Democratic Party

This Is Our Last Time

Bob Fertik — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:12:00 -0400

Last night the Democratic Party made history by nominating the first major-party African-American candidate for President, Barack Obama.

Tonight, Barack Obama will accept our nomination. It is fitting that a 20,000 seat arena isn't remotely large enough to mark this moment. Even a 75,000 seat stadium will be too small and many will be turned away.

Rightwingers will mock the white columns. Everyone else in America and the world will marvel at the black man who stands before them.

Incredibly, it was the first viable feminist candidate, Hillary Clinton, who put him over the top. In that single act, the parallel lines of the civil rights and feminist movements met to transform American history.

And we did it through the oldest and largest political party in the world - the party that once fought civil rights - our party, the Democratic Party.

Barack Obama will stand firmly on the ground, but really he stands on the shoulders of giants. Traveling back in time we must recognize those who made his candidacy possible: presidential candidates Rev. Jesse Jackson and Shirley Chisholm, who broke the race and sex barriers to the presidency; presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, who put powerful blacks and women in their cabinets; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose vivid dream (45 years ago today, also in front of Greek columns) we are finally trying to realize; Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and Marion Anderson (who sang in front of Greek columns); presidents Lyndon Johnson (born 100 years ago today), John Kennedy, Harry Truman, and Franklin Roosevelt, who dismantled American apartheid; Susan B. Anthony, Sojourner Truth, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who struggled for 72 years so women could vote; Harriett Tubman (quoted by Hillary Clinton) and Frederick Douglass, who were born into slavery and freed America's slaves; and James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, who gave us the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution with the Bill of Rights, the Democratic Party, and lots of beautiful Greek columns.

Of course none of those giants stood alone. Each rose to fame and power with popular movements, who fought in the streets and the battlefields, the voter registration offices and the voting booths for their controversial causes.

And to elect Barack Obama as our first African-American President, we who are alive today must do the same.

We Democrats were never really divided. But the Corporate Media wanted to make us look divided, and they had the power to project their Bie Lie into every American home. America's shared "reality" is nothing more than the image projected by the Wizards of Oz, the scheming profiteers at who hide behind their corporate curtains with the logos of FOX, NBC, and CNN.

Our truth-sniffing Toto's work in progressive media and blogs. They can pull back the curtains to expose the fraudulent Wizards, but it takes Dorothy's with brains, heart, and courage to find our way home. That means us - all of us.

So Barack Obama is our nominee, but this is our campaign. And we must understand the opposition we face.

We are up against the Republican Party, their corporate allies, and the Bush-Cheney-Rove White House, who will stop at nothing to keep progressive Democrats out of power, and hold them accountable for the crimes they committed over the past 8 years, including war crimes.

And we are up against the enduring emotional power of racism, which will stop at nothing to keep an African-American family out of the Master Bedroom in the All-White House.

Like the suffragists and civil rights leaders, we must lock arms and march forward, and urge our fellow citizens to support us and even join us in our historic cause. They will be inundated with lies, but we must clearly repeat the truth.

The Republican plan is more disastrous war with Iran or Russia; less health care, education, justice and jobs; and environmental catastrophe. The Democratic plan is the opposite: ending war, more health care, education, justice and jobs; and saving the planet before it is too late. That is our choice, and it leaves us no choice.

In Berlin Barack Obama declared, "This is the moment when we must come together to save this planet. Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands. Let us resolve that all nations - including my own - will act with the same seriousness of purpose as has your nation, and reduce the carbon we send into our atmosphere. This is the moment to give our children back their future. This is the moment to stand as one."

He concluded, "People of the world, this is our moment. This is our time."

But in reality, it may be our last time. So from now until the last vote is counted and re-counted by hand if need be, we must keep our eyes on the prize and do everything we can to win.

Remembering When the Government Was at Least Approachable

dlindorff — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:26:59 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

We’ve come a long way towards imperial government in the US—towards
a view of the relationship between the federal government, and
especially the administration, and the citizenry that has more of a
ruler-subjects than a democratic feel to it.

Now I know it is easy to gloss over the way things were, and since I
spent a few days in federal prison for protesting the Indochina War at
the Pentagon in 1967, after being beaten by federal marshals for doing
nothing more than exercising my constitional right to protest on public
ground, I am well aware that 40 years ago we were also often treated
like serfs. But that said, there was something different back then—a
sense that you could deal with powerful officials as an equal.

Back in the summer of 1968, I spent one of several summers on the
road (something more young people should do today). I had hitch-hiked
across the country from Connecticut to Washington state with Allen
Baker, a college buddy, and then, towards the end of that summer break,
had bought an old pick-up truck for $100, which we were driving home
via the West Coast and the central route. Not having much cash, we were
stopping at cities along the way, where I would play guitar for gas
money.

This was the late ‘60s, and there was a major and sometimes violent
culture war underway between the long-hairs like me and the clean-cut
American “Silent Majority,” and my travel companion, Allen, and I were
concerned that it would be tough scaring up much cash in the vast
Republican stretches of desert, mountains and prairie that lay between
Nevada and Missouri. So when we passed through Yosemite National Park,
we decided to spend a day in the valley’s main parking lot, raising
donations from tourists.

While Allen dozed in the back of the truck, I opened my guitar case
and put up the “Gas Money” sign, and then, sitting on the running board
of the old Dodge, started to play.

The money poured in—over a hundred dollars in a fairly short amount
of time. It was really astounding. People walking by really enjoyed the
music and wanted to help us out.

Then a park ranger, an older fellow with a friendly smile, drove up.
“I’m sorry,” he said apologetically, “but I have been told to arrest
you.”

“What for?” I asked, genuinely shocked.

“There’s no panhandling allowed in the park,” he responded.

“What’s panhandling?” I asked him, genuinely unaware of the meaning
of the term, which I, an Easterner, thought must have to do with
cooking with a skittle on an open fire.

“It’s what you’re doing right now,” the ranger said.

By that point, Allen had woken up and sat up in the truck bed, rubbing his eyes.

“You’ll have to come in too,” the ranger told him.

We followed him back to the ranger station, where he proceeded to
write up our tickets. I noticed that there were two actual jail cells
in the station. Thankfully, at least we weren’t going to be locked up.
Then there was a loud bang outside. Suddenly, a younger ranger, looking
like a recent Marine veteran, muscled and crewcut, ran in. “Where’s the
first aid kit,” he yelled. “ I was just bringing in a kid on a
marijuana charge and he tried to run. I shot him in the leg.”

Whoa! I thought. This is Dodge City!

The older ranger told his partner where to get the kit, and then
turned his attention back to us. “Here are your tickets,” he said. “And
don’t skip out on them. This is a federal offense, and the FBI will
come after you if you don’t pay it.”

We left the building, and only then did I look at my ticket closely.
The fine: $500! It was a fortune back then. Even today it is a big
whopper—especially as a penalty for being poor.

I was pretty upset. That was about how much I had earned towards college that whole summer.

Well, the $100 I’d earned panhandling in the park got us back across the country, at least.

When I got home to Connecticut, though, my fine was rankling. Angry
at the injustice of it all, I typed up a letter to the Secretary of the
Interior, who at the time was Stewart Udall. I wrote about the shooting
incident, saying that I thought it was an outrage that an unarmed young
man arrested on a minor charge like marijuana possession would be shot
in a national park, and I also wrote that it was unfair to fine someone
$500 for simply playing music in a park parking lot. “I wasn’t
bothering people,” I wrote. “In fact, they were coming up to me to hear
the music, and the $100 they tossed into my guitar case is testimony to
the fact that they liked what I was doing. That isn’t panhandling, and
in any case, it’s pretty nasty to fine someone $500 when he’s doing
something because he needs money.”

About two weeks later, I got my letter back from the Department of
Interior. On it, in red ink, Udall himself had written, “I agree.
Forget your ticket. It’s been taken care of. Stewart Udall.”

I have tried to imagine that same situation happening today. First
of all, the unfortunate hippie who got shot that time long ago would
probably have been killed, because the ranger would have been carrying
a more high-powered weapon, and wouldn’t have even been aiming to
disable. Second, Allen and I would probably have been put on some
database at the Pentagon, the FBI and the Transportation Security
Administration, and would have been barred from flying or entering any
national parks. More importantly, though, I tried to imagine the
response I would have gotten writing to current Interior Secretary Dirk
Kempthorne to complain about an arrest for panhandling. Or to his
predecessor, Gale Norton. This is, after all, a department that has
instructed its rangers at the Grand Canyon and other parks not to talk
about evolution, and those at the Everglades National Park not to talk
about global warming and the inevitability that rising ocean levels
will swallow that sea-level park in this generation. Under both
secretaries, the Interior Department has played a key role in the Bush
administration’s efforts to alter and to selectively censor government
scientific reports on evidence of climate change.

I’m not saying it was all sweetness and light back in the ‘60s, or
even that Stu Udall was representative of all government officials in
the Johnson years, but there clearly was a different sense back then
that ordinary citizens had a right to communicate directly with their
leaders and to expect some kind of response.

Nixon began the end of all that, with his Imperial Presidency. It
wasn’t just his penchant for secrecy, though that was legendary. It was
his desire to make the government something more remote and feared,
something imposing and awesome, rather than down-to- earth and
accessible. President Carter, to his credit, went a long way towards
reversing that trend, but over the years it has continued, with Bush
and Cheney taking it to an extreme. Today the White House is a bunker.
Federal police carry assault weapons. Snipers man the roof of the White
House. People who write letters of complaint to minor federal officials
can end up being strip-searched and arrested.

And from the looks of things, it may not be much better even if
Obama takes over the White House. The first day of the Democratic
Convention in Denver saw anti-war protesters penned into the same kinds
of “free-speech zones” that the Bush/Cheney administration has made
into standard features of any “public” appearance they put in, while
AT&T, the company that brought us the convention, kept even
credentialed reporters away from a private party the company threw for
those Democrats in Congress who obligingly passed immunity legislation
to protect the company from lawsuits by those whose communications were
spied on by Bush’s National Security Agency. (Obama supported the
immunity legislation.)

So even as we are all being reduced to a nation of panhandlers, it
may be a long time before we can expect a handwritten letter from the
secretary of the Interior Department or of federal department, or for
help in getting off an unfair ticket.
___________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006).
His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Check Out Alan Grayson's new ad! (D-FL CD08)

ddeclue — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 12:59:04 -0400

Fellow Democrats:

Just in case you haven’t seen Alan’s new ad on TV yet, you can check it out on-line at the DailyKos:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/25/155020/561/340/556978

I actually saw it for the first time on TV the other night and I thought it was really an eye-catching ad in which Alan talks about just how much money has gone missing in Iraq and how he has been working to recover tax dollars through his whistleblower lawsuits for waste fraud and abuse. I thought the ad had a lot of energy and avoided the usual political clichés that voters tune out.

Please be sure to leave a comment and please be sure to tell your friends.

Thanks,

Doug D.

Corporate Media Blackouts Continue as Iran War Looms and Impeachment Moves Ahead

dlindorff — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:55:18 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The sorry performance of the US corporate media, which blacked out
stories questioning the official line on the so-called “Iraq Threat”
until the nation was deeply mired in to pointless, bloody war in that
country, and which has almost completely ignored a three-year,
nation-wide movement calling for the impeachment of the president and
vice president, has continued.

Search far and wide, and you will find no reporting on the fact
that Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who has filed a total 36 proposed articles
of impeachment against President Bush, is finally going to get to
formally present his case to the House Judiciary Committee, beginning
on July 25. Although this is not an impeachment hearing, it is putting
impeachment “on the table,” from which it has been banned for two years
by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Although the House last week voted
251-166 to send Kucinich’s articles to the Judiciary Committee for
hearings, the New York Times, the Washington Post
and the nation’s television news organizations ignored this
breakthrough (which included 24 Republicans voting for the measure).
Only USA Today, at least in its online edition, even
mentioned it, with a headline saying “Pelosi cracks door open on
impeachment resolution”--and that was just a five-sentence story.

Another critically important story that is being blacked out by the
corporate media is the Bush/Cheney administration’s march towards war
with Iran. On Sunday, the London Times ran a well-researched and reported piece headlined President George W Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on Iran,
saying that Bush has given the “amber light” to Israel to get its air
force ready for an aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The
article, which quoted an unnamed “senior Pentagon official,” reported
that while an actual attack would require a further “green light” from
the president, the “amber light” meant planning could proceed.

The article also stated that the president was acting, “Despite the
opposition of his own generals and widespread skepticism that America
is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of
an airborne strike on Iran.”

Surely such news of an increased possibility of the US being dragged
into yet a third war in the Middle East should at least warrant a
mention in the mainstream media. The Times of London is,
after all, hardly a fringe publication. Though owned by Rupert
Murdoch’s NewsCorp. it has a sterling reputation. If it reported on a
gossipy story about another sex scandal involving the British royal
family, you can bet the American media would be quoteing it ad nauseum.

Yet while the rest of the world is holding its collective breath
wondering if such a cataclysmic attack might be about to happen with US
sanction and assistance (Israel would be flying American-made planes in
any attack, and would have to be given clearance to fly over
US-controlled airspace in Iraq, even if it was denied access to US
airbases along the way), Americans are being left blissfully unaware of
this latest crime in the making by their war-mongering president.

This is news of major import, and it is nothing short of a shame and
a scandal that it is not being reported in the American media, which
more and more is resembling state propaganda.

Those who want better of their news purveyors should contact local
editors and demand that they stop blacking out stories like these.
Better yet, get together with friends and picket your local news
outlets!
___________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at ThisCantBeHappening.net

Impeachment Hearings: A Win is a Win

dlindorff — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:13:57 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

There are two ways to view the news that the House Judiciary
Committee will be holding a hearing on impeachable crimes by President
George W. Bush.

One view would be that this is all a charade and that after all, it
will not be a real impeachment hearing, but rather, simply a hearing
into the impeachable crimes of the Bush administration. As committee
Chair Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) put it, “We’re not doing impeachment,
but he [Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who introduced 36 articles of impeachment]
can talk about it.” Viewed that way, this is not such a big deal. Rep.
Kucinich gets to make his case that the president is committing high
crimes and misdemeanors and abuses of power and war crimes, but then
Congressional Democrats will continue to ignore all the crimes as it
has done since taking control of Congress in November 2006.

But a second way to view this is as a significant victory over the
quisling Congressional leadership, which has been ducking its
responsibility to defend the Constitution and to stand up for the rule
of law not just since November 2006, but since the inception of the
Bush/Cheney presidency.

I go for the second interpretation of events. It is clear, as was
beautifully laid out in an article published by Glenn Greenwald in
Salon magazine on July 15, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and
the rest of the Democratic Party leadership both in Congress and in the
party organization, have been blocking any action on impeachment for
fear of having their own complicity in Bush's and Cheney's crimes
revealed. As Greenwald notes, the Washington Post has
reported that Pelosi, along with Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep.
Jane Harman (D-CA) were briefed on the administration's use of torture
and not only didn't object, but actively encouraged it. Rockefeller and
Harman, who at the time were minority leaders of the Senate and House
Intelligence Committees at the time, were also briefed about Bush's
order to the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless spying on
Americans. They didn't object or publicly expose this blatant violation
of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment.
And of course, many, if not most of the House and Senate Democratic
leadership as well as many of the rank-and-file members of the party in
both houses backed Bush's illegal war on Iraq, and his USA PATRIOT Act.

No wonder Pelosi, even before winning control of Congress and being
elected Speaker, made it clear that under her "leadership" (if it can
be called that), impeachment of either Bush or Cheney would be "off the
table."

Looked at in this light, the fact that the House just voted 251-166
to send Kucinich's 36 articles of impeachment to the Judiciary
Committee for a hearing, that Pelosi has had to buckle, and that
Conyers has agreed to hold even an "informational" hearing on
impeachment, at which Kucinich, Rep. Robert Wexler (D-FL), and other
impeachment advocates in the House will be able to present their case
about the president's crimes and abuses of power, constitutes a major
victory of principle over cowardice, of integrity over complicity, of
the Constitution over creeping fascism. (24 Republicans joined in
voting to send the articles to the committee.)

The fact is that public demands to hold this criminal administration
accountable for its crimes against the Constitution, the American
people and the global community, have been mounting and have reached a
point that the Democratic leadership, as terrified as it is of
impeachment and of the accompanying airing of its own complicity in
those crimes, has been forced to allow an airing of those crimes.

Now I don't expect Rep. Kucinich to bite the hand that feeds him. He
will not present the impeachment case in a way that criticizes those
leaders. Indeed, he has publicly thanked both Pelosi and Conyers for
allowing a hearing on impeachment. But it would be surprising if
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee didn't make those points.
And that's good. Even if real impeachment hearings never actually come
to pass, we will be treated, finally, to a public airing of not just
the president's and vice president's crimes, but of the Democratic
Party leadership's participation in them.

The challenge now will be for the American people and for the
wide-spread and decentralized impeachment movement, and all
progressive, anti-war and civil liberties organizations, to press
Conyers and the Judiciary Committee to take it to the next level. If
Kucinich, Wexler and others do their job, and if we all demand that the
corporate media report on the hearings, Americans will finally know the
extent of this administration's crimes against the Constitution, and
the nature of the threat it poses to democracy and freedom in America.
At that point it will be time to demand that the Judiciary Committee
move to constitute itself as a formal Impeachment Committee, with full
power to subpoena and demand the appearance of witnesses in a real
impeachment hearing.

The hour is getting late, but there is still time to bring this criminal administration to justice.

American voters may forgive leaders like Pelosi, Harman, Rockefeller
and others for failing to stand up to Bush and Cheney if their names
get dragged through the mud of an impeachment hearing, but the American
people will never forgive them or the rest of the Congress if it allows
these two men to leave office next January without tar and feathers on
their backs and a federal grand jury on their cases.

Call your representative today and every day (at 202-224-3121) and demand that he or she co-sponsor some or all of Rep. Kucinich's 36 bills of impeachment, and join the call for real impeachment hearings. Send them an email. And sign the petition calling for impeachment hearings.

We are witnessing a backdown by the House leadership. It's time to push harder. Impeachment hearings, and impeachment itself, can happen!
____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback). His work is available at ThisCantBeHappening.net

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digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n There are two ways to view the news that the House Judiciary Committee will be holding a hearing on impeachable crimes by President George W. Bush.\r\n\r\n One view would be that this is all a charade and that after all, it will not be a real impeachment hearing, but rather, simply a hearing into the impeachable crimes of the Bush administration. As committee Chair Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) put it, “We’re not doing impeachment, but he [Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who introduced 36 articles of impeachment] can talk about it.” Viewed that way, this is not such a big deal. Rep. Kucinich gets to make his case that the president is committing high crimes and misdemeanors and abuses of power and war crimes, but then Congressional Democrats will continue to ignore all the crimes as it has done since taking control of Congress in November 2006.\r\n\r";
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Support a Progressive Candidate!

ghost122 — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:19:18 -0400

Born in 1963 in Parkersburg, West Virginia, Rebecca Schneider grew up in rural western Pennsylvania in a middle class neighborhood. Rebecca graduated from Mars High School in 1982 and Slippery Rock University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. During the course of attending College and working two, sometimes three jobs to pay her way, she set the course of her career when she began working in the library and currently works as a Library Supervisor for Arizona State University.

Rebecca has a long history of working within and with government entities to achieve success for the organizations and communities by which she has been employed. She has experience managing budgets as well as personnel as part of her management of a Maricopa County Branch Library in addition to her current supervisory position at ASU. Schneider brought together business, government and private foundation groups to raise the funds necessary to build a new library building in Sun Lakes, Arizona. She will use those same skills to bridge the aisle in Congress and foster relationships that will enact legislation that doesn't undermine our Constitutional rights while providing true security to our nation.

In her own words:

Our government has been broken by those who have been in power these past eight years. We have lost many of our constitutional rights and we have lost our way in the world. This is completely unacceptable, and it is my passion and my calling to restore what has been stolen. WE, the people, should be watching our government. They should NOT be watching us. While they were watching us, they were not watching our economy, our infrastructure, our security, our children's health and education, our ports and chemical plants, our energy production and certainly not our environment. They’ve neglected our internal welfare while they were pretending to be concerned about our nation.

Mr. Flake has gone unopposed in his past two elections. With your help, we can make sure that this time around he has a run for his money! Let's at least be able to offer District #6, and by extension, all of Arizona and the United States, a choice. A progressive choice!!

We must demand a strong America that offers broad prosperity to all its citizens, a better future for YOU and all of us. We require a more effective government without all the waste and terrible planning. We must have mutual responsibility between government, the people and business for the betterment of this nation. I want to encourage an economy that doesn't neglect the worker and focus solely on big gains for the CEOs and shareholders. We need a strong voice in Congress that will stand up to partisan bullying and do what is right. I will be that voice.

I am dedicated to improving all our lives by creating an environment of hope and unity. I promise to work tirelessly to affect positive change in the world around us and to work with the citizens of Congressional District #6...YOU...to create a community, a state, a nation that serves us all. I will not waiver in the conviction that we can create a better world for all citizens now and for the future.

I pledge to do everything in my power to return our government and our nation to the people; to restore our rights as promised by our Constitution; to renew our standing in the world by demonstrating the strength and goodness America has always stood for; to LISTEN to the people and enlist everyone’s help in transforming the country into one we can be proud of again. I will endeavor to bring dignity and fiscal responsibility back to Washington. We will have a healthy, vibrant nation once again where there are opportunities to achieve the American Dream for all instead of the few.

Help build that dream for yourselves by electing me to be your Representative in Congress. The time for the old way of doing things is past. It is time we, the people, took charge of our government, instead of special interests and big corporations remaining in control. Now is the time for the power of the people to shout from the rooftops, “WE are in charge!”. Permitting me to be your voice is a great step towards that freedom! We CAN bring back our dignity, our prosperity, our innovation and our American Dream. Join me, won’t you, in making it a reality. Truly, the time is NOW!!

Please check out my website at: www.schneider2008.com Then, make a donation of $20, $50, $100 or more to help me defeat Mr. Flake: the same Mr. Flake who never brings our fair share of our tax monies back to our district; the same Mr. Flake who has voted over and over again to undermine or take away our Constitutional rights; the same Mr. Flake who has supported George Bush for 8 years, yet has voted against helping our troops and our children.

If the status quo of borrow and spend, war and rising healthcare costs isn’t what you want anymore, please give your support NOW so that we have a true choice for change in November.

Thank you!!

Rebecca

Why Puerto Rico's Democratic Primary Won't Matter

dlindorff — Wed, 28 May 2008 16:10:17 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

There are a number of reasons why the Puerto Rican Democratic primary election set for this coming Sunday won’t matter, in terms of Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for the party’s nomination.

The main one is that she’s not going to get the big vote that she has been predicting.

Clinton, trailing Obama by about 400,000 votes nationwide with only three primaries to go, is fantasizing that she will win the lion’s share of one million Puerto Rican votes, which would put her in the lead for the nomination in terms of the popular vote, though not in the delegate count.

The problem with this fantasy is that Puerto Rico, a colonial possession of the US since the 1898 Spanish-American War, while famous for its passionate electorate when it comes to island elections, is not going to have that kind of turnout for a Democratic presidential primary. Indeed, local politicos in Puerto Rico are saying they will be surprised if even 600,000 people turn out to vote.

Clinton may well win the majority of those votes that are cast, but her margin is shrinking as Obama campaigns and runs ads on the island. She’s already down to a 13% lead, with 11% still undecided, and that lead is liable to shrink further, not grow. Even if Clinton kept that lead in the voting, however, if the turnout were just 600,000, she’d only pick up a net 88,000 votes. And Obama is likely to win Montana and South Dakota two days later, by large margins, erasing much of that gain again.

The other thing is, why would Democratic leaders and the all-important remaining undecided so-called superdelegates care what Puerto Rican voters do? Thanks to the continuing colonial status of the island, although its residents are all American citizens, free to travel to and from the US and to carry US passports, they are not allowed to vote in national elections, have no representation in Washington, and don’t even pay federal taxes (only Social Security and Medicare taxes). Puerto Rico has no Electoral College votes.

That in a nutshell is why Puerto Rican voters are so uninterested in this primary—so uninterested that the Democratic Party of Puerto Rico earlier this week requested that the island’s election authorities close 1000 polling stations. It wasn’t that they thought nobody would want to vote in them—they couldn’t find volunteers to staff them!

The other thing is it would not surprise me if the vote this Sunday comes out a lot closer than the polls have been predicting. For the most part, the early advantage held by Clinton has been a matter of name recognition. Clinton’s husband was president for eight years, and moreover, with half of the eight million Puerto Ricans living in the mainland US, most of them in New York, Clinton is familiar as “their” Senator. By rights, she ought to be considered Puerto Rico’s home state senator, as sure to win this primary as she was of winning New York, or as Obama was of winning Illinois.

But in fact, there are reasons for Puerto Ricans, particularly those on the island, to view Clinton negatively. Her husband, after all, helped get rid of corporate tax breaks for American companies doing business on the island—tax breaks that kept a lot of US manufacturing jobs on the island. Doubling the felony, the Clintons, both Bill and Hillary, pushed through the NAFTA treaty that made it easy for those same companies, when their tax breaks were lost, to pack up and move to Mexico, since Puerto Rico also lost its advantage of being inside the US customs zone. Now US companies can make things in Mexico, where labor costs are a fraction of what they are in Puerto Rico, and ship them tariff-free to US consumers.

Puerto Ricans also do not have the same latent hostility towards blacks that some Mexican-Americans may harbor, and which the Clinton campaign so shamelessly tried to stir up in her Texas and California campaigns.

Unlike Mexican-Americans, who are ethnically a mix of white and Indigenous American, Puerto Ricans are much more a mix of white and African—a legacy of the slaves that Spain brought over to the island to replace the native Indians who were slaughtered, worked to death or who died of disease and starvation. Many Puerto Ricans are indistinguishable from African-Americans in appearance, and when they come to America to visit or live are likely to experience the same racism from whites that African Americans experience. They are not going to be easy marks for a campaign that tries to stir up racial fears or animosity.

Obama’s skin color will not be a liability in Puerto Rico. It will more likely be an asset.

Although predicting this kind of thing is always risky, I’m going to bet that Clinton will win a narrow victory in Sunday’s Puerto Rican primary—somewhere between 5-9 percent, with turnout of perhaps 550,000.

If I’m right, she will pick up a net 55,000 votes and 5-6 delegates. There are also 11 Puerto Rican superdelegates, but they will also probably split fairly evenly, at best, for her.

So no big deal—especially since Puerto Rican voters, in the end, simply don’t count.

Until the island is either made a 51st State—an unlikely occurrence since it would be a reliably Democratic state virtually ensuring Democrats of Senate and House majorities for years to come, and thus would never be admitted by Republican members of Congress, and since almost half the island is passionately opposed to such a submerging of their unique culture—or set free as an independent nation, the citizens of Puerto Rico will mean next to nothing to the powerbrokers in Washington.

The Democratic Primary is over, whatever Hillary Clinton may say or do between now and the Democratic Convention in August.

Obama has won it.
___________________
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/33688'; digg_title = "Why Puerto Rico\'s Democratic Primary Won\'t Matter"; digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n\r\n There are a number of reasons why the Puerto Rican Democratic primary election set for this coming Sunday won’t matter, in terms of Hillary Clinton’s failed bid for the party’s nomination.\r\n\r\n The main one is that she’s not going to get the big vote that she has been predicting.\r\n\r\n Clinton, trailing Obama by about 400,000 votes nationwide with only three primaries to go, is fantasizing that she will win the lion’s share of one million Puerto Rican votes, which would put her in the lead for the nomination in terms of the popular vote, though not in the delegate count.\r\n\r"; digg_skin = 'standard';

DEMS UNITE!

redhed67 — Wed, 28 May 2008 07:18:17 -0400

Well, as we all know, election season is once again upon us. Our choices are, as always, a great source of controversy and strife among the American people. This is understandable as not every candidate fits our ideals of the perfect President.

However, I've noticed some very disturbing trends among voters and, most glaringly, the Democrats. Frankly, it's appalling. I can't get through a blog or a chat room without seeing Democrats at each other's throats, each bashing the views and private lives of one another's pick as the Dem candidate.

You know what, people?? Knock it off. I'm not particularly wild about Hillary nor Obama either, to be honest... but all have a common goal here. That goal is to do everything we can to keep the GOP out of the White House.

Haven't the GOP done enough damage already? For the past 7 years, we've been subjected to two recessions, the invasion of a sovereign country with no violent designs on us, over 935 lies from this administration ABOUT IRAQ ALONE, and the blatant trampling of our civil rights such as our privacy with the warrantless surveillance and with free speech with arrests of peacful protestors and even people whose only "crime" was merely wearing an anti-war or anti-Bush T-shirt.

John McCain has stated that he plans on continuing our occupation of Iraq. He has also stated that he not only wants us to stay in Iraq for 100 years, but is already planning on attacking Iran, as he so playfully reiterated in his rousing rendition of the Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann" titled "Bomb Bomb Iran."

Obama and Hillary's ideas are really not so different from one another. They have similiar ideas on health care, Iraq, national security in general, etc. There are subtle nuances that make their plans slightly different but when it comes down to it, one is really just as good as the other.

It's bothersome that people are saying things like "Hillary is a warmonger"... or "Obama is a Muslim sympathizer." These same lines that Rightwingers were using against the two of them just a few short months ago and the Dems were scolding them for, the Dems are now using. I, personally, never chose a particular party with which to label myself. I consider myself an Independent even though I never formally even declared myself as such... and this is why. Both sides seem to go off the deep end when elections come up and I am so disappointed that Dems have allowed themselved to stoop to the level of "The Righties."

I don't like any party spreading lies and innuendo about any candidate, whether he or she be Republican or Democrat. It's juvenile and ignorant. I don't approve of McCain's policies but I'm not going to perpetuate the rumor that he committed treason while in the service. I have no proof that he did. On the same token, I won't perpetuate the rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist sympathizer. We have more than ample evidence that he is not.

Let's think about that particular rumor for a moment. George W. Bush has been more in the pocket of Muslim terrorist sympathizers than anyone else. Despite the fact that the Saudis not only have an appalling track record on human rights but they're also funding terrorists and helping to fund the insurgency which is killing our soldiers... Bush calls them "friend." Not only that but he's also given them weapons which are in turn being used against our troops in Iraq.

Same with Pakistan who has openly harbored Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden for a couple of decades. Then there's Uzbekistan, a nation with a record of committing unspeakable atrocities against its citizens...again, Bush calls them "friend."

So to say anything about Obama is not only stupid but incredibly hypocritical if you're Bush supporter. If you're a Dem, it's insincere and ridiculous. We need to pull together in these elections this year and vote for whomever the Dem nominee turns out to be, even if we have to hold out collective noses to do it. I know I will. If a GOP president gets in again, I would hate to look back and know that my missing vote helped to get him in.

So come on... remember that common goal we have to do something good for this country and keep the GOP out.

VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE!!!
_________________
Don't blame this mess on me... I'm an Independent!

The Democratic Presidential Race: A View from Pennsylvania

dlindorff — Thu, 08 May 2008 17:39:04 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The results in Tuesday’s twin primaries—Barack Obama by 14 percent in North Carolina and Hillary Clinton by 2 percent in Indiana—confirmed that Clinton is finished as a contender. Barack Obama will be the Democratic candidate for president this fall.

Clinton, the private-schooled, Wellesley and Yale-educated millionaire lawyer from Chicago, who first tried to present herself as a White House veteran, and then, in recent weeks, as a NASCAR mom on Food Stamps, and who in Pennsylvania resorted to cheap race-baiting and red-baiting in an effort to derail her opponent, has failed. Barack Obama, another private-schooled Harvard and Yale-educated lawyer, but one who actually did have to work his way up the economic ladder, won decisively in North Carolina, even drawing a significant number of working-class white voters in a state where white voters have not traditionally voted for candidates with dark skin.

As a resident of Pennsylvania, I can only express a sense of shame for the large number of white voters here who bought Clinton’s subtle racist message. North Carolina, my mother’s home state, proved to be more resistant to the Clintons’toxic campaign than my adopted state. Exit polls suggest that as more than one in five Pennsylvanians voted in the primary on the basis of race. Now, if half of the 14 percent of the voters who were black voted for Obama for racial reasons, this still means that perhaps 14 percent of the state’s white voters, or about one in seven, voted for Hillary simply because her oppponent was black. I would argue that for a black person to vote for a black candidate because he is black is qualitatively different from a white person voting for a white candidate because the other candidate is black. First of all, blacks have not had the opportunity, ever, to vote for a candidate of their race who has a real chance at winning the nomination. It is a historic first. They are not saying they would not vote for a white candidate, and indeed, if they voted in the past, they probably did vote for white candidates, since that’s all there were on offer. It’s akin to women (and men) voting for Clinton because she is a woman. Obviously they are not saying they won’t vote for men, just that they want a chance to vote for a woman. A white candidate voting for a white candidate because they won’t vote for a black candidate is simply being racist, just as a person voting for Obama because Clinton is a woman would be a sexist. What we had in Pennsvlvania—indeed, accounting for more than Clinton’s entire 9 percent victory margin—was white racists voting against a black candidate.

Part of the problem for Obama in Pennsylvania, too, was the self-serving decision by Philadelphia’s new African-American mayor, Michael Nutter, to endorse Clinton instead of Obama. Nutter, clearly looking ahead to statewide office, when he will need white votes, opted for a candidate who, with her husband, helped pull the rug out from under many Philadelphians, white and black, with the Clinton administration’s ending of support for welfare programs on which many of the city’s poor and minority families desperately rely.

But at the same time, Obama himself contributed to his 9-point loss to Clinton in Pennsylvania by barely campaigning in Philadelphia, and by an over-reliance on television advertising—a mistake he did not repeat in Indiana and North Carolina.

In the end, the Clinton end-game strategy of using the race card, and of trying to recast herself, absurdly, as a working-class hero, may end up being all to the good for Obama. Clearly it forced him to move away from his empty “change” and “hope” slogans and to address the issues of ordinary working-class Americans—something he had largely avoided doing earlier in the campaign. It also put the issue of race—which the Republicans can be expected to use even more blatantly in the general election—out front and center, where it could be exposed to the light of day.

What seems to be happening is that racist Democrats, those who cannot vote for a black candidate, are rejecting Obama, and will probably either skip voting in November, or swing over to McCain, just as they swung over to Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon before, on different but related issues. The difference is that Obama seems to be able to reach independent white voters and even liberal and libertarian Republican voters who are turned off by the Republicans’ overt racism, as well as by many of the Republicans’ so-called “social policy” positions, such as abortion bans, opposition to gay rights, denial of global warming, etc.

From here in Pennsylvania, I’d say the outlook for the fall is likely to be a strong win for Obama in a McCain/Obama match-up. In a funny way, he will have Pennsylvania, and Hillary’s sewer campaign, to thank.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Rounding Out the Pennsylvania Primary Story

dlindorff — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:52:23 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The corporate media have been quick to buy into and promote the Hillary Clinton campaign claim that she won the Pennsylvania primary by "double digits," but the truth is, that involves a bit of creative rounding.

The final figures for the vote are that Clinton won 1,258,245 votes out of 2,300,542 cast, compared to 1,042,297 for Barack Obama.

If you do the math, that works out to 54.71 percent for Clinton, and 45.31 percent for Obama.

Now granted, if you use the convention of rounding up numbers 5 or above and rounding down numbers below 4 and below, you get 55 percent for Clinton and 45 percent for Obama. But if you take the actual numbers, 54.71 and 45.31, and calculate the difference, it works out to 9.40 percent. And that is a number closer to 9 than to 10.

That is to say, it is more correct to say either that Clinton won by 9.4 percent, or, if you want to round the answer, 9 percent. Either way, it's not a "double-digit" win. It's a single-digit win.

Given that Obama came into the Pennsylvania race with polls showing Clinton ahead by a whopping 20 percent, getting that margin down below 10 percent has to be rated a pretty impressive accomplishment. Add in the viciousness of the Clinton campaign's attacks on Obama, which played deliberately and shamelessly to the racial fears of her aging white, Catholic, working-class, less-educated female base, and it looks even more impressive.

That said, I think Obama ran a poor campaign in Pennsylvania. He relied heavily on television advertising, which has a diminishing impact the more that is spent (doubling a small number of ads can have a big impact, but doubling a large number won't accomplish much). He spent most of his time campaigning in Clinton strongholds, trying to lure Clinton voters away, and precious little time in his own strongholds--especially in Philadelphia's large black communities, which not surprisingly failed to turn out in the record numbers that his campaign needed, and which his historic candidacy should have logically gotten.

In part, Obama is hemmed in by his own national strategy: He is not running as a "black" candidate, and there is certainly the danger that if he got down into the streets and worked to generate real excitement in the projects and slums of cities like Philadelphia or Wilkes-Barre, he would simultaneously stoke the racist fears of white voters. But if he wants to win the nomination, and go on to win in November, he will clearly have to take that risk. (And it is considerable: Exit polls in Pennsylvania showed Obama losing by five percent, which means many people actually voted against him but didn't want to admit it to pollsters, suggesting that many didn't want to confess to casting an anti-black vote. Governor Ed Rendell, a Clinton backer, also famously noted that there are many people in Pennsylvania who "simply won't vote" for a black candidate.)

Obama has the same problem in confronting the Clinton attack machine. In the Philadelphia debate, where he was assailed from three sides, by Clinton, and by the two ABC "moderators," Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, Obama tried to avoid returning the same kind of cheap-shot fire. In his six-week campaign in Philadelphia, too, he was far less willing to, and ultimately late in his counter-attack against Clinton's red-baiting, race-baiting and other assaults, trying to offer what he calls a "new" kind of politics.

Again, it's clear that this "above the fray" kind of campaign strategy is not going to work--especially going forward. Americans say they want positive, issue-oriented campaigns, but they really want blood on the floor. Clinton is delivering that blood. Obama is going to have to do the same.

Finally, if he wants to win those white, working-class voters, and the women voters who are backing Clinton, Obama needs to do more than talk about Hope and Change. He needs to start talking concretely about fighting for women’s equality (he has two daughters—the case is easy!), he needs to talk concretely about ending not just the Iraq War, but the nation’s obsession with military spending, he needs to talk seriously about the crisis of global warming (not just creating green-energy jobs!), he needs to talk seriously about protecting American jobs, and he needs to talk seriously about how to break the insurance industry’s grip on the health care dollar.

In short, he needs a much more aggressive and focused campaign.

He should start by questioning her "fuzzy" math in claiming a double-digit win in Pennsylvania.
_________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006, and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/32945'; digg_title = "Rounding Out the Pennsylvania Primary Story"; digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n\r\nThe corporate media have been quick to buy into and promote the Hillary Clinton campaign claim that she won the Pennsylvania primary by \"double digits,\" but the truth is, that involves a bit of creative rounding.\r\n\r\nThe final figures for the vote are that Clinton won 1,258,245 votes out of 2,300,542 cast, compared to 1,042,297 for Barack Obama.\r\n\r\nIf you do the math, that works out to 54.71 percent for Clinton, and 45.31 percent for Obama.\r\n\r\nNow granted, if you use the convention of rounding up numbers 5 or above and rounding down numbers below 4 and below, you get 55 percent for Clinton and 45 percent for Obama. But if you take the actual numbers, 54.71 and 45.31, and calculate the difference, it works out to 9.40 percent. And that is a number closer to 9 than to 10.\r\n\r"; digg_skin = 'standard';