Solving the Florida & Michigan delegate problem... Obama, hand 'em over to Hillary... Winners know when fighting isn't worth the effort...

Dear Barack Obama,

I have solved the Democratic delegate crisis of 2008. I have crafted an elegant solution to handling both the Michigan and Florida delegations. My solution will not cost the states, parties or candidates anything. My solution will not require a re-vote. The John Brown solution fixes the whole mess instantly.

Just give Hillary what she wants.

Seriously. He should let her have her precious little phony Florida and Michigan victories and move on to bigger and better things. Like winning the nomination without them.

You aren't going to need them. You've done the math. Just hand 'em over with a smile. Explain your preference for focusing on bigger national issues and America's well-being, as opposed to intra-party bickering.

If you're playing one-on-one with someone and you're whipping them, there's no reason to worry about cutting them some slack when they travel or claim BS fouls. You're gonna win either way, you might as well silence the whining in the process.

Plus, there are other advantages to the John Brown plan. How many superdelegates are gonna screw the gracious guy? Who's going to back Hillary into winning when she's only marginally close because you were the bigger person? No one.

You'll go from being the leader to the presumed nominee immediately. Oh, and the Jeremiah Wright thing will disappear for at least two weeks' worth of news cycles.

Give her Florida and Michigan. Everyone will know she doesn't deserve them. They'll count in her favor on paper, but they'll weigh her down with negative karma.

If you do it just right, she'll look like shit and you'll be the champ. The trick is in the presentation, but I think you can handle it. Hand 'em over and tell her to meet you in Denver if she plans on dragging this mess out until then.

Then, stop talking about her. Period. Make her a ghost at the debates and don't utter her name again until you toss some love her way during your acceptance speech. Your only opponent right now is John McCain.

READER EXERCISE: Consider the proposition "John Brown is just kidding about giving Florida and Michigan to Hillary". Mentally outline reasons why this proposition may or may not be true. Determine whether he is joking or serious. Explain your conclusion.




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Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, religion, race and the political dance... The three lessons of Pastorgate...

The Barack Obama / Jeremiah Wright controversy's narrative is reaching its denoument for most of the world, although some of the more fearful and fear-mongering among us may continue to pound the story for a while longer.

Although the story isn't yet 100% complete, we can skip ahead just a few pages to study the lessons it teaches.

The Moral(s) to the Story

1. We don't understand religion in America very well.

The Unitarian and the evangelical Christian have very different views of what religion is all about. The Hassidic Jew and the cafeteria Catholic have very different outlooks on faith and membership to a religious group. Rod Parsley and anyone who embraces Islam are on very different wavelengths. You get the idea.

Unfortunately, a lot of the "Obama's militant preacher" crap is being offered with a certain perspective in mind. We hear from fundamentalist Christians who "can't understand" why a guy would stay in a church with a pastor "like that". We hear from more moderate, and predominantly protestant, voices who have a vision of what church membership means that probably doesn't mirror the way many people think. The outcome? The Wright stuff gets twisted into something it isn't, blown a little out of proportion, and still isn't treated seriously.

The religious perspective divide includes a black/white dimension, too. If you read anything more about Obama and Wright, check out these two articles. It may change your perspective on why Wright says the things he says, the context in which he says them, and why a parishioner might not consider them all that inflammatory.

Charles Coulter at the KC Star has a great piece on the topic. His little First Amendment argument at the beginning is silly, but the rest of the article is a great read. Here's an excerpt:

Rev. Wright has not said anything that has not been said or is not being said in bars, poolrooms, barber shops, hair salons or anywhere else more than three black people gather.

And don't fool yourself. It's not just the black urban poor, those without jobs, education or hope, who express these comments. Many members of the black middle class have the same sense of history; the same sense of anger.

Deborah Mathis at BlackAmericaWeb provides some interesting perspective, too. In part, she writes:

In a fair world, Obama would be able to elaborate about the black perspective and thereby give some context to Wright’s comments and the facts of black expression.

But, then, in a fair world, there would be no racial divide to bridge. Of course, Obama’s detractors would never consider that.

These two articles are the part of the Wright controversy you aren't hearing about from most news sources. Even if you don't agree with Coulter and Mathis, they're worth reading.

2. Race is still a big deal.

A few short weeks ago, it almost felt like the USA was proving that it had a great deal of progress in terms of race, racism and race relations. We had a black guy of mixed heritage leading in the polls and no one was saying anything about it.

Yeah, we obviously still had our issues with those of Latin origin and those darned Muslims, but it was starting to seem like we had that whole black/white thing resolved.

Not quite. The Wright thing is a HUGE reminder of the black/white divide. Not only are whites "not getting it" with respect to black churches, many people are expressing reactions that don't seem to understand the nation's racial history. You have those who foment racism without saying the "n word" pretending as if they're colorblind while they intentionally hit the right buttons to make white folk just a little bit nervous, if you know what I mean. Meanwhile, you have hypersensitive folk on the other side of the table finding racism where it probably doesn't even unintentionally exist.

Then you have the outright crazies, but that's another story. They're definitely out there, but I think their most influential days are long behind them. Nonetheless, they're stirring the shit pot so everyone can get a whiff.

We've got a long way to go when it comes to race. The Wright stuff proves it and you're gonna see a lot more of it in the coming months after Obama officially gets the nomination. I'm not just talking about McCain-backers coming down on Barack, either. This is going to cut both ways and no one is going to be able to pretend that we're running around inside the MLK dream.

3. Barack Obama isn't perfect.

I liked Obama's responses on the Wright question, for the most part. In fact, a lot of what he said wasn't much different than my own perspective on the matter. However, he did do one thing I didn't like. He acted like a pretty traditional politician.

First, he denounced all of Wright's "controversial" statements. That's a sensible thing to do when you're on a hot seat, but I don't think it's completely honest. Many of the "controversial" Wright statements aren't really, at their core, all that horrible. Sometimes, it's more about "how you say it" than it is about "what you say". Explaining the difference, however, isn't always politically feasible (or at least easy enough to justify when your objective is winning an election). I think Obama copped out a little bit in his across-the-board reaction to those who disagreed with Wright's sentiments.

Second, Obama parsed his language like a pro. He made sure we knew he wasn't in the pews when Wright was yelling "God damn America", but he sort of left some wiggle room when it came to the "did you know the guy said this sort of thing" question. That's because he probably DID know about Wright's more "radical" harangues but didn't want to concede it because of the nature of the media coverage. He probably felt it was too challenging to explain why those comments might not have been all that controversial within the walls of Trinity United.

So, he took the easy out: Repudiate while leaving room for interpretation. It's probably smart in some ways, but it's also very old school from a guy who's running on a "new politics".

Barack isn't perfect. Usually the recognition of massive personal imperfections comes long before anyone runs for the office. In Obama's case, however, it's hitting him late, so it feels like news. Me? I'm still backing the guy, though I wish he would have been willing to take the harder and more intellectually honest route on this one.




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Barack Obama and the Jeremiah Wright "issue"... Truth is duller than fiction...

People are complicated. Some people are smart. That second category probably includes both McCain and Obama. Neither are likely to be blindly accepting the words of clergymen, trading the insights of Wright or Parsley for their own thinking. They're smart enough to know better.

Are we?

Jeremiah Wright, the now infamous pastor at Trinity United Church, seems a little stuck in the past to me. I'm also convinced that all of this attention on Wright and his Church is probably misplaced.

I've heard and seen the various clips that are getting so many people worked up over Barack Obama's pastor. As far as I can tell, he's not doing anything new or shocking. When he goes on what some people would call an "anti-American tirade" he sounds like an old recording from 30-40 years ago. He's a pulpit firebrand preaching a radicalized afrocentric message. He's not breaking new ground, he's comfortably echoing the sentiments of "angry blacks", hanging on to a perspective that was already losing favor when I was a kid in the 70s.

I'm not going to provide a long history of predominantly black churches and civil rights issues. I'm not going to take you on a trip that involves the precursors to MLK, King himself, more radicalized clergymen who competed with King's perspective, Malcom X, black power movements, and what's happened since. I won't bore you with an explanation of the intersection of church and politics within the black community.

Do you know why I'm not going to go through all of that? Honestly, part of it is a matter of my personal laziness. Mainly, though, it's because I don't think most people give a shit. They don't want context and they don't want understanding. I'm guessing that if you entered the magic phrases into Google to land here that you want "red meat"--something to piss you off or to make you feel better about Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright and race in general.

If someone actually tries to make real sense out of this stuff, it just isn't simple, fast and interesting enough to give us the political hard-ons we crave.

Besides, if we did this from the ground up... Well, we'd be looking at a book instead of a blog post and this one is gonna be long as it is.

I'm not completely abandoning hope that someone out there would like to hear something a little more meaningful than "Jeremiah Wright is the devil and his hatred will kill the Obama campaign" crap. I'm skipping some history for the sake of expediency, but I'm not selling out completely.

Here's my take. Understanding why this Jeremiah Wright thing is a bullshit dust-up is easy.

OBAMA

Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright have a relationship. Obama has high regard for much of what Wright has done and the candidate found a home in Wright's church. Wright performed the Obama wedding and one of his sermons became the title for Obama's Audacity of Hope.

The simple-minded will argue that this relationship creates a reason for concern. Wright says stuff we don't like. Obama likes Wright. Thus, by the transitive process of shallow political thinking, Obama is somehow on board with Wright when the pastor says "God damn America". That is bullshit.

Obama himself tried to explain this in a sort of folksy way, describing Wright as a family member who he loves, but with whom he doesn't universally agree. "An old Uncle", Obama called him.

That's a quick takeout of the Obama/Wright link, but the real reason why you don't need to be afraid of Barack Obama based on Jeremiah Wright is a little more complicated. It's something Barack Obama has explained before and it's something that one might not recognize without first having their attention drawn to it.

Obama once gave a speech in which he discussed his religious awakening at Trinity United and his current position on faith. Read this:

And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.

It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity one day and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice and not an epiphany. I didn’t fall out in church, as folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn’t magically disappear. The skeptical bent of my mind didn’t suddenly vanish. But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to his will, and dedicated myself to discovering his truth and carrying out his works.

Obama is not a religious zealot. He's not pretending he has all of the answers and he's not willing to claim that his church has all of them either. He remains skeptical and continues looking for truth.

When you actually think about Obama's stance on religion, it mitigates a lot of concerns, doesn't it? He isn't part of Jeremiah Wright's army. He's not taking orders from a pulpit. He understands his faith as an important part of his life and one that has a great deal of power, but he hasn't traded in his critical thinking for zealotry.

I think this is hard for many religious people to understand, because many of us don't approach our faith in this way. Many of us are soldiers for our churches. Many of us take our church leaders' word that "things are the way they say they are". For many people, church membership and the very idea of belonging to a church involves accepting that church's interpretation of the bible and its stance on issues.

That's not Obama's faith. Now, you can argue that he isn't "your" kind of Christian because he's still skeptical and he's still looking to develop a real understanding of truth. You can argue that he's not "Christian enough" for you because he's not a member of your brand of Jesus worship or because he's willing to submit to God's will but not to the will of any individual, absolutist doctrine.

Personally, I think those arguments are meaningless, but you're welcome to make them.

However, when you understand how Obama describes his faith and his understanding of religion, it's very hard to believe that he's taking marching orders from Jeremiah Wright. It's also hard to argue that you can impugn Obama with Wright's zaniness.

WRIGHT

Based on everything I've seen of Jeremiah Wright, he's sort of the black ministerial version on Geraldine Ferraro. I don't know his theology, but I know his politics. He's pitching a rather outdated version of angry black politics. It's conspiratorial, it's inflammatory, and it has a big chip on its shoulder about the white man.

As a white man, I should probably feel threatened or should take offense. I don't some of that is because I've studied the history this post skipped. Some of that is because I see it in a larger social context. Most of it is because I recognize that Jeremiah Wright's voice on these political matters is one of the last of its kind.

Olympic athletes no longer give the black power salute and the Black Panthers are probably playing shuffleboard at the senior center right now. The Wright perspective and the Wright language are old and dying. It still has an audience, but it's shrinking and its relevance is in decline.

Jeremiah Wright shares a little bit in common with Geraldine Ferraro. Ferraro seems unable to shake her old-school feminism, clinging to it ferociously even though most "radicalized" younger women have long ago recognized the intersections of race and gender and what they mean. Meanwhile, Wright rants about the White Man and rails against the system in an antique voice. He's not up to speed.

Have a little sympathy and empathy for both of them. They came across their views honestly, even if those perspectives aren't right. They hold to them because they've worked on things very meaningful to them for a very long time. They can't change their stripes and spots that easily. Truth be known, we owe Ferraro and Wright debts of gratitude. What seems stupid, shallow and old today was groundbreaking in different times and under different circumstances.

I don't know about Wright's preaching. I know about his politics, but I haven't heard him preaching in a more traditionally religious sense. Maybe it was in those quieter moments that he touched Barack Obama?

I haven't really heard all that much from Wright, either. I've seen a highlight reel of the moments when he says things that frustrate and upset people. The government made AIDS, the chickens coming home to roost (nod to Malcom X), God damn America, etc.

If you line up all of those "here's crazy Jeremiah" Youtube clips, they comprise a ridiculously small percentage of all the talking, preaching and teaching he's done. We're seeing the Worst of Jeremiah Wright. I don't think it's completely fair to pass judgment based on that.

With respect to Barack Obama, it doesn't really matter, though. I don't think there's any evidence that Obama subscribes to the more incendiary thoughts of Mr. Wright, do you? Nah. But pretending that's the case is a lot more exciting than using your noodle, isn't it?

FOLLOW THE POLITICS

Ask yourself who benefits from making the transitive argument with respect to Wright and Obama. Have you answer? Good. Remember it.

Now, contrast Wright's lunacy with that of John McCain's spiritual adviser and campaign buddy in Ohio, Rod Parsley.

Rod Parsley sells magical healing prayer cloths. He argues that America was founded to crush Islam. He thinks its worth revisiting adultery laws and potentially punishing cheaters with the machinery of the criminal justice system. He's a dominionist who thinks we might benefit from trashing the Constitution in favor of a Christian version of Sharia.

Contrast Wright's bombast with that of McCain supporter John Hagee. You know, the guy who calls Catholicism "the Great Whore" and who wants to nuke Iran in order to pave the way for Jesus' return on a white horse. He's said plenty of amazingly offensive things, too.

For some reason, people are willing to paint Obama with Wright's comments while recognizing that John McCain isn't quite as crazy as Hagee and Parsley. Why is that?

What is it about far-right Christian politics that differs from far-left black Christian politics in these matters?

Here's a clue. The words "far-left" and "black".

I'm not trying to play "that religious guy is crazier than the other religious guy". Personally, I think Wright is silly and Parsley/Hagee are goofy, too.

The more important question, with respect to what's going on in the media and around water coolers today, is how much it really matters in terms of the candidates.

(Remember: The Vatican didn't manage to take over the White House when Kennedy was in office)

I don't think John Mccain wants to throw himself in prison for adultery and I don't believe he's plotting a Constitutional crisis in order to replace the governing principles of the USA with some kind of conservative Christian theocracy.

I don't think Barack Obama believes the government has intentionally spread AIDS or that he plans on singing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America". I don't think Barack Obama hates whitey, which would create some problems when it came to his very own mommy.

People are complicated. Some people are smart. That second category probably includes both McCain and Obama. Neither are likely to be blindly accepting the words of clergymen, trading the insights of Wright or Parsley for their own thinking. They're smart enough to know better. Are we?






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Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, sex and race... Vaginas vs. Melanin...

Obama won 9 out of every 10 African-American votes in Mississippi. As an Obama supporter, I know there are many good reasons to vote for the guy. At the same time, I'm not delusional. You don't snag 90% of any signficantly-sized demographic unless identity politics are at play.

This is one of those things Obama backers usually won't say, but Barack is locking down the black vote, in large measure, because he's a black guy. Period.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton's greatest base of support seems to be among white women, particularly those who are fairly well-removed from college age. Personally, I think Hillary Clinton is emblematic of just about everything bad about politics, but I do recognize that people have legitimate reasons to supporter her. Nonetheless, the only real explanation for her victory margins within white women, when you look at how the rest of the electorate is behaving, is identity politics.

Clinton fans are quick to bemoan Obama's massive support among blacks, but they don't like to be honest about what's going on with white women. Identity politics again.

It's vaginas vs. melanin right now. I recognize that there are diverse opinions within demographics and I don't really want to hear "I'm a white woman who backs Obama, so you're wrong" or "I'm a black man wearing a Hillary pin, you're wrong". There are exceptions. I'm speaking in broader terms. I recognize exceptions. I'd like to think that I'm one.

Check this out. I'm a white guy. I've long understood and accepted that white guys are usually at the root of major social problems. We've screwed a lot of people over and we've done some bad stuff. If there's something massively goofed up in the USA, it can usually be traced back to the self-interested decisions of white guys.

I tried to break the mold, cognizant of my privilege and "my group's" record of evil. I raged against the machine. I've read more feminist literature than your average senior in a good women's studies program. I'm receptive to the legitimate complaints of minority groups. I've bent over backwards to avoid toxic forms of sexism and racism. I tried to be one of the "good" white guys.

Now, to my surprise, I am a disaster unfold that has little or anything to directly do with white guys. The Democratic primaries are descending into vaginas vs. melanin and white guys like me seem to be the ones who aren't the source of the problem for a change.

Sure, you can blame us for the society that created the situation which has led to this moment. I'll accept responsibility on behalf of all white guys, evil and good, for some of that. You have a point. However, at this point women and African Americans have a choice to make. They can vote with their heads or they can vote with their genitals/skin color (depending on the individual).

As a white guy, I sort of feel bad for both demographics. I also understand the identification thing.

Geraldine Ferraro behaved stupidly with her "Barack is lucky to be a black man" jibber-jabber. Ferraro isn't a Klan member or anything. She's just frustrated. She's a woman who's undoubtedly seen more than her fair share of sexim and is certainly piShe's frustrated because a woman had a legitimate shot at the White House and someone stepped in and blew it for her. It just so happens that guy is black. She's pissed.

I can understand why. As one of the good white guys, I get it. Women haven't had it easy. They've been oppressed. I don't feel like a long dissertation on phallocentric biases and patriarchal domination are necessary here. I'd hope that we all know sexism has deprived women and the world of a lot of greatness over the centuries. Things are a bit better today than in the past, but sexism remains a very real societal force.

Women have been working and fighting for improvement for longer than any of us have been alive. They've sacrificed, they've fought. They've won some battles and have lost others. They've been fighters. Middle aged white women in America have been on the front lines of a battle for equality and the idea of a woman in the White House has tremendous real and symbolic significance to them. That makes sense. A woman President would be meaningful. Very meaningful. If I were a woman, I'm willing to guess I'd want a woman President.

I get it with the African-Americans, too. Again, I don't think we really need to spend a great deal of time talking about the very racist history of this country, the struggles for equality and the assorted evils of our society's long-held bias. As with women, things are better today, but racism is still a very present problem.

The idea of a black President has meaning to African-Americans. If you can't understand that, you're hopeless. Think about what a dark-skinned President might symbolize to those who fought and continue to fight for legitimate equality and civil rights? If I was a black guy, I'd wager I'd love the idea of a black President.

I think there are probably some resentments between the two groups, too. I don't know how strong "fear of the black man" is among white women. I don't know if black men hold a real grudge against white women, either. I do know there are tensions sometimes.

Vaginas vs. Melanin, though. It's a problem. Hillary supporters can't simply concede that they're backing a candidate because she has genitals that match their own. We all KNOW how shallow and silly that sounds. Those of us who identify as Democrats also know that we've been pissy about Republican identity politics for so long that we can't really advertise our own dissent into "voting for our own".

Thus, you get Geraldine Ferraro. Thus, you get the posters at Taylor Marsh's website, who find reverse racism in every utterance of the Obama campaign, sexism in all media coverage of Hillary, and a complete unwillingness to recognize that their support of Hillary is no different from the support of Barack within the black community. It's pathetic deflection and an absolute unwillingness to admit what's really happening.

You also get 90% voting blocs within the African-American community and a sort of hyper-sensitivity about race matters from within the ranks of Obama supporters (both black ones and white ones who just love the consistent lockdown of the black vote). People are engaging in a game of mental Twister to avoid admitting what we all really know. Obama gets 90% of black votes because he is black. Period. It's the melanin, stupid.

It wasn't supposed to come down this way, you know? We were supposed to have a string of white dudes as Commander in Chief until EITHER a black or a woman became a serious contender. We weren't supposed to end up getting them both at the same time.

What happens when two historically disadvantaged groups both have a horse in the race? It gets ugly. Women and blacks are left to duke it out in favor of their choice to the detriment of the other. There is an alternative, but it requires a lot of people to take a big step away from the issues, causes, and beliefs that have, in large measure, defined their politics and their lives. That's asking a lot. Maybe too much, although I personally believe there is a permutation available to reconcile the situation, it's unlikely that the white women and the black guys will figure out the right common ground any time soon.

Meanwhile, you have the "good" white guys trying to make a smart decision and the "bad" white guys defaulting to whichever wrong-headed bias is stronger for them.

Sometimes I wish Barack Obama had a vagina. Hell, I might settle for a black Hillary Clinton.

What do I know, though? I have a penis and I sunburn easily.





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Obama vs. Clinton... The Ohio debate and predictions...

Obama and Clinton will show up for another "debate" tonight. I have five questions in anticipation of the Ohio Battle Royale. Here they are, along with my predictions about the answers...

QUESTIONS

1. Will Barack Obama find a way to stay "on message" or will we lose discipline and sink into the slime pit of petty attacks and smarmy reactions?

2. Will Hillary Clinton have the guts to say "shame on you" to Obama's face and to mock his hopeful message while he's only a few feet away, or is that just the kind of thing she does when he's not in the immediate vicinity?

3. Will Hillary Clinton find a way to explain why she's allowed to keep the mojo of White House experience based on her time as first lady while simultaneously disclaiming responsibility for the parts of Bill's legacy that don't play well in Ohio?

4. Will Barack Obama lazily continue to allow the "35 years of experience" and "ready on day one" bullshit to continue unabated or will he finally provide the obvious and substantive response to Clinton's most beloved meme?

5. Will we be forced to listen to bullshit about turban pictures, Muslim rumors, missteps on the part of low-level campaign staffers, foolish accusations about plagiarism, and assorted other superficialities or will Russert & Williams manage to conduct a meaningful discussion?

PREDICTIONS

1. He'll basically stay on message but will find it impossible not to (errantly) sling a little slime here and there. Nobody's perfect.

2. No. She might come out with a toned down version of her recent attacks, but she lacks the courage to make those tougher pronouncements personally. Whether because of cowardice or strategy, she won't wag a finger of shame at Barack.

3. No. She wants to have her cake and eat it, too. If the matter is addressed, she'll duck, juke, deflect and change the subject. She needs that experience to maintain her current strategy and she needs to avoid the negatives associated with it. Her position is untenable under scrutiny, but she'll avoid scrutiny by whatever means necessary.

4. Obama will again fail to take the "experience" argument on in a meaningful way. He'll hope that the combination of people who don't give a shit and those who are able to figure it out for themselves will be enough to continue beating it without meaningfully engaging it. Sometimes, unfortunately, it seems as though Obama mistakenly thinks substantive argument and disagreement are at odds with his "higher purpose" message. It doesn't have to be that way.

5. Absolutely. This one is a lock. Russert is a tool and even the Giant Head of Brian Williams cannot contain Timmy's uselessness. Look for Russert, guided by his desire for moron-ready arguments about useless things, and utilizing his "gotcha" skill set, will find a way to drag down the quality of the discussion.






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Dummies and Eggheads... Why Obama is winning...

Are you puzzled about Barack Obama's popularity? Are you scratching your head, befuddled about his rock star status? Do you find yourself seeing the massive gatherings of supporters and wondering "why, why why?"

This post will explain exactly why Barack Obama is riding a wave of unprecedented (in my lifetime, anyway) political popularity. Maybe not. I could be very wrong.

Why is it happening? Simple. Barack Obama has a message that appeals to most of the voters. How so? Dumb people love him. So do smart folk.

Here's why it's perfect: It appeals to the two most important groups of people in the electorate. Barack Obama is loved by the idiots and the intellectuals--for two very different reasons. The Obama campaign may have a reasonable level of support in the middle of the bell curve, but the outliers represent his rabid fan base.

DUMB PEOPLE LOVE OBAMA

Dumb people love Barack Obama. The simple version of his message and dominant theme of his campaign appeals to them. Hope and Change. Those are nice, warm, fuzzy concepts and people love them. Those ideas work really well with dumb people who are incapable of considering how one goes from concept to implementation. People who don't understand the difference between the legislative branch and the executive branch of government adore these messages.

They want change because things could and/or should be better. They want hope because it gives them a reason to get up in the morning. The actual dirty work of getting creating change and fulfilling hope, however, is too complicated for them. They don't want to dissect the pros and cons of mortgage freezes. They don't want to spend a lot of time discussing the proper role of diplomacy in the conduct of foreign policy.

They want to kick the bums out and get the good guys in. They want change and they want a reason to believe things will get better. If you serve up a dish based on those two ingredients, you're halfway home with the dumb.

And don't be fooled, the dumb vote. They vote in droves. The other night, I was watching that annoying pollster Frank Luntz. You know the guy. He has these little focus groups that he babysits during the debates. He gives them all paddles from old Atari 2600's and records their reactions to what the candidates say, giving us an idea of what "works" and what "fails".

Luntz is an aggravation for 200 different reasons and may be the subject of a later post. That isn't important with regard to this conversation, however. The actual members of his focus group are. These are undecided voters. They may lean toward one candidate, but they haven't expressed outright support for either. They watch the debates and Luntz is then given an opportunity to quiz the shit out of them on a series of cable networks after the top-level spinners do their things.

These focus group members are dumb. Plain old stupid. I'm not talking about "I can't read and I speak like a character from some hillbilly-bashing movie" dumb. I'm talking about "I look like a normal person and I am, which means I'm also stupid as shit" dumb.

You see, most people are sort of dim-witted when it comes the whole governance thing. They spent civics and government classes checking out the ass on the girl sitting in front of them. They worried about the prom committee. They sketched pictures of hot rods or wrote notes to friends during class.

Their intellectual curiosity may have been sufficient for them to limp through college in a similar fashion. Now, if they do any investigation of anything, it's usually because their stuck in a doctor's waiting room with nothing but an old Golf Digest and a 1998 Newsweek at their disposal. If they read, they read horrible Mitch Albom shit or mystery novels. If they watch the news, they go local in hopes of finding out how lousy the weather is going to be be or they seek out the more "exciting" form of television news--shows where people yell at each other in a constant partisan circle jerk. They're dumb.

OK, they might not be clinically stupid. In terms of selecting quality leadership, however, they are dunces. They are stupid, naive, and easily swayed by Hope and Change.

Luntz's focus group participants--people who are sufficiently engaged to participate in a debate-watching and analysis session--are evidence of this. These morons inevitably reference whatever has been the prevailing headline of the last 96 hours and/or incredibly easy-to-understand but amazingly trivial arguments about the not-so-important when they're quizzed. They can get downright heated about the Obama "plagiarism" bullshit, but they're completely baffled by the difference in Barack's and Hillary's health insurance schemes.

They WANT to be involved and they WANT to "get it", but they're unequipped. They don't have the background. They don't do the reading. They haven't been bit by the policy or politics bugs like the people who are probably reading this blog. They can't. They fall into the diversionary traps of campaigns and they fall in love with the simplistic and positive.

Dumb people are a core constituency for Barack Obama right now.

Don't read that as a criticism of Barack. That's not my intent. The winner of a Presidential election probably always gets the stupid vote majority. I'm sure Bill Clinton cleaned up with the dummies. GW Bush probably did, too. The stupid outnumber the bright, and if you can get the not-so-with-it crowd on your side, you're in damn good shape.

Note that I'm exaggerating a bit for effect. I'm not really saying that these folks are "dumb" in a traditional sense. They're just, shall we say, political ignorant? You know what I mean, wink-wink.

SMART PEOPLE LOVE OBAMA

Smart people adore Barack Obama. That's because the sentiments and analyses underlying his simple Hope/Change message form an a priori critique of American politics. Obama's articles about the nature of political discourse, the divisiveness of standard partisan politics and the need to redefine both technique and goal in order to better govern the USA are just what the PhD in poli sci ordered.

Have you ever actually read the kind of stuff really smart people tend to write? I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill smarties. I'm talking about PhD candidates and those who make a living out of intellectualism. They're writing and reading articles that apply history to theory, that test core concepts of democracy and governance, and that question things the rest of the world takes for granted.

In the rarified air of the ivory tower, the day-to-day stuff doesn't matter all that much. An academic may be interested in what a grocery bagger's motivations are and whether her job in a supermarket represents a multi-level subjugation of woman via simultaneous commodification of the the Goddess Earth and the gum-chewing teenager. An academic probably isn't that interested in how the bagger pulls the paper sacks out of the rack or figures out how many cans of vegetables to put in a single sack.

The academic is interested in concept and theory, not in the purely pragmatic. The technocratic concerns of actual operation and policy take a backseat to the critique and the construction of intriguing meta-arguments.

The intellectual Obama supporter is enamored with his meta-critique of the process and doesn't have a really good idea of what difference the presence or absence of mandates in a healthcare policy will make.

Like the dummy, the scholar will fall in love with Hope/Change. Oh, some of it is a matter of the concepts tugging the right heartstrings, but it's mainly about the theoretical aspects of those ideas. "The power of ideas". You hear phrases like that from smart people all the time. They believe it and they think about it--a lot. The nuts and bolts, however, aren't all that interesting.

WHAT ABOUT THE MIDDLE

In Democratic circles, it seems like the middle is voting for Hillary. We're talking about people who aren't necessarily dummies but who don't spend hour upon hour reflecting on the meaning of liberal democracy. Nuts and bolts people. Technocrats and their ilk. The hands-on folk who have some understanding of the machine called government are probably leaning toward Hillary.

Hillary speaks to them. She codes her campaign in vague-as-hope notions like "Solutions" and talks about "readiness", but those keywords are a wink to those who put political nuts and bolts above ruminations on the theoretical.

Hillary fans like to talk about policy differences more than do Obama buffs. Clinton's backers have concerns about experience, just like a prospective employer might prefer and experienced machine operator over a novice.

The middle understands Clinton and her concerns with the question of "how" while the intellectuals ruminate on "why". The dumb? They're still back in the world of simple appeals.

DOING THE MATH

Dumb + Smart > In the Middle

Thus, Obama wins.

That's simple. If you look at in those terms, you'll also find a theory that fits the overall narrative of this campaign. Hillary's supporters grow increasingly frustrated at their inability to win over voters even though they believe they are winning policy debates. Obama isn't having a policy debate. He's having a mindset debate. He's talking about paradigm shifts while Clinton talks about policy construction. The intellectuals chuckle at her for not understanding that you can't answer the Obama critique with discussions of policy mechanics. The eyes of the dumb glaze over and they reach for the positive antidote to boring old political arguments they think they've heard a million times. Hillary loses.

FULL DISCLOSURE

I fall into the intellectual crowd. My (somewhat reluctant) support of Obama is based less upon my assessment of his abilities as an administrator and is premised on the ideas he represents and his apparent dedication to altering the perspective and priority of governance on a "higher" level than that of "mere" policy.

You'll notice I'm sort of hard on the smarty-pants crowd in this post, even though I'm in the club. That's because I recognize the tendency among those who think my way to be self-important and wrapped up in the abstract instead of rolling up our sleeves and actual DOING something. At the same time, I thoroughly believe that smart critique and a recognition of its message are essential to creating paradigmatic changes that are a prerequisite to serious positive change.

(LIMITED) SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

As this campaign pushes forward, I'm beginning to have a little sympathy for Clinton supporters. Not for the weak-ass "let's say he plagiarized and that's why Hillary should win" bullshitters, but for the ones who think she really is the better candidate in terms of getting things done. I see them struggling to understand why others aren't getting their message. I can sense their frustration. They just aren't keying into the idea that many of the smarter folks believe there are prerequisite issues at play that prevent any real policy success until they are addressed. They don't understand how powerful simple, positive concepts are with those who don't spend all day reflecting upon the theoretical.

Clinton is winning her arguments, on some level. The problem is that the debate itself has already been redefined and she didn't get the memo. HOW you do it is of secondary importance to WHY you are doing it right now. The debate is more about IF anything big can happen if monsters far larger than any policy proposal aren't first slain.

Hillary isn't talking to me right now. She's not talking to the disaffected and frustrated, either. They're with me. They might be with me for different reasons, but they're here. That leaves Hillary with the "pretty smart but not academic/intellectually-oriented" crowd of can-do action people. They're a minority.

My sympathy for Hillary is limited, however. Instead of debating on the more theoretical level and engaging the reservations of those who believe that more than clever policy is necessary, she's decided to take the low road way too often. Her campaign seems to live and die by one-day mini-issues that do little more than distract from the meta AND from her own more policy-oriented positions. She's running a down and dirty old school campaign in a setting where that doesn't resonate with ANYONE. Whoops. That's why March 4 is looking more and more like her Alamo.






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