Community Organizers Fight Back

September 4, 2008

Organizers are not particularly practiced at taking things lying down.

Surprise!

"I have ‘actual responsibilities,'" said Jacqueline del Valle, a community organizer in the Bronx. "If Mayor Giuliani and President Bush cared more about working people instead of just people who can hire high-powered lobbyists, maybe I wouldn't have so much responsibility. Maybe working people would have an easier time in America today. But that's not our reality, and they don't have to mock us while we're trying to clean up their mess."

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GOP Goes After... Community Organizers?

September 4, 2008

You know what's fun? Sitting in a room with thousands of people who run the country and listening to them unleash their full fury at how unfairly they're been treated. It's like listening to Caligula whine.

But I digress. Like pretty much everyone, I think Sarah Palin proved herself an adept and talented politician last night. I also think. and have thought since she was named, that she's a distraction. a "rabbit" as Tom Schaller wrote, that the GOP is hoping Democrats chase.

But one of the (many) attacks Palin leveled last night was part of a broader GOP push against Obama's years as a community organizer. I even heard Newt Gingrich on Fox the other day claiming that Obama was "wandering around the south side." You know, like a homeless person, or something.

Notes on Political Cant

September 3, 2008

You know how if you repeat a word long and often enough it begins to become a different word: the sounds break off from each other and thin out and you achieve some sort of altered state in which you can't even reclaim the original sound of the word or its meaning. (If you don't know what I'm taking about, try it. Use, say, ketchup.)

That's more or less what it's like to watch a political convention.

I started this post in reaction to last night's convention speeches at the GOP, shocked by what Joe Klein called the lack of "even the slightest wisp of substance." But to be fair, the Democratic convention was only marginally better. Part of the problem here is sheer mathematics. There is an inverse relationship between the specificity of a statement and the number of people who will agree with it. Millions of people will agree with the statement, "I like music!", far fewer with the statement "I like Lil Wayne!" and far, far, far fewer with the statement "Mrs. Officer is by far the best track on Tha Carter III!"

The Party of Taft

September 3, 2008

At one level, yesterday's Ron Paul event was a political sideshow. (This despite the fact it drew some big names: EMceed by none other than Tucker Carlson and addressed by Grover Norquist: more on him later). Jesse Ventura seemed to be doing his best to cement this impression, by pandering to the crowd about the ultimate perpetrators of 9/11.

But in the midst of an ideologically exhausted and downright moribund Republican party, the event at the very least had passion in spades. And most interestingly it served as a kind of ideological fossil: an stark reminder of what conservatism in this country once was and what it has become. Neither of them are particularly pretty pictures, but the journey from one to the other is worth contemplating.

I walked into yesterday's rally in the midst of a rip-roaring speech from Tom Woods, a hard-right Austrian economist who was laying into "McBama" but especially the Republican party, which he said was run by a "neo-con death cult," and full of "blood-thirsty savages." Strong stuff.

The Dangers of Constitutionalism

September 2, 2008

I just spent a few hours at the Ron Paul rally, about which I'll have more to say later. But as I listened to the speakers get misty eyed over the constitution and describe their views as constitutionalism, it crystallized something that's bothered me for a long time about the way the left tends to talk about the shredding of basic civil liberties that have happened over the last 8 years. There's a tendency to defend civil liberties in the context of fidelity to the constitution, which has the twin virtues of being a) accurate and b) politically potent -- who doesn't support the constitution? But hearing people with beliefs quite different from mine on issues other than civil liberties invoke the same justification to rail against what amounts most of what makes up the modern liberal state, I couldn't help feel that perhaps the constitution is not the best way for progressives and civil libertarians to make their argument. It acts, in a way, as both a short-cut and a cipher.

The constitution itself is a remarkable document, but also flawed. Prophetic in places (the 1st amendment), short-sighted in others (the 3rd amendment). And the Paulites make a plausible case that the Founding Fathers (at least some of them) would be scandalized by things like Social Security and most of the modern regulatory state. I'm not quite sure where this goes: how you build a robust argument for civil liberties not reliant on invoking a document, but something about the ceaseless fetishization of the Constitution at the Paul event gave me pause.

Labor Day at the RNC

September 2, 2008

I spent yesterday trying to celebrate the struggles of working people while still covering the RNC. An impossible task, you say? Well, tried. My dispatch can be found here.

Not About Issues

September 2, 2008

Yesterday, I quoted Obama's contention in his speech that, Republicans are attempting to "make a big election about small things."

Well, today the McCain campaign manager admitted it!:

"This election is not about issues," said Davis. "This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates."

New Campaign, Please

September 1, 2008

This campaign really has become some kind of caricature of trivinalia. Now we're getting press releases about the pregnancy of a Vice Presidential candidate's daughter?

I'm reminded of my favorite line from Obama's speech:

If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.

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Security State

September 1, 2008

I arrived too late in Minneapolis to witness the police (and FBI) raiding the houses of supposed protesters, but a number of people have been doing incredible coverage of it.

Read the links above. It's insane that this hasn't gotten more coverage. Apparently the federal government has directed local authorities to first infiltrate lefty groups (like vegans. seriously) and is now raiding the homes of dozens of protesters before they did anything. In some cases they surrounded homes and told people they'd be arrested if they left the house. Exactly what legal authority does the state have to do that?

More on this later...

If It Keeps On Raining...

September 1, 2008

It's hard to tell at this point just how bad Gustav is going to be.

CNN Is reporting that the industrial canal levees have been breached and water is pouring into the lower ninth ward. Please, God, let the levees hold.

I'm in the Twin Cities watching this all on cable news, trying to make sense of last week and this. And while it seems perverse to talk about the political ramifications of this disaster, it's essentially unavoidable, since the GOP has already attempted to make this a political storm. (Check this out if you don't believe me.)