“The Senate passed a $162 billion war spending plan Thursday, sending the President Bush legislation that will pay for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until the next president takes office.”

The war funding was approved 92-6, with two Senators not voting. All six of the Senators who voting against further funding of the war were Republicans. Both Obama and Clinton voted for more funds, as did Mikulski and Cardin.

I hope you can see why I don’t take Democratic promises to end the war seriously, and wonder why Democrats do.

As we all know, Obama is the first candidate in the history of our public campaign financing system to opt out of the many tens of millions of dollars that were available to him in favor of the hundreds of millions he believes he can raise for himself. Of course, he broke his previous promise to accept public financing. But his explanation is also disingenuous. The Washington Post (6/25/0 said this about his desire to fund his campaign through small donations from ordinary people:

“Ordinary people, that is, if your definition of ordinary people includes bundlers who can collect six- and even seven-figure sums for your campaign. Because even as he was rhapsodizing in public about ‘the grass-roots values that have already changed our politics and brought us this far,’ Obama was privately cozying up to Hillary Clinton’s major fundraisers.

Earlier this month, he dispatched his campaign manager, David Plouffe, to woo Clinton bundlers in Washington and New York. This week, Clinton will introduce Obama to nearly 200 of her major bundlers, including some who have raised $1 million or more, in a meeting at the Mayflower Hotel.

‘This group could represent 50 million, if not 100 million, bucks,’ said one top Clinton strategist.”

Obama says he needs these millions to counter attacks from independent conservative groups who are no doubt preparing to swift-boat him. The only ads I’ve seen, however, are MoveOn.org ads that attack John McCain by name. If Obama really represented “change we can believe in” couldn’t he had publicly asked MoveOn not to start the mud-throwing, and publicly challenged McCain to say the same thing to his conservative supporters?

There are many other issues, of course. During the West Virginia primary, Obama emphasized the importance of “clean coal,” as if a rock we have to blow up a mountain to get so we can burn in a giant furnace could actually be “clean.” Immediately after he won the nomination, he told AIPAC that he would work for a two-state solution in the Middle East, while promising Israel that “any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided” - defining the outcome of Israeli/Palestinian negotiations before they actually begin. Palestine also considers Jerusalem to be its capital, so why would it ever enter into negotiations sponsored by someone who would say that?

Obama supports passing a bill that “effectively gives legal immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on calls and e-mails for years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, without the approval of a special, secret court.” (AP, 6/25/0

Obama supports state-sanctioned murder, also known as the death penalty. “While the evidence tells me that the death
penalty does little to deter crime, I believe … that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment” (Barack Obama, “The Audacity of Hope”

Republicans take the same stances on all of these issues, as do Democrats who really want to change things but know they can’t go too far before they alienate their support from the center. On what issues does Obama actually represent change?

During the primary, since I’m not a Democrat and didn’t need to decide between either candidate, I made a serious effort to listen to Clinton and Obama supporters and find out why they supported the candidate they did. I came to believe that most people who supported Obama (and Clinton as well) believed that their candidate of choice were out to do the things voters wanted them to do - end the war, feed the poor, etc. - even though their voting record didn’t support that thought. I saw a lot of voters projecting their values onto a candidate and making beleive that the candidate had done things they hadn’t actually done. One writer wrote:

“We chant in unison with Obama that we want change, we yell ‘yes we can,’ and then stand dumbly by as he coldly votes away our civil liberties. The Democratic Party, including Obama, continues to fund the war. It refuses to impeach Bush and Cheney. It allows the government to spy on us without warrants or cause. And then it tells us it is our salvation. This is a form of collective domestic abuse. And, as so often happens in the weird pathology of victim and victimizer, we keep coming back for more.” (http://www.alternet.org/story/89301/)

Are you still as firmly behind Barack Obama as you were before all this happened? If so, why? I promise I won’t argue before everyone’s had a chance to write.

I believe a little bit is true of all of the above. Although the media play the doomsday angle on everything, I think in the end the party will be more unified, the nominee will be stronger and this will be a good Democratic year.

Let’s be clear: unless he is caught in a compromising position with Larry Craig, Obama will almost certainly be the nominee. The best H. Clinton can hope for is a convention fight. While I don’t fault her for believing she’s the best nominee and fighting on, I definitely find fault with some of the ways she’s done it. There’s no excuse for taking sides with McCain against Obama, for suggesting the Republican would be a better commander in chief than Obama, for attacking him on past associations harder than McCain has. She should be defending him, and would be if she were not running against him. And her popular vote argument–including MI and FL numbers when neither campaigned there and Obama wasn’t on the ballot in MI–is fundamentally dishonest.

Obama has not “closed the deal” not because he is a weaker candidate, but because Clinton remains a strong candidate. She has the name recognition, she has the built-in advantages, the organization and the local contacts (Rendell et al. in PA). She’s the safe choice for people who remember the relative peace and prosperity of the Bill Clinton years. It’s amazing what Obama has pulled off in the face of his relative disadvantages.

People of good faith can argue which is the better candidate to defeat McCain in November. The problem is, that’s an academic exercise because Clinton can’t catch up. It’s too little, too late.

If there’s a superdelegate coup and Obama ends up second, I’m sure he would support Clinton and ask his followers to do the same. But I’m not sure they would listen. Many would probably stay home. Conversely, I think if both Clintons suck it up and accept defeat–sometime–and tell their supporters to vote for Obama, those supporters are more likely to fall in line. Those voters are generally older and have more practice voting for Democrats.

My two cents.

It has been this way since 1789, so I argue that now is the time to take a 180-degree turn. Nearly all progressives agree. Check out George Lakoff’s book “Don’t Think of an Elephant” for his analysis of progressive values and what they mean. Accepting glacial change is a liberal value, not a progressive one. Progressives are defined by their belief in radical change and refusal to be constrained by established systems.

It doesn’t really matter what the petitions that Obama challenged to make sure he was the only Democrat on the ballot looked like. I’m saying that someone who talks about “change” as much as he does never should have looked at them. My point is that he sees the world of politics as one in which people should be excluded if they fail to meet certain standards (and that these standards were not created randomly - they were created by people working to preserve power for themselves). Why should a Democrat have to turn in any petitions to be on a Democratic ballot they are otherwise qualified for? I can’t think of a reason, but he accepted that point of view and applied it, using the legal system to exclude others. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it is right.

Just like it’s not right that independents and third party members can’t vote for non-partisan judges next week. Does that fact provide specific reasons not to vote for a Democratic candidate? No. But I hope that, as an analogy, it helps progressives realize that Clinton and Obama are the ones who helped create, sustain and pay for the system they are now saying is broken.

We can argue about whether Clinton’s or Obama’s plans go far enough to meet some idyllic standard. We can also discuss whether any plan has a political chance of success in today’s climate.

None of that is the point. I was responding to your assertion that none of the Democratic candidates “offer anything worth voting for.” A candidate who recognizes our country’s vital problems, and has a forward-looking plan to solve those problems that will benefit the most citizens, is worth voting for. I believe both remaining Democratic candidates fit that bill.

The root of “progressive” is “progress.” It usually does not mean immediate, 180-degree reversal. It’s OK to argue that we’re at such a crisis that we must move that fast. But to equate slower-than-desired change with no change at all is wrong and irresponsible. It may end up with the no-change candidate winning, and we can’t afford that.

P.S. I wasn’t present for the Obama-Chicago petition hearings, and neither were you. We don’t know on what grounds the signatures were invalidated, but they were. Some of us refer to “legal leverage” as simply “the law.”

I don’t think the Progressive Democrats for America are the best possible model, but let’s use their example on health care. PDA has prioritized a single-payer health care system. Neither Clinton nor Obama support a single-payer system. They support universal coverage, but leave the implementation of universal coverage in the hands of employers and private insurance companies. If you’ve seen ‘Sicko’ you know why that system is doomed.

Both Clinton and Obama voted against funding the war in May of 2007. Fair enough. But both Clinton and Obama voted for over $240 BILLION in war funding in 2007 alone ($124 billion on 4/26/07 and $122 billion on 3/29/07). These were emergency supplemental bills, not the yearly allocations for the Department of Defense. They were not approving pay for soldiers or medicine for their babies - they were approving President Bush’s request for extra funds solely to continue the occupation of Iraq.

Clinton and Obama’s belief in global warming and promises to do something about it are meaningless - John McCain believes that we ought to do something about global warming. I congratulate Clinton and Obama for their recognition of reality.

I guess you can’t appreciate my anecdote about Obama’s challenging of his opponent’s petitions without having participated in a petition drive before. Most discrepancies occur not because of “dirty tricks,” but because someone signs a petition using the incorrect address, putting the zip code in the wrong box, signing a petition for the wrong county, etc. I don’t see challenging all four primary opponents off the ballot as a triumph over political shenanigans - I see it as using legal leverage to deny voters the right to choose from among candidates with diverse messages. The article says that Obama knew that’s what it would look like he was doing, but he did it anyway.

If you want to learn about petitioning “dirty tricks,” look into what Democrats in a dozen states did to Ralph Nader in 2004.

Happy a Super Tuesday!

My name is Tandra Ridgley Co-founder of The GrassRoots Steering Foundation, Inc. a non-profit based in Harford County. Just wanted to invite you to the 2008 VOTE THE POWER™ launch party! It will take place on Friday, Feb. 29th, 2008 at the Aberdeen Fire Hall. Time: 6:30pm-10:00pm. Dress is casual. This is a free event open to the general public. Visit our pre-launch page at: http://www.votethepower.com for more details. Or call: (410) 272-8346.

Thanks,
Tandra Ridgley