What Clinton Should Do Next

194 thoughts on “What Clinton Should Do Next”

1. The caveat being that, at least as far as it’s explained in Nixonland (which I assume is fairly comprehensive), Nixon didn’t seem to believe in much of anything he was espousing. What with the strong similarities between the Clinton and Obama platforms throughout the primary, it should be even easier for her to get behind, and then eventually in front of, the movement than it was for Nixon in 1968. Where he had to ingratiate himself slowly and methodically into the conservative movement before he could take over, she really just has to keep doing what she’s doing (with the obvious changes in foreign policy).

2. 
   But Nixon eventually came around and worked his tail off for Goldwater. After the inevitable crushing, it appeared that Nixon had squandered whatever capital he had left. But the chessmaster knew exactly what he was doing. Goldwater conservatives were taking over the party and he got out in front of the movement, positioning himself perfectly for 1968.
   
   Minor quibble: my take on reading the 1964-1968 part of Nixonland is that what Nixon did was not so much to jump to the front of the Goldwater movement conservative parade, but rather he avoided burning his bridges with both wings of the GOP, and so in 1968 he was the only major figure who was acceptable to both sides, having walked a tightrope between them ideologically.
   YMMV of course.
   Now my question about the applicability of this lesson to the relationship between the Clinton and Obama wings of the Dems:
   It seems to me that unlike in the example you just cited, there is much less of an ideological difference between Hillary’s base and Obama’s base.
   This is partly because there is a fairly broad consensus in the Democratic party right now on policy (compared vs the current GOP where paleocons, neocons, theocons and big business can’t agree on much), and partly because Obama has constructed a moderately broad ideological coalition combining anti-war progressives with fiscal conservative Dems and Indys attracted to his Chicago-school influenced policy tilt towards market oriented solutions and limited top-down regulation (c.f. his health care and mortgage foreclosure remediation proposals) which effectively straddled Hillary both to the left and to the right of her positions.
   It seems to me that the larger difference between the Obama camp and Hillary’s camp is not over ideology but rather over structure, meaning the top-down vs bottom-up relationship between the leadership and the base. See for example Al Giordano’s observations about this contrast: No More Drama.
   I may be wrong, but in some ways this difference in structural relationships seems to me to make for a more difficult switch for a politician if they want to run around to the head of the parade, than the ideological shift that Nixon pulled off.

3. “And, she won’t receive the blame if Obama loses.”
   Like hell.

4. You know if she throws Larry Johnson under the bus wheels, Joe Wilson and Val Plame will get squished, too. Then where will you be?
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5. The ones she needs to throw under the bus are those morons making up the DLC. When she disowns them and ‘they never work in this town again’ she might have a chance of being a heavyweight in the party. But she can’t do it if she insists on keeping that bunch of losers around.

6. Wow, could you get more patronizing if you tried with both hands?
   Unless you have drunk too deep of the anti-Clinton KoolAid to be able to spew it up, you know Clinton – like every other sane/well-informed person in the US – wants a big Democratic win in November because that’s the only way to begin undoing the criminal damage done to the US over the past 8 years.
   And you know Clinton, who just ran one of the most successful primary campaigns in US history despite constant negative attacks from the media and from the misogynistic wing of the Democratic party and even from normally sane and sensible blogs (like Obsidian Wings) – will do what she can to bring that about. And she’ll be way better than you, Publius, in figuring out what that is.

7. Jes, at some point are you going to acknowledge that Clinton is a strong supporter of the course of action that’s led (so far) to thousands of dead Americans, a million dead Iraqis, twice that many fled their homes, and been the major justification for war crimes starting with torture and ending with the abolition of privacy? That she made common cause with the primary bankroller of the administration-long assaults on her husband’s ability to govern? And that she draws her senior counsel entirely from the ranks of those responsible for the Democratic strategy of capitulation and collaboration that you have yourself rightly condemned over the years?
   There are places for meaningful debate, like whether health coverage is overall advanced by imposing mandates on individuals. (I think not, but it’s an issue with a lot of room for nuance.) But this pretending that Clinton’s candicacy wasn’t marred by her chosen associations with many of the greatest evils in American life today doesn’t help much. No other candidate, I suspect, could have gotten nearly so far with such a massive toll of death and misery on their hands. But there it is nonetheless, despite her excellence on some other issues and her ability to rouse a crowd to angry ferment.

8. Wait a minute, Bruce. If Joe Wilson and Larry Johnson and Val Plame are all liars, then maybe deposing Saddam was a good thing to do.
   =============================

9. Bruce, I had the same basic reaction to publius’ post as Jes, even if I share your analysis of why HRC did not win the nomination.
   Publius, a post in which you compare Hillary Clinton to Richard Nixon does not do her any favors, nor you much credit.
   I’m sure to you this is just thinking out loud inspired by reading Nixonland. But less than 24 hours after Clinton’s welcome unity speech… It’s patronizing, clueless, insensitive, and actively divisive.

10. I’d also note that the main post’s indulging in the Larry Johnson reference has attracted a new troll; please DNF.

11. Clinton’s potential problem is that she can’t capitalize on the loss if people blame her (e.g., if lots of older liberal women stayed home and Clinton did little to get them out).
    Or, say, the GOP plays an endless loop of her saying that she and McCain have passed the commander-in-chief test whereas Obama? Eh.
    Jes: And you know Clinton, who just ran one of the most successful primary campaigns in US history despite constant negative attacks from . . . normally sane and sensible blogs (like Obsidian Wings)
    Exactly. Clinton was entitled to run a criticism-free campaign because, god knows, she never had anything but high-praise for Obama and only focused on their narrow policy differences.

12. The Nixon comparison is very interesting, but I don’t think Hilary Clinton will have another shot at the presidency no matter what happens in November. Goldwater might have been a decade or more ahead of his time, but Obama loses this year I’d still say he’s only about 4 years ahead of his time, or not even ahead of his time at all but simply lost for tactical reasons (or perhaps even racial reasons at the margin).
    Iraq, race and gender issues have the potential to pull a rabbit out of the hat this year, but the fact is that the political landscape of the US has changed a great deal, and both parties have to forge modified coalitions — and the Dems are obviously much further down this path than the Reps. The short-medium term catastrophe for the Reps is that their social conservative base is literally dying off; the nationalist War on Terror theme papered over these cracks very successfully for 8 years, but that’s not a long-term solution for them.
    Obama seems to me like a more right-wing version of Tony Blair, and that seems just about perfect for the current state of American politics and society. I think we’ll all be surprised by who the Republicans come up with to run for the White House in 4 years’ time.

13. Oh, and for all those who haven’t got their heads stuck into the anti-Clinton hole: a good idea.

14. Bruce: Jes, at some point are you going to acknowledge that Clinton is a strong supporter of the course of action that’s led (so far) to thousands of dead Americans, a million dead Iraqis, twice that many fled their homes, and been the major justification for war crimes starting with torture and ending with the abolition of privacy.
    First, link me to posts about Clinton on Obsidian Wings written during the past four months that focussed exclusively on her voting record as a Senator and her platform as a Democratic candidate for President, and made no reference (except to condemn) whatever the current media storm against her was: whether that’s the claim she and her husband were “race-baiting”, or the claim that she lied about Bosnia, or the claim that she compared Florida to Zimbabwe, or the claim that she said McCain would be a better President than Obama, or the demand that although she was still winning primaries she ought to drop out of the race now, or lambasting her because she wanted the Florida and Michigan delegates seated.
    You may be able to find such posts: but on the whole, during the whole primary campaign, Obsidian Wings bloggers were not campaigning against Clinton on the issues, or making substantive criticisms of her voting record and her declared policies, as compared to Obama.
    And I never saw any acknowledgement by any of the front page bloggers that they’d merely joined the media anti-Clinton storms.

15. whether that’s the claim she and her husband were “race-baiting”, or the claim that she lied about Bosnia, or the claim that she compared Florida to Zimbabwe, or the claim that she said McCain would be a better President than Obama, or the demand that although she was still winning primaries she ought to drop out of the race now, or lambasting her because she wanted the Florida and Michigan delegates seated.
    I really don’t get your point here. The race baiting issue was certainly arguable. I don’t see any point in rehashing all of that business. But are you seriously trying to claim that all of the other issues you list aren’t legitimate campaign issues?
    Clinton did, for instance, compare the Florida situation to Zimbabwe. Are you arguing that she did not do so or are you arguing that it is somehow not legitimate to criticize her rhetoric because that criticism is not “substantive?” That when I say “it was ridiculous for Clinton to compare those situations,” I am not making a genuine argument that I think is important. That rather, I am joining the “media anti-Clinton” storm?”
    If so, I can only say that I could not possibly disagree with your assessment more. It literally makes no sense to me. It would not even occur to me to mount some defense of the principle that a politicians rhetoric is a legit part of the political discourse and absolutely fair game for disagreement and critique. That really seems self evident to me.
    If you are not arguing that then I am afraid I don’t understand your point at all.

16. I don’t see what’s wrong with going after Clinton because of the way she campaigned. That stuff is important too, especially in a race in which the two candidates are very close in terms of their positions on issues.

17. The simple answer John is that no criticism of Clinton would be accepted as legitimate by many of her supporters. It’s astonishing to see a campaign that combines sharp-elbows aggressive politics (proudly claimed as evidence that she was tough enough) with perpetual complaints about any criticism that such tactics caused. I view it as an ugly consequence of identity politics – we’re seeing the least attractive side of 70’s-era feminism manifesting itself. And I’m very grateful that such tactics ultimately failed.

18. And Publius’ post provides the occasion for yet another round of backbiting. Ommmmmm…..

19. While I can understand the revulsion at having HRC being compared to Nixon, I think that if you step back and see the comparison as a description of the lay of the land rather than suggesting that HRC is going to demand that Mark Penn pray with her, it is actually a rather revealing comparison. Can anyone really claim that the center of the Democratic party has not shifted. We can debate the dimensions of that shift and whether it is to antiwar or netroots or something else, but the idea that Clinton is watching the party leave from where she is to someplace else is quite insightful. It is also interesting that while linking HRC to Nixon is a slap, note the implicit comparison here.
    I’ve just started Perlstein’s Nixonland, and it offers a useful comparison. Nixon very much wanted the nomination in 1964, thinking — correctly — that he was a superior candidate. At the time, the Republican establishment was treating Goldwater like a pariah.
    One could argue that if Hillary = Nixon, then Obama = Goldwater, and in another time and other circumstances, Hillary would be the superior candidate, given her experience and connections.
    These thoughts come up when I think of Ted Kennedy and he and Jimmy Carter in the 1980 convention. Again, perhaps a superior candidate who saw the landscape shift before him.

20. Jes: “First, link me to posts about Clinton on Obsidian Wings written during the past four months that focussed exclusively on her voting record as a Senator…”
    How soon we forget …
    “and made no reference (except to condemn) whatever the current media storm against her was: whether that’s the claim she and her husband were “race-baiting”, or the claim that she lied about Bosnia, or the claim that she compared Florida to Zimbabwe, or (…)”
    Wait: why should we just condemn these things, rather than, you know, asking what they meant, and deciding for ourselves? Take Bosnia: that arose at a time when Clinton was using Bosnia and the sniper fire to argue that she had real experience dealing with foreign policy. The fact that it was false was relevant to assessing one of the arguments that she herself was making about why she was a better candidate.
    Why, exactly, was it out of bounds to say that actual video of the event showed nothing like what she said? (And, of course, that every other bit of evidence contradicted her account)? Is it just because the media got on top of it that I was supposed to “condemn”? Or because it was a criticism of Clinton?
    Look: I don’t want to rehash this. I thought Clinton gave a great speech last night, and my hat is off to her. (My figurative hat; I don’t normally wear literal ones, though it’s hot enough out today that I might.) I’m not replying to replay these fights; I’m just very curious about the grounds on which I was supposed not to do anything but condemn the media when faced with a case in which I didn’t just think that Clinton might have made up a part of her own argument about why she was better; there were contemporaneous accounts and video to show that she was.
    I mean: why should that have been my response?

21. Jesurgislac: First, link me to posts about Clinton on Obsidian Wings written during the past four months that focussed exclusively on her voting record as a Senator and her platform as a Democratic candidate for President, and made no reference (except to condemn) whatever the current media storm against her was:
    Did Clinton attempt to draw any meaningful distinctions between herself and Obama on policy? Her candidacy was first and foremost about process- and character-oriented issues like “inevitability”, “experience”, “electability”, “strength”, being a “fighter”, “the Commander-In-Chief threshold”, etc. You talk as if you think these issues, which Clinton herself raised as the main arguments for nominating her and not Obama, should be off-limits to those of us who have supported Obama.
    And where Clinton did draw policy distinctions, Obama supporters discussed those distinctions at length — a lot of pixels were spilled over her gas tax pandering, as I recall.
    But she made this nomination fight first and foremost about her character and her supposed superiority as a candidate per se. There’s nothing inappropriate, much less misogynistic, about engaging her campaign’s arguments on their own terms.
    Nell: And Publius’ post provides the occasion for yet another round of backbiting. Ommmmmm…..
    You’re going to lay this on Publius? Sheesh.

22. Jes – I honestly don’t understand where you’re coming from at all. For one, I never said Clinton wants him to lose (i don’t think she does). I said “for the sake of argument,” let’s assume she’d better off. also, our critiques of clinton were, i think, quite substantive. for instance, the main reason i didn’t support clinton was b/c of hte war and her defensive centrism (points i made repeatedly). so the vitriol is a bit much.
    nell – it’s a historical example, nothing more. i wasn’t comparing her to nixon in anything but a procedural sense. Nixon was by the way one of the most gifted politicians of the 20th century.

23. I should also say that while I can easily see why Clinton supporters might mind seeing her compared to Nixon, having read Nixonland, it’s such a great book that for weeks afterwards, almost everything appears in its light, and comparisons of just about everything to one or another of the events it describes are the most natural thing in the world.
    It also manages the astonishing trick of neither pulling its punches towards, say, Nixon, but never losing essential sympathy with him either. (Sympathy in the sense of seeing him whole, not necessarily (or actually) agreeing.) So a comparison to Nixon after reading Nixonland would not be the usual “Clinton is like teh worst scumbag ever!”, it would be (a) the most natural thing in the world (to compare anyone to, and (b) a comparison to a complicated but fully human person.
    Perlstein is like that.

24. cross-post 😉

25. Jes, I have better things to do with my money than put it into the pocket of a multimillionaire. Much of Clinton’s debt is to herself, so effectively my few bucks would be going directly to her. If she believed those last couple of months of trashing the likely nominee and whipping up resentment against him among her supporters were worth it, then let her spend her own money like any other multimillionaire candidate.
    I will instead make donations that further Democrats’ chances of taking the White House and increasing their congressional majorities. Since you believe that goal is so important that we’re not even allowed to care which Democrat is our nominee enough to criticize the candidates, it surely should be important in deciding how to spend our money.

26. Oh, and for all those who haven’t got their heads stuck into the anti-Clinton hole: a good idea.
    I agree with KC. Those “Hard-Earned” need to go to getting Dems in the Senate and House, especially the White one. I’ve never heard of an ex-candidate asking for funds after the primaries — if I did, I’d be more likely to give to Edwards or Kusinich.

27. It’s very silly to be offended by the comparison to Nixon. It’s not like he was Hitler–we are discussing a former inhabitant of the White House who lost the nomination battle to an insurgent, and harboured dreams of success later.
    It’s also simply untrue that people did not have substantive objections to Hilary Clinton, on this blog and elsewhere. Personally I think she’s a scumbag, to use a colloquialism, and I consider that substantive. Nevertheless, I also object to practically everything she’s said on foreign policy issues, her advocacy of policies like gas tax vacations, and the fact that she already made a huge hash of what is supposed to be her signature issue–health care reform.

28. BTW, there was much greatness in Nixon. I find him and Carter to be two of the most interesting presidents at least since WW2.

29. Jes: Obsidian Wings bloggers were not campaigning against Clinton on the issues, or making substantive criticisms of her voting record and her declared policies, as compared to Obama.
    I’ll bite: please define, explicitly, what you would regard as substantive criticisms of her voting records and her declared policies, or tackling Clinton on the issues.
    Furthermore, please explain, explicitly, why critiques of her campaigning style were inherently inappropriate; and, for that matter, why her campaigning style was (as you have portrayed it) beyond reproach.
    And if any of those responses boil down to “Because she’s a woman”, then please don’t bother us on this subject again.

30. I’ve been saying for a long time that I’m very much interested in how officials make decisions. I’ve mentioned this book before, but will again: Angelo Codevilla’s Informing Statecraft was a big influence on me. Codevilla is very conservative – he was in fact part of the Reagan transition team – and while we’d have much to argue about, he brings some real insights to bear on the subject of reliable intelligence-gathering and the uses of it. He has a devastating passage early on about all the things a typical newly hired CIA agent doesn’t know and will never learn, and how much being a person who can function well in Washington society makes it hard to be a good gatherer of info in the field.
    The major thing I took away from his book, back in 1992, was that policy made in secret is almost always bad policy. That’s because it doesn’t get exposed to anyone who will laugh, mock, sneer, or passionately disagree with it – it’s never probed by anyone likely to have any fundamental argument with the person who came up with. Since secrets stay in relatively small circles almost all the time, policies held secret are unlikely to get tested by anyone with a culture or experience much different from the conceiver. By contrast, the more people can poke at it, the faster its flaws will surface.
    (Some years later I realized that this is pretty much the open source software argument for reliability and security, and that there may well be a general fact of human nature at work here.)
    Thus, for instance, one of the reasons the Bush/Cheney “no one could have foreseen” style of defense is bad is that it’s so vulnerable to the obvious retort. “Someone did, but you only talked to the people you already agreed with.” But it applies to a lot of things – as, for that matter, does the Hayekian/Discordian argument that centralization distorts information. Distributed power, openness to outside argument, and the like, aren’t just nice (though they are that), they are more likely to lead to good results. And since I have to live with the president’s results, I have a vested interest in seeing that they’re as good as possible.
    And I have about the same laundry list of “let’s not do that again” warning signs of trouble as a lot of my fellow survivors of Bush/Cheney. Some of it’s simple, like “Always have a contingency plan, because the one thing you can count on is that something won’t go as you expect.” Some of it’s temperamental, like “I wish you would go looking for support as widely as possible rather than fixate on another one of those barely-sufficient coalitions and sneering at others who’d like to support you as not really counting”. Some of it’s a mix of tactics and values, like “It’s true that campaigning in every state guarantees that some of your resources are going into doomed races, but if you campaign everywhere, you’re also in position to pick up unexpected gains when serendipity strikes.” Some of it would have struck me as self-evident, like “Never at any time suggest that the Republican candidate can do anything better than your fellow Democratic contenders.”
    In all these cases, the decisions people reach about their tactics and strategies and the way they reach them tell us important things. None of us can know what will be the critical issues of 2010. (You in the back there, Kreskin, shut up.) So we have to see how they respond to what’s going on at the moment, and figure that their operating style will matter at least as much (often more) than their words. Take Bush’s VP selection: fobbed off on a lunatic or at least obsessive old family buddy, who went into secret and came out to announce he was the guy. That turns out to have been a very important preview of coming attractions, much more so than the soothing lies Bush uttered in debates. Ditto with stuff this campaign.

31. “Liberal lioness of the Senate?” What is that guy smoking? I mean, it’s Hillary Clinton. You can say a lot of things about Hillary Clinton, but one thing you can’t call her is “liberal” – at best, she’s a centrist.
    Maybe now that Obama’s demonstrated how to fund one’s campaigns without extensive corporate funding she’ll jump at the chance and become really liberal or something, but I don’t think her centrism was merely out of convenience. I think it’s who she is.
    Which is fine, mind you. Nothing wrong with intelligent centrism (as opposed to Lieberman-style centrism). But she ain’t a big old lefty and it’s silly to suggest otherwise.

32. I’ve yet to hear anybody explain how Clinton lost the nomination because of sexism, when a good bit more than 50% of the voters were women, and she beat Obama amongst men of various categories on various occasions, not least amongst rural men who one might have thought would have more traditional values than urban voters.
    That is, if anyone has ever seen any kind of justification for the misogyny explanation just uses actual numbers and data, I’d be very interested in it. I haven’t seen much more to this beyond pointing out that some guy at some event way back when shouted “iron my shirt” or various other incidents without any suggestion of cause and effect.

33. Hi Publius,
    If Obama had lost and if in his concession he said nothing about her judgment, I would say that he was holding back.
    His criticism of her votes on the Authorization to use Force were by far the most damaging.
    by the same token, the sleazy way in which she questioned his qualifications to be Commander in Chief, were nonetheless the most (substantively) damaging to him.
    And yet she says nothing to put them behind us.
    Recall that she did so by aligning herself with McCain.
    Yet in her speech, she does not use the phrase Commander in Chief in connection with Obama.
    And worse still, she does not say anything negative about letting McCain put his decrypted finger on button.
    The first time President Obama offer an olive branch, she is going to attack. She’s a sick puppy, publius. she wants nothing but power.
    on the other hand, if the purpose of your post is to move on, fair enough.

34. It also manages the astonishing trick of neither pulling its punches towards, say, Nixon, but never losing essential sympathy with him either. (Sympathy in the sense of seeing him whole, not necessarily (or actually) agreeing.) So a comparison to Nixon after reading Nixonland would not be the usual “Clinton is like teh worst scumbag ever!”, it would be (a) the most natural thing in the world (to compare anyone to, and (b) a comparison to a complicated but fully human person.
    Perlstein is like that.
    
    I agree. If you read only one book on American politics this year, make it Nixonland. Reading it a second or third time to get more detail would probably be a more productive use of time than reading most other books on politics the first time.
    This is a book which deserves deep study and I think it might be fun if we could set up a thread here on ObWings devoted to an in depth discussion of the book. I’d love to hear what the conservatives on this blog think of it.
    
    In all these cases, the decisions people reach about their tactics and strategies and the way they reach them tell us important things. None of us can know what will be the critical issues of 2010. (You in the back there, Kreskin, shut up.) So we have to see how they respond to what’s going on at the moment, and figure that their operating style will matter at least as much (often more) than their words.
    
    
    Did Clinton attempt to draw any meaningful distinctions between herself and Obama on policy? Her candidacy was first and foremost about process- and character-oriented issues like “inevitability”, “experience”, “electability”, “strength”, being a “fighter”, “the Commander-In-Chief threshold”, etc. You talk as if you think these issues, which Clinton herself raised as the main arguments for nominating her and not Obama, should be off-limits to those of us who have supported Obama.
    
    What Bruce and Gromit said.
    This nominating contest was not very much about ideology per se because neither candidate made much of an effort to distance themselves from the other, except for the Iraq war. It was fought primarily (and also caucusly :->) on the grounds of character, temperament and tone. There is nothing wrong with having a contest focus on these things because we cannot know with certainty what challenges a President will face in 4-8 years.
    Hillary Clinton was very much the aggressor in this area since Obama’s early speeches attacked a generic “establishment Washington culture” more than focusing on Hillary directly and personally. These attacks were only implicitly directed at Hillary in so far as she chose to run as the experienced Washington insider rather than as a change candidate. If the shoe fits…
    She was the one who made it a personal character contest by attacking Obama as unfit to be President.
    Reap the wind, and sow the whirlwind

35. Now that I am supporting Obama, I feel it is safe to come out of hiding. I do not think Hillary lost the election because of sexism, but I agree with Digby, who says it much better than I can.
    “Clinton’s campaign ripped open a hole in our culture and forced us to look inside. And what we found was a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny that a lot of us knew existed but didn’t realize was still so socially acceptable that it could be broadcast on national television and garner nary a complaint from anybody but a few internet scolds like me. It was eye-opening, to say the least.”
    I think it is essential that Obama supporters understand this when they reach out to former Hillary supporters. Neither Digby or I are stating that this sexism came from Obama or his campaign. Many women, young and old, Hillary and Obama supporters, are hurting and outraged. I suspect in the long run it will have a positive effect. People can no longer believe we live in a post-feminist era. The patriarchy that has existed through all of human history could not be smashed in one generation.
    I have decided to work my heart out for Obama. But I am not interest in defending or criticizing either of their campaigns. I was very unhappy that neither of them emphasized policies that would address the shameful reality that the US is one of the most family-unfriendly countries in the world.

36. Jes,
    The following is an honest question, not meant snarkily; I want to understand your mindset.
    Do you have the same ire for Clinton supporters who wrote critically about Obama on Wright, Rezko, or “sweetie”? Were you upset by Clinton campaigners who tried to connect Obama to drugs, or by Clinton’s own remarks on Obama’s fitness to be President? (Some of these–his use of “sweetie,” especially–I believe were real and legitimate issues; some not.)
    I’m trying to understand whether what you find objectionable is non-voting-record-based criticism of Democrats in general, or whether it was only criticism directed at Clinton that was out of bounds. If the latter, could you please explain what the difference is?

37. Well, Redstocking, you’ll be happy to read that Obama has proposed expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act. And though her ideas and language didn’t penetrate his platform nearly as much as one would hope, it is worth noting that Karen Kornbluh is his policy director, and her economic focus has always been geared towards more family-friendly economic policies. That certainly portends well for an Obama administration.

38. Redstocking, lots to agree with there.
    My feeling for some while has been that any of the candidates would be a major disappointment to me time and again when it comes to policy. What I’ve been aiming for is someone with good decision-making values and skills, in the expectation of having to pressure them constantly from outside.

39. jdbrown,
    I was a very ambivalent Hillary supporter and I found all those instances you cite objectionable. Many of the best feminist political commentators on sexism were not Hillary supporters at all–Melissa McEwan, Digby, Jessica Valenti, Echidne.
    I fear the sexism of American society will become crystal clear as the Republicans slander Michelle Obama. I am afraid many feminists haven’t supported her enough. I rather hope Michelle and Hillary become friendly. Only Hillary understands what Michelle is going to have to cope with. Laura Bush would not understand what they are talking about:)

40. Dear Michael,
    I agree that Obama’s heart is in the right place on these issues. I love it that his daughters are young and he and Michelle struggle with these problems everyday. Fortunately Michelle’s mother is available to help care for their kids. That solution is available to fewer and fewer families since grandparents still work and often live too far away. (I am lucky enough to be able to care for my 1-year-old grandson three days a week.)
    Hillary wasn’t really better on these issues, but I hoped that as an older woman with so many woman advisors, she would understand. She might be more sensitive to the dilemmas of caring for aging parents.
    But we need a mass movement to pressure Congress to address these issues. Sadly most young parents and most caregivers of elders do not have the time or energy to lead this crusade.

41. @Gromit: Sheesh, indeed. I said that Publius had provided the occasion with this post, with absolutely predictable results.
    publius: Nixon was by the way one of the most gifted politicians of the 20th century.
    Yeah, I was there. So much the worse for politicians qua politicians. Mad skillz are not admirable in and of themselves, regardless of the purpose to which they’re put.
    “Only a historical example”, “for the sake of argument”: Sure, if this post were being written twelve months ago or seven months from now. My point is about timing and thoughtlessness, not some Godwin-like point about Nixon.
    Hilzoy at least grasps why and acknowledges that this post might give offense to Clinton supporters.
    It also irritates those of us who have been waiting for the backbiting to be over, who really are interested in the reconciliation happening as quickly as possible, and mutual trust re-developing between the camps in the interest of maximum success in November.
    In that context, in this moment, a thought experiment asking the reader to consider, however briefly and as part of setting up an argument leading to a different conclusion, that Clinton would be objectively better off if Obama loses, is not likely to be taken in the way publius probably intended.

42. Nell – i see the point about ending it and moving on. And I want to do that. eventually…
    But this is one of the biggest political upsets in american history. a former first lady lost after being “inevitable,” for very unique reasons (historically speaking). it’s a big complex interesting question why that happened. so, i am going to be talking about it — more to the point, i think it’s a very interesting discussion, particularly for political junkies.
    but i’m not gloating or bashing clinton in doing so. i know if i do, you’ll call me out. 🙂
    seriously though, this is a very post-worthy topic right now, despite the timing. at the end of the day, i fancy myself a pundit rather than a democratic activist — and so I want to explore these interesting questions without feeling that i’m violating some other sort of duty.

43. No, I won’t call you out. I’ll just return to not reading your posts.

44. i fancy myself a pundit rather than a democratic activist — and so I want to explore these interesting questions without feeling that i’m violating some other sort of duty.
    hmmm. I’m not sure a [d]emocrat can contenance that distinction, not at the end of the day.
    but whoever said that that election was not much about political ideology was not listening carefully.
    Obama said repeatedly that change must come from the ground up, which flies in the face of everything the real Hillary stands for, from health care mandates to nation building to enforcing our notions of gender equality on Islamic nations.
    as Jeanne Kilpatrick will tell you, that’s all top down ideology.
    This is the deep significance of Obama’s candidacy. He is a democrat through and through.

45. Publius, a post in which you compare Hillary Clinton to Richard Nixon does not do her any favors, nor you much credit.
    Except among the crucial vonnian block: we vonnians think that Nixon was a generally swell president on some issues (foreign policy) while thinking dimly of him on others (the southern strategy) — always while keeping in mind that has was a snake.
    Since that pretty much sums up the vonnian reaction to Bill Clinton as well, Publius’ comparison is nearly perfect.
    Sadly, the vonnian block consists of only a single voter (who’s most likely voting for McCain).

46. “always while keeping in mind that has was a snake.”
    Strike “has.” Wow. If that’s a Freudian slip on my part, I just learned something new about myself.

47. Publius, I think timing is important. This isn’t the best time for discussing this topic. I suppose it’s better than the attempt to discuss reforming the nomination process at a point when people’s feelings about reforms are largely tied to which candidate they supported and moreover when we haven’t seen how well the process worked out for November and beyond.
    But I did participate in both threads, so I guess I found them interesting even if not all that useful. I agree that some of this one is counterproductive, and I regret that I drifted into that in my comment.

48. Redstocking (or someone else sharing her views):
    Regarding this:
    “Clinton’s campaign ripped open a hole in our culture and forced us to look inside. And what we found was a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny that a lot of us knew existed but didn’t realize was still so socially acceptable that it could be broadcast on national television and garner nary a complaint from anybody but a few internet scolds like me. It was eye-opening, to say the least.”
    I plead some ignorance here. I am aware of some outrageous and stupid statements regarding Hillary Clinton. And I agree with your observation that, though sexism clearly still exists, sexism was not responsible for Hillary’s loss. But I am having a hard time understanding how Clinton’s campaign reveals — one recalls
    Port’s death scene in The Sheltering Sky — “a simmering cauldron of crude, sophomoric sexism and ugly misogyny” previously hidden by the sky stretch thin across, only to be ripped apart and “rush upon us with the speed of a million winds.” (OK, the “million winds” phrase is Bowles’, not Digby’s.)
    If anything, aside from a few blips at the beginning (e.g., hairstyle and dress focus), Clinton’s campaign seemed to be remarkably sexism-free.

49. Redstocking,
    Oh, I recognize that many, many Clinton supporters had objections to those instances I cite. But, in their calculations, those objections just didn’t outweigh the considerations in favor of Clinton. That’s fine.
    I’m really trying to get a read on Jes’s mindset, specifically, because, from what I can tell of her comments here, (s)he thinks any criticism of Clinton (apart from that directed towards her voting record) was out of bounds. I want to know if this has to do with some feature of Clinton in particular, or if Jes subscribes to the Democratic version of Reagan’s 11th commandment.
    I also certainly didn’t mean to suggest that Clinton wasn’t the target of sexist attacks during the campaign–she most definitely was. (Though, as I obliquely suggested on another thread, I think most of this was coming from the media, Republicans, and isolated jerks who happened to Obama supporters, rather than from Obama supporters as a general class.) And your point about Michelle Obama is well taken. (I always thought the treatment Theresa Heinz-Kerry got from the Republicans and from the press four years ago was rather sexist, itself.)

50. jdkbrown,
    I could never satisfactorily explain to my family of Obama supporters why I was supporting Clinton because my political views were so much more similar to Obama’s. I had some difficulty understanding it myself. I did think Hillary would make an excellent president; I greatly admired her brains, hard work, and indomitable spirit. Electing a qualified women president was tremendously important to me. I would not have supported any Republican woman for president. Obama seemed too much of an unknown. I preferred Clinton’s health platform.
    Electing a qualified woman president seemed a truly history-changing event. At 22, my grandma voted in the first election I was sad my feminist mother died 4 years ago and didn’t get a chance to vote for Hillary. I would imagine African Americans felt similarly about Obama.
    I agree that Theresa Heinz-Kerry’s treatment was sexist. The media doesn’t know what to make of Hillary, Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, Theresa Heinz-Kerry, Judy Dean, who are their husbands’ true equals. In other countries, spouses of the leader are permitted to keep their own jobs.

51. von,
    If anything, aside from a few blips at the beginning (e.g., hairstyle and dress focus), Clinton’s campaign seemed to be remarkably sexism-free.
    I don’t know where to begin. I suggest you add some feminist blogs (Shakesville, Feministing, Echidne, Digby) to your RSS reader. Perhaps some consciousness-raising is in order. The feminists of the 70’s realized that sexism is so embedded in human society, that women as well as men mistook it for realilty.

52. i watch those “Sexism In The Media Hurt Clinton” clip montages and one thing stands out to me: 99% of the people they show being sexist are a) Chris Matthews b) Republicans c) FOX News guests. (yes, a lot of overlap in b and c).
    so all that says to me is: there are a lot of sexists in the GOP – and Chris Matthews is a dink*.
    i still think most of the ostensible Dems who say they’re going to vote McCain are trying to turn a loss into power over the winner. but i hope the rest of them think twice about supporting the very people who are responsible for the bulk of the sexism in those clips. in other words: do these people really want to encourage Glenn Beck ?
    * – sexist!

53. The points been made elswhere, but it bears repeating.
    Hillary lost because she voted for the war.
    Had she gotten that vote right she’d be the nominee right now.
    As for the “it’s not the right time” comments, how do they even make sense. This is a good a time as any to think about what Hillary will do next. I seriously doubt the great mass Hillary supporters are so thin-skinned that they can’t handle a discussion of the obvious.

54. Though it’s outside the four-month window, what about Hilzoy’s useful set of links to discussions on Democratic candidates’positions on transgender issues, which you might think provides useful information, particularly for feminists. (But I suppose as it criticizes Hillary, that doesn’t count).

55. jdkbrown: Do you have the same ire for Clinton supporters who wrote critically about Obama on Wright, Rezko, or “sweetie”? Were you upset by Clinton campaigners who tried to connect Obama to drugs, or by Clinton’s own remarks on Obama’s fitness to be President?
    On Wright? Absolutely. I do not actually recall reading much from pro-Clinton blogs about Wright, actually: but yeah, the hit Obama took about Wright was overtly, obviously racist, and anyone who bought into Wright being a “problem” was either racist themselves or way too gullible about pro-Republican media strategies.
    “Sweetie” was Obama himself being casually sexist. I saw reasonable criticism of Obama for his behavior, which ceased when Obama apologized and acknowledged fault.
    As I understand it, the problem with Obama and Rezko is the same kind of “problem” that the Clintons had with Whitewater: which is to say, that while Obama has done nothing wrong, the Republicans will certainly claim that he did. However, it is a situation worth commenting on – and I note 335,000 hits on Obama and Rezko. But, I get 524,000 hits when I google on Hillary Clinton and Zimbabwe. So it looks like the storm that hit Obama over his connection with a federal criminal, was minor compared to the storm that hit Clinton over a reasonable remark that made perfect sense if you were informed of international current events, and was grossly misinterpreted to “Clinton compared Florida with Zimbabwe!”
    Your assertion further down claiming “she thinks any criticism of Clinton (apart from that directed towards her voting record) was out of bounds” is absolute bloody nonsense, which you have pulled out of thin air.
    I said specifically, in response to Bruce Baugh, that criticism of Clinton should be substantive. Examples of substantive criticism: her policies and her voting record. Example of insubstantive criticism: OMG CLINTON SAID ZIMBABWE!
    There you go.

56. Magistra: Though it’s outside the four-month window, what about Hilzoy’s useful set of links to discussions on Democratic candidates’positions on transgender issues, which you might think provides useful information, particularly for feminists. (But I suppose as it criticizes Hillary, that doesn’t count).
    More to the point, Magistra, I specified the four-month window for a reason: it was when it became clear that Clinton, Obama, and McCain were the three front-runners for President that the media went mad whipping up anti-Hillary stories, and ordinarily reasonable blogs followed right along.

57. But, I get 524,000 hits when I google on Hillary Clinton and Zimbabwe.
    Update – it occurred to me that some of those hits might well be “innocent” – that is, not items referencing the storm but actual legitimate news/articles that just happened to have both “Hillary Clinton” and Zimbabwe, so I regoogled for hit counts with other keywords. I still get between mid-200 thousands and high-300 thousands for each googlesearch: at the high end, still beating out the storm about Tony Rezko, and even at the low end, not that far below in media interest.
    My point still stands: it’s an absurd number of googlehits for a story about a single, non-actionable, inoffensive remark about current events, to be comparable with a story about a link, however innocent, between a federal criminal and a Presidential candidate.

58. it’s an absurd number of googlehits for a story about a single, non-actionable, inoffensive remark about current events,
    inoffensive ?
    it’s offensive in multiple ways. that’s the reason people were talking about it!

59. I do not actually recall reading much from pro-Clinton blogs about Wright, actually

    ??? What pro-Clinton blogs were you reading?

    the storm that hit Obama over his connection with a federal criminal, was minor compared to the storm that hit Clinton over a reasonable remark

    The Rezko storm was about someone who had an insignificant connection to Obama. The Zimbabwe storm was about a statement that — together with others mentioning Jim Crow, the 2000 Florida recount, the strained popular vote claims, etc. — was part of the most damaging theme launched by any of the Democrats this year in terms of its effect on party unity, and it was made at a time when it was quite clear that Obama would be the nominee. No other candidate came close to Clinton’s attempts to paint Obama’s successful winning of the nomination as somehow stealing an election.
    Despite Clinton’s continuing the attack as recently as Tuesday, I’m willing to move past it now that she’s saying the proper things. I only hope that the many supporters that she whipped up into resentment about the issue will recover as quickly.
    I’m amazed that your choice of an example of a harmless action by Clinton that she was unfairly criticized for was what I view as the single worst thing she did during her campaign, even worse than her repeated claims that McCain was more fit to be commander in chief than Obama (now being used in Republican ads).

60. “Your assertion further down claiming ‘she thinks any criticism of Clinton (apart from that directed towards her voting record) was out of bounds’ is absolute bloody nonsense, which you have pulled out of thin air.
    I said specifically, in response to Bruce Baugh, that criticism of Clinton should be substantive. Examples of substantive criticism: her policies and her voting record. Example of insubstantive criticism: OMG CLINTON SAID ZIMBABWE!”
    Well, I did preface that with “as far as I can tell.” Apparently I couldn’t tell very far; so I cheerfully amend that to “voting record and policies”. And calling somebody “sweetie.” I happen to agree with you that all of these are substantive issues. But I don’t think they’re the only substantive issues.
    And I’ll echo other commenters: your choice of the Zimbabwe remarks is bizarre. Clinton was casting Michigan and Florida voters in the role of ordinary Zimbabweans, herself in the role of the democratic opposition, and the DNC and Obama in the role of the Mugabe government.
    Besides being morally distasteful, it was part of a strategy that has the real possibility of hurting Obama in Michigan and Florida (and elsewhere). Since (I think) part of the reason you objected to the criticism of Clinton was that it was doing the Republican’s dirty work for them, I really can’t see how you can so casually dismiss Clinton’s behavior here.

61. KCinDC: No other candidate came close to Clinton’s attempts to paint Obama’s successful winning of the nomination as somehow stealing an election.
    Yes, I’m quite aware that’s how it was spun by the media, and how it was picked up by people who really should have known better.
    As should be clear by now, this “spin” was pure media invention, and had nothing to do with Clinton’s actual intentions – outlined in her concession speech. That you are still clinging to the media spin… well, I think that says a lot about who is damaging party unity.

62. As should be clear by now, this “spin” was pure media invention, and had nothing to do with Clinton’s actual intentions – outlined in her concession speech.
    I mean this in the nicest possible way but: how the f*** do you know what Clinton’s actual intentions were?

63. jdkbrown: Clinton was casting Michigan and Florida voters in the role of ordinary Zimbabweans, herself in the role of the democratic opposition, and the DNC and Obama in the role of the Mugabe government.
    Really? Can you actually link to the transcript where she said that? That Obama was like Mugabe, she was like the opposition in Zimbabwe, and Florida voters were like Zimbabweans?
    Because I think you’re getting that from the media/blog spin, not direct from a transcript in which she said what you’ve just claimed she did.
    What I’ve got that she actually said was, after telling an audience of Democratic voters in Florida that she would support having Florida delegates seated: “We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe,” Clinton said. “Tragically, an election was held. The president lost. They refused to abide by the will of the people, so we can never take for granted our precious right to vote.” Nothing more. A perfectly reasonable reference to current events – which got grabbed on to and spun out of control.
    Of course Clinton asked to have the Florida and Michigan delegates seated! Why not? If Obama had won in either state, so would he! Sure, it’s a tricky issue – I’m not coming down on either side of whether it’s right or wrong to seat the delegates – but demonizing Clinton for wanting them seated was absurd.

64. Anarch: I mean this in the nicest possible way but: how the f*** do you know what Clinton’s actual intentions were?
    I mean this in the nicest possible way: because I paid attention to what she actually said, rather than to what Obama supporters were claiming she meant. Why you would think that Obama supporters have some special telepathic insight into what Clinton meant that belies what she actually said, I do not know.

65. Jes, I get 650,000 hits for “Obama Rezko”. Make it “Obama (Rezco OR Rezko)” and it climbs to 1.8 million.

66. Jes, I don’t really care what Clinton’s intentions were. I care about the effects, which I’ve seen with my own eyes. I was at the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting and saw the protesters, and I see people making the same arguments about the illegitimacy of Obama as nominee around the blogosphere as well.
    I don’t understand at all what harmless thing you believe she intended by her statements. Perhaps she was just randomly commenting on history and current events with no intention of connecting them to the nomination process at all. That seems unlikely to me, but maybe you have greater insight into American politics and the state of the Democratic Party here.

67. I trust most Hillary supporters will come to their senses and realize that they would be betraying their candidate if they supported McCain. People are very raw and probably don’t truly mean what they are saying. However, I don’t see how it helps to harp on Hillary’s high crimes and misdemeanors however emotionally satisfying and intellectually interesting it may be. I will no longer read Hillary blogs compelled to trash Obama.
    I have been heroically resisting the impulse to psychoanalyze Hillary hatred for the whole campaign. Do you think our society will only stop fearing and hating truly powerful women when men and women share equally in childrearing?. Then the strong, powerful woman will no longer be seen unconsciously as the all-powerful mother of infancy and toddlerhood, who had absolute power over the defenseless child. Of course, this would apply to women as well as to men.

68. I’ve read Clinton’s remark. There’s absolutely no point in making it unless she thinks Zimbabwe is somehow relevant to the Florida/Michigan situation. Despite not coming out and saying, “I’m comparing the DNC’s and Obama’s refusal to have the Florida delegates seated to the Mugabe government’s refusal to accept the outcome of the Zimbabwe election, ” she is, indeed comparing the two. Otherwise her remark makes no sense.
    I’m sure you’ve heard the joke: A man is out for a drive in the country when he runs out of gas. He sets out walking and soon reaches a farm house with and old farmer sitting on the porch. He greets the farmer and says, “I ran out of gas a bit back. Is there a gas station around here?” The farmer responds, “Ayup. About two miles down the road.” The man hikes two miles down the road, and when he gets there, it’s obvious the gas station has been closed for years: the pumps have been stripped, the windows are boarded up, the parking lot is overgrown. He walks back to the farm house, and, as the farm is still on the porch, he vents his yells: “You said I could get gas two miles down the road!” “Nope,” the farmer replies, “I said there was a gas station.”

69. And as long as we’re talking about unlikely insights: I’d quite like to get ahold of the crystal ball that let’s you know what Obama would have done if he’d come out ahead in the Florida primary or uncommitted had out-polled Clinton in Michigan.

70. I have been heroically resisting the impulse to psychoanalyze Hillary hatred for the whole campaign.
    Well done. I’ve just been trying not to explode with rage over it.
    I mean, the bizarre thing about it all is: on the issues, while there’s not a hell of a lot to choose between them (given that Obama wasn’t in a position to vote for or against the “authorization of force”, there’s no comparison available for Clinton’s vote): I would probably, I think, if I had been in a position to vote which of course I’m not, have voted for Obama.
    Unless I’d got particularly p*ssed off by some extraordinary piece of crap from an Obama supporter about how dreadful Clinton is.
    Either way, of course – McCain and the Republican Party are the enemy who must be defeated: Obama and Clinton were merely in ordinary political opposition. Of course the media demonized Clinton: they’ve been doing that for 15 years. What was bizarre was the sheer volume of Obama supporters who were willing to follow the media on this, regardless of how it split and damaged the Democratic party; and who are now angrily blaming Clinton and Clinton supporters for the damage done by the vile Clinton hatred which the Obama supporters spouted.
    Gromit: Jes, I get 650,000 hits for “Obama Rezko”. Make it “Obama (Rezco OR Rezko)” and it climbs to 1.8 million.
    Fair enough. Googlehits are a very random way of determining interest – they only work on the broadest possible level, and work best for really detailed searches. I evidently misunderestimated the interest in Rezko – which will, I guess, have climbed in the past couple of days now Obama is the frontrunner and the Republicans will be looking for ways to discredit Obama specifically.
    KCinDC: I was at the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting and saw the protesters, and I see people making the same arguments about the illegitimacy of Obama as nominee around the blogosphere as well.
    And that’s a bad thing and plays into McCain/the Republican Party’s goals, yes. But blaming Hillary Clinton for it is as much nonsense as blaming her exclusively for the Iraq war on the basis of one vote. (When she voted the wrong way, yes.)

71. Jes,
    I seldom comment, but read OBW every day. I have been enriched greatly by the thoughts of many of the writers here, yourself included. I do think you have lost objectivity on this issue and that you do Hillary ( Clinton, if you prefer) an injustice in the process. I’m not pleading that sexism isn’t and wasn’t an issue. It is and was one of many. It did not cause the end result of this campaign. It seems to be the ONLY issue that you can see. that is why I say you are not being objective. Please come back. We miss you.

72. redstocking,
    nice to see you back. This isn’t the thread, but I hope we can return to some discussions about family structure and how we get society to change

73. Gromit: Fair enough. Googlehits are a very random way of determining interest – they only work on the broadest possible level, and work best for really detailed searches. I evidently misunderestimated the interest in Rezko – which will, I guess, have climbed in the past couple of days now Obama is the frontrunner and the Republicans will be looking for ways to discredit Obama specifically.
    “Frontrunner” – er, presumptive nominee, sorry.
    Also, this sounds (now I re-read) like I’m trying to discredit an assessment method I myself make use of, now it disagrees with my conclusions: I wasn’t and I’m not. I accept Gromit’s googlehits as indicative of strong Internet interest in Obama and Rezko, currently far outweighing Internet interest in the artificial mediastorm worked up about the “OMG CLINTON SAID ZIMBABWE” thing.

74. When you’re in a hole, most people would advise you to stop digging.

75. (By the way, add me to the list of folks who’d like to see good discussion of pro-family policy and attitudes. Since it’s been a long time since I was part of anything like typical office work, I know I don’t know a lot about what affects regular lives, and would love to learn.)

76. Hillary supporters perceived that too many progressive blogs became almost as hurtful as the mass media, and they stopped reading and commenting on them. Fancying myself as a member of the new creative class, I suddenly was a member of the low-information gullibles. What a dismal fate for a reference librarian! Hell, I stopped discussing politics with my daughters because for the first time in their lives, political debate degenerated into screaming matches–me against all of them.
    An ambivalent Hillary supporter, I tried rather stridently to discuss feminism and the election in January. I then disappeared from OW for five months and only reappeared when I had become an Obama supporter. I am not usually so craven; I love to argue and debate. And yet I slunk away.
    The progressive blogosphere is bleeding and needs healing.

77. Jes, some of us have been commenting a lot about decision-making processes, the extent to which competency is rewarded over or under personal loyalty, contingency planning, and ties to the morally and intellectually rotten Democratic leadership responsible for so many capitulations and collaborations as issues in our choice of candidates. I admit that I may have missed something (mostly because I hurt like hell; big cellulitis outbreaks suck, a lot), but I don’t think I’ve seen you take up the broad topic of decision-making cultures. Which I find a little odd, not least because the first intellectual study of such things I engaged with was in feminist critique of American historiography, so for me it’s always been a feminist virtue to take processes as being as real and significant as outcomes.

78. Oyster Tea: I’m not pleading that sexism isn’t and wasn’t an issue. It is and was one of many. It did not cause the end result of this campaign. It seems to be the ONLY issue that you can see.
    No, it’s not. And I think you are misreading me.
    The end result of this campaign was caused by Obama having a (comparatively) slight edge: more voters preferred Obama to Clinton. I think that the various artificial mediastorms and subsequent blogstorms whipped up against Clinton (and the Wright thing about Obama) did not affect the end result: I think that, in the end, the voters picked the candidate they preferred.
    I have no quarrel with the end result of this primary season, and wouldn’t no matter which Democratic candidate had won.
    My annoyance arises from three things:
    1. The Obama supporters who are being such ungracious winners, who can’t let go of the campaign and are still acting as if Clinton is the enemy: this is extremely bad strategy, as well as being bad manners.
    2. The persistence of the meme that Clinton ran a disastrous campaign. She didn’t. She ran an immensely successful campaign: Obama ran a better campaign. Decrying Clinton’s success is decrying Obama’s success: they both managed to get Democratic voters out in unprecedented numbers.
    3. The persistence of the various artificial mediastorms whipped up against Clinton: OMG ZIMBABWE, among others.
    Now you want me to be “more objective”? Dear God. I am being very objective. And I say with absolute certainty: when Obama supporters can get over their foolish hating on Hillary Clinton, accept that Obama won and Clinton came out in strong support and their ungracious attitude and foolish clinging to media-hate on Clinton is counterproductive, then I will quit pointing out to them that they are still fighting a primary campaign that is now over.
    Clinton’s focussing her attention on getting Barack Obama to the White House: why are these people who supposedly support Obama focussing their attention on telling us how awful they think Clinton is?

79. Okay, I’m going to put myself on a moratorium for this topic.

80. Bruce, like RedstockingGrandma, I tried to stay away from a lot of blogs during the primary season, including Obsidian Wings, and tried to avoid threads that appeared to be focussing on the primary process. This was partly because, like RedstockingGrandma, I was finding the persistent hating-on-Clinton both damned irritating and damned hurtful: and partly because I’ve always felt that while the outcome of the Presidential election is my business even if I’m not an American (it’ll affect my country and my life almost as much as it will yours) the outcome of the Democratic primaries is not my business: either Clinton or Obama (or Edwards, back when he was in the race) would have made a good President, and it would be a historic moment whether Clinton or Obama had become the nominee.
    Most of what I could have said about the nuts-and-bolts of how a party selects a nominee, have to do with how the various political parties in the UK select representatives and leaders: I didn’t think that would have been of any great interest or much relevance to Americans.

81. “when Obama supporters can get over their foolish hating on Hillary Clinton, accept that Obama won and Clinton came out in strong support and their ungracious attitude and foolish clinging to media-hate on Clinton is counterproductive, then I will quit pointing out to them that they are still fighting a primary campaign that is now over”
    And I’ll get over it when I stop being told that I’m foolish for finding fault with Clinton.

82. Hillary supporters perceived that too many progressive blogs became almost as hurtful as the mass media, and they stopped reading and commenting on them.
    Redstocking, tis good to see you back here. I must ask though: is this sentence really the way that reference librarians are trained to write? I mean, doesn’t it strike you as terribly vague and near content free? For example, one might ask: which Clinton supporters? How many of them are there? Are we talking about millions of people or some crazy person in an asylum who thinks blond-haired candidates must always win lest the world end? Which progressive blogs were problematic? All of them? One of them? This one? Why were they hurtful? Did people on those blogs seek to give offense intentionally? To whom? You? Millions of people? That crazy guy in the asylum? How were they hurtful? Did they cast spells? Utter insulting equations?
    I’ll be honest with you: when I see this sort of incredibly vague yet accusatory writing seemingly aimed at no one in particular or perhaps everyone, my first thought is that the writer wishes to attack but lacks the factual basis to do so, and thus settles for insinuation. This style of writing puts me in mind of a certain passive aggressive mode of behavior that I find distasteful.
    Nevertheless, I’m sure that you, as a reference librarian, have adopted this style for other reasons. But I think you should be aware that other people may well look on your writing in this fashion. Directness and clarity can be very useful in avoiding pointless disagreement, if, indeed, disagreement is something which you seek to avoid.
    Fancying myself as a member of the new creative class, I suddenly was a member of the low-information gullibles.
    See, this is another example of what I’m talking about. Presumably you yourself did not believe that you were a low information gullible, so someone must have claimed that you were…who was this someone? Did they actually make such a claim, or did they merely claim that Clinton performs better amongst low information voters? We don’t know because you shy away from saying anything that comes close to a testable verifiable claim.
    An ambivalent Hillary supporter, I tried rather stridently to discuss feminism and the election in January.
    With respect, ambivalent supporters do not typically enter into “screaming matches” when discussing the object of their support with their children.

83. Most of what I could have said about the nuts-and-bolts of how a party selects a nominee, have to do with how the various political parties in the UK select representatives and leaders: I didn’t think that would have been of any great interest or much relevance to Americans.
    On the contrary, we’ve just seen a campaign where the nuts and bolts of how someone is chosen has resulted in a jiu-jitsu like showing. I believe that an obsession with first past the post led HRC’s campaign to argue the way it did towards the end.
    Besides, wonky is good.

84. On the subject of media coverage of the candidates, this study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism might be of interest.

85. Jes: in the recent threads in which people have started going over all this stuff, it is in large part because you appear informing all of us that we have to apologize, first without saying what for, and now saying that it’s because we all participated in what you regard as media-driven firestorms, and we, or at least I, regard as legitimate areas for criticism. (I mean: if, when a candidate holds some piece of evidence up as proof of her superior qualifications, and that “evidence” turns out to be completely false, one is not allowed to say so on pain of ‘jumping on a media bandwagon’, then I have no idea what one is allowed to say.)
    I would not claim that you hold your opinions only because you are the unwitting puppet of our media overlords (or some other puppetmaster that might be more likely in your case.) I think it’s rude of you to make this blanket assumption about others.
    And I don’t think this has much to do with my willingness to be gracious to Clinton supporters. I am, but being willing to accept without question the claim that I need to apologize for what I’ve written, that I just get all my opinions from the media (and why not just say that I can’t think for myself?), is a different story.
    In any case, if you want to know why we end up going over this stuff, that’s the explanation for my share of it.

86. Publius,
    As a Clinton supporter, I appreciate your post — and I, too, was confused by those who seemed insulted by your mention of Nixon, as I took it as you meant it, an historical reference.
    I thought Clinton’s speech was as good — or better — than many that Obama has given during the primary campaign. View that as biased, I don’t care.
    I wish I could be more profound, make a better contribution to Obsidian Wings right now, a site I have grown fond of since tuning in a couple months ago.
    But that won’t be the case today, the first time I’ve clicked onto a computer at all in a week.
    I lost an uncle last Sunday. And then Monday, I lost my beloved CoCo (the circumstances of her death too tragic to mention now, if ever, who knows).
    Strange how I hurt more over the passing of a dog I’ve had for six years — not returning to work until yesterday, and basically brooding all week — than I hurt for Uncle Bob who I’d known for all of my 45 years on this earth.
    His passing was expected, numerous illnesses killing his body for years, but, still, at 56, a life cut too short.
    Her passing was not. In fact, I’ve mentioned her in passing a few times in these pages as “my pretty girl.”
    Well, my pretty girl is no more.
    And as I start to weep upon reading how stark that sentence is, I realize I am still not finished grieving.
    How long do you grieve for the loss of a dog?
    For Uncle Bob, we had a wake, and it was beautiful and sad and poetic and warm and even laughs were shared.
    For CoCo, not even my wife understands my pain — and nor should I expect her to. My best friend, a 25-year-old co-worker who I have watched grow into a fine, fine husband and father in our six years working together, helped me immensely Monday night at the Newark Animal Emergency Center, helped me by just being there; so if anyone understands, it is he — yet he and I are still more apt to talk about something else, as we did yesterday when I returned to work: you know, the normal guy stuff, sports, sports, work, sports, work and more sports.
    Death always puts things into perspective — and then we go on. (Work was waiting for me yesterday, and it will be there first thing tomorrow morning.)
    But the older I get, the less I understand it. The older I get, the less I understand a lot of things.
    This week I realized I am a lot more passionate about my three dogs — now my two dogs, Bowser and Hamilton — than politics, sports, food.
    I wasn’t passionate about anything this week, other than thinking about how happy CoCo made me these past six years, fetching tennis balls, chasing squirrels and just being a “real” dog.
    Already I miss not having a dog who will lick my face or jump on my lap while I try to read the paper — neither Bowsie nor Hammels are lickers or lap-sitters.
    But life goes on — the Cliche of all Cliches.
    And so we take one last look at Sen. Clinton’s ill-fated campaign before looking ahead to Sen. Obama’s challenge with McCain and the Republicans.
    Clinton turned out to be an excellent candidate, again view that opinion as biased if you wish.
    I think, much like Al Gore in 1980, her advisors never got a handle on things until it was too late. (Of course, just as with Gore, that blame ultimately must be put on the candidate, not the advisors. Which makes me wonder why candidates don’t say more often: F— the advisors.)
    Clinton’s speech — much like Gore’s after the damning Supreme Court decision — was her best.
    I wonder what it says about a candidate who gives their best speech when conceding. I mean, Clinton actually asked her supporters to forgo the “what-ifs” and to focus on supporting Obama.
    Say what you want about Clinton’s alleged Selfishness — and call her words politically expedient — but I found them heroic and inspirational.
    Obama supporters shudder at the tought of her being his running mate. I doubt if he wants her to be, and who really knows if that’s what she whats.
    And forget a “Gov. Clinton.”
    Most likely, she will become a major force in the United States Senate, one who will continue to work both sides of the aisle — one who will have the voices of 18 million people behind her.
    A personal wish, coming from a Democrat who is not big on Nancy Pelosi: I would like to see Hillary Clinton become Senate Majority Leader.
    And I would like to see a Democract in the White House when Bush finally exits stage right in January 2009.
    Yet, if Obama fails to defeat McCain, I hope Sen. Clinton does not pull an Al Gore and never runs again.
    We’ll see.
    Life goes on.

87. Jes, I’m perfectly willing to move on and stop discussing what Clinton did during the nomination process. I’m not going to pretend that none of it happened, but I’m willing to stop discussing it. Plenty of Obama supporters feel the same — including, I’d guess, many of those here. Unfortunately you’re not making it easy.
    You’ve made your feelings about us clear many times, and you’ve repeatedly given us your analysis of the nomination contest, which doesn’t correspond to what we who’ve been involved in it have experienced. I don’t understand why you think it’s necessary to stir up that conversation yet again, especially since you seem to believe that such discussions are counterproductive to the goal of electing a Democratic president.

88. because I paid attention to what she actually said, rather than to what Obama supporters were claiming she meant.
    On the contrary, you’re the one making artificial — and somewhat bizarre — assumptions about what she actually meant, since the plain meaning of her words and actions are otherwise. And I sure as hell didn’t base my understanding of her speeches on “what Obama supporters were claiming she meant”, I read (or listened) to them directly. And I was offended by her as a politician, not as a woman — please, for the love of god, get this through your head — based on her own words.
    Let me reiterate this, since you apparently don’t get this (or more likely choose not to): it was not the media that mind-controlled me into disliking her, nor the Republican operatives, nor some deep-seated hatred of women. It was her own words that condemned her in my eyes. She was the one who tried to — illegitimately — seat the Michigan and Florida delegates when it appeared that the honest course of the election had turned against her; she was the one who made common cause with the Republicans, in such a clear and explicit way that they are now using her memes in their attack ads; she was the one who tried to delegitimize the entire primary process, from attacking the caucus states to comparing her “plight” against fnording Zimbabwe — jesus, was Der Sturmer too obscure a reference for her? — to talking about spurious disenfranchisement in places that (as you well know) had suffered very real disenfranchisement not two elections previously; and gave every indication in her own words and actions of trying to break the party rather than let Obama win the nomination.
    That she ultimately did not is to her credit; that she tried is to her eternal shame. I understand her reasons for doing so, and — as I’ve said multiple times previously — I like her as a person and respect her resilience in the face of myriad indignities foisted upon her by the GOP and the media, but it will be a very long time before I forgive her for the damage she knowingly and recklessly inflicted upon the Democratic Party and progressive causes as a whole.
    And if you can’t see that this is a legitimate reason not to like her, independent of her gender or the media’s portrayal, instead choosing to believe that we’re somehow brainless, misogynistic drones: then you’re not worth talking to.

89. bedtime for bonzo: I’m so sorry.

90. I don’t know where to begin. I suggest you add some feminist blogs (Shakesville, Feministing, Echidne, Digby) to your RSS reader. Perhaps some consciousness-raising is in order. The feminists of the 70’s realized that sexism is so embedded in human society, that women as well as men mistook it for realilty.
    Restocking, I appreciate that you mean to be helpful, but assume that I’ve read the standard Feminist critiques from teh 1970s (and 80s, and 90s, and 00s) and that I do, at least once a week, visit various “feminist blogs” (among those you list: Feministing most, Shakesville less, Digby less than that, Echidne not at all). Also assume that I’m aware of Youtube. Further assume I’m neither a complete idiot, nor trying to be an ass. Finally, keep in mind that I’m the same von who wrote this: http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2004/01/im_watching_her.html. I know a thing or two about feminist grandmothers.
    Give me an idea of what motivates Digby to speak in such apocalyptic terms. Again, from what I saw, the dings against Clinton had nothing to do with sexism and quite a bit to do with substance and character.
    von
    

91. Bedtime: Deepest sympathy on your losses. I don’t think it’s at all silly to deeply mourn the loss of a beloved animal. After all, in life they identify with us in the way they do with their own packmates, and clearly our feelings for them owe a lot to how we bond with our families and clans. Those are real feelings, on both sides. They and we are both in the midst of a genuine co-evolution.

92. End italics.

93. And you know Clinton, who just ran one of the most successful primary campaigns in US history
    I disagree here. She ran an unsuccessful primary campaign in a winner-takes all system. That alone would be sufficient to repudiate your statement – but name me one other candidate with the initial backing of the Democratic Establishment (a 100 Superdelegate lead should be ample evidence of that) who started with a significant lead in the polls and who lost. Kerry was the establishment candidate. Gore was the establishment candidate. I’m not sure who the establishment candidate was in Clinton/Tsongas but Clinton started with a pretty big lead in the polls, and was certainly the big business candidate. The establishment-backed candidate in 1988 didn’t really exist I think – Hart was in then out then in and Cuomo didn’t run. Mondale was the establishment candidate in 1984. So you need to go right back to 1976 and Jimmy Carter in order to find another case where someone who started with all the advantages Clinton started with was defeated in the primary. On the other hand it was a historic candidacy and the first time a woman has got that far – may there be many more and ones that get even further.
    despite constant negative attacks from … normally sane and sensible blogs (like Obsidian Wings)
    Prove it. It shouldn’t be hard.
    First, link me to posts about Clinton on Obsidian Wings written during the past four months that focussed exclusively on her voting record as a Senator and her platform as a Democratic candidate for President, and made no reference (except to condemn) whatever the current media storm against her was:
    Hillzoy’s done that already. And those posts Hillzoy linked were the reason I started reading Obsidian Wings regularly. Consequently such an attack is something I find somewhat risible.
    You may be able to find such posts: but on the whole, during the whole primary campaign, Obsidian Wings bloggers were not campaigning against Clinton on the issues,
    Hillary Clinton trying to change the rules in the middle of the primary (see Florida and Michigan) is an issue. It shows that either she or someone on her campaign and acting on her behalf is prepared to try to cheat to win.
    or making substantive criticisms of her voting record and her declared policies, as compared to Obama.
    That’s because her voting record and policies were barely distinguishable from Obama’s (where they were, Hilzoy did as thorough a disection as I’ve seen anywhere). On the other hand, the way the Clinton campaign approached the primary was different from the way the Obama campaign approached it – and the way someone leads a campaign is an issue when selecting someone to lead an election campaign.
    And I never saw any acknowledgement by any of the front page bloggers that they’d merely joined the media anti-Clinton storms.
    I never saw any reason to believe they had. They disagreed about the way Clinton was running her campaign. Is that wrong now?
    I said specifically, in response to Bruce Baugh, that criticism of Clinton should be substantive. Examples of substantive criticism: her policies and her voting record. Example of insubstantive criticism: OMG CLINTON SAID ZIMBABWE!
    Give me one good reason why she mentioned Zimbabwe when she did. When listening to someone speak ask not just what they say but why they are talking. Why did Clinton bring up Zimbabwe other than to try to compare it to Florida? (If you have a genuinely good reason I apologise – but I’ve yet to see one). The only explanation I can come up with is that her intent was to say “it could be worse – if she said that (or indeed later tried to calm the comparison) I apologise, but if not she at the very least has a political tin ear.
    And a substantive criticism is that Clinton (or rather paid staffers of hers) were doing their best to change the agreed rules of a campaign in order to benefit their candidate. In other words they were trying to cheat.
    As should be clear by now, this “spin” was pure media invention, and had nothing to do with Clinton’s actual intentions – outlined in her concession speech.
    Actions speak louder than words. You would rather take the words in the concession speech than the actions of her surrogates such as Harold Ickes. It is not easy to be gracious once you have already lost beyond almost all doubt – but Clinton’s concession speech after she had lost is a different article to Clinton’s campaign and I’m not surprised that it is somewhat more friendly. (It was an excellent speech btw).
    That you are still clinging to the media spin… well, I think that says a lot about who is damaging party unity.
    That you keep making this accusation despite having most of your points roundly rebutted … well I think that says a lot about you on this issue.
    Either way, of course – McCain and the Republican Party are the enemy who must be defeated: Obama and Clinton were merely in ordinary political opposition.
    Absolutely.
    And for the record, I don’t think that Hillary Clinton ran a particularly dirty primary campaign especially given how long it went on. On the other hand when the Primary first slipped from her grasp (i.e. post Super Tuesday) she reacted badly out of instinct, and when the thing slipped away entirely her first (and entirely understandable) response was to try to cling on to it as tightly as possible. The obvious thing to do and the wrong thing to do – forgetting the difference between a competitor, an opponent, and an enemy. With her concession speech she ceased doing this. And good for her. I think she gave up before she could do too much damage (a floor fight would have been messy). Thank goodness. It can’t have been easy for her and I wouldn’t care to have to do the same. (Well, you would have to force me to run for President – but she seems to want it).
    Although I said earlier she didn’t run that successful a campaign, she had the misfortune to be in the way of probably the best primary campaign ever and was simply caught unprepared. I don’t think she actually ran a bad campaign (although Mark Penn not knowing about California being awarded proportionately and Hillary Clinton discovering Texas’s system so late does point to holes). But from her starting position I think she’d have beaten any other opponent.

94. Either way, of course – McCain and the Republican Party are the enemy who must be defeated: Obama and Clinton were merely in ordinary political opposition.
    Absolutely.

    Huh?
    McCain and the Republican party are your political opposition. Your enemy is al Quaeda (among others).
    This exchange with Jes makes both of you look like silly radicals who don’t see the big picture. And the foregoing response — admittedly cute — will resonate a majority of voters.
    Anger in politicals doesn’t work. See, Clinton, Bill, the impeachment of (subheading: How the Republicans lost).

95. This exchange with Jes makes both of you look like silly radicals who don’t see the big picture. And the foregoing response — admittedly cute — will resonate a majority of voters.
    1: McCain is not my political opposition nor is he Jes’s. We are both Brits rather than Americans (but interested observers)
    2: That wasn’t the place to have that battle. Looking for common ground was the best way to finish that post IMO.
    3: Give the Republicans some time in the wilderness to sort their own house out and I will agree – but after crippling Habeas Corpus and legalising torture, I think that they are a more dangerous enemy than Al Quaeda. More Americans have been killed in the Iraq war than by Al Quaeda outside Iraq. (And the number of Iraqui deaths is shocking).
    4: I regularly try to rein in radicals – but their passion is bloody useful for getting things done. What they normally lack is focus.
    5: What are you talking about that anger in politicals doesn’t work. Are you telling me that MLK was not an angry man? What doesn’t work is uncontrolled anger. And are you telling me that MLK never said that one of the reasons people talked to him is that they didn’t want to talk to Malcolm X?
    6: I don’t believe Jes is a political. From what I can tell she’s a radical activist. Anger is very useful for them. As for me, I’m (a) an analyst and (b) ill and hence cranky. When I play political I approach things very differently – but it isn’t my primary sphere for getting things one.

96. The Republican Party has done substantially more harm to America than Al Qaeda could ever dream of, and for bonus points completely botched the punishment of Al Qaeda. Our nation is no more secure than it was on 9/11/2001, less so in many ways, and we’ve funded this collapse both through fiscal insanity and through moral cretinism, the willful abandonment of every principle on which the republic was founded. If any nation had imposed on us the changes of the last eight years, we’d regard it – rightly – as brutal aggression, and the fact that we were conned into it by obsessive schemers and crooks doesn’t make the changes themselves any less horrific. What caps it is how much of the harm was done by people who knew they were lying about it – it wasn’t good intentions gone bad but chosen contempt for consequences and victims.
    So yes, I do think the Republican Party and McCain’s policies are the enemies of American strength, peace, freedom, and prosperity.

97. How long do you grieve
    bedtimeforbonzo,
    I am very sorry for both of your losses. I have some personal acquaintance with grief, having lost beloved pets and beloved family members over the years. I wish that there was some way mere words could provide you with some consolation, while knowing that there is little I can say to help.
    Grieve as long as you need to and in whatever manner best suits you, it is an intensely personal process with no one right way to do it, and no rigid logic regarding who else in your life is best suited to understand what you are going through.
    One of the things I’ve told myself in my own times of grief is that the pain of loss we feel is another aspect of our capacity to love. When it hurts, that is one way in which we come to know our own humanity.
    Please take care of yourself, with my best wishes and sympathy
    – LeftTurn

98. 
    “Either way, of course – McCain and the Republican Party are the enemy who must be defeated: Obama and Clinton were merely in ordinary political opposition.
    Absolutely.”
    Huh?
    McCain and the Republican party are your political opposition. Your enemy is al Quaeda (among others).
    
    von,
    That phraseology sounds rather familiar
    For a conservative, you make a awful lot of sense sometimes :->

99. McCain and the Republican party are your political opposition. Your enemy is al Quaeda (among others).
    Exactly how many Iraqi civilian deaths would Bush, McCain and the Republican party have to be responsible for annihilating before we can consider them enemies? 6 million? 3? 1? In all seriousness, please tell me the death toll that these people have to bring about before I have your permission to think of them as enemies.
    This exchange with Jes makes both of you look like silly radicals who don’t see the big picture.
    The blood of a million dead people does tend to obscure the vision. Fortunately, many fine fellows such as yourself can’t see that blood, so your vision remains unobstructed.
    Anger in politicals doesn’t work. See, Clinton, Bill, the impeachment of (subheading: How the Republicans lost).
    In general, statements as overbroad as “anger in politics does not work” are either trivially obvious or require some evidence to be taken seriously. Citing a single ambiguous example does not qualify as evidence. What makes you think it was the anger and not the stupidity or the violation of privacy norms or the perceived hypocrisy that motivated the public’s displeasure?
    For example, I might say that American lawyers make ridiculous overbroad claims without evidence all the time. See: von.

100. von: Give me an idea of what motivates Digby to speak in such apocalyptic terms. Again, from what I saw, the dings against Clinton had nothing to do with sexism and quite a bit to do with substance and character.
     I think you mean to, or at least should, qualify that statement quite a bit more than you have. There is no question whatsoever that Clinton got savaged because she was a woman — it’s the identity of the savagers that’s in question here. See, e.g., the… what is it now, 140+ part series at Shakesville.
     Anger in politicals doesn’t work.
     That’s BS. It can work just fine — see the civil rights movement, or really anything in the politics of the 1960s and early 1970s. That it tends not to work nowadays is a curious happenstance, a fetishization of “centrism” often pushed by an increasingly extremist GOP seeking rhetorical cover. And even that’s false: it doesn’t usually work for liberals nowadays, but anger has been working quite well for the right-wing extremists, in case you missed the last decade or so.
     But to your larger point: frankly, we should be angry. We should be angry about what has happened to our country, to the lies being told by our government, to the coverups being tried (successfully, for the most part) to avoid criminal accountability, to the extremism continually spewing forth from the right-wing. Bruce is right: the Republican Party — by which I don’t mean you or other (erstwhile?) Republican voters, but the GOP leadership — has done far more damage to this country than Al Qaeda did, or ever could. [Unless you regard their tactics as a particularly cunning form of realpolitik judo which, well, you might have a point then.] If the GOP is not “the enemy”, it’s only because they’re not actively trying to kill us… only indifferently destroying the country. Bluntly, that’s something of a distinction without a difference; it might matter at the Pearly Gates, but here and now there are people dying — hundreds of thousands of people dying — because of their madness and their lies, and that’s all the sin I need to judge them.
     If that makes me radical, so be it. Such is the price of the truth.

101. Francis D —
     1: McCain is not my political opposition nor is he Jes’s. We are both Brits rather than Americans (but interested observers)
     I was overlooking that fact, but, if you’re going to take sides in a US political drama, you have to be aware of the consequences.
     Understand your point #2.
     Re: #3, time in the wilderness is sometimes overrated.
     Re: #4, and not putting Jes in this category, my view is that radicals are 9 times out of ten more trouble than they are worth.
     Re: #5, your point is well made and well taken.
     Re #6, I don’t know Jes save from her blog posting and thus cannot comment.
     Bruce —
     I agree that President Bush has been a disaster on several fronts, and that many in the Republican party did nothing to stop it. As for the rest, I disagree.
     TLTIA —
     I wish I had seen your earlier post because I’d simply direct the readership to it. But note Francis D‘s necessary clarification: “What doesn’t work is uncontrolled anger” (emphasis added).
     (Tho’ I’m a classic liberal, not conservative.)
     Turbulence —
     The blood of a million dead people does tend to obscure the vision. Fortunately, many fine fellows such as yourself can’t see that blood, so your vision remains unobstructed.
     No, I see the blood. What you aren’t seeing is that your argument contains implicit assumptions that are not shared by a large majority of American voters.
     Moreover, you are going to have to come to grip with the points made by me, TLTIA, and Francis D regarding anger in politics.

102. Exactly how many Iraqi civilian deaths would Bush, McCain and the Republican party have to be responsible for annihilating before we can consider them enemies? 6 million? 3? 1? In all seriousness, please tell me the death toll that these people have to bring about before I have your permission to think of them as enemies.
     
     Turb,
     OK, here we go again.
     The opposition are members of the same polity, with whom we struggle against while abiding by the rules which frame and define that polity. Enemies are outside that circle.
     Bush, McCain et al are opposition rather than enemies because they were (in Bush’s case) or might be (in McCain’s case) put into power by virtue of a process for selecting our leadership and legitimizing our government which you and I (and any other person who is not actively attempting to otherthrow the US Govt) have consented to, which makes us all as Americans in some small way morally responsible for their actions.
     I know that sounds revolting, but that is the cold hard truth.
     If you truly see them as enemies in the apocalyptic manner that you outlined, then it is your moral obligation to attempt to overthrow the US Govt as it is presently constituted (whether by violent or non-violent means, that is a different question) and replace it with something else morally acceptable to you. That was John Brown’s choice.
     If you haven’t reached that fork in the road yet, then this is your govt. too, like it or not. Which means that definitionally you have accepted that they are members of the same polity, and that makes them the opposition.
     IMHO, YMMV, etc. and maybe we should both bookmark one of these discussions since we seem to go round and round on this topic without any sign of closure that I can discern.

103. TLTIA: I realize this is a reductio, and I genuinely don’t intend this as a “gotcha” but: would you have considered the NSDAP as “opposition” rather than “enemy”? And would you mind elaborating on why? For that matter, suppose the government had been taken over by the Mafia — legitimately elected, mind — who proceeded to use the government to further their own criminal ends. Opposition or enemy?
     Once again, this isn’t intended as a gotcha, I’m genuinely trying to understand what I perceive to be deficiencies in your dichotomy.

104. No, I see the blood.
     You do? OK, then please answer the question I raised above: how many dead before I have your permission to call McCain an enemy? 6 million? 3? 1? What? Pick a number and tell me please.
     What you aren’t seeing is that your argument contains implicit assumptions that are not shared by a large majority of American voters.
     Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. Since you don’t say what these secret assumptions are, I can’t tell whether or not you’re telling the truth. Please reveal to me the great secret assumptions that only you know so that we can discuss them.
     Moreover, you are going to have to come to grip with the points made by me, TLTIA, and Francis D regarding anger in politics.
     von, I don’t recall claiming to be angry. I think that McCain is an enemy, but most enemies don’t make me angry, and he’s enough of a joke that I’m more inclined to laugh. Still, were he to retire from politics, I would be very happy, simply because I could stop worrying about how many more innocent people I might kill for sport or madness.
     As for TLTIA, please see my first response to him in that thread, and the second one which I shall post soon. Given that he’s made a fairly in-depth argument that depends on particular historical causation without actually demonstrating that causation happened, I am skeptical.

105. If you truly see them as enemies in the apocalyptic manner that you outlined, then it is your moral obligation to attempt to overthrow the US Govt as it is presently constituted (whether by violent or non-violent means, that is a different question) and replace it with something else morally acceptable to you. That was John Brown’s choice.
     WTF are you talking about? Apocalyptic? Who has said anything apocalyptic?
     I write the word enemies in the moral sense. That does not mean I wish to overthrow the government or assassinate anyone.

106. Also, von, I’m still waiting for a real argument to substantiate your earlier statement that anger doesn’t work in politics.

107. Anarch —
     I think you mean to, or at least should, qualify that statement quite a bit more than you have. There is no question whatsoever that Clinton got savaged because she was a woman — it’s the identity of the savagers that’s in question here. See, e.g., the… what is it now, 140+ part series at Shakesville.
     (Emphasis mine.)
     This is what I’m trying to get at. Clinton got savaged, and certainly more so than Obama. Some of the savaging was in a misogynist or sexist way. But I am having difficult seeing that she was savaged “because she was a woman.” Indeed, as I said before, I just don’t see it. For instance, the claim that Obama is a Muslim is clearly because of some aspect of Obama outside of Obama’s control: some combination of his race and family background/travels. I’m struggling to find an example that works for Clinton. Father Pfleger’s rant is close, but it wasn’t really because she was a woman. It was because she did something unusual in US politics (nearly cry at a loss), which some had taken be have been a calculated move.
     That’s BS. It can work just fine — see the civil rights movement, or really anything in the politics of the 1960s and early 1970s.
     Look at Francis D‘s point #5 (above): I should have written “uncontrolled anger” doesn’t work in politics.

108. Also, von, I’m still waiting for a real argument to substantiate your earlier statement that anger doesn’t work in politics.
     [Puts right arm out, palm perpendicular to the floor. Swings arm across his chest.]
     That’s the sound of one hand clapping (at least in one urban legend).
     Turbulence, you are missing perspective. So, here is how I would respond to your question:
     OK, then please answer the question I raised above: how many dead before I have your permission to call McCain an enemy? 6 million? 3? 1? What? Pick a number and tell me please.
     My friend has lost his perspective. He believes that wars are games, with some point total to watch for, where the goal is to beat the Republicans in November. We know that wars are not games. They are terrible. Many Iraqis have died. Many US soldiers have died. We dishonor the dead by leaving the job unfinished.
     My friend asks how many Iraqis must dies before he can call McCain his enemy. He asks exactly the wrong question. The correct question is how many more Iraqis will die if we choose the wrong course for the future. Because we can only lament the dead. But those Iraqis still living — those we can save.
     [That took me about a minute to compose, and, certainly, has some holes. But I hope you’re beginning to see that your anger is blinding you to some obvious retorts.]

109. But I am having difficult seeing that she was savaged “because she was a woman.”
     I’m in the same boat as von in this case. As near as I can tell, the press has had a bizarre fixation on hammering the Clintons ever since the 90s. They hate the Clintons, both of them. I suspect that hatred has motivated a lot of the more nutty media attacks against her. Those attacks might have taken rather sexist form, but their origin may have less to do with sexism than anti-Clinton hatred.
     To put it another way: did the media treat Hillary Clinton during the primary any worse than they threated Bill Clinton during his Presidency? He is not a woman, so to the extent that they were both treated poorly, sexism can’t explain why.

110. 
     TLTIA: I realize this is a reductio, and I genuinely don’t intend this as a “gotcha” but: would you have considered the NSDAP as “opposition” rather than “enemy”? And would you mind elaborating on why? For that matter, suppose the government had been taken over by the Mafia — legitimately elected, mind — who proceeded to use the government to further their own criminal ends. Opposition or enemy?
     Once again, this isn’t intended as a gotcha, I’m genuinely trying to understand what I perceive to be deficiencies in your dichotomy.
     
     It is a fair question. Extreme cases are fine to discuss as long as everyone understands that they are not typical and may distort the argument to the point of absurdity.
     My answer is that the line which seperates “our polity” from “not our polity” in my definition is a fuzzy zone and not a bright line. There are different degrees of allegiance to a particular constitutional order, and also different degrees of threat to that constitutional order.
     The NSDAP in the 1920s and early 30s is a uniquely egregious example of a party determined to destroy the constitutional order of the current state while working within the norms of that state for tactical purposes only. This was not exactly a secret either – it was well known to informed people in Germany, many of whom chose to ignore that problem because it suited their own agendas.
     I would say this this is an exception – the NSDAP were enemies to be fought by fair means or foul in whatever manner was most effective. Of course I’m going to say that, who today is going to admit that on principle they would lay down before the NSDAP and let the consequences happen.
     Where this analogy breaks down when compared with the USA is that while some elements of the GOP (Dick Cheney, et al) are committed to a partial revocation of our constitutional order (at least as understood by those of us opposed to him), that order is far stronger and more deeply grounded in US history and culture, than was the weak Weimar democracy which was under siege from both the left and the right.
     For me, it really is a question of: do you trust that our creaky and sometimes slow and ineffective system is going to hold up. I look back at a lot of very bad history that we’ve managed to get through and say yes.
     I know that when contemplating the human cost of letting malevolent or foolish people hold power, there is a tremendous urge to do something, now, to make it stop. My take from lengthy reading and thinking about this problem is that a democratic system is the best means yet devised to solve this problem, and counterfactual histories which imagine a radicalized politics as a solution tend towards benefit analysis, without reckoning the true costs. A radicalized political system usually ends in one of two ways: (1) the Right wins, or (2) the Left has to resort to extreme violence and coercion to win and loses its moral compass in the process. Both of these are bad outcomes, IMHO.
     In that sense, I too am a classical liberal like von (sorry von about the misclassification), which is why I am agreeing with him on this.

111. I’m in the same boat as von in this case.
     I amend my comment that you’re missing perspective, Turbulence. Anytime you agree with me, your perspective is absolutely perfect. 😉

112. But I am having difficult seeing that she was savaged “because she was a woman.”
     No, I get that. What I’m not getting is why. Are you seriously suggesting that all the references to her being “castrating”, of her “reminding men of their nagging wives”, of her sounding like she’s telling men to take out the garbage, about her cleavage and her makeup, that these would all have happened were she a man? That Tucker Carlson would’ve said “I’m really going to miss that cackle”, that Mathews would’ve called the male politicians who support her “castratos in the eunuch chorus”?
     And on. And on. And on. Links available on request, but you really shouldn’t need them by now.
     [Mind, I don’t dispute that the media (and the GOP) have had a bizarre hard-on for the Clintons for some time… but what that overlooks is that, for many of them, the obsession with Hillary is a sexist one, if not a misogynistic one. Remember the lesbian accusations? How unwomanly it was that she used “Rodham”? That she had a career? And so forth. It may be historical, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sexist.]
     I should have written “uncontrolled anger” doesn’t work in politics.
     That’s well and good — and a massive change from your original, btw — but irrelevant and still not correct. Completely uncontrolled anger, or wild anger, that I could agree with; but I haven’t seen that and, unless riots break out, I don’t expect to. “Anger which might be more precisely targeted”, OTOH, has moved mountains, and will do so again, though whether it will now is of course open to question.

113. WTF are you talking about? Apocalyptic? Who has said anything apocalyptic?
     Sorry, I should have quoted:
     
     Exactly how many Iraqi civilian deaths would Bush, McCain and the Republican party have to be responsible for annihilating before we can consider them enemies? 6 million? 3? 1?
     
     To put it into perspective, 6 million is more than 20 percent of the pre-war population of Iraq, which would be on par with the Thirty Years War or the worst parts of WW2 in Eastern Europe and Russia.
     That sounds pretty apocalyptic to me. Not that I am in any way discounting the tragedy of smaller numbers of victims.

114. sorry von about the misclassification
     No worries. I tend to come across on this blog as conservative, even though I tend toward the social-liberal/economic conservative Cato-at-Liberty crowd.
     My answer is that the line which seperates “our polity” from “not our polity” in my definition is a fuzzy zone and not a bright line.
     Incidentally, natural law folks have long discussed the natural human right of revolution against tyranny. Some see it in the Declaration of Independence, and regard it as an animating force for the Second Amendment (among other things).

115. Hilzoy, Bruce and Left Turn,
     I truly appreciate your kind and sympathetic words.
     I agree, Left Turn, the intensity of the pain in which one experiences over the death of a loved one does reflect on the intensity of that person’s capacity to love. But why does it have to hurt so damn much?
     Grieving may be healthy but there’s plenty of side effects that are questionable: the sleeping pills, the drinking, punching a wall or two (the fucking wall always, and, I mean, always wins).
     But the human heart is amazing.
     As you grieve — be it for a person or beloved pet — you still love. Your wife. Your son. Your Bowser. Your Hammels.
     Then you go back to work, and even that helps. Your mind is still on your loss, but you still manage to go on and do the job you do.
     You start to look at things a little differently — like when you look out your bedroom window and see a young squirrel hiding under the barbecue grill, almost as if he were playing hide-and-seek with his friend or sibling nearby, who was too busy stealing birdseed to play along.
     You notice how sweet birds sound in the morning, in the evening, all day long. You wonder if God ever made anything any better or more simple than a bird: He sings. He flys. He darts and dives. Millions and millions of dollars and great minds were required to get airplanes to do what birds have been doing forever; yes, they are perfect.
     Stress hurts and makes you tired and makes you write “much like Al Gore in 1980” — yikes!
     1980?
     I had just graduated high school. A tired mind — unlike a tired heart — is the organ that plays such tricks.
     My heart is big.
     Right now, it is not whole.
     But when it is again, I will continue to bicker and banter, agree and disagree, with fell ObWi bloggers.
     And while I was truly moved by Sen. Clinton’s speech — and her call for her supporters to embrace Sen. Obama — I am amazed by her goodwill.
     I mean, he will get my vote.
     Just not as enthusiastically as she would have.
     Losing hurts, especially when the stakes were as high as they were in the Democratic Primary. And so it was that I was amazed by Hillary Clinton’s class, composure and strength.

116. No, I get that. What I’m not getting is why.
     OK, let’s take these in turn:
     Are you seriously suggesting that all the references to her being “castrating”, of her “reminding men of their nagging wives”, of her sounding like she’s telling men to take out the garbage, about her cleavage and her makeup, that these would all have happened were she a man?
     Granted, I’ve kept an insane schedule of late. But I am a bit of a political junkie, and the only examples that I recall getting any MSM play was the stupidity about the cleavage and the makeup.
     That Tucker Carlson would’ve said “I’m really going to miss that cackle”,
     I actually agree with Tucker: If calling that practiced, stupid, fake laugh a “cackle” makes me sexist, sign me up. Clinton made herself ridiculuous with her attempt to force the appearance of a sense of humor.
     Or: sometimes a cackle is just a cackle.
     that Mathews would’ve called the male politicians who support her “castratos in the eunuch chorus”?
     On the other hand, everything Chris Matthews does or says is motivated by sexism. Why should Clinton be any different?
     Remember the lesbian accusations? How unwomanly it was that she used “Rodham”? That she had a career? And so forth. It may be historical, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sexist.
     Well, OK: if your point is based on the past, I agree with it. My perspective is based on the recent campaign.

117. “Anger doesn’t work in politics” ???
     We don’t have to go back to the civil rights struggle for a counterexample. How did George W. Bush get to be President again? Have we forgotten the “Brooks Brothers riot”? Newt Gingrich’s “liberals and Americans”? Right wing talk radio?
     I would argue that although the impeachment of Bill Clinton failed in itself, the Republicans won a longer-term victory, only now turning sour.
     I’m sorry, von, I have to disagree, even with the added proviso, “uncontrolled anger”. I happen to prefer reasoned discourse to appeals to emotion, but I am a small voice. Turning it up a notch, is violence ever justified?
     Anarch’s reducto leads to a question I have asked myself more than once — under what circumstances would I be willing to lay down my life? It’s not a choice I’ve had to face. I doubt I’ll ever man the barricades, but I hesitate to judge someone else’s decision — I have to acknowledge that somewhere there is a line, even if I disagree about its location.

118. bedtimeforbozo: Please accept my sympathies for both of your loses. Do not feel guilty for grieving over your lost dog. My bet is that somehow your grief for each has morphed together.
     Now, let me offer you this bit of “woo-woo.” I lost a most beloved pet a few years ago. During her illness, I was introduced to an animal communicator, and after she died, I pursued this avenue for awhile. It had proven remarkably helpful in dealing with all that was involved in my dog’s illness and dying, and I found it intriguing. One of the workshops I took was on Death and Dying, and during it, I had a ‘connection’ with my dog. I had asked if she had anything that she wished to tell me. Her response has proven very comforting to me over the years since she left, and it was this: “The love that we shared has been released into the Universe and is ongoing.” Trust me when I say that this is not something that I would be likely to dream up. But I have found a wonderful thought the idea that this intense love we shared may be out there offering healing in some fashion…..
     And one final comment. Society expects us to grieve for our family members, but expects us to just ‘get over’ the loss of a pet in a few days at most. For those of us who truly do love our pets, they leave a giant hole in our lives and a few days is no where near enough. Your pain will lessen over time, but you will not forget your dog. And that is good.

119. TLTIA: It is a fair question. Extreme cases are fine to discuss as long as everyone understands that they are not typical and may distort the argument to the point of absurdity.
     Of course. Like I said, this isn’t a gotcha, it’s a way of illuminating what I perceive to be a deficiency in your definition.
     Where this analogy breaks down when compared with the USA is that while some elements of the GOP (Dick Cheney, et al) are committed to a partial revocation of our constitutional order (at least as understood by those of us opposed to him)…
     But that, it seems to me, misses the point. Just because they won’t succeed — at least fully — doesn’t mean they’re benign; it just means they’re either incompetent or have taken on a task too monumental. Much like Al Qaeda’s plot to “destroy the United States”, come to that. Are you arguing that Al Qaeda isn’t our enemy because they can’t succeed at that goal? Of course not; so why should we give Cheney et al. a pass because they can’t completely dismantle the Constitution as they’d like?
     But if the NSDAP is too extreme, and fair enough, let me reiterate the mafioso comparison. Suppose that the Godfather were elected President of the United States under the auspices of the Mafia Party and proceed to use the US Armed Forces as his personal hit squad while systematically ravaging the government. Would such a man, or such a party, be an “opponent” under such circumstances?
     This, to me, strikes at the crux of the hole in your definition: you’re presuming in this dichotomy that the people who were legitimately elected within the system have the legitimate interests of the system at heart. That no-one can be elected via legitimate means who genuinely does not care what damage they inflict while pursuing their own ends. “Enemies” might be an overstrong word for such people, but I refuse to call them “opposition” because they aren’t. To be “opposition” you must, at some level, be truly invested in the legitimacy of the system; and, after eight years, I think the weight of the evidence shows that the Bush Administration, Cheney in particular, is not. If you have another word to describe such criminality I’m all ears, but until then I’m afraid “enemies” is the more accurate descriptor.
     To be clear here, I completely agree that your categories exist, are distinct, and are important, and I largely agree with your distinctions. What you said about the NSDAP applies here, though, and it warrants bolding: the Bush Administration is extremal, and extremist. They are the exceptional case in this country, and we need to treat them accordingly — both politically and, here, semantically.
     [This is the same reason, btw, that I say the Bush Administration “lied” us into war. I don’t think that’s actually true — I think they (very skillfully) deployed what Frankfurt calls “bullshit” — but parsing this distinction always ends up palliating their crimes in a way I find unacceptable. Until “bullshit” is regarded as egregious a sin as “lying”, “lying” it is.]

120. Regarding the following (and your discussion of talk radio, etc.):
     I’m sorry, von, I have to disagree, even with the added proviso, “uncontrolled anger”. I happen to prefer reasoned discourse to appeals to emotion, but I am a small voice. Turning it up a notch, is violence ever justified?
     We are not talking about inspiring or using anger in others. We are talking about crafting a message that is based on uncontrolled anger.
     I would argue that although the impeachment of Bill Clinton failed in itself, the Republicans won a longer-term victory, only now turning sour.
     I can see the argument — the impeachment was unsucessful but weakened Gore to the extent that it allowed a GWB victory. As for your other examples, I don’t think they prove your point. The closest that I’ve seen to anger working in politics was the ’94 Republican Revolution and, to a limited (and, telling, losing) extent, Ross Perot. But the ’94 RR was actually sold on a positive, not angry, agenda (Contract with America). And Ross, well, lost.

121. von: I raised the historical issue because of Turbulence’s remarks. As to the rest… the simplest advice I can give is to hunt down the Daily Show from Thursday, I think it was, the segment with Kristen Schaal — Mel from Flight of the Conchords, if you’re interested — in which something like 15 of these are played in about two minutes. It may or may not have gotten “play”, depending on your definition, but it was out there in abundance.
     [In a sense, actually, it was even worse than getting “play”, in that most of the sexism was only done in passing, as if it was de rigueur and unworthy of comment: sexism so deep they probably didn’t even notice it. Or care.]

122. Jwo,
     Thank you.
     Thank you very much.

123. But the ’94 RR was actually sold on a positive, not angry, agenda (Contract with America).
     Sure it was. There was positivity involved, true — if you regard the Contract as inherently positive, which I will arguendo — but a hell of a lot of the emotional drive came from carefully fostered anger towards the Clintons and all that they stood for.

124. von, what do you think is the purpose of a crafting and broadcasting a message of uncontrolled anger? It has been a deliberate strategy and alas, an effective one.
     I agree that this has to be opposed, but denying its power is a mistake.

125. Incidentally, natural law folks have long discussed the natural human right of revolution against tyranny.
     Absolutely. I would have grave doubts about the political judgement of anyone who did not recognize that right. The key question is: what is “tyranny”?
     And more to the point, how do we recognize that we are on a road which leads to it while there is still time to depart from that course?
     Arguments I’ve heard from radicals (both right and left) at various times since the late 1960s is that we are on the path to fascism/communism/name-your-tyranny, argued as an extrapolation of current events that are alarming, postulating an extension of the same trend into the future.
     Now sometimes this does happen (see the NSDAP example raised by Turb above). But often it doesn’t happen, that countervailing political forces come into play as a reaction to overreach and power grabs within the govt., and we step back from the brink. This has happened often enough in American history that I have some confidence in the resiliency of our constitutional system and the culture which underlies it.
     I often hear it said that power once obtained is never given up. That is simply not true in our history.
     The Aliens and Sedition Act was rolled back. Lincoln’s abridgement of civil liberties was temporary. The anti-German measures of the Wilson administration during WW1 and the Red scare which followed were temporary. FDR’s war time powers and the abuses which flowed from them were an artifact of that era. McCarthyism passed over us. Nixon’s Imperial Presidency (to return to the theme of the top level post) proceeded from hubris to nemesis.
     Given the repetitive nature of this history, I have confidence that the latest power grabs made by Bush, et. al. under the guise of the GWOT will in time be relegated to the same sad list of times when the US has not lived up to the spirit and the law of our foundational documents and our constitutional system.
     This too shall pass. Not by osmosis, but because we today are doing the same thing our ancestors have done – to actively push back when it has gone too far. We are seeing it unfold in the very election that we spend so much time discussing on this blog.
     Certainly we must be on constant guard against this history repeating itself, but that is an altogether different proposition from taking our latest outbreak and extrapolating it forward as evidence of new horrors lurking ahead of us in the future, and then using these hypotheticals as justification for radicalized action today.

126. I agree with TLTIABQ about enemies, but also with others about he magnitude of the threat posed by the Bush administration and its allies.
     I did not think this about Reagan, and surely not about Bush 1 or Ford. Heck, I don’t think Nixon was as much of a threat to our system of government. His violations of explicit laws were very small by comparison.
     I think that crafting messages (or doing most things) while in the grip of uncontrolled anger is likely to be counterproductive. I think that messages of serious anger have worked well for the GOP, but (a) we’re not them, and (b) with any luck, they might be wearing thin round about now.

127. Fwiw: what I agree with, about the magnitude of the threat etc., is not that it justifies invoking the right to revolution (which I don’t at all think), but that it is very, very serious.
     Any President who asserts, and also repeatedly uses, a “right” to disregard statutes and treaties, let alone the right to treat our country as “the field of battle” within which he has the right to act according to the laws of war, claims a dictatorial power, and throws away the separation of powers. Threats don’t get more fundamental than that.

128. Yes, hilzoy, I too hope that now that we have exhausted all the other possibilities we will at last do the right thing.
     In darker moments my fear is, that list of “other possibilities” isn’t really exhausted.

129. How long do you grieve for the loss of a dog?

     As long as it takes for the pain of losing a dear part of your life to fade. I am sorry to hear of your loss, bedtimeforbonzo.

130. To put it into perspective, 6 million is more than 20 percent of the pre-war population of Iraq, which would be on par with the Thirty Years War or the worst parts of WW2 in Eastern Europe and Russia.
     That sounds pretty apocalyptic to me. Not that I am in any way discounting the tragedy of smaller numbers of victims.
     TLTIA, I did not mention those specific numbers because I thought they were plausible or likely. I raised them because I think it is generally agreed that the Nazi regime’s killing of six million Jews might legitimately earn them the title of “enemy” for many people the world over, regardless of whether or not their government was legitimate. I mean, assume for a moment that the regime was completely legitimate: would you have the audacity to tell a surviving German Jew that it was inappropriate to consider Hitler his enemy? I would not.
     So, six million seems like a good number for many people. No doubt there are many factors that go into moral assessments inherent in labeling who or what is an “enemy”, but I think absolute numbers matter. Of course, the Nazis sought the deaths of their victims whereas Republicans didn’t, and I’m sure such issues are very important in most courts, but, alas, they don’t make Iraqi victims any less dead.
     I asked about those specific numbers because they strike me as useful benchmarks, nothing more.

131. To be “opposition” you must, at some level, be truly invested in the legitimacy of the system; and, after eight years, I think the weight of the evidence shows that the Bush Administration, Cheney in particular, is not.
     I’m sorry but I don’t see much evidence to suggest that they are currently as bad or worse than the prior eruptions of authoritarianism which we’ve “enjoyed” in our past (or perhaps I’ve failed to notice that you and I are having this conversation from the comfort of our detention cells, of the sort which past radical critics of the govt have enjoyed). As for the hazards of extrapolation see my 10:53 comment.
     Not to minimize what the current administration is doing, but rather to point out that past episodes have been pretty bad and I think we tend to lose sight of that.
     What would be the contemporary equivalent of the Ludlow massacre, to name just one example?

132. I am not a pacificist, but I do believe that the least force necessary to do the job effectively is pretty much always desirable. Thus, when I see a political party rewarding people who confess to election tampering with more opportunities to do the same, who seem not to care about the miserable lives and wretched deaths of anyone outside their circle, who enrich themselves and their cronies while neglecting the most basic elements of infrastructure and administration, and so on, I think, “I’ve seen this before” and can take steps accordingly.
     Thus, I think, we can take the NASDAP, Peron’s party, the Bolsheviks, and their like as warnings and lessons. We can fight them with legitimate means within the confines of civil order, before they get a chance to destroy that order again.
     It is, in its way, like the defense of one’s property. First you put up markers of your boundaries, then warnings about trespassings, then you warn off trespassers, then you get the cops involved, and then, maybe, if necessary, you use more force on your own. The hooligans have done a lot to destroy civil enforcement mechanisms in the US, and to make elections unverifiable and susceptible to tampering, but haven’t yet gotten to the point of just tossing out results altogether. So campaigning remains a worthwhile means of attempting to restore normal politics.

133. TLTIA,
     Would it be fair to say that if the Bush administration launched a nuclear strike against Iran and killed 15 million people, they would still not merit the term enemy provided they conducted fair elections in November?

134. Thank you, Prodigal.

135. TLTIA: I didn’t say that Cheney et al. were fascist — though I do believe that they are proto-fascist, on which your mileage may definitely vary — but rather that they do not believe, at a fundamental level, in the legitimacy of the system which they are charged to protect; and that they have instead used that system to further their own ends at the expense of the country. That furtherance does not (yet) involve violence against fellow citizens — although see Florida 2000 — but IMO that speaks more to their desires than their proclivities.
     [OTOH, if you regard malign neglect as authoritarian violence, I’ll offer Katrina as an example. Though that’s closer to the Great Flood of 1927 than Ludlow, on which more below.]
     To address your examples above, which are well taken, I’ll say only this before I head off to bed: in all those cases there were, for lack of a better term, explicating circumstances. Actual wars against actual polities with the actual survival of nations in the balance.* No such emergency applies today, the Administration’s hysteria notwithstanding. Instead, we’ve had an open subversion of the democratic norms of this country such that — if they were taken to their logical conclusion, as the Bush Administration periodically claims they will — they would mitigate entirely the protections of the Constitution.
     * Slight exception for Alien and Sedition but then again, back then the Constitution still had that new-Constitution smell.
     What would be the contemporary equivalent of the Ludlow massacre, to name just one example?
     What would be the contemporary equivalent of the Ludlow strike? I don’t think you can have one without the other, and the demoralization of labor pretty much precludes that.
     [Not to say that we don’t have strikes — heck, I myself went on strike a few years back — but striking in the heavy industries? Doesn’t happen nowadays.]

136. Publius, I’m wondering how you feel now about your last stated conclusions here. There’s no update, so should we assume you stand by them? Or not?
     Perhaps you might speak to this when you find a moment?
     Also, btw, I hope you don’t still have the weird delusion that I feel “hostile” to you in some fashion, since that’s, well, completely disconnected from reality. Though obviously you don’t have to take my word for it, if you don’t see reason to. But there’s just no reason I’d feel any “hostility” towards you. I like you fine. I’m precise with, and have high expectations of, everyone. Everyone whom one should have high expectations of, at least, anyway.

137. Wow. Well Jesurgislac, I will say this: I normally find myself nodding in agreement to whatever you have to say on this board. I comment infrequently but I am a frequent lurker and I normally find your commentary incisive. But I have to say that you are really “off the rails” on this one. To focus on one point in particular, it beggars belief that you are really trying to “hang your hat” on the Zimbabwe remarks.
     In my mind, Clinton wanted to raise doubts about her opponent’s eventual victory and to do so, she invoked a foreign election scenario that involved egregious violations of the basic principles of democracy. Your arguments that that is not what she was doing are pretty unpersuasive to me but hey, opinions are like butts right? Everyone’s got one and everyone thinks everyone else’s stinks.
     For me, the issue that I have with your argument is that you seem convinced that the argument over what Clinton’s intent was with this remark ought to be “off the table.” You believe, somehow, that her intent was completely innocent of what it implies from my point of view. I have a hard time seeing your point of view but what strikes me as even more hard to grasp is your notion that I have something to apologize for because I disagree with you on this.
     I believe that I know exactly what she meant when she said this. I find it objectionable and I have said so. You disagree. Fair enough. The idea that this should end with my apologizing for some horrible transgression is truly bizarre and mystifying.

138. LeftTurn: The abandonment of New Orleans comes immediately to mind. The Superdome victims were on TV for days, after all.
     Pat Tillman.
     The hundreds of reporter and photographer deaths and disappearances in Iraq and Afghanistan that the government won’t officially investigate and won’t let anyone else investigate.
     And that’s if I confine myself to lethal violence, as opposed to more systematic manipulation of eligibility rules and such to simply disenfranchise undesirables.

139. (Clarification: I don’t think the Office of the VP put out a hit order on Tillman, or anything like that. I believe that the central figures in the administration allow, encourage, and are amused by abuse of “traitors” up to and including fragging, both individually and collectively, as with the incidents of organized religious discrimination and harassment documented in previous posts here and elsewhere. They allow useful violence to flourish without attempting to control it all directly. This is another thing that reminds me of Peron and Mussolini.)

140. Would it be fair to say that if the Bush administration launched a nuclear strike against Iran and killed 15 million people, they would still not merit the term enemy provided they conducted fair elections in November?
     
     If that actually happened, then I would agree with you, except I wouldn’t call the people involved “enemies”, I would call them “madmen”, and “criminals”.
     IMHO that’s a strawman hypothetical slightly less unlikely than the ticking time bomb torture scenario.
     The President doesn’t just push a button to incinerate millions of people. We have a chain of command between him and the missiles and bombs, which is not in the hair trigger state it was maintained in during the Cold War when we anticipated the possibility of a Soviet attack with no prior warning.
     There has already been significant public pushback against aggression vs. Iran coming out of the DOD and the intelligence community via the last NIE.
     Given that context I am reasonably certain that any such order for a strike with nukes coming from the WH without a Congressional authorization for war, and absent a dire national emergency, would be treated exactly the way that I would expect: as a sign that the POTUS was mentally ill and needed to be temporarily removed from the chain of command pending a mental evaluation and possibly subject to emergency impeachment proceedings.
     If the WH starts making noises about a nuclear strike on Iran, I will be writing to my reps and to the leaders in Congress asking that they have impeachment articles pre-drafted and ready for emergency use, such that the entire process would take less than 72 hours.
     I don’t expect to come anywhere close to such an extreme scenario, but if you are going to postulate a constitutional crisis, that is my answer. We have the tools already in hand to deal with this kind of situation, we will need to summon the will to use them.

141. I should also say that this is a very good post, and I completely agree with you. Well-put.

142. OT: Oh frabjous day! I have got wifi back in my house!
     The importance of this, to me, is that my cable modem is on the third floor, in my office, and the AC there is also screwed up. So: no internet in any place where it isn’t miserably hot. Until now.
     This has been true for several days, which is why no posts. I’d get up there and just want to leave again asap.
     But now I can get the internet and not be over 100 degrees! Hallelujah!

143. And to add to that, a tree limb fell down near my house and took out phone service for a couple of days. The repair guy, who came yesterday, was named Dorian Gray. Really. (He was very nice, too.)

144. Did he show you a picture ID?

145. Tuning in late, just to offer condolences to bedtimeforbonzo. I am so very sorry for your loss, and not at all dismissive because “it’s just a dog.”
     There is no “just” about it: the animals we share our lives with are family, no less than the human members thereof, and the sense of grief and loss is just as deep and tearing for one as for the other.
     Grieve as long as you need to.

146. Doesn’t the fact that Bush was appointed by the Supreme Court kind of undermine von’s comments about “legitimate authority”? The Bushies played chicken right off the bat, holding the entire system of government hostage, with fake rioters and election fraud, and the American people blinked, because Al Gore and the Democrats and the American people weren’t willing to bet on what length these people would go to to seize power.
     Partly because at the time, most people figured the Bush administration would be mediocre and uninspiring, like his previous career, not the complete and utter disaster and dismantling of the country it’s been.

147. To come back to the post… 🙂
     Having re-read Clinton’s endorsement speech, I think that the best answer to the question “What should Clinton do next?” is “More like this, please!” I’m really impressed by both candidates and their staffs today – whoever made all this happen behind the scenes did a fantastic job with it. I am glad to have reasons to smile in many directions and cheer so many folks on. Looking forward to more of it.
     The challenges are serious. But serious times and tasks call for happiness as well as anger and sorrow.

148. I don’t have time to comment on the many thoughtful comments on this thread, but I need to say that I also agree completely with Nell, here:

     Hilzoy at least grasps why and acknowledges that this post might give offense to Clinton supporters.
     It also irritates those of us who have been waiting for the backbiting to be over, who really are interested in the reconciliation happening as quickly as possible, and mutual trust re-developing between the camps in the interest of maximum success in November.

     Indeed.

149. “But now I can get the internet and not be over 100 degrees! Hallelujah!”
     It’s down to 82 in this room, as of a minute ago when it finally dropped from 83, at 2:04 a.m.
     God i need some sleep.

150. “But this is one of the biggest political upsets in american history. a former first lady lost after being ‘inevitable,’ for very unique reasons (historically speaking). it’s a big complex interesting question why that happened. so, i am going to be talking about it — more to the point, i think it’s a very interesting discussion, particularly for political junkies.”
     Suggestion: you could write your post, save it, and wait two weeks, or even more, to post it, you know.
     Not in line with the immediate gratification typical of blogging, to be sure.
     But it’s an available choice to consider, while also considering the consequences of what you want to accomplish by posting, and how various readers will react, and how useful or not you’re being, in the end, to the Obama campaign, with your choices.

151. “Electing a qualified woman president seemed a truly history-changing event. At 22, my grandma voted in the first election I was sad my feminist mother died 4 years ago and didn’t get a chance to vote for Hillary. I would imagine African Americans felt similarly about Obama.”
     Grand to see you back, Redstocking! Welcome!
     “Electing a qualified woman president seemed a truly history-changing event.”
     So is electing a qualified African-American candidate, so obviously that can’t be it, alone.
     I suggest that you may have the answer in your next two sentences: “At 22, my grandma voted in the first election I was sad my feminist mother died 4 years ago and didn’t get a chance to vote for Hillary. I would imagine African Americans felt similarly about Obama.”
     What you are saying — and I see this in many women, and some men — is that Senator Clinton’s campaign was, and her nomination would have been, a history-changing event that you identify personally with.
     There’s nothing whatever wrong with that! We are all the sum of the different parts of our identity! It is fine to identify with ourselves if it is within reason. And preferring a qualified woman to a qualified man is an utterly valid thing to do when you identify more with the historic nature of the first woman to come within a hair’s breath of the nomination than you do with the first African-American to edge past that hair’s breath.
     Just as it’s fine for African-Americans, and many other Americans, women and men alike, to identify as much or more with the first dark-skinned Democratic nominee for President.
     Just as it was fine for Catholics to identify with John F. Kennedy, and for some Jews to identify with — eeuw, yes, I know — Joe Lieberman (that was then, this is now; hey, Al Gore picked him, not me).
     And so on.
     We are who we are, and that’s a valid choice.
     So maybe that’s not if, but if it is, that’s fine, I suggest.
     What do you think?

152. “and I note 335,000 hits on Obama and Rezko. But, I get 524,000 hits when I google on Hillary Clinton and Zimbabwe.”
     I get this:

     Results 1 – 10 of about 720,000 for obama rezko.

     I made sure to sign out as a Google user, and it made no difference.
     For “‘hillary clinton’ zimbabwe” I get this:

     Results 1 – 10 of about 570,000 for “hillary clinton” zimbabwe.

     I suggest people try Googling these words themselves, and or clicking my actual link, to check these results. I encourage Jes to provide an actual link to her results. Someone might ask her to do that, if she’d like to.

153. “Of course Clinton asked to have the Florida and Michigan delegates seated! Why not? If Obama had won in either state, so would he!”
     Is this mind-reading, or do you have a cite?

154. Brent: You believe, somehow, that her intent was completely innocent of what it implies from my point of view.
     Yes, I do. I think it beggars belief the amount of really horrific ill-will and presumption of malice that can be directed at Hillary Clinton – it’s an extraordinary proof of how the media’s hate campaign against her within the US since 1992 had paid off.
     Bruce: Having re-read Clinton’s endorsement speech, I think that the best answer to the question “What should Clinton do next?” is “More like this, please!” I’m really impressed by both candidates and their staffs today – whoever made all this happen behind the scenes did a fantastic job with it. I am glad to have reasons to smile in many directions and cheer so many folks on. Looking forward to more of it.
     Bruce, you don’t know how glad I am to make my last comment on this thread end with this: I completely agree.

155. “Do you think our society will only stop fearing and hating truly powerful women when men and women share equally in childrearing?”
     This is a kind of totum pro parte. Only individuals can fear and hate. Society has no consciousness, no thoughts, no will, no self-awareness, no ability to decide.
     “Society” cannot engage in any of these things, including the actions you attribute to it.
     This is a truly common category error, a truly common logical error. It typically leads to confused conclusions, and in this case, the notion that it makes sense to rail against “society,” which cannot reply, and if we don’t apply an objective metric to judge how “society,” as a collective, does something — anything — it leads to railing against a concept that isn’t measurable, can’t respond, and can’t be usefully discussed.
     That which can’t be usefully discussed can’t be usefully discussed, I suggest, and so I question the use of this sort of thinking or approach to any topic.
     Be concrete, I suggest: it’s the only way useful discussions can take place, rather than with generalities which can’t be usefully measured or discussed.

156. “Hillary supporters perceived that too many progressive blogs became almost as hurtful as the mass media,”
     Blogs can’t be hurtful; only people can be hurt. Only specific people can be hurt. Confusing cause and effect is also a category error, and also always leads to confused conclusions, I suggest.
     If you’d like to discuss which specific people were hurt by which specific blogs, with cites, cool.
     But claims that blogs were, passive voice, “hurtful,” without specifying who was hurt and why and by whom can’t lead, again, to any kind of useful discussion: it’s an assertion that cannot be tested, and an assertion that isn’t falsifiable isn’t useful.
     All blogs are, after all, “hurtful” to someone. It’s who they’re hurtful to, and when and where and why, and how much — the specifics — that matter.
     Can you put your ideas into falsifiable terms, perhaps, please? If so, thanks!

157. “Anger in politicals doesn’t work.”
     What’s a “political”? It’s an adjective, not a noun. To what are you referring?

158. If we’re talking about specifics, do Clinton supporters who complain about the sexism of Obama’s campaign have examples of Obama campaign advisers (not blog writers or media commentators) saying things which are as offensively sexist as James Carville’s comments on Obama’s masculinity? Samantha Power’s comments about Clinton were offensive, but not specifically gendered.

159. Yes, I do. I think it beggars belief the amount of really horrific ill-will and presumption of malice that can be directed at Hillary Clinton – it’s an extraordinary proof of how the media’s hate campaign against her within the US since 1992 had paid off.
     But I did not and do not align myself with the “media’s hate campaign” against Clinton. I am perfectly able to recognize and criticize many of the frames and narratives that have been used to define her. I still think her comments about Zimbabwe were ill formed.
     I don’t think that there is any point in arguing which of is right but to suggest that my interpretation of her remarks proceeds from an inherent ill will towards Clinton is a bad misjudgment on your part – one you are apparently incapable of perceiving. I happen to like Hillary Clinton. Your conclusion inexorably linking the fact that some have disagreed with some of her rhetoric to some generalized animus towards her is just purely bad logic.
     There is something truly remarkable about how wrong you are on this one. The “extraordinary proof” you are talking about is actually not any kind of proof of anything at all.

160. I would probably, I think, if I had been in a position to vote which of course I’m not, have voted for Obama. Unless I’d got particularly p*ssed off by some extraordinary piece of crap from an Obama supporter about how dreadful Clinton is . . .
     [The protestors at the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee were] bad thing and plays into McCain/the Republican Party’s goals, yes. But blaming Hillary Clinton for it is as much nonsense as blaming her exclusively for the Iraq war on the basis of one vote.
     So, punishing Obama for the actions of his supporters=reasonable. Blaming Hillary for the actions of her supporters=nonsense. QED, I guess.

161. Read Fred Hiatt in the Washington Post this morning. He shows that Bush Lied, People Died’ is a canard. Over and over again, Rockefeller’s report says that what the administration claimed was ‘generally substantiated by intelligence information’.
     What price Val Plame, Joe Wilson, and Larry Johnson?
     You think this issue is going away. Well it might if we were stuck in a quagmire, but we are winning and the Iraqis are happy about it and the Iranians, upset.
     Are you glad?
     ========================================

162. He shows that Bush Lied, People Died’ is a canard.
     hmmm. a war-cheerleader cites a report written by another war cheerleader as evidence that war-cheerleaders were correct.
     well, i’m convinced!

163. Yes, it appears Rockefeller was a war cheerleader. Read the editorial.
     =================

164. James Carville’s comments on Obama’s masculinity

     Is there any hope that Clinton’s loss might mean we see less of the odious Carville? Probably not. The DSCC and DCCC were both using him to send out e-mail requests for contributions even at the height of the Obama-Clinton contest. Needless to say, those weren’t successful in reaching me.
     And Coke has an ad featuring Carville with Bill Frist. Which one of those slimeballs is supposed to make me want to drink the product?

165. It seems, in fact, that the problem is that Bush didn’t do enough cheerleading. The crowd was roaring behind him, in full throat, bipartisan, precautionary principle.
     ==========================

166. Oh wait, Obama wasn’t roaring. He was busy schmoozing with Rezko, absorbing Wright’s sermons with his family, and breaking into divorce court records. Much too busy to be involved in the most important event of his time.
     =======================

167. DNFTT, people. It would be one thing if Kim’s comments were even vaguely related to the thread, but this is just derailment, verging on an attempt to “disrupt or destroy meaningful conversation for its own sake” (to quote the posting rules).

168. Read the editorial.
     5 out of 5 war cheerleaders agree: war cheerleaders are blameless !

169. “Anger in politicals doesn’t work.”
     What’s a “political”? It’s an adjective, not a noun. To what are you referring?

     That was a typo, Gary.

170. ok. KC’s right.
     it’s off to the pie factory for kim.

171. It’s a bit tangential, but I’ve already mentioned Larry Johnson, big fan of Hillary.
     I’ll be happy to respond in a new thread. This is important stuff, pertinent to the campaign. Ignore it at your peril.
     ====================

172. What should Hillary do? She should support the war effort, and validate her vote years ago. Hiatt’s editorial is a powerful indictment of the disloyalty of the opposition.
     =================

173. You know, when the Iraq campaign is practically a victory, and the war on terror well engaged, it is going to occur to some Democratic politician that opposing the effort looks ludicrous.
     Across the Muslim world, even jihadists are denouncing bin Laden. C’mon, people, rejoice.
     ================

174. More important than whether or not blogs are ‘hurtful’.
     =======================

175. von: In re your earlier post, I’d forgotten the the Hillary Nutcracker. [Warning: Link to Great Orange Satan.] Whether or not you find it amusing, it’s undeniably sexist and of a piece with what I was talking about above.

176. Gary – I think you go a little far in ascribing category error. If the person making the argument is actually positing that an object has an ability that it can’t have, then sure, it’s category error. But language is rife with metonymy precisely because it’s useful in discussions.
     I’d even argue that, beyond the valuable shorthand they provide, metonymic expressions can make useful discussion easier by allowing the discussion to proceed from “loose” to “tight”. A statement like, “society needs to realize…” has a rich set of entailments, and a discussion can explore them rather than walking a more strictly delineated path. Compare the following two discussions:
     X: Society needs to realize blah blah blah
     Y: That’s a category error.
     X: **Imputes something more specific**
     Y: **Refutes something more specific with devastating ninja logic powers**
     [end]
     X: Society needs to realize blah blah blah
     Y: Would you require that actual laws be passed to admit that society has realized blah blah blah?
     Z: If blah blah blah were presented more positively by Hollywood, then yak yak yak
     Q: I believe that society is evolving such that blah blah blah is likely to become a common belief due to blibbidy blibbidy.
     [etc., etc.]
     Some discussions, I’d argue, are better when the participants wander around metonymically for a while, get the lay of the land, set up some discursive lawn chairs, pop a few Rogue Dialectic Pale Ales, and save the brass tacks for later.

177. Thank you, CaseyL, for the kind words (12:49 am today).
     Thank you.

178. Hye, bedtimeforbonzo. I share your pain. About six weeks ago, my wife and I lost our eight-year-old German shepherd to liver disease. We knew it was coming, but it happened quickly and dramatically. We’re still hurting, but it does get better with time. How much? I can’t say. My wife is still deeper in grief than I am, so it varies.
     You may have seen it already, but if not, the Rainbow Bridge helped up both deal with our loss.
     Blessings to you,
     John

179. “Given the repetitive nature of this history, I have confidence that the latest power grabs made by Bush, et. al. under the guise of the GWOT will in time be relegated to the same sad list of times when the US has not lived up to the spirit and the law of our foundational documents and our constitutional system.”
     Historically, this is the stance I have taken.
     However, this administration has caused me to reconsider how I’ve consistently underestimated its dangerous nature.
     So while I’m still inclined to agree with you, I’d stress the caution that this relegation will not take place unless everyone works hard to make sure it takes place, and that we all educate each other on our history, and the value and meaning and an understanding of our constitutional values, and our civil liberties, and most of all, not assume that a pendulum must always swing backwards, just because historically has, or that things could not, with sufficient pushing on one side, and inaction on the other, tip to a new form of malevolence in our governmental system never before seen, that could become so institutionalized as to be effectively unrepealable until we are, indeed, in a situation sufficiently not distant from one like the NSDAP achieving roots throughout our government.
     It can happen there, it can happen anywhere, and vigilance must be maintained, and nothing taken for granted.
     These have been scary times, and the forces that have gotten us here aren’t going away even if they lose a mere election or two or three or four. Power is power, and thems that got it tend to not give it up easily, no matter the surface of our electoral system.

180. “That was a typo, Gary.”
     Ah. Was it “anger in politics doesn’t work,” then?
     If so, what do you mean by “work”? Anger by who, directed at whom, in what context?
     I see anger “working” in all sorts of ways, across our contemporary politics, and historically. Could you perhaps clarify what you mean by this extremely vague statement? I really have just about no idea of what you mean by it.
     I have, let me be clear, now read the entire thread up to now, and your subsequent comments, and I don’t see anything you wrote that clarifies in the slightest. I may certainly have overlooked the key comment; if so, could you perhaps point it out to me?
     I read “Moreover, you are going to have to come to grip with the points made by me, TLTIA, and Francis D regarding anger in politics,” and I can’t figure out what point it is that you believe you have made, I’m afraid: what is it?
     Specifically, at June 08, 2008 at 08:30 PM you wrote “anger in [politics] doesn’t work.” At une 08, 2008 at 09:38 PM you wrote: “Moreover, you are going to have to come to grip with the points made by me, TLTIA, and Francis D regarding anger in politics.”
     Did I miss a comment by you in between those two in which you made a point about anger in politics? If so, could you give the time of the comment, or link to it, perhaps?
     Subsequent to that, you did comment a few more times, but I still can’t figure out what it is you believe or are trying to say. I suspect we may have very different assumptions relevant to whatever that is. I’m afraid I also couldn’t make much sense out of your June 08, 2008 at 10:11 PM. But maybe that’s just me, and it made sense to everyone else. And ditto that your points about anger in politics, whatever they are, make sense to most everyone but me.
     As a check by use of a third-party commentary, I assume you’re familiar with Hofstader’s classic, The Paranoid Style in American Politics? If not, you can read it there. Could you perhaps give a couple or so sentences on what you think of its thesis?
     Thanks for any and all help here.

181. “Yes, it appears Rockefeller was a war cheerleader. Read the editorial.”
     How about linking to it?
     I’d also suggest trying to write in actual sentences.
     Bedtimeforbonzo, awfully sorry about your canine companion’s death; it’s horrible, I know; my sympathies.

182. Sorry, Gary, I only want you to read the editorial if you have to look for it. It’s in the WaPo, you can find it.
     I don’t really aim to persuade. Maybe I mean to direct you to an enhanced learning experience.
     Those two sentences are actual sentences.
     Style critics. Bah.
     ============

183. 
     Historically, this is the stance I have taken.
     However, this administration has caused me to reconsider how I’ve consistently underestimated its dangerous nature.
     Gary,
     Agreed, and I suspect that we are fairly close in our views regarding how potentially dangerous the authoritarianism and constitutional subversiveness of the current administration is, my caveat being that much of this threat is potential rather than actual.
     Unlike past episodes where brute force has been exercised outside the law (e.g. the murderous anti-labor violence of the anarchist and red-scare era), this administration has been much more forthright and open about working within the channels of a newly peverted system of law. They have done the work of creating a framework for an openly authoritarian legal system, rather than engaging in an illegal and extra-legal clandestine power grab such as was the case under Nixon.
     That is the bad news.
     What makes me more optimistic is that the Bush administration’s moment of political popularity has passed, irrevocably IMHO, so their sinister new legal system will have to wait for another authoritarian executive before it can be applied on a large scale.
     This means that for now we have an opportunity to defuse these legal landmines. We must sieze that opportunity, and having a Presidential nominee who is a constitutional scholar gives me great hope that we will not lack for a dialog on these issues and have at least a passing chance for getting a new President who is well equipped intellectually and temprementally for the task of undoing what Yoo and Addington have done.
     or that things could not, with sufficient pushing on one side, and inaction on the other, tip to a new form of malevolence in our governmental system never before seen, that could become so institutionalized as to be effectively unrepealable until we are, indeed, in a situation sufficiently not distant from one like the NSDAP achieving roots throughout our government.
     
     One thing that I think would help is if we (and by we I don’t mean you personally – I mean critics of the current administration broadly and collectively) could stop using the historically inaccurate term fascism to describe the threat of authoritarianism in the US, even in proto- form.
     We need a new vocabulary to help people to understand that the threat will almost certainly not manifest itself in the form of jack-booted thugs murdering the opposition and dragging people off to internment camps. If that is how we visualize the threat, then our impoverished imaginations will not be adequate to recognizing the real threat and how close we are to reaching its terminal point.
     Fascism in early 20th Cen Europe was a culturally and historically conditioned form of authoritarianism which IMHO was much more crudely and explicitly violent than anything I ever expect to see here in the USA (with the exception of organized lynchings during Jim Crow).
     The USA is the country where the art of non-violent and non-coercive persuasion (aka advertising) was perfected. I expect that in the future our native form of authoritarianism will draw on that legacy to manifest itself in a much smoother and more indirect manner than the brutally violent far-right and far-left authoritarianisms of Europe.
     In this country we don’t need to murder dissidents when we can silence them by delegitimizing them, and we have no need to use mass terror to cow our population into obedience when they can be bribed and persuaded to obey, with massive economy of effort compared with the NSDAP or the Bolsheviks or the Falange, etc.
     I expect an authoritarian nightmare in the USA to look much less like 1930s Germany, and much more like 2003 USA, only with Fox News clones filling all the airwaves and alternative news channels subordinated or silenced softly and quietly, or marginalized by ridicule. If liberty in the USA is threatened, it will be due to a lack of oxygen, not by more dramatic means, and I think use of the term fascism ill prepares us to monitor that threat.
     IMHO as always, and also I greatly appreciate your very scholarly approach to this and other subjects, so criticism and correction are always appreciated.

184. LeftTurn, I think you may be underestimating the depth and breadth of violence in American society past and present. Start off with the prison population. According to Human Rights Watch, whom I trust very much on this kind of thing, 11% of black men ages 30-34 were behind bars in the middle of 2007 (and blacks are 12 times as likely to go to prison for a given drug offense as whites). This is staggeringly disruptive. It would be so even if we had prisons which weren’t routinely high on the global list of havens for abuse of all kinds. As it is, a large fraction of an entire ethnic group’s men can expect to be raped, assaulted, and otherwise seriously worked over for things that white people are much less likely to pay any penalty for. That’s institutionalized racism as thorough in its way as Jim Crow.
     Overall, more than 1% of our population is in prison. This is mind-boggling. We have twice as many prisoners as China, despite their vastly larger population. We have half again as many prisoners per capita as Cuba, three times the per capita rate of former Soviet republics on our State Department’s list of oppressive regimes. And let’s not forget that many of the instructors and instigators of torture and other abuse in the military prisons come from our domestic prison-industrial complex. It’s bad in there, for a staggering number of Americans, and the threat of it is a constant blight on the lives of whole sectors of our population.
     That’s almost certainly the single biggest locus for state violence against its citizen, but far from the only one, alas.

185. LeftTurn, I think you may be underestimating the depth and breadth of violence in American society past and present. Start off with the prison population. According to Human Rights Watch, whom I trust very much on this kind of thing, 11% of black men ages 30-34 were behind bars in the middle of 2007 (and blacks are 12 times as likely to go to prison for a given drug offense as whites). This is staggeringly disruptive. It would be so even if we had prisons which weren’t routinely high on the global list of havens for abuse of all kinds. As it is, a large fraction of an entire ethnic group’s men can expect to be raped, assaulted, and otherwise seriously worked over for things that white people are much less likely to pay any penalty for. That’s institutionalized racism as thorough in its way as Jim Crow.
     Overall, more than 1% of our population is in prison. This is mind-boggling. We have twice as many prisoners as China, despite their vastly larger population. We have half again as many prisoners per capita as Cuba, three times the per capita rate of former Soviet republics on our State Department’s list of oppressive regimes. And let’s not forget that many of the instructors and instigators of torture and other abuse in the military prisons come from our domestic prison-industrial complex. It’s bad in there, for a staggering number of Americans, and the threat of it is a constant blight on the lives of whole sectors of our population.
     That’s almost certainly the single biggest locus for state violence against its citizen, but far from the only one, alas.

186. Thanks for any and all help here.
     Gary, I appreciate that you’re confused. Others were not.

187. Thank you, Gary.
     Thank you, John — sorry for your family’s loss of your German Shepherd. I have never had one but I understand they are loyal-to-the-cows-come-home companions.
     I just logged on before hopping in the shower for my 1-9 shift. But when I have time, John — probably on my much-needed day off tomorrow — I will check out the Rainbow Bridge link you provided. Thanks again and take care.
     Kim — I feel your pain. About style critics, I mean:)

188. One thing that I think would help is if we (and by we I don’t mean you personally – I mean critics of the current administration broadly and collectively) could stop using the historically inaccurate term fascism to describe the threat of authoritarianism in the US, even in proto- form.
     I completely disagree; I think “fascism”, or rather “proto-fascism”, is a perfectly accurate descriptor of what we’re seeing here. As I said previously, the fact that it might not have achieved its fullest flower* doesn’t mitigate against its obvious predilections; not Nazism by any stretch, but the more “subdued” fascism of Franco or Mussolini. Ideologically, see, for example, Eco’s ‘Eternal Fascism’, which I’m sure you’re familiar with.
     Politically, the case is more tenuous, I agree. Your point about the lack of overt political violence is well-taken, of course, but I think you’re underestimating the degree to which “lack of oxygen” v. “outright violence” is a distinction without difference in terms of preserving political liberty, much like that of “lying” v. “bullshit”. [It’s also why I prefer the term “proto-fascist” to describe the movement.] Likewise, as Bruce mentioned above, I think you’re underestimating the level of violence already present; not just in terms of the prison population, but in terms of the threats made to liberals (cf Misha giving maps to someone’s home or Malkin giving out home phone numbers), the violence against gays, etc. There is a very real, and very dangerous, proclivity towards such action out there — not quite “action for action’s sake” but something passably close — and it should not be underestimated.
     Has it actually reached a state that can be termed “fascism”? Probably not, depending on how essential one regards the legalization of the fascist state and the necessity of violence in pursuing it. There won’t be internment camps for political dissidents — unless you count prison for minorities which, well, there’s something to that — nor will there be an actual Fuhrerprinzip/Enabling Act or Fascist Grand Council. Heck, I don’t think there would have been a call for a third term for Bush even if Iraq had gone well, though there was no question that the political elimination of their rivals — not defeat, elimination, and that’s a crucial distinction — was on the table. Again, though, I regard this as a difference in degree not kind, modulo the more generally violent milieu of the 1930s**… and I regard the leaders of this movement as fascists-in-training.
     Though obviously, YMMV.
     * Depending on what you think the fullest flower of the Bush Administration and its ideological kin would actually be.
     ** To be a bit more explicit about this, since I think similar things have cropped up a few times in our conversations: I think that if political violence were more acceptable, say to the degree of the 1930s, the GOP (or at least the more extremist elements of it) would have deployed it against their opponents in 2002-2004. That they didn’t speaks to me of the changed social mores and not their “innate impulses” (if such makes sense). Now, one can argue that fascism is definitionally such a transgressive ideology that any movement which allows itself to be morally restricted in its use of violence cannot be fascist, and I’d somewhat agree; but this, to me, is precisely the distinction between “fascist” and “proto-fascist”, especially if the restrictions are accompanied by wistful ruminations of a world without such petty restrictions. And, revealing my black-hearted cynicism, I don’t doubt for a moment that if right-wing extremists had started outright, overt violence against anti-war protesters during those three years, there would have been a significant number of Republican faithful cheering them on.

189. but the more “subdued” fascism of Franco or Mussolini
     Anarch,
     This is very complicated topic and obviously we are in an area of subjective judgments where reasonable people disagree. Bruce’s point about the grotesquely large US prison population is well taken, IMHO, but otherwise it seems to me that there are both qualitative and quantitative differences between authoritarianism in the US and even the “milder” (caveat – you have to judge the effects of say Franco in Spain in proportion to total population) European versions from the early 20th Cen., and that these differences are not an accident but are an expression of the different historical and cultural contexts. (note: sprinkle numerous IMHO on every paragraph below)
     Authoritarianism is both a means to and end, and an end unto itself. In neither case do I see our native version as simply an offshoot of European Fascism.
     With regard to means, I made the point in my earlier comment that far more subtle and sophisticated ways exist for an economic and political elite to dominate our country and maintain sufficient control over policy to suit their purposes, than those used by Franco, Mussolini, et.al. When better means are available, extreme violence is inefficient and costly, and is risky and potentially counterproductive. Why use it if you don’t have to?
     Do you disagree?
     With regard to ends, I submit that the various forms of European Fascism drew their strength from filling a psychological void created by the secularization (simultaneous with the shocks created by rapid industrialization and urbanization in the 19th and early 20th Cen.’s) of societies which had a very long and deep cultural history of having religion at the center of their public life. Not pluralistic religion such as practiced here in the US, but what in most countries was a monolithic state sanctioned and established religion.
     In that sense, Fascism and the other forms of virulent authoritarian mass politics in Europe (which really began during the French Revolution, mutated under the two Bonaparte Emperors, and came to full flower across Europe in the wake of WW1) were false religions, substituting for the older and more authentic faiths which withdrew or were pushed from the center of public life and ceased to be the axis around which those societies were organized.
     It was crucial to Fascism’s appeal that it provided a fetish object for public worship – the nation, or the biological race, to fill this void. And violence was not just a means to achieve political ends, it was a form of sacrifice to and liturgical sanctification of that fetish object. Violence was the raison d’État. Fascism wasn’t just a more violent form of repressive state practice, it was a new constitutional form based on a radically different concept of how to legitimize the state in the new era of mass politics which began in 1789, in which the people and the state were bonded together as one through the sacramental destruction of enemies. Violence was what legitimized the Fascist state.
     I don’t see American authoritarianism taking that direction, because we already have a fetish object around which our public life is organized – Constitutionalism and its folk expression in the form of American Exceptionalism, and because traditional religion is still very strong in the US and despite the “War on Christmas” propaganda coming from Bill O’ and others it is not in danger of being displaced from the position it has held in our culture for several hundred years. That is a benefit derived from our more pluralistic approach to faith in this country – because no one faith was enshrined as the official sect, creeping secularism is less traumatic for us than it was for Europeans.
     That is my long view of the problem. YMMV, and while great minds may “think alike”, greater ones find ways to dissent.

190. ThatLeftTurninABQ: I submit that the various forms of European Fascism drew their strength from filling a psychological void created by the secularization (simultaneous with the shocks created by rapid industrialization and urbanization in the 19th and early 20th Cen.’s) of societies which had a very long and deep cultural history of having religion at the center of their public life.
     It’s a nice theory, but it’s completely wrong. Spain, Italy, Germany, and indeed France, are one and all very religious countries. For your theory to be worth considering, you’d have to show that the countries that “went fascist” were more secular, less religious, than the countries that didn’t: and you really can’t.
     Indeed, Franco’s government (the last remaining national fascist government in Europe) was strongly supported by the Catholic church – which support is (I’m told by Spanish acquaintances) the main reason for the populist opposition to the Catholic Church in Spain – too many Catholic bishops, archbishops, and Cardinals with too long and too public a record of supporting Franco.

191. It’s a nice theory, but it’s completely wrong.
     I read it as ‘religious countries’ that felt threatened by secularization, which accounts for the severe backlash. I don’t think that a countries religious history as determining their embrace of fascism and while we view someone like Moseley as a clown now, but in 1933, he wasn’t.

192. 
     It’s a nice theory, but it’s completely wrong. Spain, Italy, Germany, and indeed France, are one and all very religious countries. For your theory to be worth considering, you’d have to show that the countries that “went fascist” were more secular, less religious, than the countries that didn’t: and you really can’t.
     Indeed, Franco’s government (the last remaining national fascist government in Europe) was strongly supported by the Catholic church – which support is (I’m told by Spanish acquaintances) the main reason for the populist opposition to the Catholic Church in Spain – too many Catholic bishops, archbishops, and Cardinals with too long and too public a record of supporting Franco.
     
     Jess,
     The works of historical analysis which I’m glossing this theory (the 20th Cen. totalitarian political movements as a quasi-religion) from don’t work at that level of granularity at all. A country is not a monolithic entity, and there are plenty of countries which appear in total to be “very religous” but which had extensive subcultures of secularism, especially amongst the economic and political elites. You have to look at the psychology of individuals and subcultures within each country to understand the roots of Fascism, not at something as crude as national culture.
     To take the example of Francoist Spain, the Nationalist movement led by Franco was a badly fractured coalition of elements, some of them deeply religous in a more traditional way (like the Carlists, who were most powerful in the NE) and others very hostile to traditional religion and the institutional power of the Catholic church (much of the Falange was this way). Franco steered this seething volcano of semi-murderous rivalries to victory over the Republic in part because the Republican side was riven by even deeper and more intractable cleavages.

193. A very special note to John of the Dead:
     Thank you so much for the link to the Rainbow Bridge!
     I just had the chance to view it.
     Wonderful, heart-breaking, heart-warming, just terrific.
     As I guess you know, this short video can’t be viewed just once. So, I immediately replayed it — and it was better the second time: more heart-warming, more heart-breaking, sad and wonderful at the same time.
     I began to weep, and not so quietly, upon the second viewing, and the late CoCo’s big brother, Bowser — a good-hearted, goofy Border Collie mix — who had been laying nearby, perked right up as I turned around to look at him. He seemed to wonder, and worry, why Dad was making these strange crying sounds. As my eyes met his, Bowsie walked over gingerly and gave me a couple of licks — not the couple dozen his sister was famous for — but a couple of licks to the face, just the same, as if to say, “It’s OK, Dad, it’s OK.”
     My wife likes to joke that Bowser isn’t very smart and does some pretty dumb things. Maybe. To be sure, as Border Collies go, I don’t think my BC mix has their famed intelligence. But I never thought Bowser was dumb and — unlike CoCo’s young puppy-like eyes — his are very penetrating and soulful. And tonight — I mean, this morning — I found out Bowser is indeed a very good soul, a true friend.
     And pretty damn smart in his own right.
     Thank you again, John. You gave me something very special, I won’t forget it.
     God bless you and your family and your German Shepherd.
     Good night, CoCo. Good night, Bonzo. Good night, Bodie. Good night, Lillie. Good night, Lucky. Good night, Tom. Good night, Sue-Sue. And good night, Kitty Boy, my very special member of this 45-year-old All Dog Club. See you all on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.

194. Authoritarianism is both a means to and end, and an end unto itself. In neither case do I see our native version as simply an offshoot of European Fascism.
     I tend to agree — in fact, I’d go further and argue that these phenomena (pace Dave Neiwert’s work at Orcinus) are uniquely American — but does it have to be an offshoot of European Fascism to be called “fascism”? I’d argue not. Italian Fascism, Nazism and Francoism — to name the big three European Fascisms — aren’t offshoots of one another, or even offshoots of a common source; and if that requirement isn’t imposed in Europe, I don’t see that it needs to be imposed here.
     When better means are available, extreme violence is inefficient and costly, and is risky and potentially counterproductive. Why use it if you don’t have to? Do you disagree?
     Not in the slightest; in fact, I think I may have made that point above. Or maybe you did. Whoever said it was right though 🙂
     Violence was what legitimized the Fascist state.
     On this, though, I think we disagree. Violence, in this paradigm, wasn’t a legitimation, it was at most a sacrament given to the select few. IIRC, the vast majority of fascists — by which I mean, members of a fascist party — never raised a finger against anyone else during their reign; the violence was instead confined to special units like the SA or SS. What was paramount was not violence, but the idea of violence: violent action in pursuit of the fascist goals, sacred unto itself. The legitimation of the state, in these ideologies, came not from violence per se but from their Will and their willingness to deploy that violence as an exercise of that Will.
     [Even this is a massive oversimplification, as the ostensible underlying rationale varied from fascism to fascism. I’ve singled out “the Will” since that is, to me, the defining commonality, but that’s not a great fit.]
     This is the point on which I think “proto-fascist” is most apt. The glorification of violence is a hallmark of modern movement conservatism, from the jingoistic marches to war to the exaltation of the military as the only True Americans. It’s not truly fascist because the majority of the movement wasn’t advocating violence against internal political enemies — with notable individual exceptions — but that impetus was (and maybe still is?) certainly there.
     I don’t see American authoritarianism taking that direction, because we already have a fetish object around which our public life is organized – Constitutionalism and its folk expression in the form of American Exceptionalism…
     This, to me, misses the point completely: American Exceptionalism is the core of American proto-fascism. It is precisely this myth that enables all the others. The belief that we are inherently, by sole virtue of being American, stronger, wiser, smarter, better than all the others is exactly the exaltation of the State required for fascism. It’s not traditionalist in quite the same way that Franco’s monarchism was; it’s not mythopoeic like Mussolini’s Roman fixation; it’s not (usually) racial as Nazism is — though there have been some unpleasant quasi-racial overtones about the Muslim world — but it serves the same function in the fascist mindset.
     This isn’t to say that American Exceptionalism is proto-fascist, btw. Rather, as fascism is itself a warped outgrowth of democracy, so American proto-fascism is a warped outgrowth of American Exceptionalism.
     …and because traditional religion is still very strong in the US
     That might be an argument against European Fascism taking over the US, I guess — though I’m not particularly convinced, since “traditional religion” was very strong in Germany, Italy and Spain, and indeed all three dictators made appropriate genuflections in that direction. [See, e.g., the Lateran Treaties.] It doesn’t at all argue against the phenomenon being fascist, though, since there’s nothing inherently irreligious about fascism. In fact, I’d argue that fascism requires a country strong in traditional religion and steeped mythic archetypes, as those are the soil in which fascist tropes take root.
     [BTW, I completely agree that fascism is a form of secular religion, as is much of Communism. I’m just disagreeing over the extent to which it has to replace religion, as opposed to merely co-opting it.]
     Hazarding a guess at a hypothetical future, American Fascism would indeed wear the cross and be draped in the flag. Lip-service would be made to God, with religious doctrine being warped by false prophets to serve the secular agenda — as indeed happens now in some of the crazier evangelical churches. [See, e.g., Ted Haggard.] I would tend to doubt that it would be a true theocracy, though, as the totalitarian instruments wouldn’t be explicitly religious in nature; that is, assuming something like Francoist Fascism, everyone would be expected to make appropriate genuflections towards religion — possibly mandatory for public office — but you wouldn’t have the Ten Commandments being enforced by stoning or what have you.
     That is a benefit derived from our more pluralistic approach to faith in this country – because no one faith was enshrined as the official sect, creeping secularism is less traumatic for us than it was for Europeans.
     Maybe, but — as any European will tell you — we’re a lot crazier about religion here in the US than over there, at least since the preconditions for fascism have held. There aren’t really any analogues for the Great Awakenings, nor the impetus to put the Ten Commandments on every flat surface, nor the attempt to overturn the Enlightenment, that are hallmarks of the modern fundagelical movement. [Fear and hatred of gays, alas, remains pretty much constant.] I think you’re massively underestimating the extent to which religion is considered fundamental to the American identity by a wide swathe of people — incorrectly, in my view, but that’s beside the point — not just in overt religiosity and self-described Christianity, but in terms of our ritual genuflections: “In God We Trust”, “one nation, under God”, hand on the Bible, etc. In fact, I’d say that the enforced separation of Church and State has made the creeping secularism even more traumatic, because it’s denied them the milksop of official recognition.
     By way of illustration: when I was growing up in the UK system, I thought nothing about compulsory singing of hymns in primary school. It was… non-religious is the only word that I can use to describe it, because religion in the UK is often itself more about the ritual than the religiosity. [And I mean that in the best of ways.] Were the same to have happened in the US, I would have been outraged; it wouldn’t have been about the ritual, it would have been about the propaganda, precisely because it would have been regarded as daringly transgressive (or bracingly moralistic) by the staff. That difference comes, as near as I can tell, from the fact that Anglicanism is the official religion of the increasingly-secular UK; the ritual and the religion have become separable for the heathens among us.
     And since this is now officially Too Long, I’ll stop.

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