American Patrol

Representatives of the Obama and Clinton camps announced today that Clinton's name will be placed in nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month. Why? Damned if I know. Hillary, apparently, is hearing voices again, and wants us to hear them too as a means of "catharsis" for her former supporters. Some of those supporters, convinced despite fresh revelations in the Atlantic this week that their candidate headed a cluster fuck of a campaign in as inept a manner as any major candidate this side of Dole '96, remain convinced that they wuz robbed, and despite Clinton crony Lanny Davis' remark that the Senator will have "little sympathy" for those of her supporters who try and use this as a means of disrupting the convention, several of these folks are likely to have big stinky catharses all over the convention floor.

Meanwhile, Senator Obama, already having given Clinton and her ex-POTUS husband prime time speeches on two consecutive nights, has now devoted a third to, as the joint Clinton-Obama announcement puts it, "honor and celebrate these voices and votes." You know-- the ones who couldn't defeat him in the primaries, whose template for tearing down his candidacy has been adopted wholesale by McCain and the Republicans, who refused to acknowledge his victories and have never really given him his due as the nominee of the Party.

Why is he doing this? Again, damned if I know, but I can damn well guess. Disappointing as it is to admit, this reeks of the kind of Democratic timidity that has plagued the Party for thirty years, and suggests that among the things we overestimated about Obama were his guts and his intelligence. Disappointing? Sure. A reason to regret his nomination over Clinton, much less vote for McCain? Oh, hell no. Will it get played that way? Most bloody likely.

Anyone expecting that this year's Presidential election campaign was going to be some kind of high-flown exercise in "the new politics" (and one wonders what planet they've been spending the last few decades on) is invited to take a close look at the current "debate" on energy policy taking place between the two campaigns and join me in despairing over what a complete bullshit-toss it has become. While said bullshit, as might be anticipated, originated from the nether regions of the McCain campaign, both sides have managed to cover themselves in it pretty thoroughly, and their reasons for doing so provide the basis to a fairly wide indictment indeed.

The shit in question is McCain's contention that offshore oil drilling is a dandy solution to our country's energy needs and to the economic hardship caused by rising gas prices. This has lately taken the form of a nice, reductive chant: "Drill here!! Drill now!!"

The smart answer to which, of course, is "Okay, then, go ahead," followed by an outraged "Whuddaya MEAN you can't drill here and now? Whuddaya MEAN offshore drilling can't produce any oil anytime this decade or for most of the next? Whuddaya MEAN this won't make a damn bit of difference to energy prices?" , followed by a landslide defeat of a candidate willing to lie so readily to the American people.

This result, of course, is perhaps a bit much to expect from the Democratic Party. Rather than making any point about the McCain plan's status as ineffectual bullshit, congressional Democrats have emphasized their role as saviors of the planet, standing up for the environment over the depredations of the nasty oil men-- a point of its own, to be sure, but the wrong one to be making now. As for Senator Obama, his attempt to become the voice of reason by accepting safe, environmentally sound offshore drilling as a compromise element in a larger package has both opened him to flip-flop charges and put us on notice that he is willing to compromise even on, well, utter ineffectual bullshit. Again, the wrong point made, the wrong message sent.

The largest share of blame, however, needs to go to the folks who are causing the above professional politicians to act that way: we, the People, the majority of whom are willing to eat this crap with a spoon and pretend its chocolate pudding if it means we don't have to make any real sacrifices to end this energy crisis. Guess what, folks-- we do, and if our response to this energy wake up call is the same as our response to the last ones, we are a nation of idiots who deserve what we get.

Though almost a week late in saying so (God bless computer problems, time constraints, and my children, and while you're at it, me), I was interested in Krugman’s NYT column last Friday, which took off from Nancy Pelosi's statement to The Politico regarding an attempt to block an offshore drilling amendment: “I’m trying to save the planet.” Krugman went on (at length) on the subject “Can This Planet Be Saved?” before deciding, well, maybe, maybe not, and certainly not by John McCain.

I was struck less by the content of Krugman’s column than by his unquestioning acceptance of and expansion upon Pelosi’s statement. While I am keenly aware of the realities of environmental degradation and supportive of any rational measure designed to prevent and reverse it, I cannot help but wonder if the environmental movement in particular and the human race in general isn’t being ill served by the romantic and inflated rhetoric of planetary salvation.

When we speak of “saving the planet,” we are, unfortunately, talking utter bullshit. The planet went on without us for many millions of years before we got here and will go on for many millions more after we’ve gone. And, eventually, we will be, our species sloughed off its surface like the opportunistic infection that we are. Our efforts to “save the planet” are really about trying to maintain it as a viable ecosystem for us— that is to say, about saving our own sorry asses.

Crude as that sounds, I can’t help but think it would be a more effective and compelling argument in favor of our environmental efforts than our current (and for some, eminently dismissible) hodgepodge of Gaia worship, huggable trees, and cute wild animals. Dead polar bears are one thing, dead children and grandchildren (not to mention selves) quite another. Each is a possible outcome of global warming. By elevating self-preservation from a mere side effect of the great quest of planet-saving to the point of the exercise, we may be able to change the minds of those who are currently hostile or indifferent. Nothing like a little imminent death to concentrate the faculties...

No, it’s not particularly noble or edifying—but it just might work.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, Wednesdays were celebrated in Minneapolis as "tabloid day," the day when the city's two free weeklies, the Twin Cities Reader and City Pages (referred to collectively as the "Reader Pages")were circulated, insuring at very least adequate bathroom reading through the weekend. The nasty capitalist machinations that took the Reader out of the equation have been old news for quite a while. Less remarked upon is the City Pages deterioration into what folks in the newspaper business used to refer to as a "one dumper"-- skim the letters, read The Blotter, Tom Tomorrow, and Savage Love, wipe, and flush.

Particularly disappointing is the Pages' tendency towards feature stories that seem to be geared to their author's hoped for a sub-Diablo Cody leap into careers writing teleplays for the Lifetime Movie Channel. This week-- an abused mother and children who fled (in the '90's-- news value?)to Amsterdam as "refugees". A couple of weeks back-- a story on gay Lutheran seminarians featuring a woman who received a message from God during a worship service informing her that she should go to seminary and, by the way, was a lesbian, that oddly enough missed the obvious mental health angle completely. One slogs through these multipage behemoths in vain trying to find some point larger than "Gosh, folks sure are mean," only to be left with a turnable page and a review of a restaurant one either can't afford or has no interest in. In a metro area this size with so many identifiable civic issues, the waste of journalistic forum is nothing short of breathtaking.

Still, having the Pages around does come in handy for stuffing the chimney starter for my barbeque (though I find that using the Onion imparts a bit more flavor) and for use as "City Place Mats" when I'm feeding my sons. Hey, reuse and recycle, right?

Meditate on this, children-- after a summer spent contradicting himself, being caught in lie after lie, and basically running the worst Presidential campaign since Dole '96, John McCain is making ground in swing state polls in Minnesota, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Let us contemplate the possible whys of this situation for whatever enlightenment might be gleaned:

1) Polls taken in summer "silly season" this many weeks before the election probably don't amount to much in the big picture.

2) Despite the pathetic and often internally contradictory nature of McCain's proposals for what he'd actually do as President, which consist largely of good old Republican faith-based Clap for Tinkerbell economics and a lot of bombing and shooting, his overriding campaign theme, which has devolved into the slogan "Obama: He Thinks He's So Big," has found a foothold in the conciousness of a nation that re-elected George W. Bush.

3) The media, dependent as they are on an ongoing conflict to weave their narratives, have done a demonstrably piss-poor job of presenting the true nature of McCain's campaign.

4) The collected works of P.T. Barnum.

Commenting on Secretary of State Condoleeza "Converted" Rice's decision to participate in nuclear weapons talks with North Korea, John Bolton, the former Senate-rejected, recess appointed US Representative to the United Nations and current American Enterprise Institute fellow, characterized this change in US policy as signaling the "intellectual collapse" of Bush administration foreign policy.

Honest to God, folks, I have been laughing so hard since I heard this that I can barely type....

Tim Russert, moderator of "Meet The Press", NBC Washington Bureau Chief, and Official Washington's designated Keeper of the Meme, died in saddle Friday, collapsing at his desk in DC. Russert, 58, was the living, talking embodiment of Washington conventional wisdom and a tireless defender its status quo.

NBC, CNN, and the other network news operations are commemorating Russert by running endless "Remembering Tim" segments and ignoring utterly the real news of the day. It is a fitting tribute to a man who often did the same.

It's been a week since Hillary Clinton, having proven herself a political danger to herself and others by delivering a graceless, delusional, and wholly unearned quasi-acceptance speech the night Barack Obama definitively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, was finally convinced to put down the knife and back away slowly. The change in the political atmosphere in that short period of time has been nothing short of breathtaking. Without Clinton and her surrogates spewing self-serving convolutions into the collective American thoughtstream, a picture has emerged of the realities of this year's general election that renders nearly every comment and prediction made about it for the last few months complete and utter nonsense.

The answer to the question on everyone's lips last week--"What does Hillary want?"-- turns out to be "Who cares?" As indicated by Wednesday's WSJ/NBC poll, absent Hillary herself, the electoral importance of both the Hillary Factor and the fracture in the Democratic Party she supposedly leaves in her wake is somewhere between negligible and nonexistent. Hillary as veep on a so-called "dream ticket?" No need-- just about as many registered voters said it would make them less likely to vote for the Democratic ticket (21%) as vote for it (22%), with a clear majority (55%) saying it would make no difference at all. Hillary as power broker, bringing her voters into the fold? Thanks anyway, but they're already there. Obama starts the general election campaign with clear leads over McCain among the women (52%/33%), Latinos (a 62%/28% landslide), and blue collar workers (47%/42%) who went for Clinton in the primaries, with a 61%/19% advantage among Clinton's primary voters overall.

The legacy Hillary Clinton spoke of during her belated concession speech last Saturday is indeed an important one. Her campaign did in fact prove that gender need not be a determinative factor in Presidential politics, and it is much to be hoped that her example will inspire other women to seek high office. It is also to be hoped that their campaigns will not be marked by the cynicism, hubris, opportunism, and indifferent bad management that in the end rendered Clinton's not just unsuccessful but entirely irrelevant. Her behavior during that campaign has left her own political future questionable at best-- in the end, her involvement in the Obama campaign may prove to be more about her own political rehabilitation than about any advantage her presence might bring to the party. Hillary as Senate Majority leader, New York Governor, Supreme Court Justice? As she herself reminded us time and time again in the face prohibitive odds, anything is possible. Here's wishing her good luck and short memories.

"Oh, there you go bringing class into it again."
-- Woman (Terry Jones) in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

One of the marvels of our postmodern political culture is its ability to reduce powerful socioeconomic constructs to easily palatable and completely meaningless bits of political stage business. Thus the recent discussion in political circles over the working class, a discussion almost entirely absent of any references to labor issues, economics, justice, or the real day to day lives of people who work for a living. Instead, we have been presented with a weeks long video pastiche of a bunch of salt of the earth cliches and the politicians who pander to them, featuring bowling, whiskey shots (Personal to HRC--real working people can afford to drink Crown Royal on Christmas and at weddings, if at all. If you can't stand the Windsor, get out of the barroom.), and half assed attempts to buy votes on the cheap (gas tax holiday, anyone?).

Class, of course, is second only to sex as the topic that adult Americans can't discuss honestly. As with sex, we've been programmed to find class consciousness somehow distasteful and impolite. This is due in large part to our quaint belief that our nation is a meritocracy-- a belief that somehow survived the tenure of our current President-- and that anyone with gumption, spirit, positive attitude, and six easy payments of $49.99 for the sponsors of the infomercial can strike it rich in their spare time. The national narrative invites us to view the working class-- and the working class to view themselves-- as future members of the upper class, as not so much have-nots as have-not-yets, and thus as people with an intrinsic if not immediate interest in furthering the economic agenda of the class they aspire to, often in opposition to their own interests. On taxes, trade, and labor issues especially, a large chunk of the working class has been wildly and enthusiastically supportive of an agenda that has increased their tax burden, stagnated their wages, and undermined their security.

At some point, one would think that the candidates' current attempts to win the working class vote would translate itself into an actual frank discussion of the issues affecting the working class. One would be wrong. To address working class issues honestly in this country is to invite the charge of class warfare against the privileged, and were actual class warfare to break out a surprising number of Americans would be manning the upper class barricades, many at minimum wage.

Hillary Clinton's trouncing of Barack Obama in last night's West Virginia democratic primary probably means that the twisted, opportunistic horseshit that serves as the basis for the continued Clinton campaign will probably be flying around for another week at least. On the theory that the sheer volume of airborne poo constitutes a hazard to the health of the general public, I'd like to offer a few thoughts that may inoculate my readership from some of grosser symptoms (nausea, delusion, depression, and ennui) of this syndrome.

As West Virginia Goes...: The idea that West Virginia is somehow representative of the rest of the country is almost too ridiculous to deserve comment, so this will be short. West Virginia is whiter, older, poorer, and less educated than average-- a perfect state for the Clinton campaign's chosen demographic, but hardly a bellwether.

Clinton wins the swing states: This one is largely based (as is much of the current Clintonite logic) on the kind of consultant-driven thinking that has driven so many Democratic campaigns off the cliff. If one accepts the premise that the "swing states" can be defined as those states that "swung" in the last few elections, along with the notion that any state Obama loses to Clinton he will also lose to McCain, this might make a bit of sense. That is, if one ignores the current Obama/McCain state by state polls completely, in which case the entire idea disappears in a puff of irrelevance. Like much of the Clinton line these days, this is the politics of the past-- indeed, some of the least successful elements of the politics of the past-- incarnate.

John McCain is a formidable opponent: While complacency is hardly called for, most of the conventional wisdom on McCain's chances in the fall derives from a combination of press inattention caused by the high drama of the Clinton/Obama primary battles and Senator Clinton's tendency to talk McCain up at Obama's expense. In truth, McCain is badly funded, has embarrassed himself on a regular basis out on the stump, and is running as the nominee of a greatly weakened Republican party that only marginally supports his candidacy. While the general election is likely to be a fight, McCain is hardly the political ogre the Democrats need Hillary to save them from, and his status as the Big Bad Wolf of '08 is likely to dissipate mere seconds after she shuts up about it.

On to Kentucky and Puerto Rico!: After which Senator Clinton, who will still be behind Senator Obama in every meaningful measure, will either exit the campaign at long last or assume in earnest the role of the bald faced spoiler ghoulishly waiting for some tragedy to befall Senator Obama.

Hillary Clinton's comments to McNews have amplified and expanded on the offensive implications of her campaign's conference call this week and turned what might have been a minor story into the major campaign sound bite of the moment. Touting her broad base among "hard-working Americans" (who she helpfully translated as "white Americans" in her very next phrase) and "whites... who had not completed college" as a sign of her superior electibility, Senator Clinton sprayed a veritable shitfroth of racism, anti-intellectualism, statistical inaccuracy,and sheer squirrel's-ass craziness straight into the media mainstream.

It is now exceedingly clear that Air America's Rachel Maddow is right if exceedingly kind when she notes that the Clinton campaign is "post-rational." Clinton's arguments that she is the superior nominee, with their exit poll demographics and electoral vote maps (UPDATE: on full display HERE), have always been based on the faulty premise that voter behavior in the primaries is 100% determinative of voter behavior in the general election. This premise, the logical detritus of the long disproven "inevitable nominee running a general election campaign from day one" strategy, is, to be blunter than I've seen anyone else be about it, complete unsupported horseshit-- nowhere in history is there any evidence of such a correlation.

Accepting this premise is a complete prerequisite to accepting that Hillary Clinton has any continued viability as a candidate. To accept it, however, is to follow Goldilocks down the rabbit hole (if I may abuse allusions as badly as she does). To reject it is to be confronted with the fact that her continuing campaign has less to do with her concern for the future of the party than it does with her "tough fighter" self image, her lust for power, and her sense of entitlement. At some point, the depths to which Senator Clinton is willing to go to continue this exercise in political narcissism should, and to me already has, disqualify her for any further office whatsoever.

I repeat: this is as disgusting as it is desperate, and it needs to end now.

"Have you gone berserk, can't you see that man's a ni?"
--Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, et al.

This morning's Clinton campaign conference call, occuring as it did the morning after an Obama blow-out in North Carolina and a narrow squeaker for Clinton in Indiana turned Obama's statistical advantage into a lead pipe cinch of the nomination, may have been expected to be a fairly low key event. No such luck. The Clintonistas, it would seem, are still "in it to win it," facts be damned, and presented many indications that they have no qualms about winning it in as ugly a fashion as possible. A main theme of the call-- Clinton wins with white voters.

With a black identified biracial candidate running for President in a country that has never really faced down its racial attitudes, some crypto-racist content is to be expected. Indeed this campaign, particularly in the last few weeks, has inspired a plethora of racially coded commentary, from references to Obama's "elitism" (which many in the black community took as a code for "uppityness") to the observation that small town voters in Pennsylvania "weren't comfortable" with Obama and didn't see him as "one of them" (gee, wonder why).

While racial demographics have always played a role in the analysis of this campaign, it has been for the most part tip toed around until this morning. What exactly the Clinton campaign is actually trying to sell here is anybody's guess. Is it the idea that Obama's voters may be too lazy and shiftless to actually come out in November? The idea that it is somehow okay that the percentage of voters in this day and age who based their selection largely on race did so, and should be encouraged to continue doing so?

This is as disgusting as it is desperate, and it needs to end now.

In what can only be described as a defining moment in her campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton, in a speech outside Indianapolis last Friday, stated “I sometimes feel like the Goldilocks of this campaign. You know, not too much, not too little. Just right.”

Clinton's statement was notable not just because she screwed up a simple literary reference in a way that made it appear that she was threatening to invade peoples' houses and criticize their belongings before stealing them, but because in a rare moment of what can only be dubbed accidental candor she managed to put her entire campaign into context as never before. Clinton was referring not to beds, chairs, and porridge, but to the proposal for a summer gas tax holiday she had stolen from Papa Bear John McCain. Never mind that the proposal itself is, per the Speaker of the House and Senate Majority leader, dead on arrival. Never mind that even if it happened it would be of minimal if any benefit to anyone but the oil companies. Clinton wanted us to know that McCain's unfinanced version was toooo hot, and Obama's complete rejection of the proposal tooo cold. Clinton's, which offsets the expenses of this pretend gas tax holiday with the revenues from a make believe windfall profits tax on the oil companies (which is, if not also dead on arrival in Congress, a cinch for a Bush veto)is presumably just right, and as such should be a further reason for the Democratic party to give her a nomination that she is clearly unable to win by conventional means.

The storytellers of the media, of course, have been able to talk about nothing else all weekend. Will Clinton's imaginary gas tax holiday excite the busy little worker elves of North Carolina and Indiana? If enough of them clap, can she magically overcome Obama's statistical deadlock on both the delegate count and popular vote total and fly like Tinkerbell straight to the White House?

The moral of this story? Morality has nothing to do with it, children.

A stray observation from having found a copy of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune on a bus stop bench last week, and great news for Minnesota media consumers who like their thinly veiled right wing status quotidian commentary served up with healthy side orders of smarm and smugness-- James "Don't Call Me Jim" Lileks is back after a long exile as the editor of (and most frequently sole contributor to) the Strib-sponsored BuzzMn.com blog site. Lileks, an attempted satirist of the fatuous "Isn't that cute? Isn't that true?" school, can now be found in the Strib every Friday.

Not Doug Grow. Not Eric Black. Not any of the other writers the Strib sloughed a year ago to cut costs. Nope-- Lileks, whose stuff, seriously, a literate dog wouldn't deign to shit on during paper training.

The Star-Tribune was once a world class newspaper. Now, it's mostly just absorbent.

If the disconnect between the realities of the 2008 Democratic Presidential campaign and the media coverage thereof wasn’t 100% completely molto motherfucking obvious before last night’s 21st (and we can only pray, last) candidate’s debate, it most certainly is now. From a first half addressing Jeremiah Wright (yawn), William Ayres (“Who?”), and, God help us, flag pins(with a brief stop in Bosnia for "balance") to a supposedly more substantive second half featuring a solicitation of “no new taxes” pledges and some false and fatuous economic analysis on the part of Charlie Gibson, Gibson and co-moderator George Stephanopoulos demonstrated a grasp of the issues and the mood of the American people that came straight from the right wing blogosphere. Worse yet, in Stephanopoulos’ case, the approach was telegraphed by an appearance on the Sean Hannity radio show during which Hannity actually posed some of the questions Stephanopoulos later dutifully parroted to the candidates.

The rationale for most of this coverage, as well as for the continuation of the against-all-odds Clinton campaign, is the question of whether Barak Obama will be able to stand up to the right wing attack machine. Both the media and the Clinton campaign have attempted to explore this question by offering coverage, analysis, and press statements derived from and largely serving the interests of that very same right wing attack machine.

Ignored as usual is the question of whether any of this has any real impact on the actual election. When early week polls indicated that revelations of Obama's San Francisco fund raiser statements of the previous weekend had had no effect whatsoever on Obama's numbers in either Pennsylvania or nationwide, cable commentators cautioned their viewers that the real story would be told by the numbers later in the week when, presumably, the effect of their continuing to devote inordinate amounts of air time to the story would finally kick in.

It is now, presumably, the job of the mainstream political analyst to find, and present, and keep presenting little tidbits at which the electorate can take cheap offense. It is now, therefore, the job of the electorate to ignore their crap utterly. If last night's debate was in any sense a reflection of what will ultimately decide this election, then we are well and truly doomed.

UPDATE: Hey Brooks-- up yours.