For better or for worse, we live in a world in which most "democratic" political systems are constructed on a basis of hierarchical tiers of representation. The higher the tier one reaches, the more one can accomplish. This effectively means that being a politician is a career. We do not live in the world in which leadership and representation is a duty one takes reluctantly, for maybe a year or two in addition to one's other life activities. I wish we did, but we don't.

I’m thinking about how to make use of the suggestions offered in the comments to my previous post. First I want to elaborate on something I said here and try to give you a little insight into what I’m up to.

When I mentioned high standards, I was not talking about how well you use grammar, punctuation, imagery and tropes. I was talking about a standard of intellectual discourse. You folks are the best group of bloggers that I know when it comes to calling bullshit when you see it. A lot of you make it seem like an art form. You don’t sugarcoat anything, and you don’t care whether it’s primary season or not. You say fuck when you see something that ought to make decent people say that. I’m amazed by how well you’ve kept this up over time. That sort of honesty is in my mind the most important element that is missing from our public discourse. It’s a big part of what’s wrong with the media. We need more of it if we’re ever going to get to the point where enough people are willing to put bodies on the line to change this country, and I am afraid that is exactly where we’re gonna have to go before we’re done.

My hesitation to post here doesn’t have anything to do with my confidence as a writer. I’m sure I can hold my own with most people in that department. I identify myself primarily as a writer, no matter what job I happened to be doing at any given time. I’ve been a writer since I wrote my first poem in 1984. It only took one to get me hooked, and when I look back on my life up to this point, the most miserable times were the times when I wasn’t writing anything. The hesitation I expressed is more about my confidence as a thinker and my confidence in my ability to put it on the line and let the chips fall where they may. Lucky for me, that gets easier with practice.

David notes:

This super-durable bungee cord must have the force of law, meaning it will be woven by Democratic legislators now exerting as much pressure on President Obama's left as congressional Republicans focused on President Bush's right.

When, for instance, Obama hedged on his promise to revoke $226 billion worth of Bush's upper-income tax cuts, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) pushed him to fulfill the pledge and put the money into programs that better guarantee job creation.

When Obama initially offered up a stimulus bill filled with discredited business tax breaks, Democratic senators forced him to back off. Reps. David Obey, D-Wisc., and Jim Oberstar, D-Minn., then argued that the president's proposed infrastructure investments were too small to boost the economy. That led House Democrats to increase Obama's spending targets.

As stimulus negotiations continued, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., tried to add provisions letting courts renegotiate banks' primary-residence mortgages so as to prevent more foreclosures. It's a commonsense proposal: Judges already have the power to renegotiate vacation-home mortgages, and the New York Federal Reserve Bank says existing bankruptcy laws are exacerbating the foreclosure crisis. While Obama opposed the initiative out of fear that banking industry opposition might slow the underlying stimulus bill, Conyers' effort ultimately made the president commit to supporting the reforms in future legislation.

George Soros' son, Jonathan opines on the merits, or lack thereof, of our electoral college in this article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB12293012...

Although this made the OpEd page the WSJ, I wonder how much time will be spent discussing this topic before October of 2012.

We often forget that the power to appoint electors is given to state legislatures, and it is only because they choose to hold a vote that Election Day is at all relevant for us. Nowhere is a popular election constitutionally required. And, as the 2000 election reminded us, the winner of the popular vote is not guaranteed to become president.

Not so much so far--in Florida, at least.

"... younger voters have shifted heavily toward the Democratic Party during the past four years.

But as yet -- in either Central Florida or the state as a whole -- a surge of younger voters hasn't materialized.

Though a bit more than 10 percent of all voters are younger than 25, fewer than 6 percent of early voters fit that category. Similarly, voters 25 to 34 years old are 14.4 percent of the electorate -- but just 9.5 percent of those who voted early. ..." -- Orlando Sentinal analyses the early voting figures in all of Florida -- Battle for Florida: Blacks turn out in droves, but few young people have voted

For a good long while before the 30s, some people thought they could create wealth while not paying anybody, and it all came crashing down. Then they were made to pay people, for their own good. Years later, they tried to realize the dream of not paying anybody a second time around, with even cleverer not paying anybody techniques. Needless to say, it still didn't work, but they'll get to try again. And they got rich anyway.

Another video from the Canadian election whose overall lesson is quite applicable to the American situation. Rick Mercer is the host of the CBC comedy Monday Report, which is a weekly Daily Show-type thing. Mercer is a very popular comedian in Canada, but IMO he became less funny when he left the endlessly hilarious This Hour Has 22 Minutes team. This video is from several months ago:

Here is the second part of my review of Manfred Steger's The Rise of the Global Imaginary (part 1 here). In the last part of the book, Steger focuses on the sometimes conflicting ideologies derived from the global imaginaries.

Starting from the collapse of the USSR, Steger argues (correctly, I think) that the first winning ideology in the decontestation game was market globalism, the ideology that managed to decontest "globalization" in the limited sense of deregulated markets on a global scale.

To explore the tenets of market globalism, Steger reviews the writings of one of its main proponents and popularizers: Thomas Friedman. Needless to say, this is painful to read as is anything related to Thomas Friedman (hence no links), however he is indeed a central figure in the promotion of market globalism. He is also a good representative of the way this ideology was promoted by the political, economic and corporate elites in the 1990s (or the transnational capitalist class as Leslie Sklair calls this group, Friedman belongs to the ideological sub-group of the TCC).

  Read more…

Coss-posted from The Global Sociology Blog, a proud PB2.0 Blog!

I have already blogged a bit about Manfred Steger's concept of social imaginary but that was before the actual publication of his book on the subject. Now that I have had the time to read the book, let me offer the following review.

Let me say right off the bat that I am a big fan of Manfred Steger's writings on globalization. His Globalization: A Very Short Introduction is still the best introduction to globalization on the market and the one I use for my undergraduate classes. His other book, Globalism: Market Ideology Meets Terrorism is a great exploration of the ideological and cultural implications of globalization.

In his latest book, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from The French Revolution to the Global War on Terror, Steger offers another analysis of the ideological dimensions of globalization, but more in-depth than in his previous books.

  Read more…

This will surprise no one here, but it's important to remember as the PB2.0 attempts to regain some of the political influence pissed away by the previous incarnation. RPR:

If indeed Wal-Mart is mobilizing its employees to vote against Democrats, it's sending a mixed message with its political action committee donations.

Wal-Mart is on pace to give more money to House Democrats this cycle than House Republicans for the first time ever. And as Wal-Mart's contributions reach further and deeper into the Democratic Caucus, it's becoming more difficult for the company's critics to demonize the corporate giant.

Thank you Glennzilla:

It isn't that difficult to keep the following two thoughts in one's head at the same time -- though it seems to be for many people:

(1) What Barack Obama is doing on Issue X is wrong, indefensible and worthy of extreme criticism;

(2) I support Barack Obama for President because he's a better choice than John McCain.

Why is this so hard for so many in the progressive blogosphere and progressives in general?

Discuss...

There are reasons to prefer Clinton to Obama. There are easily arguable reasons to be angry that Clinton is not presently likely to be a Presidential candidate in the general election. You can even make a case for not voting for Barack Obama. You can make an even better case for not voting at all.

But there are a few moderately popular reasons for preferring Clinton to Obama that disturb me. A variant of one of these is present in this post at The Confluence.

Most folks in the blogosphere have chosen to give their support to one primary candidate or the other without really demanding anything in return. When the next election comes around, a different strategy may be in order.

Most liberal/progressive interest groups also gave away their support without really getting any policy guarantees from the candidates. Why?

It seems to me that groups and individual voters themselves were motivated by the Corporate Media-driven horse race hype more than anything else. This turns politics into team sports.

The primary coverage (progressive blogs included) focused almost exclusively on the ups and downs of the competition: the gaffes, the smears, the polls, etc. rather than "the issues" (boooring!).

Oh no! Your team is down, they're having problems, cheer louder!

Yay! Your team is up, victory is in sight, high fives!

But what do you get when your favorite team wins? You get to say "we won!" and a warm feeling, that is all.

So what does it mean to "support" a candidate?

Just 5 weeks ago...

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

Mighty Corrente Building Manager Lambert brought something up in the comments to this post by bringiton that I thought deserved its own, entirely new thread. Maybe; it's part of the "What To Do With The OFB" issue that I think is a fairly important matter.

Anyway, Lambert quoth:

How about they go fuck themselves?

Via TeddySanFran @ FDL, the question everyone should be asking right up to election day:

So, the question is: will the ad run on Monday?

...

Is John McCain powerless? Is he impotent?

Bwahaha. Yes, these are important questions. I hope that some of our more accessible talking heads *cough* Ezra *cough* will be able to raise them on the air. As in:

Really, what people are asking right now is, why hasn't McCain been able to gain traction with Democrats? Are we looking at an impotent campaign here, you know, one that's never going to get any stronger towards November?

or

Well, McCain's been taking criticism lately, and he hasn't shown that he's really strong enough to deflect any of it... is this the emergence of an impotent candidate?

or

"Say, do you think McCain takes Cialis because he's impotent?"

You get the picture. Simple yet devastating. Can we pull it off?

Today's slew of "Democrats In Disarray" columns offer yet more proof of the time-honored axiom: there is nothing a Dem can do to avoid being attacked by the Right Wing and the Beltway punditocracy.

Even the candidate that has embraced the Unity Pony (the absolute fabrication that the problem with Washington is excessive partisanship) doesn't get a pass:

Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship.

But also the candidate whose family has been attacked relentlessly for the past 15 years:

Clinton had seeded doubts about her own character long before this campaign began through her record as a polarizing figure, her secrecy and her obvious prevarications.

skdadl at pogge reminds us that certain parties regularly get away with spinning their regular wrongitude into a larger, more noble narrative of rightness.  And that those who were right never get the credit for it.

Look: the point is that Iggy and company may have been wrong in the observable, normal universe---what you or I might call "reality"---but they were wrong in a noble, beautiful way.  The kind of wrongness to which they fell victim is the kind of wrongness that allows one to cover ones eyes with the back of one's hand, stretch out the other hand, and sigh, "Ah, me!" 

From the Naomi Klein article referenced by Lambert earlier today:

Many argue otherwise. They say that if we want to end the war, we should simply pick a candidate who is not John McCain and help them win: We'll sort out the details after the Republicans are evicted from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Some of the most prominent anti-war voices--from MoveOn.org to the magazine we write for, The Nation--have gone this route, throwing their weight behind the Obama campaign.

This is a serious strategic mistake. It is during a hotly contested campaign that anti-war forces have the power to actually sway U. S. policy. As soon as we pick sides, we relegate ourselves to mere cheerleaders.

It's not just a mistake in this election, it's always a mistake for citizens that want policies that benefit them.

Politicians are experts at getting you to work your ass off to get what they want (win elected office) while they neglect to fight for what you want (single payer health care, ending the war, etc.).

Jane nails it:

Rather, I think we're seeing the evidence that the media has decided that Obama is now the presumptive nominee, and having built him up he must be taken down to make the way for St. John McCain

The strategy is pretty obvious if you look at the big picture over the last year rather than the daily details:

You know Hillary is a bit...busy...at the moment
She can't be bothered right now to reinvent
EVERY GODDAM WHEEL

It takes presence of mind to have devine inspiration
At least for us...mere mortals...it does.
She needs all her smarts out there on the stump.

I say Hillary could use some bigger better brighter slogans
and we're all bright kids here
we can come up with...bumper stickers & lapel pins.

We can do that.
"So cough'em up for Hillary!"

(well, okay...THAT one is not so good...)

But I do like mine:

america:
"you need a mother VERY badly!"
--wendy to capatain hook

what's yours?

(preferably one per post for full impact)

...

Matt Compton crystallizes something I have been thinking about for days:

These are all examples of how the Obama campaign is doing something new: leveraging technology and community organizing to reach people one on one. It is avoiding the traditional and even nontraditional filters -- the conventional media, the leaders of the blogosphere, and the Party establishment -- to speak directly to voters.

One thing that is missing from this analysis, however, is the virulence of the Obama meme. All candidates are using web-based social network technology as a vehicle for their message, but the Obama meme is showing superior potency.

From another key article on the subject by Matt Stoller (via Digby):

Congressman Ron Paul is running on the wonderful ideal of “liberty.” And who among us would not like more liberty? – The freedom to choose any personal path, freedom to do whatever it is that sparks our fancy. We’d be free of governmental impediments; who needs all these laws anyway?

The problem is, that when I gain the liberty to do X you necessarily gain the liberty to do Y. And what if X and Y are philosophically or practically in conflict if not incongruous?   Read more…

From a recent article by Teh Krugman:

OK, before I get there, a word about terms—specifically, liberal vs. progressive. Everyone seems to have their own definitions; mine involves the distinction between values and action. If you think every American should be guaranteed health insurance, you're a liberal; if you're trying to make universal health care happen, you're a progressive.

(h/t to J Fyrste)

This is similar to my own personal definition* of Liberal:

January 3 is four days away. The biggest Democratic primary of the year is so close you can smell the desperation. Who should be standing up in the klieg lights at the end of the night, victorious? Who shouldn't, and why?