alternative hippopotamus

Prof Turley is without doubt one of the most admired legal eagles in our fair city, the People’s Republic of DC. In this case, though, I’m hoping he has mischaracterized the relationship between Obama and Cass Sunstein, aka Mr. Samantha Powers. As far as I can tell, Sunstein is a creepy dude.

This quote from Sunstein has been going around lately. You may have seen it:

Prosecuting government officials risks a “cycle” of criminalizing public service, [Sunstein] argued, and Democrats should avoid replicating retributive efforts like the impeachment of President Clinton — or even the “slight appearance” of it.

It’s kind of ironic that Sunstein wrote a book called Republic.com 2.0. If he had read the slightly older Republic.com 1.0, he would have recognized that Justice is a fundamental attribute of the ideal city. Ideal, of course, in the Platonic sense. The idea that the Executive branch should not be accountable for crimes, high or low is so offensive to our notion of justice that I find it hard to believe that a Harvard Law professor would broach the subject. Well, Harvard, maybe. They can be kind of weird.

As one of Turley’s commenters asks:

Sunstein is a lawyer? Where’d he get his degree? Costco?

Look, Sunstein: there is public service, and there is crime. They are not the same thing. It’s apples and oranges. Public service simply cannot be “criminalized.” A person holding public office who uses that office to commit crimes is not in public service but in self service.

I’ll note that Sunstein doesn’t refer to himself as a “close advisor” to Obama, as Glenn Greenwald had put it: (Salon)

You’re sounding a bit like Barack Obama. He was your colleague for a while, right?

Yes, 10 years. And I’m an informal, occasional advisor to him.

I’ll tell you what I like about Obama, which is connected with the book. He really doesn’t like to surround himself only with like-minded others. He really is someone who has never lived and wouldn’t live in an echo chamber.

While I’d prefer “he thinks I’m an idiot” to “informal, occasional advisor” at least it’s something.

David Weigel on the Meowists, emphasis mine:

Is there any way of gauging how many PUMAs there are? Well, on June 14 Bower created a Facebook group for them. In a month and a week it’s grown to 456 members. Is it so small because Clinton’s salt-of-the-earth supporters don’t waste their time online? Well, no. The still-active Hillary Clinton for President group has more than 22,000 members, although it’s shedding dozens of them every day.

Are the PUMAs lying about their support, their numbers, or their fundraising just to get attention? We won’t know for sure until July’s fundraising numbers come out, as they can prove or disprove Bower’s Fox News claims. Bower, in another interview where he made the “$10 million” claim, said that PUMAs give in increments of $20.08 so “they know it’s from us.” Anyone want to bet that 50,000 Clinton donors materialized in a week in early July? A long holiday week, no less? If you do, I’ve got an account at IndyMac I want to sell you.

I’ve seen some pretty tin-foil hat stuff on the rivermalkin site, including a theory about how the DNC colluded with the Obama campaign to schedule the convention on the anniversary of MLK’s “I have a dream” speech. This, according to the sufferers of ODS, proves that Obama had been chosen before the primary season began, ostensibly to bring down the Clinton faction of the DNC.

Oi.

Here’s a much more straightforward conspiracy theory for you: that a small group of people took advantage of hard feelings on the part of Clinton supporters after the primary season to get attention. And, who knows, maybe a little cash.

That would explain something that’s always bothered me about the “divided government” folks among the PUMA’s. Even if they didn’t care about the Supreme Court make-up, or, say energy policy, environmental issues, or the de-Bushification of the Executive branch you’d think they’d care about accountability. To see investigations into wrong-doing by high-ups in the Bush 43 administration. Which will certainly not happen under a Republican. You’d think they’d want to see that as members of the Democratic party. Unless…

The Prince of Pudding ponders:

What I find interesting about the New Yorker cover is that it’s almost exactly the sort of cover you could expect to find on the front of National Review.

Consider that, for a moment, a work of art so PoMo that its meaning changes based on where it’s published.

In another world, it might be possible for a white guy to satirize the right-wing by dressing the first black nominee and his wife as Muslims and terrorists, and people would get the “joke.” In this world, the Jonah Goldberg’s, Fox Newsers, and Limbaugh’s will get the last laugh at the expense of the haughty intellectuals that run great bastions of progessivism like The New Yorker.

Chris Bowers wonders:

Logic aside, I have to wonder why hundreds of people on Daily Kos would desire for people to leave a group that is critical of Obama from the left. This is to effectively ask Obama supporters to stop asking things from Obama. The inability of some to tolerate any criticism of Barack Obama is pretty depressing.

Really? You don’t understand why someone would want to put an ixnay on the iticism-cray? Might it be that a continued Executive under the Republicans would be harmful to our society? Hmmm? Also, am I crazy here, or do Democrats have a history of pulling defeat out of the jaws of victory? (I guess both could be true.)

It’s a balancing act that Democrats have not yet figured out. Democratic representatives routinely dump on the left. They show disrespect for the base in a way I don’t see from the Republicans. That’s not going to work going forward. The base needs to, ought to, hold their representatives accountable. Now, it’s also true that some politicians (you know who you are) are from districts that don’t understand why the Democrats are against eavesdropping on the Muslims. Living in an informed society, to very badly paraphrase Ghandi, would be a good idea. The point being that large segments of American society don’t see things like FISA as effecting their rights, but just the rights of others.

So, there must be a degree of accountability. There must be a constant and vigilant effort to undermine authoritarianism. Money, and the laws of physics and gravity say that politicians will reform government in a manner that most benefits themselves. If there is a central tenet of the blogosphere, it’s that the light of observation kills cancer.

On the other hand, there are the crazies. (Excerpt: “Did I mention all of the superdelegates that had to be threatened with primary challenges, the other superdelegates that were bought off, the power of DFA used as your personal campaign organization outside of the official OBAMA organization and nearly every African-American in the US voting for you? And with all of that plus the institutional power of the Democratic establishment lining up behind Obama so they can pull his strings after he is in office, he only just *barely* managed to buy his way into the winner’s circle. Barely. Because we’re not talking about his qualifications or experience, which is virtually non-existent. I can’t think of anything more embarrassing than having been carried to the nomination on the back of droogs who want to use you. For sure, no one will ever look at the nomination of Barack Obama and have anyone say he won on his merits. “) That reminds me: any chance that Michelle Malkin actually writes the Riverdaughter screeds?

The point being is that there is a balance between those two extremes (Orange Satanists and Meowists), and we haven’t found it yet.

From Jewschool, on an anti-Obama bumper sticker encouraging jews to immigrate to Israel if Obama is elected:

Funny, I would have thought “Yerida…because he might win” would have been more appropriate. No one is concerned about what Obama will do to Jews in the US. It’s what he will do to Israel’s safety/security that people are debating.

Yeah, if I understand the email forwards correctly, I thought the problem was that Obama, if elected, was going to appoint his former pastor Mahmoud HUSSEIN Ahmadinejad as Secretary of State, and would then nuke Israel and establish a fundamentalist Islamic state on the charred wreckage. It seems that the Obama-smearers need to be more on-message.

I laughed. ODS satire is funny.

Speaking of ODS. The Chairman Meowists are getting restless:

And now we have a presumptuous nominee who we can’t quite pin down when it comes to policy on much of anything. But we know who is championing him: libertarian Democrats, former moderate Republicans, young college aged students from affluent backgrounds and a bunch of academic liberals wo don’t like to get their hands dirty. The part of the party that is being purged consists of working class, elderly, latino, women, GLBT. Just the kind of people who benefit from New Deal programs and the Great Society.

Did you guys know about the party purge? Sounds like everybody but “libertarian Democrats, former moderate Republicans, young college aged students from affluent backgrounds and a bunch of academic liberals who don’t like to get their hands dirty” has got to go.

I’ll talk to KCinDC about doing a Party Purge night at DCDL. Should be fun.

A few days ago I saw this Robert Samuelson op-ed in the Washington Post-it-note. Allegedly, Samuelson is non-partisan. This wikipedia article, for instance, mentions that he’s so concerned about the possibility of becoming partisan that he doesn’t vote. Looking at the details of his op-ed, I have to believe that it would be okay if he went ahead and voted right-wing hack.

For instance, take these paragraphs:

Start with Barack Obama. Even those who disagree with him ought to feel pride in his impending nomination because it continues America’s racial reconciliation and atonement for slavery. But symbolism can’t substitute for policy, and any feel-good fallout from electing Obama would soon fade. He’d have to earn popular support, and this would be made harder by a problem of his own making: He’d have to disavow much of his campaign rhetoric. The reason is that his campaign is itself a contradiction.

On the one hand, he projects himself as the great conciliator. He uses the metaphor of his race to argue that he is uniquely suited to bridge differences between liberals and conservatives, young and old, rich and poor — to craft a new centrist politics. On the other hand, his actual agenda is highly partisan and undermines many of his stated goals. He wants to stimulate economic growth, but his hostility toward trade agreements threatens export-led growth (which is now beginning). He advocates greater energy independence but pretends this can occur without more domestic drilling for oil and natural gas.

This plays into a narrative initiated by the Clinton campaign, and no doubt will be used by McCain: Obama is a phony, an empty suit. Samuelson argues this by saying that Obama is such a phony that he promises to govern from neither right or left, while a little digging shows that he’s such a hippy that he intends to undo all the peace and prosperity that Bush’s trade and energy policies have created.

For instance, Samuelson says he is hostile to trade agreements. Economists for Obama has a different take:

Obama will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. He will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world and stand firm against agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that fail to live up to those important benchmarks. Obama will also pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and nontariff barriers on U.S. exports.

If by hostility to trade agreements, Samuelson means that Obama is hostile to trade agreements that screw over the US labor force, then yes, Obama is guilty as charged.

Regarding energy independence, Samuelson says that Obama is pretending that we can get there without increased US drilling. After reviewing this speech by Obama, I’d say that Samuelson is confusing the word ” pretends” with “has facts that show that”:

The President’s energy proposal would reduce our oil imports by 4.5 million barrels per day by 2025. Not only can we do better than that, we must do better than that if we hope to make a real dent in our oil dependency. With technology we have on the shelves right now and fuels we can grow right here in America, by 2025 we can reduce our oil imports by over 7.5. million barrels per day - an amount greater than all the oil we are expected to import from the entire Middle East.

We can do this by focusing on two things: the cars we drive and the fuels we use.

The unfortunate truth is that any kind of meaningful energy conservation has been put on hold since at least 1995, the last time CAFE standards increased, and in many cases since the Carter administration.

Well don’t ya go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Meow.

Shorter Confluence:

1. Write manifesto calling for the overthrow of the Democratic Party to install your preferred candidate:
   

   The problem with Obama and the new Democratic party is that it doesn’t stand for real Democrats. It is yet another strange amalgamation of voters whose self interest was pandered to. In many ways, it is no different than the Republican party of gilded capitalists, religious crazies and neocons. This new Democratic party is made up of young people, libertarians and pretentious status conscious liberals. There is a nasty streak of cynicism in it as well, as if it’s just so outre to consider helping the poor or abiding by any core Democratic principles. The new Democratic party is just too cool for that. They can write some lengthy, detached policy paper about it and pay some lip service but really, the American demographic has evolved and those people on the brink of insolvency, well, they are the Neanderthals that didn’t make the cut. Moving on.
   

2. ?
3. Profit.

Seriously, if I thought these folks had some kind of a point I’d politely argue that the grassroots/netroots movement here in Our Fair City is primarily made up of Obama supporters, or, as the PUMA’s prefer, young pretentious status conscious liberals. (At least I get young.)

I’d write something with a little more sympatico, but something tells me that you don’t want to be friends. Maybe could be the manifesto. C’est la vie. Moving on.

One of the things that I look forward to is being able to focus on the right-wing freak show rather than the rhetorical fallacies of fellow progressives. But today and tomorrow we’ll probably see a few token shots at the “Obamabots.” For example, BTD takes this statement by Roger Simon out of context to inflame Clinton supporters:

It has been a hard-fought and sometimes bitter campaign, but Obama is not, one of his senior advisers assured me Tuesday night, going to spend a lot of time in the next few months wooing Clinton supporters whose feelings may be hurting.

Sounds like Roger Simon is saying that the Obama campaign told him that Clinton supporters would be thrown under the bus doesn’t it? But, the following paragraph makes clear that the Obama campaign staffer is saying that now the campaign pivots to focus on former Clinton supporters, independents, and Republicans: ( Politico )

“I think there are always immediate feelings of disappointment and anger,” Anita Dunn said. “But in the months ahead, he must appeal not just to the constituency groups who favored her in the primaries, but those he wants in the general election, and that includes independents and Republicans.”

Why would BTD quote the introductory remark without the context of the following paragraph? Interesting question. Here’s my theory. BTD understands that anger sells. He is providing what former supporters of Clinton are looking for: justification for their anger at Obama. Is the anger actually justified? Not from that quote it isn’t.

Any other theories?

Like most bloggers, I’m trying to understand what HRC’s actions mean wrt not conceding while acknowledging that BO is about to clinch the nomination. It’s kind of like a modern version of Aesop’s the Tortoise and the Hare. In this case the hare appears to insist that the tortoise didn’t win the race, as the hare has not yet conceded that the tortoise has won the race.

As Talk Left puts it:

Until and unless Hillary Clinton publicly suspends or ends her campaign and concedes that Obama is the nominee, there is no nominee. There is only a statement that if current delegate positions at this moment were frozen in time until August he would be the nominee.

The way that I’m hearing this is that HRC’s supporters believe that she holds the power of concession over Obama. With which she will get some kind of agreement out of him. I don’t believe that, but maybe there’s a political truth in this that I’m missing.

I see TPM is also trying to understand where this is coming from. It sounds like Greg Sargent believes that HRC senses the historical nature of the moment:

Here’s my stab at trying to answer the question of why this controversial and in some ways enigmatic figure has refused to quit the race. One key reason she has stayed in, I believe, is that it strengthens the inspirational power of Hillary’s political narrative and persona, and, ultimately, strengthens her emotional grip on her supporters.

It’s no accident that Hillary has compared herself to Rocky on occasion. Just as Rocky emerged as an iconic figure for blue collar whites disoriented and displaced by the wrenching demographic changes of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Hillary has presented herself as a kind of feminist Rocky, a heroine who refuses to lay down on behalf of millions and millions of women who have felt defeated or voiceless, or who have felt as if they quit too early, or who have felt that the odds have always been stacked against them.

It may be that it’s impossible to really get what’s driving her. Unless, of course, you too have been married to the President, and have lead the most successful campaign for a woman to be US president.

So, I had credentials to sit in on today’s DNC Rules & By-laws Committee. The proceeding broke up around 3:00 for lunch at which point I thought I’d make a shot at writing up my impressions. While I had some things I wanted to relate regarding details, there’s a meta-narrative here which is important. What has been lacking during the Bush years, indeed, often discouraged, is participatory democracy. This was a valuable opportunity to see a vital part of what holds this society together. That is, people arguing. Freely, often heavily handed to make their point, or to secure their clients victory. I think you could argue that some parts of the proceedings bordered on the scripted. This is a failing of the modern political class system, but one that can be compensated for by healthy debate. And, for the most part, today’s debate was healthy.

I’m just saying. Remember to chalk one up for the good guys today. The threat of hard-line authoritarianism is just a bit more distant as a result of this assembly.

So, on to some more specific observations.

• Bill Nelson is the guy who I would cast if I ever did a Hollywood flick on the life of a senator.
• Likewise, in the same epic I’d need a villain. Howard Ickes is cut-out for this role. He is oily in the way that you’d expect from a character right out of Dickens.
• Kesh from DC4D had a really good point about the Michigan delegates. The RBC shouldn’t try to decide how many delegates should get seated. That should be up to the Michigan Democratic party. The RBC should just make a decision related to what percentage of the delegates should be seated.
• Jesse made a good point also. While it’s true that Clinton supporters on the floor have been disruptive, often booing statements they didn’t agree with, or hissing at speakers, the tone was set by members of the RBC. A number of the RBC speakers set a tone and a style that was confrontational, and even baiting to the supporters in the crowd.
• A lot of the arguments by the pro-Clinton supporters in Florida and Michigan were to the effect of, and I’m paraphrasing: “please, don’t punish the voters.” This is a dicey argument as many of the parties present today committed acts which set in motion events which predictably lead to the disenfranchising of voters in Michigan and Florida. Wouldn’t it be simpler to say that the current situation is a result of the individual egos of people in power? Aren’t the voters of Florida and Michigan being used as bargaining chips?

Speaking for me only, AltHippo.