"I hate a man that talks rude," he said, "I won't tolerate it." - Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

I've been reading Please Don't Remain Calm: Provocations and Commentaries, the recent book of essays published by Michael Kinsley, mostly in the online journal, Slate, from 1995 until 2007. Upon reviewing those less than fond memories of the controversies over the vote count in Florida during the Bush - Gore election contest I'm struck by certain similarities in both tone and content with the present Internet free-for-all over the Democratic nomination.

An unfortunate and recurring propensity of intellectuals, academics and those who spend too much time on the Internet is to confuse theory with reality. We then get so passionately identified with our theories that we battle like young boys in an online World of Warcraft. Those who may get hurt in the real world due to our misperceptions and misjudgments are too often those who don't have the leisure time to spend piddling around on their computers. The looming consequence of one such passionately contested theory may be long term damage to the Democratic Party.

The most serious damage that our current president has wrought over the past eight years has been to the Constitution and to its' balance of powers. His actions, along with the inaction of congress and the collusion of the Supreme Court has focused more and more power in the hands of a single human being, making of the presidency an office more fit for a King.

Many have commented that in this election cycle we've seen the Internet come of age as a primary tool for political organizing. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first president to fully employ radio to channel his message to the people while Adolph Hitler used the same medium to destructive effect. John F. Kennedy was the first politician to fully realize the importance of television as a means to construct a sense of national identity. People like Jerry Falwell used television as the supreme vehicle for demagoguery and group think. Someone like Barack Obama will be the first president that emerges out of the Internet Age, and we should question what are the ways that the new medium can foster both the use and abuse of power.

The following article by Adolph Reed in the May issue of The Progressive paints a pretty complete picture of the ongoing con game that has successfully divided Democrats and convinced many of the inevitability that the candidate least likely to win is most likely to be nominated.

Adolph Reed in May issue of The Progressive.

For someone who increasingly finds himself sitting on the fence about whether to vote for Barack Obama in the general election or to simply call it quits on my lifelong relationship with the Democrat Party, the huge flap Obamacrats have made over Wednesday's debate has pretty near pushed me over the edge. In response to Obama's rather lackluster performance they've viciously rounded on the people asking the questions, consigning them to an ever-expanding purgatory for those who pose any doubts about Obama's righteous claim to the throne. Not that Obama's debate performance has ever been particularly stellar, as he comes off to me as a bit of an over-intellectualized lawyer-geek except when he's giving speeches. (Don't mention this to a true-believer however, as you will be roundly attacked as a reactionary.)

A recent Gallup poll found that in a general election, 28% of Hillary supporters and 19% of Obama supporters would opt to vote for John McCain if their candidate doesn't get the nomination. I urge you to read this summary and try to make sense of the data it reflects. Likely defectors across both camps tend to be concentrated among conservative Democrats and independent voters, but Clinton defectors would include more voters of lower education and income. Blacks, liberal Democrats and core Democrat voters are least likely to defect no matter who wins the nomination. Surprisingly, gender appears to be a minor factor either way. The report concludes:

It's already being said in many quarters that Barack Obama's has given the most significant speech on the racial divide in America since the 'I Have a Dream' speech that Martin Luther King gave at the Lincoln Monument in 1963, and one of the most important political speeches given in the last couple of decades.

I have to agree.

The first political campaign that I took part in was before I could even vote. I was seventeen. It was the mayoral campaign for Carl Stokes, who emerged in 1967 as the first black mayor of a major American city, Cleveland. My grandmother who was a prominent local Republican activist had gotten me a volunteer gig outside the county courthouse receiving the metal ballot boxes driven in from the precincts for counting. We would grab them out of cars and vans pulling up to the curb and pile them on carts that were taken across the street where we would place them on a ramp that led down into the courthouse basement.

But howsoe'er, no simple man that sees
This jarring discord of nobility,
This shouldering of each other in the court,
This factious bandying of their favourites,
But that it doth presage some ill event.
'Tis much when sceptres are in children's hands;
But more when envy breeds unkind division;
There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.

            William Shakespeare, Henry VI-Part I

In an election that challenges the patriarchal and racial stereotypes of leadership that have dominated this country since the beginning the most effective way to difuse any real challenge to the status quo is to pit one minority against the other.

I listened to Keith Olbermann the other day in his almost hysterical attempt to amp up the conflict to the point of parody.

The fact is that much of what Ferraro said was as true as Clinton's comment that the Civil Rights law would not have passed without the political leadership of Lyndon Johnson (another statement spun as being 'racially insensitive' - not politically correct) by the Obama campaign.

This campaign has been a minefield of racial and gender sensitivities from the beginning. Perhaps no man but a black man could have campaigned as effectively as Obama against the first serious woman candidate for president, as his own status as a member of an oppressed minority trumps her own minority status as a white woman.

We are seeing a repeat in many ways of 1968 when the Democratic Party establishment was overthrown by a bunch of mostly white and affluent draft age college students who had made common cause with the civil rights people over the Vietnam War. The result was McGovern and the largest landslide loss in history.

Obama has brought the same two coalitions together, and I believe they are making the same mistake that was made back then in assuming they represent the majority of the country or even of the Party. This is simply not even close to being true. If one looks at the demographics of each candidate's base, Obama's is affluent white young and black, while Hillary's is blue collar, white women and older voters. Hillary has won in most of the solid Democratic states while Obama has won through motivating energized islands of activists, progressives and blacks in smaller and largely conservative Republican states.

Either I'm missing something, or the demographics of a Democrat election victory would have had to change beyond recognition by the Fall in order for Obama to win.

Before the Texas and Ohio primaries Bill Clinton made the out-on-the-limb statement that if Hillary did not win both the Texas and Ohio primaries she would probably not get the nomination, and if she won in those two races she probably would. At the time Hillary's team tried to out scramble one another in backtracking and qualifying his statement, which in conventional political terms was setting a bar which if not met would come back to bite the campaign. Of course, everyone was relieved at the result, and once again the uncanny political reputation of 'The Bill' was somewhat rehabilitated, having been in the doldrums since his seeming misadventures in the Carolinas where he stepped into the racial and messianic minefield surrounding Obama.  

I just received the first of, I'm sure, many pieces of anti-Obama email from someone's mailing list.

It was really nasty and obviously came from a Republican source...professionally done in a way that looks almost like it was knocked off by an amateur. Entitled Obama Thanks You. Presented as an ironic twist on a personal message from the Senator to his supporters. Full of all those right wing code words you can hear all the time on talk radio. Probably written by someone on the staff of Michael Savage or his ilk. It refers to "youthful drug use and criminal behavior", it brings up all kinds of specious garbage about the Kennedy's, it refers to Farakhan and white guilt and a 'left-wing' voting record. It mixes legitimate criticism with all sorts of racist button pushing.

While Hillary's nomination is no longer certain, neither is a Democrat victory in the general election. In both parties the leading candidates have had to contend with serious insurgencies representing populist factions rebelling against the party leadership. The incredibly accelerated and compressed primary season has exposed the strains and fault lines in both parties. My sense, however, is that the tensions among Democrats are more likely to pull that party apart than those among the Republicans. The Obama Democrats carry both the idealism and the arrogance of youth, assuming much too readily that the world will fall in step with their obvious virtue, while Republicans see themselves as pragmatists in a world that must be coerced into marching in tune.

I Love Elections.

Specifically, I love presidential elections. More theater than substance it is said, but I contend that the theater is the substance. National elections are, after all, the way we sort out for ourselves the image we have of ourselves as a people. (Or, how else did you think we did this?) These huge personalities stalk our screens, made up of the real personalities of those running plus the thick accumulation of media narrative and popular fairy tales we associate with them. Each candidate portrays a particular dream image, a myth of who we are and where we are collectively headed. All around them are the professional media handlers whose job it is to wrestle with the media beast, striving to keep control of the story that is told, and sometimes losing control through missteps or poor timing, helplessly watching the narrative wind out away and out of control (see 'Willy Horton'; see 'Swift Boats'). You don't want the 'fifth estate' to wrest control of your message, because the news is an entertainment, and entertainment is based on conflicts, polarities, dramas and gossip more than on substance or truth.

I've been raving about and reading aloud to anyone who will listen the following Rolling Stone interview with Bill Clinton that appeared in their November 40th Anniversary issue.

Can anybody tell me...

Every generation faces a struggle and is defined by it. We are shaped by the events of our time and our very perception of the world is molded from our experience. My parent's world was shaped by the Great Depression and the worst war in history, followed by the cold war. My own generation grew up under the terror of nuclear holocaust, and was shaped by the Civil Rights struggle and the Vietnam War and all of the blood, assassinations and rage that resulted from a radical shift in consciousness and the radical reaction to that shift.

Sooner or later, the world moves on, and the struggles of one generation are no longer center stage. Sooner or later the torch is passed from the old to the young. For the past 20 years or so my generation has dominated the political will of our nation, and the stark polarities that we've carried and nursed since the sixties have made it increasingly difficult to move forward. While the whole world awaits our leadership we've become more and more mired in battles over class, race, religion and the very definition of who we are as a nation.

In an ideal world the American public will awake to its higher nature, nominate Barack Obama, who will play the transcendent politics of reconciliation, leading to the humiliation and defeat of the dirt slinging fear mongering Rudolf Giuliani, bringing a new generation to power and providing a real surge toward the solution of our global predicaments.

However, unless Obama wins the caucus in Iowa and goes on to win in New Hampshire the Democrat nomination is probably a foregone conclusion. In the real world the next election will be yet another duel between the two radically polarized world views represented by the two most polished and dynamic politicians in their respective packs. In this corner, representing for better or worse, the feminized image of the postwar progressive imagination, is HIllary Clinton. In the other corner, representing the coalescence of the Republican winning strategy of inspiring fear and promising protection from the evils of the world, is Rudolf Guiliani. The election will likely be a somewhat strange battle between two New Yorkers, in a country where the political axis of both major parties has long since shifted to the south and the west.