on the other line if they really want her as their President. In national tv appearances and the debates thus far, in recognition of Obama’s campaign against “politics as usual,” the candidate and his running mate have avoided a negative or derisive tone or even challenging Palin. I think Biden probably could have field dressed Palin last week had he wanted to. Instead, he treated her and her substanceless winking — to paraphrase Garry Shandling– like how “Johnny Carson treated Charo.” (It’s only fair when acknowledging Palin’s winking to also note Biden’s botox. He did, however, answer a few of the questions). At the local level, the Obama campaign has a bit tougher.

There’s a direct correlation between the sophistication of the Obama ground game and the Democratic gains in affiliated voters. In Pennsylvania, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 486,000 in 2000 and 580,000 in 2004. Now? 1.15 million. In Nevada, four years ago Dems trailed by nearly 5000 registrants. They currently hold an 80,000 voter edge. In Florida, the Democrats have added 130,000 more voters than the Republicans over the past four years. If you’re an Obama supporter, those numbers are very encouraging.

Other factors explain this swing, including the unpopularity of the current administration and the downturn in the economy. But it would be foolish to discount the effectiveness of the Obama machine in organizing its base, supporting voter registration (especially among the young), employing technology, and effectively tailoring its message to particular constituencies. Obama and Biden know who their audiences are, and how to speak to them.

Admittedly, I haven’t been following the McCain campaign as closely as Obama’s, but I’ve seen no evidence that there’s much innovation or energy at its core. Yes, Palin has fired up the Republican base. But has that led to more organizing or a flock of volunteers in key locations? Aside from McCain’s increasingly negative ads and his hope that the economy becomes less central to the campaign, a few yard signs are all I’ve really seen.

* Late update: Ben Smith has a piece in Politico on Obama’s “quiet efforts” to target black voters… subterranean for real.

To riff off Bush/McCain’s mantra until they woke up last week: The fundamentalisms of our economy are strong.

So here’s to some economic heresy.

With Bush, Obama, McCain, and most of the media all urging us not to think there are alternatives to Main Street paying taxes for Wall Street - being economic fundamentalists spouting suddenly bi-partisan, pro-banking dogma - hats off to Lou Dobbs (and I didn’t think you’d ever hear me say that) for giving a solid chunk of time to listen to an alternative “No Bailout Plan” by my old congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon, and Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio.

I’m sorely disappointed in Obama, particularly, for joining the Bush stampede to give $.7 trillion to an egregiously corrupt Wall Street. 1 + 1 always equals 2, but this economic crisis isn’t a math problem with only one solution. Obama should show that, his over $9 million in campaign contributions from the banking industry notwithstanding, he can lead against it when appropriate.

As for McCain? He’s put deregulation first for 26 years - enough said.

So give a listen to these good economic heretics, and consider joining them in urging the Congress not to rush us all into a give-away that may not even solve the problem. See my last post for more.

h/t to Crooks and Liars’ very lively comment thread for tipping me off, way out here in Korea, to this CNN clip:

Thom Hartmann has yet another take on a possible “No Bailout” plan:

How Wall Street Can Bail Itself Out Without Destroying The Dollar

For Grover “Drown Government In The Bathtub” Norquist, this bailout deal will work out very well. At a proposed cost of $4,780 per taxpayer, it’ll further the David Stockman strategy of so indebting us that the next president won’t have the luxury of even thinking of new social spending (expanding health care, social security, education, infrastructure, etc.); taxes will even have to be raised just to pay for the bailout. It’ll debase our currency, driving up commodity prices and interest rates, which will benefit the Investor Class while further impoverishing the pesky Middle Class, rendering them less prone to protest (because they’re so busy working trying to pay off their debt). It’ll create stagflation for at least the next half decade, which can be blamed on Democrats who currently control Congress and, should Obama be elected, be blamed on him.

But there’s another way: Create an agency to fund the bailout, loan that agency the money from the treasury, and then have that agency tax Wall Street to pay us (the treasury) back.

It’s been done before, and has several benefits…..(read on)

I’m no economist. But judging by the inability of the experts to explain their plan’s superiority to other plans, I’m not convinced blindly following their rush to a hand-out is the sensible thing to do. Shouldn’t we at least consider the argument that drastic measures should come only when more moderate, less expensive, and more just ones fail?

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If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

1 Comments

• At October 2, 2008, Penelope M wrote:

  "But judging by the inability of the experts to explain their plan’s superiority to other plans, I’m not convinced blindly following their rush to a hand-out is the sensible thing to do"

  Yes, exactly. I'm pretty disappointed right now.

  Some interesting reading on the economic situation--

  http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/09/maturity-transforma...

  http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2008/09/where_are_the_m_1.html

During these strange political times I have found myself returning in thought to Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia for some reason. Don’t ask me why, for I am not entirely sure, but I do have to say that this work continually blows my mind. This might by the third or fourth time I have read it through, and there are a number of passages that truly leave me in awe thinking about just how nuts Jefferson was for better and for worse, which I think is the true mark of genius.

Anyway, this is post is neither an apology nor an indictment of Jefferson, just a reflection on one of his observations about the custom of naturally inducing abortions and contraception amongst Native American women in Query 6: “Minerals”:

They [Native Americans] raise fewer children than we do. The causes of this are to be found, not in a difference of nature, but of circumstance. The women very frequently attending the men in their parties of war and of hunting, child-bearing becomes extremely inconvenient to them. It is said, therefore, that they have learnt the practice of procuring abortion by the use of some vegetable; and that it even extends to prevent conception for a considerable time after.

What strikes me about this passage is just how sanguinely Jefferson remarks on this practice, which today is one of the hallmark issue that divides the US along “conservative” and “liberal” lines (I put these terms in quotes because I really don’t know what they mean in our moment anymore). Yet, for Jefferson it is a practice that is both naturalized and contextualized within a particular cultures relationship to “circumstance” and necessity. This passage does not highlight this as a savage practice of the other, nor is the explanation for this practice to be understood as ” a difference of nature.” In fact, I think the Notes is fascinating in that Jefferson is trying to reclaim the humanity of the Native Americans (despite the fact they have been al but decimated and removed from the 13 colonies) while at the same time struggling with that of the African American slave.  Possibly the most famous passage from the Notes is this bit from Query 14: “Laws”:

To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act. The bill reported by the revisors does not itself contain this proposition; but an amendment containing it was prepared, to be offered to the legislature whenever the bill should be taken up, and further directing, that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniusses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper, sending them out with arms, implements of houshold and of the handicraft arts, feeds, pairs of the useful domestic animals, &c. to declare them a free and independant people, and extend to them our alliance and protection, till they shall have acquired strength; and to send vessels at the same time to other parts of the world for an equal number of white inhabitants; to induce whom to migrate hither, proper encouragements were to be proposed. It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race. [My emphasis]

This may be the most insane political plan ever dreamed up (both politically and finanically), to send all slaves back to Africa to start a state of their own under the guidance of the US. A colonial state premised on prejudices and a difference of nature that can never be overcome. In many ways the election that is happening to us now makes me think that so many of the claims here, and the violent history out of which this nation was born, might begin to expose and heal the centuries of scars. I don’t want to ignore the potential power of the moment, and the historical precedent that reverberates deeply within it, yet I am afraid of the machine. Of the surety that it is not about nature, which Jefferson grants the Native Americans though refuses the African Americans, but circumstance. The circumstance of a nation and a people caught between two parties that are both chin-deep in corruption as is made all too clear by the current bi-partisan push for an ill-defined bailout of corporate greed, reminiscent of the post-9/11 push for an international witch hunt that manifested itself as the war in Iraq. And that corruption extends well beyond Capitol Hill into many a home across this fair land. The circumstances are bigger than any one candidate, but I want to try an honor the historic moment of Obama’s candidacy while simultaneously wonder if All the President's Men hasn’t already written the script for this movie?

I’m not really a big fan of the whole “John McCain is so old he can’t use a computer” line the Obama camp rolled out today.  I think there are stronger, more necessary and relevant attacks that Obama should launch.

That said, the activity level on the two candidates’ Twitter pages does seem to back up the overarching thesis.

Check out these screenshots.

Obama’s:

McCain’s:

(Note the “Location” each has signified.  Obama sharply “outsiders” his online presence.)

ShareThis

In response to my last political post, the subject of High Road vs. Low Road was brought up. One comment suggested that I thought Obama’s was the former while McCain’s was the latter. In fact I was suggesting that both roads were tactics used by both candidates, and that I feared the election would be won and lost, as it usually is, by fighting along the low road to election day.

My current favorite reporting about road-taking comes from the St. Petersburg Times, which keeps up with both campaigns via the Politifact.com Truth-o-Meter. To each statement by each candidate and their campaigns (including emailings by candidates and parties), they sort statements into True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True, False and Pants on Fire. Currently those3 sort out this way :

Some of the rulings are generous. For example, they found Sarah Palin’s claim that she put the state’s jet up for sale on eBay is true, even though it wasn’t sold on eBay.

As H.L. Mencken said, Looking for an honest politician is like looking for an ethical burglar. (More good quotes — all correct — here.*)

For what it’s worth, I favor Obama for two main reasons. One is that I’d rather see the country run on the ethics of empathy rather than those of fear. The other is that McCain and Palin are both warriors at heart (McCain was ready for war with Iraq right after 9/11, and Palin preached that the Iraq war was part of God’s “plan”) — and we’ve had eight bad years of that already.

I also think Obama is more likely to nominate top-notch non-ideological judges and to reform government in general. Also that he is less likely to screw up the Internet, which is the single best thing the world has going for itself. Finally, that he’ll restore the faith of the rest of the world in the sanity of the U.S. electorate and its government.

As for the economy, I think McCain understands the private sector — and the good it does — far better than Obama. If I were voting by my economically consevative and Libertarian sympathies alone, I’d favor McCain. But this election isn’t about that. This election is about throwing the old bums out and trying some new ones.

Back to the War Issue.

A few decades back Penelope Maunsell said of a former employer that “His management style was to find a problem and intensify it”. Same goes for politicians. There are exceptions, but that’s close to a rule.

I don’t doubt that John McCain is a first-rate military man. His experiences as a prisoner of war obviously strenghtened his character and equipped him with a high degree of sympathy for those suffering injustice, as well as for members of the armed forces. But John McCain shared with George W. Bush the urge to solve the problem of terrorism with the use of force, and lots of it. I don’t doubt that this response was exactly what Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist leaders were looking for.

Even if the Surge is working (and I’m inclined to agree that, on the whole, it is), that does not excuse McCain from having supported the Iraq War in the first place. That war has not only killed countless thousands (beyond the counted thousands of our own casualties), but put the country terribly in debt, weakened our military positions elsewhere, and diminished our reputation throughout the world. It was strategically wrong, in a huge way. McCain’s bad judgement on this count alone is reason enough not to elect him.

[Later...] Calvin Dodge points to RedState’s take on FactCheck.org’s take on Palin’s acceptance address.

I took the text of Obama’s speech from the 2008 DNC and fed it through Wordle.net to generate a word cloud to visualize common words. I’ll be interesting to compare with McCain’s speech next week…

by George Schmidt
4/30/08

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is speaking for the majority of Black people who live in America's most segregated city, Chicago. Let's just put this in a few additional perspectives. Chicago, today (2008) has more all-black public schools than all of the cities of the Old Confederacy combined. There are 300 segregated all-black pubic elementary and high schools in Chicago today. That is the product of the policies of 50 generations of Daleys -- and of the people who ally themselves with the Daleys to rule this city in a certain way.

As we've shared with people here, Barack Obama has had more than enough time to distance himself from Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley's corporate version of "school reform." He has not done so. But since the Clintons have praised Daley's "school reform" work going back a decade now, it simply means that Obama and Clinton take the same practical position regarding these realities. Bill Clinton praised Daley's teacher bashing union busting test based privatization oriented "school reform" in two state of the union addresses; Hillary was often with President Clinton when he came to Chicago to meeting with Mayor Daley and praise the rampages against the public schools that were then going on under Mayor Daley and Paul Vallas.

In Chicago, the Business Roundtable has been around for more than 100 years in the form of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club. They have always been part of the attack on democratic equitable public schools here. They wrote "Renaissance 2010," which for the past five years has provided the script for the privatization of more than 50 Chicago public schools (most turned into charters after enormous teacher bashing using phony "data").

Barack Obama has been silent on all of those teacher bashing (and union busting) crimes against public education, and on all of the privatization that began in 1995 here and is accelerating to this day.

From a Chicago point of view, it is one thing to perhaps make nice with Mayor Daley in order to garner votes (and delegates) but quite another thing to publicly criticize Jeremiah Wright and not ever say one word critical of all of the corruption of the Daley administration -- of which corporate "school reform" is just one piece.

Sorry.

The record is getting more and more clear. Those of us who have voted for Barack Obama before and are likely to do so again should at least go into the polling places with a clear eye.

When I heard and read Barack Obama's attack (and it's an attack, people, read it carefully) on Rev. Jeremiah Wright (and the pile on from the media -- "left" to right -- after Barack gave everybody the green light to attack Wright), I was reminded of the attacks (that's a plural) in the media on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in 1967 and 1968, after King came out clearly against the Vietnam War and clearly on the side of working people.

Jeremiah Wright, not Barack Obama, is now in the presence of Dr. King and Dr. King's traditions.

Barack Obama is in the presence of the traditions of Chicago's Daley family, which attacked Dr. King in 1966, 1967 and 1968 here in Chicago (both directly and through media).

Let's just go into this next iteration of "Election 2008" with a clear eye. I write this as a person who has met Barack Obama on numerous occasions, who has voted for him and supported him in many other ways, and who is saddened by the fact that in Barack Obama we are going to elect a corporate Neoliberal, University of Chicago ideologue, who has never opposed Chicago's monstrous neoliberal attacks on working class and poor people -- corporate "housing reform" and corporate "school reform."

We have reasons to oppose some of the work of Jeremiah Wright here at Substance. Wright, for example, is now sponsoring a charter school that will open in September in CPS, part of the overall attack on the city's public schools. But there can be little doubt among people who read what Wright actually said at the National Press Clubs, the NAACP, and to Bill Moyers during the past week that Wright's tradition is more in the traditions of Martin Luther King than Barack Obama's. That may be fine with many people. It brings great sadness to many of the rest of us.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance
www.substancenews.net