on tactics and risk management

PUMA people: do not think that just because you really, sincerely can't support what the Democratic party has done and is doing, that therefore the Republicans had nothing to do with what is happening now.

Get this straight: when it comes to strategy, they really are smarter than you*.

Remember earlier? How Rush Limbaugh bragged about "Operation Chaos"? This is Operation Chaos in action, folks.

The good news is that it might be the best thing that ever happened to the Democratic party.

What happened:

1. There was a pre-existing split between two sides of the Democratic party.
   
   
2. Someone not only widened that split, but actually used the wing consisting of young people and uber-liberals to attack the rest of the party.
   
   There isn't enough information available yet to really know exactly who did what to whom. But it's naive to think the Republicans merely stood by and watched**.
   
   Black voters were really used as pawns here - they should be on our side, but Democratic identity politics games are reaching their absurd yet logical conclusion....
   
   
3. Now that one half of the party has attacked the other to get what it wanted, the half of the party that was attacked is furious and won't stop fighting back.
   
   The side-that-was-attacked recognizes (in a way that the attacking flank does not) that the integrity of the party has been breached - and the damage is severe. It's really severe.
   
   
4. Where we are now: it is not clear that anyone should stop fighting back, because the split in the party really does need to be resolved now. It is too late to paper it over. Also, the tactics that were used genuinely cannot be legitimized. These tactics must be put down. They are tactics that cannot be tolerated.
   

Does all of this lead to the conclusion that shutting up and getting behind Barack Obama the right thing to do? No, it doesn't. Obama is a terrible candidate, and there really is something rotten in the state of the Democratic Party.

The real correct thing to do is to stop and examine and think. Don't just join a crowd and do whatever that particular leader tells you to do. Don't just worship a particular idol - whether it's Barack, Hillary, or a blog site owner. Don't just follow that idol's belief. Democracy means you have to follow your own belief.



In the absence of trustworthy leaders, we are running around like mad, looking for someone to follow. What is needed is to recognize that an excessive tendency toward obedience is the problem. Finding someone new to be obedient to is not going to solve anything.

This is why it bothers me when I see people trying to apply the old ways of doing things to the first new leader that rises up***.

It is natural and normal for people to follow their leaders. They have to, because there are too many issues and too many decisions for any of us to make an informed decision on each one. So we learned to rely on 'voter guides' - and, until Bush, that system worked (?). But the "voter guide" approach is how lots of good Republicans got fooled, and got their party stolen away. Bush pretended to be a moderate and he pretended to be a moderate "compassionate" Christian, even while he also sent out special signals to the far right Christians. Both moderates and Evangelicals were betrayed. We will see the same thing (already are starting to see the same thing) in Barack Obama, who has been taking the same moves straight out of the Karl Rove playbook. Obama has fooled many people into thinking he is what he isn't.

This brand of politics must stop. It stops when we, the voters, rise to the challenge. Think of it as coevolution.

Somehow, we have to learn to navigate the reality that it's impossible for us to be well-informed on every issue - and yet the old ways we used to measure how we should give out our vote has failed.

One thing that would help is to recognize that words do matter. And so do symbols. The Democratic party has long ridiculed most of America for paying too much attention to symbols. The Democratic party is wrong to do so - those symbols matter. That flag pin matters. That Michelle Obama said for the first time in my life - that matters. These things matter far more than promises about filibustering FISA legislation.

You can't guarantee that people who give off the right signals will be good leaders - but you can quite safely assume that a politician who gives off the wrong sort of signals during the election is not going to be a good leader. The reality is, it all hinges on trust.

What we as voters need to do is recognize that we need to develop skills we don't currently have in a thing called risk management. We need to add to our political awareness a skill set that involves being able to make reasonable estimates of the probability of - I will not say a politician's sincerity, because quite honestly I don't care if my politician is sincere or not. I just care:

• whether s/he gets done the things I expected him to
• whether s/he refrains from doing things I don't expect him to and don't approve of

That's what we all need to learn to measure.

In a nutshell, the reason the Clinton supporters I know preferred her to Obama (and that preference grew much stronger over time) has to do with signals. Specifically:

• Clinton's signals were consistent with past performance and past record.
  
  Obama's showed increasingly upsetting contradictions - eventually reaching "bait and switch" proportions.
  
  
• Clinton's signals focused on us - stories about people like us, discussion of what issues confront people like us.
  
  Obama's focused on himself - who he is, why he's marvelous. His story - over and over again.
  
  
• Clinton's signals suggested that, like Bill before, she intends to derive her real political power from the voters. She courted us and the level of detail in her discussions about issues reveal that she has actually put in the time to work on these issues and formulate opinions. She made it clear that she was willing to commit to specific positions on issues we care about.
  
  Obama does not talk about issues. When he does, he is vague, contradicts himself, and - well, it's clear there is a reason why his supporters repeat the lie that he is "virtually identical to Clinton" - and now that his actual votes and his endorsements have proved that is anything but the case (so much so that those who are still repeating the lie are either really ignorant, reeeeaaally naive, or downright crooked), the new talking point is that whatever Obama votes for is somehow excusable because he's gotta win! (Why does he gotta win? Because he's virtually identical to Clinton on issues?)
  

Obama signals loud and clear that voters are irrelevant. Whatever the source of his power, I say we should be very afraid of that source of power, because it is totally indifferent to democracy. If we have any power left as voters, we should use it to restore democracy - even if that means voting against the Democrat.

Obama's anti-corporate, left wing rhetoric appears to be nothing more than the left-wing version of the same pandering Bush did when he pretended to be a staunch conservative Christian. The far left will end up as screwed over and disillusioned as Bush's far right evangelicals were. It's part of a duel strategy: part one is fool the moderates and part two is fool the extremist fringes. And if you think Rev. Wright isn't or shouldn't be a problem for Barack Obama, consider two very troubling facts:

1. One of the central premises of Trinity involves opposition to 'middleclassness' and 'white man's greed'
   
   
2. Rev. Wright's new house

Just one of soooo many examples of the sort of contradiction that indicates fraud is taking place.



And sorry, boys, but Obama has no intention of taking us out of the war. If you're afraid of the draft, you're probably actually better off voting for McCain, because Obama and McCain are both going to expand the military - but McCain actually has knowledge and experience, whereas Obama has the same sort of experience that gave us Bush In Iraq and Bush Responding To Katrina.

(For what it's worth, I don't want to see you drafted either. I want the killing in Iraq to stop. I want torture to stop. I want peace in Palestine. And I am absolutely certain that Obama is the worst of the three candidates on all of these issues. Yes, I seriously believe that.)

Also, if McCain is elected, we might actually get some opposition from Congress. Especially if we show them that we are now not going to vote for any Democrat who does not uphold our agenda.
___________________________________________
*It isn't something to feel bad about - they are professionals. This is what they do. And never forget this: they do it very well. Very very well.

And they do it together - starting with a think-tank, and then following orders all down the hierarchy.

** Did Republicans vote more for Hillary? Would Obama be the uncontested nominee if Republicans hadn't interfered? Or do they just run circles around our tiny brains and laugh while they're doing it? They are smart enough to realize (even if we aren't) that by making a big deal of how they are keeping Hillary in the race, they are in fact suggesting that Hillary is not in the race (except through our intervention).

Look at the same question from a different angle: which candidate earned the most Democratic votes? That is, if you eliminate all the crossover voters, which candidate won?

*** at PUMA sites, it is already possible to see people all but swooning because the new PUMA-gods are emerging. People are excited at the idea of being invited into a discussion or a conference call. Or at (gasp!) actually being on the receiving end of a compliment.

It's absolutely horrifying.

condescending

Barack Obama graciously allowed that Hillary probably didn't really mean anything by daring to bring up the Kennedy assassination. Of course, we're all going to continue to take it as a given that she should just know not to go around talking about whatever she wants. Anything that could possibly set off Obama's little weakness must be guarded against, because he has a pathological fear of - you know - certain kinds of people. People who are crude and racist and gun-toting and bitter.

Of course, it is understandable that a really fragile person might just assume we're dangerous. We really are that scary, to those who've never seen our kind before.

Bigotry is a problem in this country, all right. Obama is bigoted against white people. And I am bigoted against shrieking, hysterical little men who let their xenophobia rule them.

The problem is, this pathological dread of people who are not like him is just too deep at the heart of the Obama campaign. As Sean Wilentz writes:

The main difference between now and then is the openness of the condescension with which many of Obama's supporters - and, apparently, the candidate himself - hold the crude "low information" types whom they believe dominate the white working class. The sympathetic media coverage of Obama's efforts to explain away his remarks in San Francisco about "bitter," economically-strapped voters who, clinging to their guns, religion, and racism, misdirect their rage and do not see the light, only reinforced his campaign's dismissive attitude. Obama's efforts at rectification were reluctant and half-hearted at best - and he undercut them completely a few days later when he referred derisively, on the stump in Indiana, to a sudden "political flare-up because I said something that everybody knows is true."

(emphasis mine)

"Everybody" means - well, him.

All of which is just one more way of saying what people have been saying about Obama for some time now: one way or another, anything and everything anyone does, it always ends up being all about him.

Is runaway ruling egocentrism really a quality anyone wants in a President?

give us our due

We're all very different people. We're not Watusi, we're not Spartans, we're Americans. With a capital "A", huh? And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts.

- Stripes, 1981

There's a history in this country that Barack Obama never seems to have heard. It is usually called 'the immigrant experience', and its basic assumptions are at the center of why Obama is so incapable of connecting with working class white voters.

The majority of "whites" in America are not descended from the Mayflower. Our people came here through Ellis Island. We mostly weren't considered white when we first got here - in fact, some of the earliest IQ tests proved "scientifically" that we were subhuman (which is largely why we ignore jerks who publish books like The Bell Curve).

But we were proud to become Americans. And now peoples' definition of whiteness has expanded to include our features.



We are not passive beneficiaries of the slavery system. We had to fight for our place in America's prosperity, and we are aware (acutely aware, this election) that we are already losing what we've gained.

The first of us got here just in time to fight the Civil War (on the Union side), and after that the rich whites used us like disposable tissues in and on their factories and railroads and mines.

Cities like New York were so crowded with dirt-poor immigrants that the only way to get a job was to literally sell your body, signing away all rights. Conditions were terrible - sweatshop conditions. Immigrant labor made other people rich, but the workers lived terrible lives.

We did benefit from wealthy whites who were horrified at what we were subjected to. There is no simplified narrative like the one Rev. Wright gives us, where you can tell who the villain is by something as easy to check as skin color. If rich whites were as bad as some people seem to think, immigrants and blacks would still be living the way they did in 1904. It is crude and simplistic and insulting to suggest that you can divide people into moral categories of good and evil in such a fashion. There were activists who spoke out and who worked to end horrific conditions and we owe them something. And it's petty and ungracious to refuse to acknowledge that debt.

But although we had help, we also fought and died ourselves for what we gained: minimum wage, forty hour workweeks, child labor laws, workplace safety regulations.

Obama is probably familiar with the Illinois Pullman strike.

(Do Americans realize that once upon a time it was legal for employers to pay wages in "scrip", that is, company credit?)

We fought for rights such as the right to not be kept locked into the building, after 146 teenage girls died in a fire (started because the building was not well kept).

I have heard a lot about how unions "overpay" their employees. What they don't realize is that working in a blast furnace is like working in Hell. It's hot and it's dangerous and it's hard work. The shifts are often crazy, ten or twelve or fourteen hours at a stretch, working through weekends and holidays, very frequently on a rotating schedule that seems designed to make sure nobody ever gets a good night's sleep. The "big bucks" usually comes from overtime, not base wages.

...of three men at J & L who fell
when a catwalk buckled
to the crucible
and how their screams melted...

- excerpt, Open Hearth, by M. Lisa Shattuck
from Youngstownsteel.com

Factory workers dying on the job isn't something from last century. Even with all the nearly obsessive focus on safety, people still die, and factories still post those Days Since Last Accident signs. In a way, it kinda bugs me that those signs don't count the most pernicious danger: falling asleep behind the wheel - I wish someone would do something about back-to-back shifts. However, before there were unions, fatal accidents were not only common, but the surviving spouse usually had to pay the company for any damage done to the machinery.

Fighting those excesses in power is, to me is the essence of what the Democratic party stands for. I'm the so-called labor vote and my first interest is a decent life for anyone willing to work hard and play by the rules. This has two parts:

1. a decent life: this is what the labor movement fought for. It's what conservatives don't get/don't want to talk about. Americans had to fight hard to win a good standard of living because the sweatshop is what capitalism looks like in its natural state.

Just as our system works on the principle of checks and balances, so too economics and politics need to check and balance the other. Economics without politics leads to corruption and tyranny; politics without economics leads to stagnation. Either way, the end result of extremism is collapse.

2. willing to work hard and play by the rules: this half is important. It's the part liberals don't get/don't want to talk about. Working stiffs live in that world economists are describing when they speak of "competition for scarce resources". Scarcity is reality and it means life is naturally harsh. Civilized life means banding together to make life a little less uncertain. A little less painful.

The working class works hard and plays by the rules and wants to be recognized and rewarded for that. Some of us take it as a personal affront when our tax dollars, instead of supporting things that benefit us, are instead diverted to the sort of handouts that reward people for rejecting our ethical code.

Personally, I really like the idea of a safety net - but I resent that so many safety net projects specifically exclude white people; they should be open to anyone who has a legitimate need. I want to hit something when I hear it suggested that reverse discrimination never hurt nobody; of course it does. It's just that nobody listens to the people who actually carry that burden.

And lots of people resent programs that destroy incentive and undermine the work ethic.

There's been a lot of shaming going on for the past several decades. People aren't proud to be an American anymore, and they don't want to speak the language, and expecting people to assimilate the way my own people assimilated is considered somehow insulting.

To become affluent too often means leaving behind your immigrant roots. In today's America, if you started from working class white stock but you're moving up in the world, you either become a conservative, or you disown your heritage and take on the peculiar identity of the latte liberal - the self-hating white, the America-hating privileged American.

Many liberals seem happy to do this. They are only too pleased to have an excuse to be angry with their small town origins. I guess it's fun to mock their parents' culture. They get to be better than, and smarter.

"The place where I come from
is a small town
They think so small
they use small words.
But not me
I'm smarter than that..."

"...and my Heaven will be a big Heaven
And I will walk through the front door."

- Peter Gabriel, Big Time

I won't vote for Obama because he doesn't understand that we don't share his identity crisis - we have our own identity, and we don't particularly want to renounce it so that we can become latte liberals. Or so that we can become free trade conservatives. Or so that we can become...whatever the hell it is he is offering us. (Kos Libertarianism?)

Once upon a time, the underprivileged stood together. The blacks (and other minorities) have legitimate grievances, but they are making a big mistake in letting their leaders turn their anger against "America", which too often means against the labor vote (divide and conquer).