Minimizing FISA

While I see the need to elect Obama over McCain, I'm getting tired of toe-the-line Democrats who are deriding Glenn Greenwalk and others for making an issue of FISA. No, we're not children. yes, we understand that "politics is the art of the possible." Yes, we know that no candidate will ever 100% match our beliefs and ideals.

But we're not talking about a failure to declare Lucky Charms the national breakfast cereal. We're talking about the erosion of the Fourth Amendment. Obama's compromise on a pillar of the Bill of Rights speaks badly about the candidate's commitment to liberty. It makes progressives wonder: if he's willing to compromise on that, what else is he willing to compromise on?

That said, I recognize that Obama is more to the left than, say, Bill Clinton was. That's come about because progressive activists have helped mainstream leftist positions on marriage equality, health care, Iraq, social security, and a host of other issues. Think about that the next time you feel tempted to take a swing at the "ideological purists" on the left.

"Withholding" Money from Obama Is Fine By Me

As you can see from this thread on Yglesias, some Democrats are pissed that progressives are refusing to donate to Obama due to his tack to the center, and instead are giving their money to more consistently liberal Democrats. That seems like a perfectly good compromise position to me: vote for Obama as the best presidential candidate (well, the best one with an actual chance of winning), but put your money behind the people who will bring about the change you believe in. That's not "enforcing ideological purity"; it's using your money wisely.

The "anti-purists" may be right that a full-on progressive couldn't win the presidency. But unless we rally behind truly progressive candidates, that will never change. "Get Obama elected" and "shift America leftward" are not mutually exclusive goals. Some folks will be more attracted to the former mission than the latter, and vice versa. Citizens should engage in politics in the way that best engages their passions. Demanding obligatory donations isn't the best way to set the electorate on fire.

The larger, more disgraceful, problem is that we're no longer voting with votes, but with dollars. But mentioning such things has fallen out of fashion.

The Democracy Within The Democracy

The more I think about Barack Obama's "small donor revolution," the more disturbing it seems. It's a democracy within a democracy - a vote with dollar bills instead of votes. It doesn't equalize anything; those with more dollars get more votes.

What does it change? The millions of dollars collected are still being used for the same purpose: to wage a war of sound bites. It's a revolution within the system, not a revolution of the system. A heap of those advertising dollars will be spent on "gotcha" campaigns highlighting non-issues a.k.a. the Rev. Wright brouhaha. The end result will be an election decided, not on ideals or even issues, but on the psychological echoes of propaganda.

In other words, business as usual.

Obama Pushes Service Plan, Turns 9/11 Against Republicans

Some good ideas and leadership here. Especially inspiring when you contrast Obama's extensive plan to McCain's "plan" (included at the story's end):

In a section entitled "A Cause Greater Than Self," the presumptive GOP nominee asks Americans to donate their time to relief efforts -- including helping out in the flood-ravaged areas of Iowa. See more on McCain's plan

There is also a list of suggested sites where people can volunteer.

Obama, by contrast, advocates expanding AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps, expanding the ability of non-profits to offer service opportunities, and extend more opportunities for serving to the working, the retired, and the disadvantaged, among other proposals.

Obama took the occasion to turn September 11th into a talking point against the Bush administration:

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee also touched on the "spirit" of service witnessed after the September 11, 2001, attacks and take aim at the Bush administration's failure to capitalize on this opportunity to call Americans to service.

"We were ready to step into the strong current of history and to answer a new call for our country. But the call never came," he said.

"Instead of a call to service, we were asked to shop. ... Instead of leadership that called us to come together, we got patriotism defined as the property of one party and used as a political wedge ... we ended up going into a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged." [Emphasis added]

Boom, baby. Between this and his opposition to the anti-family marriage equality ban in California, Obama has shown that he'll fight the good fight.

Work Them All to Death - from The President on Down

It's a sign of our ongoing national sickness that we're supposed to be shocked (shocked!) to learn that John McCain "doesn't work on weekends."

McCain’s habit of weekends off is recognized by his small band of beat reporters, who are pleased by their good fortune but nevertheless find it puzzling.

Yet for insiders who follow the campaign closely, his streak has become increasingly tough to overlook.

As with so many issues surrounding his bid, McCain’s schedule is a sensitive topic because it is unavoidably suffused with the looming question of his age.

What? Resting, on your day off?! That's for old people, man!

For decades, most productivity gains made by Americans have gone, not into increased leisure time, but into increased consumption. We work longer than previous generations, and take little time off. We are one of the few countries in the world without mandated vacation time (and the time we do get from private employers is well below the world average).

Instead of finding remedies, we turn it back on one another. When someone asks us how we're doing, we launch into a diatribe about how "busy" we are - a self-pitying conversation meant to elicit sympathy, but also to show off what good people we are for putting in such long hours for a corporate employer who could fire us at any moment. Instead of demanding that our politicians pass mandatory vacation legislation, we mock them for failing to put in 80-hour work-weeks.

Progressives Must Keep Pressure - But Not Just on Obama

Good thoughts from Alternet's Kathy G on the work that progressives need to perform in order to drag Obama back to their side of the issues:

This is where we, as liberals, progressives, lefties, activists, whatever-you-want-to-call-us, come in. I do not believe that our interests are best served by the kind of cheap electioneering we saw over the primary campaign. What would be far more effective would be an independent movement that makes strategic alliances with various political candidates but is also distinctly separate from them.

Instead of shilling for Barack, or Hillary, or whoever, we should have been pressuring the candidates to work for our votes. We should have been pressing them to take firm, non-negotiable positions in favor of things like no immunity for the telecoms, or immediate withdrawal from Iraq with no residual troops. Instead, we were really cheap dates. And when you act like suckers, don't be surprised when something like Obama's support for the FISA compromise comes back and bites you in the ass.

If we want real change in this country, the place to look for it is not in our so-called leaders, but in ourselves. What we need, in short, is a movement. Without such a movement, President Obama is not going to be able to achieve a whole lot more than President Clinton or President Carter did. But with such a movement, we may actually get somewhere. FDR was able to achieve great things because he had the strong support of a powerful labor movement. Similarly, the civil rights movement was the wind at LBJ's back. But I ask you, what will President Obama have?

Sam Stein covers some of the same ground in his article "Serenity Lost: Obama and The Netroots".

One might argue that this is all empty rhetoric if there are zero consequences for not listening to the progressive cause. But the one time there were real consequences at the presidential level was in 2000, when disaffected progressives backed Ralph Nader and the Green Party. The result was eight years of an imperialist presidency that has steadily eroded our freedoms. No honest progressive, as upset as they may be with Obama's General Election moves, wants to open the floodgates to a third Bush term. Nader is wrong: there is virtue in electing the "least worst" candidate.

The key term there is "at the presidential level." Supporting Obama as the best presidential candidate (which he is) doesn't preclude fighting for just causes when his leadership veers off track. A lot more action on issues such as FISA can be taken at the level of individual Senators and Representatives. A great example: the robocalls being run in House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's district by local activist Rev. Lenox Yearwood, lambasting Hoyer's FISA compromise. And you can bet that progressive activists will remember FISA when Hoyer's re-election comes due.

Obama to McCain: Screw Your X-Prize for Car Batteries!

I knew there was something amiss about McCain's $300 million free-market incentive to the individual (or monolithic corporation) who could invent a better electric car battery. Yes, such an achievement deserves reward. But I imagine many engineers and scientists already want to do this, and for nobler reasons. Dean Kamen could make tons of money cranking out cheap gee-whiz gadgets; instead, he's invented a device to bring cheap drinking water to impoverished nations.

That Wired comment thread brings up an excellent point vis a vis commercialization of necessary technologies. One commenter urged Kamen to turn his machine over to "greedy capitalists" to drive its production costs down to the $1,000-$2,000 target range needed to make Kamen's Slingshot viable for worldwide distribution. Another reader astutely noted that this is exactly what Kamen attempted with the Segway, an expensive toy whose real purpose was to drive down the costs of parts needed to make the iBot, Kamen's wheelchair that traverses stairs and puts disabled people at the same height as the abled. Markets aren't omnipotent; they're often short-sighted and blind to our higher motives.

Barack Obama, to his immense credit, recognizes this, and has called McCain out:

When John F. Kennedy decided that we were going to put a man on the moon, he didn't put a bounty out for some rocket scientist to win -- he put the full resources of the United States government behind the project and called on the ingenuity and innovation of the American people.

Other Gristmill readers take Obama to tack, however, for not going further than the traditional, free-market-oriented approaches. Still, after a horrid week in which Obama backtracked on both NAFTA and FISA, this was nice to see.

Nader to Dems: Don't 'Scape Me, Bro!

Ralph Nader is pissed that Democrats are still pissed at him.

He said voters have allowed government to become overrun by corporate interests with no competing force to pull it in the other direction.

“If you don’t have a breaking point, you have no moral imperative in your attitude and that’s the one question they hate to be asked,” he said. “They have eternity working for them because forever there will be a least-worst party between the Democrats and the Republicans.”

I'm (partially) with Nader on this. If you take the angry Democratic logic to its extreme, this country will never have more than two dominant political parties. There will always be a "close election" that demands not "splitting" the vote. (Case in point: 2008 will be the third consecutive "close" election demanding party unity.)

And yet...sigh.

Mr. Nader called presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama a "waffler" who has abandoned principle to try to win. He added that the senator from Illinois offers little different from his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Prodded by The Times as to whether things would improve under a Democratic president, Mr. Nader stood firm.

Democrats aren't just angry at Nader for blowing the 2000 election (which is as much Al Gore's fault as anyone's). They're angry over his artless, tactically tone-deaf approach to politics.

Let's be honest: on one level, Nader's dead right. Obama's doled out some heavy panders to the coal industry and AIPAC, among others. But on another level, this is what politicians do. They dissemble. They suppress their real feelings and opinions on an issue if they feel the time isn't right to press for real change.

In reading Jon Lee Anderson's biography of Che Guevara, I've been surprised how even Fidel Castro, up until the moment he consolidated power, toed a moderate line to hold together his fragile alliances with other anti-Batista groups. Castro also disavowed any Communist connection for years - even as one of his top comandantes, Che Guevara, was writing Marxist epistles - in order to keep the United States confused and sidelined. (It worked: CIA and State found themselves at odds over whether to support one or more rebel groups, or back Batista until the bitter end.) He only became a fire-breathing demagogue after he'd tightened his military grip on the island and shut out his allies.

My point isn't that Obama is Castro. (Goddess forbid.) My point is that this is what you do in a democracy, where power is shared across legislatures and throughout branches of the government. Demagoguery is the language of dictatorship. In a democracy, you pick your battles. For those of us who dedicate ourselves more to the causes than the candidates, that's painful to watch. There's wisdom behind that old adage about laws and sausages.

The questions isn't whether Obama does or doesn't pander. The question is, what will he do in the long haul? For example, is "clean coal" a serious policy initiative - or a tactical feint to keep the coal industry happy while he presses for real change? What does he really mean by an "undivided Jerusalem"? Will he really fight to strip the FISA bill of the telecom immunity provision, after abandoning his previous promise to filibuster immunity outright? Are these panders enough reason to hand John McCain the privilege of stacking the Supreme Court with conservatives, building permanent bases in Iraq, and presiding over the continued desecration of the environment? Those are serious questions, undeserving of the flip attitude with which Nader bats them aside.

Nader's right about the "least-worst" mentality, and the ossification of our two-party system. It'd be wonderful to have some serious thinkers and politicians spend their credibility on third-party candidacies. Unfortunately for Nader, he's already squandered all of his.