Recently in 2008 Elections Category

Of the various efforts being undertaken to rebuild New Orleans, few are as vocal as activists opposing the demolition of public housing projects. Their passion is strong, and their cause just. I wrote about my problems with this movement yesterday. I'm a firm believer in the notion that you can't bring back people who live in poverty to New Orleans at this stage in the city's reconstruction. It's easy for folks who have homes, jobs, health insurance, and schools for their children to advocate a course of action that will almost certainly have no direct impact on their lives, even if that course of action worsens the quality of life for those directly impacted.

It makes more sense to restore the governmental services necessary to lift those living in poverty to a living-wage level.

Easier said than done, of course. City government is still a mess, two years post-storm. State government hasn't been much more help, with its focus on home owners (Road Home Program). The involvement of state government in New Orleans' return is going to be even worse with the election of an unsympathetic ultra-conservative as governor.

Somebody must take ownership of New Orleans, accept the situation we have here, and work with us to make it better. There are three people in a position to do something about New Orleans, assuming we can hang on until January 20, 2009. Those three people are the leading Democratic candidates for President.

Taking them in order of their current popularity, let's look at whether or not they will step up and take ownership of New Orleans.

Hillary Clinton - If you go to www.hillary.com, there's a button for "Issues" that drops down a number of choices:

• Strengthing the Middle Class


• Providing Affordable and Accessible Health Care


• Promoting Energy Independence and Fighting Global Warming


• Fulfilling Our Promises to Veterans


• Supporting Parents and Caring for Children


• Restoring America's Standing in the World


• A Champion for Women


• Comprehensive Government Reform


• Strengthening Our Democracy


• Reforming Our Immigration System


• An Innovation Agenda

Hmm...worthy topics all. Why no mention of New Orleans, or the Gulf Coast in general? Have the consultants advising Sen. Clinton told her to blow us off? After all, Mississippi and Alabama were too red for her to be bothered with pre-storm, and Louisiana is viewed as turning redder post-storm. Certainly one could argue that some of these meta-topics listed above can include support of New Orleans, but not seeing the re-building of a city destroyed by a federal flood and ignored by uncaring Republicans would be on the radar. No doubt Bill Clinton would be more concerned with the future of New Orleans. Perhaps some of you Hillary supporters can clarify this seeming lack of interest in New Orleans.

Barack Obama - Sen. Obama's got one of those neat "Issuse" buttons, too:

• Strengthening America Overseas


• Plan to End the Iraq War


• Creating a Healthcare System that Works


• Fighting Poverty


• Environment


• Energy


• Technology and Innovation for a New Generation


• Fulfilling Our Covenant with Seniors


• Improving Our Schools


• Immigration and the Border


• Protecting the Right to Vote


• Honoring Our Veterans


• Cleaning Up Washington's Culture of Corruption


• Strengthening Families and Communities


• Reconciling Faith and Politics

Nice list. Maybe if I didn't get a food of water in my house and things here were going smoothly, I'd look at this and see a candidate who could improve things. What I see from this is someone who is talking in generalities when a 300-year old city dies. Oh yeah, and those public housing residents who are about to have their apartments demolished? They're 99% African-American.

John Edwards - Sen. Edwards has an entire page of proposals to deal with New Orleans:

• Addressing the nursing shortage and supporting the proposed biomedical corridor


• Providing new resources to make the city's streets safe


• Fully funding the "Road Home"


• Putting someone in charge


• Appointing a Special Gulf Coast Inspector General


• Passing "Brownie's Law," so agencies like FEMA get the job done.

So, we've got two candidates who make no mention of New Orleans and a third who actually talks about fully funding Road Home.

At least Edwards and his consultants aren't suffering from "Katrina Fatigue."

I challenege every Clinton and Obama supporter to ask those in your campaign organizations, what is your candidate's position on New Orleans?

I know where my candidate stands.

I'm also confident that things would not be as screwed up right now here if "Vice President Edwards" was running right now rather than former-Senator Edwards.

For all that Da Paper is outraged that the presidential debate commission doesn't want to host a debate in New Orleans, they avoid the main reason for that decision.

Da Paper waxes eloquently in both a news article and an editorial about how the commission is essentially full of crap when they say the city is not ready. They point out other events that have come or are coming to the city. They point out that the "security" argument is a dog that won't hunt, since a number of presidential candidates as well as the disrespectful piece of shit who lives in the white house have all come to town recently.

Since they're regularly inclined to endorse Republicans, they stop short at telling their readers the real reason we won't be hosting a presidential debate: The Republicans just don't want to. If they agree to debating in New Orleans, they and their 2008 standard-bearer will be forced to take ownership of the Federal Flood, Heckuvajob Brownie, and Rove's Reconstruction.

Having a debate in New Orleans is like the Green Bay Packers playing the Super Bowl at Lambeau Field. There are some home field advantages that no team can overcome, and this is one of them.

What's funny about this editorial is that commenters to the on-line edition blame the loss of the debate on former DA Eddie Jordan and the Eebil Coloreds. Yup, blame it on the blacks, that always works.

In an excellent DailyKos diary published yesterday, Blue Patriot Woman outlined the extreme violations of civil liberties that will happen if TSA is allowed to implement their "Secure Flight Plan." I concluded my comment to that diary by saying, "One of the first things that the next president needs to do is rein in TSA in a huge way." I though I'd expound on that a bit more today.

First, some background: I do computer consulting and training for a living. I teach classes for companies like Hitachi Data Systems and EMC. I've traveled literally all over the world to do this. The classes usually run from Monday-Friday, so that means I've spent a lot of Sunday and Friday nights in airports. Delta is my preferred airline, and I'm a "Platinum" frequent flyer, a level one reaches when one has earned over 75,000 frequent flyer miles.

I started teaching at this level in 1998, doing classes in Tru64 UNIX for Compaq Corporation. At that time, going to the airport to see dad off on a Sunday afternoon was a family event. My wife and two sons would come with me, we'd all hang out in Delta's Crown Room club at Louis Armstrong International Airport (MSY). September 11th changed all that, of course, because airlines restricted access to the gates to ticketed passengers only.

When the TSA was first created, it was over a great deal of Republican opposition. Security companies like Wackenhut held the passenger screening contracts for large airports, and those companies are huge Republican donors. Security screeners were often minimum-wage employees with little to no training in terms of what to look for when doing their jobs. After 9/11, I wish I had a dime for every time an untrained screener would look at the cables, adapters, etc., in my computer backpack and simply yell "bag check" rather than do their job. TSA was supposed to change that, but it's been done Bush-style, employing political hacks and idiots. Sometimes I look at the obnoxious people TSA hires and wonder if the agancy's management is deliberately trying to tank it, in the hopes that people will wish for the return of the private security companies.

So, yes, the next President needs to get TSA and the FAA back on track. Here's some ways they can make progress quickly:

1. Change the "Homeland Security Advisory Level" to Cookie Monster. The DHS color system has become a complete joke in the hands of Bush's gang. Rather than abolish it, we should use it properly. Currently we are at:

Let's make this "heightened awareness" level a baseline, or a "normal" point, and set it as "blue." I wouldn't advocate going all the way down to Oscar, but let's stay at blue:

If a "normal" day is Cookie Monster, and the advisory scale reflects that, should a future incarnation of TSA decide to raise the level to Bert, or even Ernie, people might take it seriously.

2. Stop screening aircrews. Face it, a pilot doesn't need a box cutter to kill everyone on the plane. It's a waste of time and resources.

3. Stop this whole liquids ban process. While TSA martinets strut around telling us that we can't bring our shampoo, holy water from Lourdes, Central Grocery olive salad, or that bottle of Aquafina you just bought at the gift shop on the plane, there's a guy two rows back who just bought a couple of liters of kick-ass rum at one of the many duty-free shops at the airport in Mexico City. Now, that rum's more than a bit flammable. They're up above you, in his carry-on bag. Guess what's in-between you and two liters of flammable liquid? The plane's emergency oxygen system. All he's got to do is light them up with the lighter he had in his pocket when he went through security (not permitted, but it's all plastic, so it's undetected).

The catch here is that, if TSA inconveniences passengers by making you put your Herbel Essence in a ziploc bag, there's not much they can do about it. They'll get held up at the gate and won't be allowed to board the plane if you complain, like the "sippy cup terrorist." The owners of duty-free shops, on the other hand, are a different class of citizens.

4. Question passengers, don't merely screen them. Train TSA officers to spot irregular behavior patterns in passengers. Have them actually talk to the passengers while going through the metal detectors and putting their stuff through the x-ray. Airport security people across Europe do this daily. They're trained to spot potential terrorists, and they do a pretty fair job of it.

5. Stop making everyone go barefoot. The shoe bomber notwithstanding, the whole screen-your-shoes thing is silly. See #3 on liquids, the guy with the booze can blow up the plane. Richard Reed could have stashed the explosives in his pants just as easily as his shoes.

6. Make better use of video surveillance. While I'm usually reticent to use the British as example, given their atrocious track record on civil liberties and terrorism, they do use technology better than we do. Hire a bunch of people who handle video surveillance in a Vegas casino, and have them work with the Brits to identify terrorists as opposed to card cheats.

7. Fire the ball-busters and perverts. Clean out TSA of all these crackpots who think it's fun to harass passengers. The Bush administration wants TSA to fail, so they can go back to private contractors. That's why these people are allowed to touch women inappropriately, single out passengers for no reason for additional searches, etc.

I know that there are more pressing issues we all want to quiz the Democratic candidates on--the war, healthcare, etc. I'd much rather see details from Obama on how he's going to withdraw the army from Iraq than what he's going to do with ATL or ORD. What I would like to see all the candidates do, however, is to acknowledge that TSA is broken and that they will work on making it into the agency it was intended to be in the fall of 2001.

Markos asks:

Will Obama and Clinton hide in the shadows until the final minutes of this pre-emptive capitulation bill before voting against it, or will they show some leadership and help craft a real solution to this disastrous war?

This is why I support Edwards. Obama and Clinton are running "consultant" campaigns.

"Even a Republican audience in New Hampshire is divided on Iraq."

on NPR's Morning Edition today, Fox's Mara Liasson made this comment while reporting on the Fox News-sponsored Republican debate last night.

You should hear the applause for the only anti-war Republican Presidential candidate, Ron Paul, when he points out that 5000 Americans have died in Iraq, then wonders how many more will have to die.

If there are that many NH Republicans who agree with Paul, the GOP is well and truly screwed.

Troll repellant: Yes, it's safe to assume that the audience at that debate was Republicans. Most Democrats don't have the stomach for all those douchebags on the stage at the same time. It was also moderated by Brit Hume. If the candidates weren't enough, that idiot would scare away any other non-Republicans.

John Edwards turns on his fellow Democrats

yeahyourite. Clinton is truly becoming BushLite and Obama stands for nothing. It's high time Edwards takes it to them. The Dem establishment has a goddess-awful track record, 2006 notwithstanding. Taking the campaign past DC Dems to the people makes good strategy for Edwards:

Behind the scenes, Edwards' advisors continued to highlight the differences in the Democratic field. Trippi claimed the other presidential campaigns opposed banning lobbyist contributions because they did not want to upset Democratic leaders like New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who is in charge of fundraising for the party's Senate candidates, a task that depends heavily on lobbyist contributions. "We are talking about really ticking off some of the Democratic Party establishment," Trippi said. "The tougher step is to say if it's good enough me and it's good enough for Barack Obama, [why] isn't it good enough for the Democratic Party?" Trippi said he believed Obama was not working to ban all lobbyist money because "he has to walk into the Senate cloakroom."

This is why sitting senators are sitting ducks. Both of the sitting senators are playing not to lose.

Democrats want and need a candidate who wants to win.

Very compelling video of John and Elizabeth on the stump in Portsmouth, NH (home of the Press Room, a neat jazz pub, btw):

It's going to be a shame when the Secret Service won't let EE run and give people in the crowd hugs anymore when John gets the nomination. Understandable, of course, but still...

Question from the clip that should indeed be asked of every candidate, Republican and Democrat:

"How many people in will be uninsured when your healthcare policy is enacted?"

EE is right, if the answer is NOT zero, you need to get yourself another candidate!

While many people believe that our next President will be a Democrat, the process still has to play out. That means someone has to win the nomination of the Democratic party. For all that pundits and writers are discussing who will win a general election, somebody's got to win state primaries, caucuses and conventions. They've got to put delegates into seats for next year's party convention in Denver.

It's for that reason I find articles like Alex Koppelman's interview of Drew Westen in Salon yesterday curious. Westen is the author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation." According to Koppelman, "Westen thinks the Democrats need to rely less on logic and more on emotion, and they need to understand that strength is less a function of defense policy than of backbone."

OK, I'll buy that, and I might just buy the book, but the first question of the interview has me scratching my head:

What have you thought about the message that the candidates have been sending during the campaign so far?

If we focus on the people who are realistically most in this race, the three who have the best shot at this point, who I think are Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards ... they're all looking at how the voters who decide elections are the voters in the middle. The way Clinton and Obama are trying to do it is with centrist messages ... Obama is trying to capture the center by saying, "Why can't we all get along?"

Edwards is taking a different tack ... an alternative way of trying to reach the center. The center right now is actually pretty down on the [GOP], and independents right now don't like the Republicans and they don't like the war ... What Edwards is doing much more is saying: "These aren't people who you compromise with ... I'm not going to compromise with the people who've given you the Iraq war, and I'm not going to compromise with the people who don't want you to get healthcare because it's not in their interest, and I'm not going to compromise with the people who are ripping you off at the gas tank."

Westen makes an assumption that is way off base here. He's assuming that Edwards is reaching for voters in the center of the electorate by talking up populist themes. For someone who considers themselves knowledgable on our electoral process, it seems like he's missing the point of the current campaign efforts of all the Dem candidates. Put simply, they need to get nominated.

The way to win primaries is to have a message that primary voters want to hear. Those voters are not necessarily the center that Westen talks about. They're the hard-core caucus-goers, the political insiders and central committee members who attend state conventions. They're the voters who will go to the polls to vote on Super Tuesday and other primary dates.

That's why we still hear the entire Republican field of candidates talking like madmen--they need to convince their party's base to vote for them. It's no different for the Democrats. What we see here is a total difference in style between the sitting senators and the former senator. Clinton and Obama are not playing to win, they're playing to "not lose." Anybody who is a futbol fan understands this--think Brazil vs. Italy in the World Cup final in 1994. Nobody takes an aggressive position that can put you out on the edge and get you in trouble.

Edwards, on the other hand, is going for the base. He's the white trial lawyer, so he can't assume people will come out to vote for him in droves because he's black or because he's a woman. He's trying to get the party faithful to come out for him because he's talking about the things they want to hear about. When you're behind in the game, you have to play aggressive to win.

That's the kind of candidate I want running against the Republicans. I've had enough of play-it-safe Democrats. Obama's campaign reminds me of Mary Landrieu's from 2002, and Clinton sounds more like a moderate Republican than a Democrat.

While noting John Edwards' so-far very successful use of Teh Internets, Jeralyn says:

I think it's the right way to go for Edwards. I read all his campaign e-mails and really appreciate the way he's moved left of center since the Kerry campaign.

Why this race isn't between Hillary and Edwards as opposed to Hillary and Obama has me stumped. I think Obama needs a lot more seasoning and experience before becoming presidential material.

Which leads me to conclude it's still a three-way race and Edwards is very much in it.

[via TalkLeft]

yes. Yes. YES. Yes Indeedy. This is very much a three-way race. The media plays it as Clinton-Obama because the woman-vs-black dynamic is sexier to libruls and inflames wingnuts more. Edwards is just another WASP male lawyer who was a Senator. His wife riles up more people than he does, but the campaign is careful not to flog that too much. While the Clinton and Obama camps play to the media and the "middle," Edwards plays to the base.  Joe Trippi, one of Edwards' senior advisors, ran Howard Dean's Netroots effort.  It's the base that will vote in Iowa and NH.  The netroots tune out the MSM and tun into what's happening on the ground.

I didn't watch the YouTube debate last night. It's way too early in the season for this to matter. In retrospect, I should have, because it looks like Edwards kicked some serious ass.

Still, I'm concerned and conflicted on the amount of equivocation coming from the top three on gay rights issues. Reports indicate that none of the major candidates are willing to take a strong position on gay marriage. When the only candidate who comes out for gay marriage is Kucinich, what does that say about the rest? Are they "triangulating?" Do they honestly believe gay marriage is wrong? It's hard to say. Edwards does the "religious beliefs" thing here, but he lets his wife off the leash to say the right thing. I hate this sort of code-word politics, though. Still, it's got to be done, lest the dems give the wingnuts something to fundraise on.

We're back to the whole idea of back-burnering gay rights issues until after the election. Nobody's been able to pull this off with blacks or gays since Clinton in 1992, though. Clearly blacks know by now that they're just not going to get anywhere with Republicans. Black advocacy organizations spend less time now getting in a candidate's face and more time working within the existing framework. Gay advocacy groups are still, in many ways, on the outside looking in, and all that serves to do is to piss them off. Still, at some point, they have to come to the realization that a Republican party controlled by the religious right isn't in their best interests.

I'll say this for Edwards, though: his position on universal healthcare and his passion for the subject gives him the most wiggle room on gay marriage. since healthcare benefits are one of the biggest motivations for gay marriage, "civil unions" and "domestic partnerships." If the US had universal healthcare, there would be less of an urgent legal need for gay marriage.

Of course, I still firmly believe that anyone should be allowed to marry whoever the heck they want.