’08/12 Election – Page 24

Comment of The Day

Published on January 13, 2008

In this morning’s Observer Armando Ianucci has written the most penetrating and biting analysis that I’ve read yet of Barack Obama’s policy-free political messaging :

[…]

So why does Obama, billed by everyone as a cross between Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, but without the terrible looks of either, just leave me puzzled? Maybe it’s because his is a rhetoric that soars and takes flight, but alights nowhere. It declares that together we can do anything, but doesn’t mention any of the things we can do. It’s a perpetual tickle in the nose that never turns into a sneeze. Trying to make sense of what he’s saying is like trying to wrap mist.

But, rhythmically, it’s quite alluring. It can make anything, even, for example, a simple chair, seem magnificent. Why vote for someone who says: ‘See that chair. You can sit on it’ when you can have someone like Obama say: ‘This chair can take your weight. This chair can hold your buttocks, 15 inches in the air. This chair, this wooden chair, can support the ass of the white man or the crack of the black man, take the downward pressure of a Jewish girl’s behind or the butt of a Buddhist adolescent, it can provide comfort for Muslim buns or Mormon backsides, the withered rump of an unemployed man in Nevada struggling to get his kids through high school and needful of a place to sit and think, the plump can of a single mum in Florida desperately struggling to make ends meet but who can no longer face standing, this chair, made from wood felled from the tallest redwood in Chicago, this chair, if only we believed in it, could sustain America’s huddled arse.’

More…

How do all the other presidential candidates stand on four-legged seating? Commenter wikipedia has taken Armando’s ball, or rather chair, and run with it:

wikipedia
January 13, 2008 1:43 AM

SUMMARY
Biden: I have worked with chairs all over the world, and most members of Congress agree with my plan for how to make chairs

Bloomberg: I’ve put together a committee to survey voters on whether they want me to make their chairs

Clinton: I have the most experience in making chairs

Edwards: I will fight the chairmakers!

Giuliani: I can best protect you from the danger of chairs, just as I did in NYC

Huckabee: Chairs did not evolve, but were created

Kucinich: We should have a one-payer system for chairs

McCain: My friends, I believe we can sit together in our chairs and work out bipartisan solutions without torture

Obama: Together we can create chairs in a new way

Paul: Why is the government involved in making chairs?

Romney: Venture capitalism has made American chairs the greatest in the world

Tancredo: We must build a fence to keep out foreign illegal chairs

Thompson: I like a comfortable, yet presidential looking chair

Utterly brilliant.

The above perfectly captions everything that’s embarassing and cringeworthy about (American) politics. Not so much Hillary Clinton’s emotional moment, however much I suspect it was totally scripted, but the response to it. One example:

How voters interpret Sen. Hillary Clinton’s composure — emotional, cold or just plain tough — could be a deciding factor in her campaign for the presidency, political analysts told ABCNEWS.com.

[…]

But there is a line for a female candidate when it comes to speaking forcefully and appearing too “shrill,” said Diana Owen, an associate professor of political science and the chair of American studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

“It’s very hard to find the balance between appearing strong and tough and caring and engaged and then crossing your line to where you’ll be labeled shrill and bitchy,” said Owen. “As far as being a female candidate, she’s open to different descriptive adjectives — things like melting down or being too emotional — that you would not hear as much in terms of male candidates.”

“I’m sure the calculation said you’ve got to go hard and attack and appear as thought you’re really taking this seriously,” said Owen. “But she lost her cool.”

And as to Clinton’s latest emotional episode, Owen is more confident that her composure — or lack thereof — is a sign of her campaign’s unraveling.

“Crying in a campaign at this stage is something you can’t do — male or female — and history has shown that,” said Owen. “It shows people weakness — crying goes against both male and female stereotypes, neither can do it.”

*Facepalm*

As if it matters in the least whether or not Hillary Clinton becomes slightly emotional about how hard the election campaign has been. For fuck’s sake, this is a woman who has had to suffer nasty, downright evil rightwing attacks for decades, first because she was Bill Clinton’s wife, now because she’s a leading Democrat in her own right. She has been accused from everything from arraigning Vice Foster’s suicide to having a lesbian relationship with Janet Reno, attacked as a whore, a shrew, a bitch, a castrator, in fact every hurtful sexist cliche has been hurled at her and for the most part she has been able to ignore them and not let them get to her.

But is it so surprising that in what’s perhaps the most important thing she has ever done in her life, when she’s again being attacked in this way, not just by wingnuts but also by some of her fellow Democrats, at a time when it seems that perhaps her dream of becoming president might end in New Hampshire, she gets a bit choked up?

As if that’s something to be ashamed of!

“In An Asylum Full of Napoleons, He’s the One Convinced He’s Joan of Arc”

Published on November 15, 2007

The Invisible Librarian‘s describing Presidential candidate Ron Paul, who I’ve been meaning to do a post about. But I’ve had real trouble getting a handle on the man other than that from what I’ve heard of him so far, he seems a bit of a crackpot libertarian.

Nevertheless he seems to be hitting a sweet spot with many Americans of all political stripes, sick as they are of the permanent folie a deux of a two party system and an entrenched media-political elite.

Even know sensible liberals like Glenn Greenwald are giving him credence:

…Glen Greenwald had to jump in and defend Ron Paul’s honor:

A “principled conservative” is someone who aggressively objects to the radicalism of the neocons and the Bush/Cheney assault on our constitution and embraces a conservative political ideology. That’s what Ron Paul is, and it’s hardly a surprise that he holds many views anathema to most liberals. That hardly makes him a “fruitcake.”

You’re right Glen. What makes Ron Paul a fruitcake is his desire to shut down the Department of Education, revoke Civil Rights, return us to the Gold Standard and use Letters of Marque and Reprisal to catch terrorists. His bid to defend the right to burn flags by proposing an amendment to make burning flags illegal and then arguing against his own amendment is just… no that’s nutty, too. Never mind.

[…]

Ron Paul views women as baby making machines. He wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. He wants to put us back on the fucking Gold standard! The Gold standard! And just because misogyny, sex-phobia and Jesus are planks of the GOP platform doesn’t make them reasonable areas of dispute. That we accept it as such just illustrates how far around the bend we’ve slid when it comes to acceptable discourse in politics.

Go read.

I’ve let Ron Paul slide under my political radar so far, taking the media spin at face value – that he’s a nothing candidate, a bit of crackpot, not a factor, nothing to consider. But this is the man that raised $4.3 million from a didaffected voting public in one day.

That says that, despite the official GOP trying to put a lid on his coverage, that he has a lot of potential votes in the Republican pimary.He’s not a nothing, or a nonentity and if he isn’t a nutter (though the omens don’t look good), well he certainly knows how to attract ’em.

Uneasy The Head That Would Wear The Crown Presidency

Published on October 22, 2007

Something’s perplexing me.

Why is it that, in a fiercely anti-monarchical country like the US, that Democratic candidates Edwards and Obama are not using that fiercely republican feeling as a campaign strategy?

Why not use the fact that, should Hillary Clinton be elected, there will have been two dynastic presidents back to back, as a weapon against her? You’d think it a no-brainer: they only have to point to Bush to show the dangers of the hereditary principle in politics. But no, on political dynasties they are silent, though it would likely gain them advantage. Why is that? Are they saving it for later or something?

If they leave it too long they’ll find that the Republicans have picked up that particular ball and run with it, despite the fact the right hardly have much ground to stand on themselves when it comes to political dynasties and nepotism. But when has the truth ever stopped this bunch of theives and conmen? They’ll use anything, they have no shame.

Of course it might be that the Democrats would prefer not to open that particular closet: without dynasties, nepotism and financial patronage of its own the party would collapse.

Best not to go there, perhaps – but they’d better go there, and fast, or the Republicans’ll get there first.

The Republicans are skilled in the art of offence as defence and before the candidates know it they’ll have had the Democrats painted (with the willing co-operation of the major media) as pro-monarchy and pro-elite and themselves portrayed as the party of the common man. If Hillary is nominated the wingnuts’ll be all over the blogosphere within minutes with their talking points, talking up a potential dynastic Hillarian gynocracy should she be elected. Expect Chelsea Clinton to be bgrought into it too.

There are any number of reasons why I think Hillary Clinton would be a disastrous choice for the Democratic nomination – in short I don’t think she’s qualified, she’s never run a city or a state – the dynastic thing is just one of them. But speaking purely from a campagning standpoint the candidates and the party must realise it’s an issue the wingers will use against them, and withg gusto. Never underestimate the blatant hypocrisy of Republicans, especially not when they’re getting desperate.

It seems to me that either Edwards or Obama or both must use the issue of mixing family and politics and the danger of establishing presidential dynasties against Clinton, both to advance their own cause and to preemptively draw the poison away from their party’s candidate should Clinton eventually be nominated.. So why haven’t they?

Romney’s Dodgy Aides, Part II

Published on October 17, 2007

You’d think Mitt Romney’d learn to choose his campaign team better, after the last time, when his security chief turned out to be impersonating a police officer and threatening reporters…

Romney’s New National Security Adviser Said He’d Torture “In A Heartbeat”By Greg Sargent – October 16, 2007, 1:26PM

Retired General James “Spider” Marks, who has just been named a new national security adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaign, asserted in a 2005 interview that he would readily torture prisoners to save a soldier’s life or stop a terror bomb, saying: “I’d stick a knife in somebody’s thigh in a heartbeat.”

In announcing the appointment of Marks, the Romney campaign put out a press release emphasizing his “more than three decades of experience in the intelligence field.” But according to CNN, Marks also is a teacher of “interrogation.”

More…

How do you teach interrogation in an age of rampant torture? “No, I’ve told you before… stick the needle under the nail at a 20 degree angle, not 45.. dammit, electrodes go on the testicles, not the penis!”

Maybe having serial-killer tendencies is why Mitt picks ’em. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.