March 20, 2010

Nobody’s Pawn

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 5:41 pm

It was probably inevitable that this would happen, but let me go on record that, as we approach a likely final vote on the health insurance bill, I continue to stand firm in my stance that the bill should not pass, and if it does pass, it should be repealed. By continuing to hold this view even as most of my erstwhile allies fell in line to support a bill that they had, quite justly, likened to a pile of manure a few months ago, I have found myself in company with only a very select few who are ideologically similar to me. Most of those who oppose this thing are on the Republican side of the aisle. However, I’ve never been a fan of the sports team method of conducting politics. No, if the people who agree with me on the ultimate goal (even if they disagree on the reason for their stance) are mostly Republicans, well, so be it. I’m not picky. The enemy of my enemy may not be my friend, but it can be my ally for now. A vote is a vote.

And the fact that most of those same erstwhile allies consider this such an atrocious thing says a great deal about their true priorities. In my not-so-humble opinion, these people are liars to pretend they care about some 30 million without insurance, or people with existing medical conditions (of whom I am one), or a hypothetical 45,000 people who may die a few years earlier than they otherwise would have (yes, it sounds inhuman, but life can be cruel. Many of that figure will die because of cancer. Insured or not, the 10-year survival rates for internal cancers generally are not good). For starters, the bill is an insurance coverage bill and outside of some provisions for community clinic funding, it has nothing to do with health care administered by medical professionals. The typical deductible and co-pays of affordable individual coverage policies—to paraphrase Scarlett O’Hara—might as well be a million dollars if you don’t have that kind of money saved up, and most Americans, unfortunately, do not have that kind of money saved up. The bill doesn’t bring the individual market up to the standards of the group policy market in deductibles and co-pays, not even close.

Some of those lives could indeed be saved, but precious few of these activists are truly interested in saving lives. I can’t entirely fault them; it’s a known quirk of human nature that it is easier not to let death bother one if the numbers are high enough and the incident is remote or distributed enough. I see that 45,000 figure and I don’t even blink. Still, that’s not what I mean here. There are, undoubtedly, some long-term health care activists who see the world from an optimistic viewpoint and want to believe that this bill will help. I will not disdain them, though I think they are tragically mistaken, and nothing I say refers to them. However, most of the people yapping sanctimoniously about this on blogs, Facebook, and political mass e-mails are Johnny-come-latelys to the health care issue, and they are only on it right now because that is what their party and the president are on right now. These activists’ real agenda is only to maintain their partisan majority in Congress this year. They may use the 45,000 or 30 million as a loaded gun against their opponents, but if they get what they want, the devil take those human statistics. I have seen this disgusting little game played before; in 2006 many Democratic candidates invoked the Katrina response and the body count following it, but as I have complained about many a time and documented on this blog, most of them didn’t lift a finger to help those people after assuming office. I see no reason to believe it’ll be any different for the politicians or partisan activists when the true effects, or lack thereof, of their health insurance bill start to come out. Once this thing is over, they’ll move on to something else.

Incidentally, these partisan activists have revealed with their very own words just what they really think of the right of people with chronic medical conditions (like me) to have affordable health care, and it is not encouraging. Some proposals have been floated to initiate the pre-existing condition exclusions immediately but wait to implement any mandate. Such proposals would actually benefit the chronically ill (if they had all the loopholes plugged—keep reading!), you know. But whenever such an idea has been brought up, the partisan activist goons are on it like a pack of hyenas: “We can’t do that! We can’t have the pre-existing condition exclusions without an individual mandate! People might wait till they got sick to buy a policy and it would raise my premiums! Besides, there’s a high risk pool proposed for the interim!” (There are high risk pools already in place in many states. This does not make them affordable or useful for obtaining treatment for costly illnesses. If it did, we wouldn’t be discussing this.)

The proposals I refer to would affect a period of not quite four years, and even if people actually did drop their insurance en masse just because they could (which I do not believe would happen), the sky will not fall in four years, and health insurers could easily take the comparatively small losses out of their own profits rather than hiking everyone’s rates, if they were ordered to do so. Besides, even after the mandate would take place, people could still go naked as long as they paid the fine, which is much less costly than a policy, and these same people could still wait to get a policy… when they got sick. So much for that bogeyman. So no, this is not about fairness to the public at all. In the minds of partisan progressive activists, it’s more important to be “fair” to a parasitic industry that has killed its own customers by proxy than it is to provide health insurance to people who are sick. To them, I have no right to affordable health care; it is a privilege that depends on the behavior of other people. Concern for the chronically ill, my rear. I have so much contempt for the deceitful sanctimony of these people that I can barely express it, and though I do have chronic medical conditions and therefore would be among the people they pretend to care about, I will not be a pom-pom for their partisan cheerleading.

I have had the opinion for quite some time that the worst thing anyone could do, in the view of Democratic Party brass, is to display disloyalty to the party brand. There is no such thing to these people as ideological disloyalty. As I’ve lamented before, they discussed stripping Joe Lieberman of his chairmanship not because he thwarted an investigation into FEMA’s role in the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but because he campaigned for John McCain. Now, we have numerous reports that the White House threatened to make sure that any Democrat who voted against the health insurance package would not receive any party money for re-election. There were no repercussions or threats made when the stimulus act passed last year, nor have there been any such threats for any other piece of legislation that the president wanted. Absolutely none. But it was never implied that the failure of these bills might result in a party changeover in the fall. Now that some people in the pundit and political classes have formed this opinion about this particular bill, opposing it is tantamount to switching party allegiance in their minds.

But to return to topic, my opposition to the bill. It is not just unmitigated contempt for many of the proponents (and pity for the rest, who I think are in for a big disappointment) that is why my opinion is what it is. I also have good reason to believe that the bill can make things much harder for people like me. Right now, if I were to receive a denial letter that said “pre-existing conditions,” I can produce paperwork demonstrating in an open-and-shut case that I am entitled to the insurance claim. I’ve done it before. I can handle my own appeals at minimal cost and time as long as the insurers can still say “pre-existing conditions.” If the bill passed and the regulations took effect in 2014, they wouldn’t be able to say that any longer. But don’t worry; they have a backup plan: They still can send out letters to customers rescinding coverage altogether if they claim it is on the basis of fraud, and to fight a fraud claim, you’ll have to engage legal services. For many, you’ll have to hire a lawyer and fight these vermin in court while you are sick and getting medical treatment. The insurers do this already to customers whom they cannot get on pre-existing conditions but who develop a costly illness that they don’t want to pay for, and insurance company executives have even told members of Congress point-blank that they would continue to do this to customers if the bill passed. Great, just great. Though I’m sure the trial lawyers’ lobby is quite happy.

Incidentally, when this detail is pointed out to these progressive activists that I have been impugning, they get quite upset and insist that such things won’t really happen because it will depend on how regulations are written up and interpreted. (The memories of the Bush Administration deliberately ignoring and defying all manner of business regulations, let alone “legitimately” interpreting them in the most corporate-friendly way possible, seem to have slipped their minds.) The naivete would be truly amazing if I believed it really were naivete; as I have said, though, I think the simple answer is that they do not really care about the chronically ill. They are liars.

I will not be the pawn of a group of people who are interested in my life only as a tool to achieve partisan triumphs. I’ve watched it happen once before, and all I got in return was disappointment and betrayal. Say what you will about the Republican activists; at least they make it plain that they don’t care three straws about people like me. If they decide that they would use us left-wing opponents for their own goals and then discard us, it’s no different from what the progressive activists and politicians would do—except that we can also use them.

Share|
Tags: , , , , , ,

October 7, 2009

An Opt-Out Public Option Lets Red States SENTENCE THEIR PEOPLE TO DEATH by Popular Vote

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 11:11 pm

As we approach the endgame of the health care reform debate in Congress, an idea has been floated recently that might be the worst one I have yet encountered.  Yes, in my book it tops out mandates without a public option, taxing health care policies, triggers, and co-operative plans.  The idea is to have a strong national public option but to allow state governments individually to opt out of allowing their residents to make use of it.  This idea has picked up steam in the “progressive netroots community” (bloggers), with a surge in support on flagship blog Daily Kos, among others.

It is a truly horrible idea, though, and it just goes to show that bad ideas do not only come from Blue Dog Democrats or Tea Party Republicans.  Self-described “progressives” can have them too.

“Progressive” Activists Betray the Legacy of the Civil War:  A United U. S. A.

This is far from the first time that “progressives” have advocated Balkanization of the United States and the breakdown of the federal government in favor of a loose alliance such as that proposed by the Articles of Confederation.  In the lead-up to the American Civil War, many Northern progressives said “Let the South go” rather than fighting militarily to bring seceded states back into the U.S.  These 1860s-era progressives did not really care about the human rights issue of slavery.  Many of them believed that slavery would collapse under its own weight and the South might voluntarily choose to return.  Obviously, history did not take this path, so we do not know how it would have turned out if President Lincoln had followed this advice and war had not broken out.  However, we do know one thing:  African Americans would have remained enslaved for far longer than they were.  Not just living under the iron heel of Jim Crow laws, but actually enslaved.  We also know that, though some aspects of Reconstruction were extremely broken, when that process ended by the “corrupt bargain” of the 1876 election, Jim Crow laws were immediately forced into effect.  That’s what happened when they “let the South go.”  Human and civil rights in the South were eroded.

The legacy of the Civil War was not just the abolition of slavery and the enshrining in the Constitution of voting rights to people (men, at the time) of any race.  Another part of the legacy was the principle that there are certain things individual states cannot do.  The War settled the question of secession and nullification.  If states are part of the U.S., they abide by the laws of the U.S. and cannot deny their residents the protections of the Constitution, the United States Code, and federal programs.

Of course, if a health care reform bill is signed and it allows states to opt out of a robust national public option, this would blow a hole right through that ideal.  Legally, of course; there is nothing in the Constitution that says Washington cannot enact laws with an opt-out clause for states.  But the very existence of this hypothetical opt-out would go against one of the legacies of the Civil War, just as surely as it would go against the legacy of abolition if the U.S. somehow overturned the Thirteenth Amendment through legal means.  For progressives to be advocating this idea is a monumental betrayal.

Death by Popular Vote

It’s not just a betrayal of E Pluribus Unum, either.  This idea is a betrayal of every person in a Republican-dominated state who is in favor of a public option.  It is saying to us that we don’t count.  Here is a direct quote from a popular Daily Kos diary in support of this idea:

(…) I really love the idea of an opt-out public option.

Not because it’s the best idea by any means. A robust single-payer plan would be the best idea. Not because tens of thousands of real Americans won’t die and go bankrupt in states with morally bankrupt legislators. They will.

Our lives are meaningless, then, to the “progressive netroots community” except as political pawns.  The message absolutely could not be clearer.

I know what the residents of my state would probably vote for.  I certainly know what my governor and Legislature would do.  And while I would indeed apportion blame to them if Mississippi denied its residents access to a national public option, I would apportion a great deal more to the ivory tower blue coast “progressives,” and any members of Congress who voted for such a thing, for making it possible and legal for them to do it.

People in the South and other Red areas will die because of this, if it passes, whereas they would not die in Blue states.  This means that a state’s populace would be allowed to sentence people to death, permanent indigence, or bankruptcy by a popular fiat.  Have we sunk so far?  There was massive outrage—MASSIVE, I say—about the idea behind California’s Proposition 8 and the fact that 50% + 1 could deny court-established civil rights to people.  Where did the outrage go?  Or was it only ever present because LGBT people are generally a liberal-oriented group and California was a blue state?

I am a former Democratic Senate staffer, actually, but I would NOT forget that it was the progressive community and Democrats in Congress who allowed townhallers, teabaggers, and insura-cons in my state to sentence people like me to death or bankruptcy.  Want my vote in the future?  Want the votes of any left-of-center Southerners in the future?  Too bad, suckers.  If this idea ends up passing, we will remember exactly who it was that sold us down the river.  We would expect no less from our troglodyte state governments, whom we do not vote for anyway, but we depend on Washington to keep their harmful ideologies somewhat in check.  This idea won’t turn the South blue.  All it will do is royally tick off Southern Democrats and liberal-inclined people.  (Yes, I am a civil libertarian oriented liberal, not that cowardly weasel-word “progressive.”)  It will send the message loud and clear that our lives, health, and finances do not matter because of where we live, that we are not worth fighting for, that we have no inherent value, but are only useful as a body count to make a political point.

I’ve suspected this for some time about the “progressive” community’s real opinion of Hurricane Katrina’s victims, and this idea does not do one thing to dispel this suspicion.  It only reinforces it, in fact.  Apparently, if you live outside of a Blue area, your only value to this part of the “netroots community” is as a part of a body count that they can use to advance a political agenda.  Even if it’s an agenda that you otherwise would agree with, nobody wants their entire worth to be dependent upon their being dead.

In truth, this whole scheme gives the impression of being revenge politics. If you are at all familiar with the left-wing blogosphere, you’ll know that there is a huge amount of resentment over the fact that the South gets more money from the federal government than it pays in. The people who hold this resentment ignore that the entire purpose of social programs and such is to assist the poor, and the South is the poorest region in the country. To them, no one in the South deserves anything because a majority of Southern voters would vote against their having it. They are no different from anti-tax Republicans in that they only want to see “their” tax money go to projects and places that they personally like, and they have a massive grudge against the Southeast. This opt-out idea looks very much to me like they simply love the idea of “getting back at the South” for the tax money that it “stole” from them.

Passing a law with this in it would also send the message that health care is not a fundamental human or civil right in the United States.  If it were either, it would be the responsibility of the federal government to require every state to offer the same health care exchange across the borders.  With the exception of the death penalty, the federal government does not defer to states in the arena of human or civil rights (and it is truly a major problem with the DP that the same crime can get a different sentence not based on the judge and jury, but based on where it was committed).  By letting states opt out, this continues to send the message that health care is a privilege rather than a right.  This is not the message that we want to send!  That is the opposition’s message.

It will not turn the teabag crew in favor of the Democratic Party.  Their people are dying at the hands of insurance gangsters, too; it doesn’t seem to penetrate their skulls.  If anything, all it will do is cement their ideology.  “We don’t have socialism in this state!”

Denying—or letting governors and legislatures deny—people the right to use a social program is not going to turn anyone in favor of that program.  The only thing that will is to deploy it and let people see through experience, either their own or that of people they know, that it is not such a bad thing.  Every parent knows that sometimes they must force a stubborn child to do something, even if the child stamps his foot and DOESN’T WANT TO, because it is good for the child and the child will be grateful for it in the end.

Share|
Tags: , , , , , ,

May 12, 2009

Crist Is Part of the Solution

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 2:57 pm

Though I’m not in Florida, I’m pleased that Gov. Charlie Crist is running for the Senate seat being vacated by Mel Martinez. This is a fine example of the kind of politics that I think will be necessary both to uplift the South from right-wing reactionary rule and to produce a viable and non-frightening opposition party for whenever the Democrats mess up.

I’ve written before about the need for moderate Southerners to run for political office in Republican primaries. Crist is already a Republican, of course, and a rather popular one at that; the question was about whether he would run for this office. He’s also pretty much indisputably a moderate (proving my point in the past two articles that it is possible for moderates to be well-liked in the South). I’m glad that he’s running. If he is the nominee, as is (I hope) likely, it should be an interesting race to watch, as there is not likely to be much difference between many of his views and the views of his Democratic opponent. Considering that, he may try to shore up the right flank in the general election. It wouldn’t surprise me either way. But as we know all too well, campaign rhetoric often doesn’t mean a whole lot.

As could perhaps be expected, the mainstream bloggers have this all wrong. Nate Silver of fivethirtyeight.com, which I linked to, is the only prominent person with a reasonable opinion on it. The luminaries at flagship blog Daily Kos are gleefully contemplating the likelihood of a primary between Crist and hard-right Club for Growth ideologue Marco Rubio. The belief is that Rubio is dead in the water as a general election candidate, as Pat Toomey now is in Pennsylvania, and that a Rubio nomination should be advocated and promoted. Wrong. (Read more…)

Share|
Tags: , , , , , , ,

October 16, 2008

The Illusion of the “Netroots Movement”

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 5:21 pm

There are some very good reasons why I have never chosen to identify with the “netroots” movement or the politics thereof. One such reason is the “movement”‘s eagerness to take credit for anything good that happens to the Democratic Party in elections, when the simple truth of the matter is that outside circumstances shape elections. If I were superstitious, I’d worry that the onset of crowing about the apparent coming Obama win would jinx it. However, that would be the ultimate in assigning undeserved responsibility to these characters.

The political pendulum swings back and forth. As a liberal, I think that the more liberal party should be the natural governing party of the U.S., because we need to move forward continuously. However, there is a place for a more conservative party, a loyal opposition, that keeps the metaphorical feet of the liberal party firmly on the ground, and sometimes gets rewarded with power when the liberal party becomes corrupt or goes off on some kind of crazy utopian scheme. A big reason why politics in the U.S. have been so messed up is because the party charged with keeping everyone’s feet planted on the ground was emphatically not the “conservative” party. It was the “conservatives” who had pie-in-the-sky visions of using force to instill democracy in people and being thrown flowers for it. It was the “conservatives” who believed that the sheer beneficent nature of the rich would lead to a pretty unicorn world of unregulated markets promoting widespread wealth. The “hard realist” party, the one attempting to put the brakes on these kinds of ideas, was the Democratic Party. Traditionally, liberals were supposed to have optimistic ideas of human nature and conservatives were supposed to be more pessimistic and cynical, but, despite the slogan of the Obama campaign, that has been reversed. Liberalism is traditionally, and classically, not supposed to be the check on conservatism run wild, but that’s what has happened now.

What we are seeing right now in the U.S. is that natural cycle, albeit in an upside-down world. (Read more…)

Share|
Tags: , , ,

June 12, 2007

The Ugly Truth: Mudcat Is Right.

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 12:36 pm

Anyone within the political blogosphere knows about the flap with Dave “Mudcat” Saunders, a TIME Magazine blogger who also happens to be associated with the John Edwards campaign. The post that started it all, “Go Ahead And Shoot At Me,” features a slam against websites that stereotype, mock, denigrate, and dismiss rural voters as being ignorant or racist.

Predictably, the flagships of the left-wing blogosphere cried foul. Sites such as Daily Kos, MyDD, and other prominent blogs posted wailing denials that they were guilty of what Mudcat accused them of. –And, to be perfectly fair, the authors of these blogs, for the most part, are innocent of ad hominem attacks on rural residents. However, the blogging community at large is GUILTY, GUILTY, GUILTY. And that’s the ugly truth.

I’m currently an “urbanite” in the Northeast and likely will remain so for the foreseeable future. However, my roots are in small-town and rural communities. I spent much of my childhood on a large, 10-acre property in the rural South, where the nearest city of 100,000 people was an hour and a half away. When I first was introduced to political discourse on the Internet, I was truly astounded by the utter disdain and contempt shown to rural people–specifically rural Southerners–by the online community. Left-wing bloggers and commenters used such expressions as “ignorant hicks,” “backwards,” “uneducated,” “closet racists,” “fundies” (religious fundamentalists), etc., to generalize about rural voters.

Let me illustrate:

Environmental Intolerance. On some large political blogs where Green (environmentally friendly) power and Green building are big issues, especially blogs with a large membership hailing from the Northeast or the Pacific Northwest where Green technology is widespread and growing, the members will smear rural communities with no choices other than the local Tennessee Valley Authority affiliate, which, generally, does not provide Green power. It’s not limited to carbon-friendly policies, though; they’ll attack people who don’t eat organic foods because their local supermarkets do not carry them. They’ll attack people who live in energy-inefficient housing because they have no alternative. Mitigating circumstances, such as having no alternative choices, don’t seem to matter to these people. If someone does not fit their prescribed acceptable lifestyle, out come the attacks. Mudcat Saunders was talking about precisely this sort of intolerance when he posted on the TIME Magazine blog, and he is absolutely correct.

The “Commuting” Flap. When Hillary Clinton proposed a nationwide speed limit of 55 mph, there was, predictably, uproar among people in areas where driving 65, 70, or, in the desert West, 75 mph is not just a non-issue, but is almost a necessity because of the large amounts of open space. These people who objected to that sort of policy were deemed “part of the problem” (the problem being carbon emissions). If the objectors said that they needed to drive fast because they were rural and had long commutes, the proponents said, flippantly, “you should just move to the city.” The utter disdain and contempt for people who lived in small towns and rural areas was staggering.

The Dean Campaign. Let me make it perfectly clear: I like Howard Dean. I like what he’s done. And I have no problem with former Dean campaign staffers or consultants; in fact, I work with several. But a lot of the left-wing bloggers were supporters of the Dean campaign and never really got over his loss in Iowa and New Hampshire. After he came in third in Iowa, these loudmouths took it upon themselves to attack the voters in Iowa as “corn-fed hicks” or worse. The Dean campaign’s Iowa operation included a LOT of volunteers from the East Coast, and the reports from Iowa are that many of these volunteers were so obnoxious, condescending, and in-your-face that Iowa voters got fed up with it and associated it with Dean himself. In other words, these former campaign volunteers-turned-lefty-bloggers are themselves responsible for the demise of the campaign with the condescension that they showed the Iowans, but they blame it on “corn-fed hicks” who just didn’t know their own good.

Taxes, Allocation, and Demographics. It’s a known fact that “red states,” those states whose electoral votes went to Bush in 2000 and/or 2004, take in more federal tax money than they contribute, and that the contributions typically come from “blue” states. And I agree that it’s deeply ironic that many people in those states vote conservative because they claim to hate taxes and federal handouts. This hypocrisy is a source of continued derision on the part of the left-wing blogosphere for the rural South in particular. Some even go so far as to say that “we should’ve let the South secede” or “we should let the South form a separate country.” After the 2006 elections, there was a very prominent diary on the blog Daily Kos that stated that the South should be ignored and disregarded from that point on, because it wasn’t necessary to win elections. Mathematically, this is true–all that was required in 2004 were the electoral votes of Ohio, which were lost only because of massive fraud perpetrated by the (now known to be criminal) Ohio state government. But it’s a BIG difference between saying that such-and-such a state’s votes aren’t needed to win an election, and writing off the issues of that region… plus the people who live there.

The bloggers who advocate this should take some facts into account:

The Northeast voted Democratic by a margin of between 55 and 60 percent.
California and the Pacific Northwest voted Democratic by a margin of between 55 and 60 percent.
The South voted Republican by a margin of between 55 and 60 percent.
The West voted Republican by a margin of slightly greater than 60 percent.

Within any given state in these regions, selecting 10 people at random will result in a breakdown of 6 of them with the “majority” political affiliation for that region, and 4 with the “minority.” This means that there are a lot of “blue voters” in the South, who don’t deserve the blanket attacks made against residents of these states. It also means that there are an equal percentage of “red voters” in Democratic-leaning areas. These bloggers ignore these facts and refer to entire regions of the country in blanket terms, making the unspoken assumption that everyone within those regions thinks and votes with the majority. I don’t even need to say how false this is. No region is a monolith. All states are variations of “purple.”

However, I’m not meaning to suggest that only those voters who support the ideology of the current government should be given any consideration. That’s the point of view of the Bush administration. Surely the left-wing blogosphere is better than that…? Whether one is conservative, moderate, liberal, or for that matter, apathetic, they’re still an American under the Constitution and deserve the protections of that document and the United States Code. Some bloggers seem to have lost sight of this.

Hurricane Katrina Victims. Some time back I wrote a piece about Mississippi homeowners and the insurance industry and cross-posted it to Daily Kos. The response I got disgusted me: Daily Kos commenters accused the homeowners of deliberately building in disaster zones for the purpose of defrauding the taxpayers and the insurance industry, which in turn would raise their taxes and insurance premiums. All the blogosphere sympathy for New Orleans didn’t carry over eastward to Mississippi. No, as far as these people were concerned, the homeowners were to blame and it was just tough luck to them. I do not doubt that there was a strong element of rural and/or “red state” prejudice in their remarks.

So, no matter how much they wail and gnash their teeth that Saunders was being unfair to them in his blog post on TIME, this doesn’t change the fact that his allegations are true. The facts are out there. On the Internet, nothing goes away as long as there’s a server that has a copy of it, and it doesn’t take that much research to find many examples of the sort of commentary that I’ve noted here.

I am sure it is difficult to relate to people who live in a completely different manner than what one is used to. In the book To Kill a Mockingbird (set in a small town in Alabama, incidentally), progressive lawyer Atticus Finch advises his children not to judge anyone until they’ve walked a mile in their shoes. It’s a lesson that many people on the Internet could learn.

Share|
Tags: , ,

February 13, 2007

Right-wing Group Continues Attack on Edwards. Will Dems Defend Him?

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 11:21 am

Embattled John Edwards blogger Amanda Marcotte resigned, despite being told by the campaign that she was welcome to remain as a blogging consultant. I don’t particularly blame her; she probably felt that the best thing to do was to remove herself from the auspices of the official campaign, because her effectiveness as a supportive voice had been reduced dramatically.

You thought that would discourage the “religious” group that started all this in the first place? Think again.

They’ve sent letters to the other two front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (warning: both links are PDF), to condemn the bloggers (and, implicitly, the Edwards campaign itself). Some samples:

By taking up this issue publicly, you will be able to distinguish your candidacy from Mr. Edwards[...].

They [a professor and a member of a think tank] believe that Mr. Edwards mishandled this attack on Catholics and Christians, and by permitting Marcotte and McEwan to remain on his staff, it has harmed efforts aimed at building coalitions between Christians, Catholics, and Democrats.

On blogs, there is a term for this: concern trolling. It’s when a complete outsider, often (usually) opposed to the person or group’s aims in the first place, comes forward and expresses concern that some action a person or group took will harm those aims. It’s pure psyops, intended to create self-doubt and weakness among the ranks.

This group, known as Fidelis America, self-identifies as a Republican/Conservative political action committee. Here are the contributions that they made for the past election cycle, from disclosure database Open Secrets:

2006 Cycle:
Burns, Conrad (R-MT) – $100
Ensign, John (R-NV) – $100
Kyl, Jon (R-AZ) – $100
Santorum, Rick (R-PA) – $5,100
Talent, James M (R-MO) – $100
Total to Democratic Senate Candidates: $0
Total to Republican Senate Candidates: $5,500

And Democrats should cater to the demands of this group why, exactly?

These people will not endorse Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. In all likelihood, they’ll endorse Sam Brownback. This is the Religious Right. Democrats have absolutely no obligation nor responsibility to condemn other Democrats at the urging of this group. The group donates to Republicans and does not care one bit about coalitions between Christians and Democrats. It probably shrinks in horror at the thought of the Religious Left becoming a force in politics. The purpose of this action is to create division and doubt among party ranks.

However, the right wing has sensed that the party tends to conduct itself this way — attack each other out of sheer terror. They did it to John Kerry last year in the face of a right-wing onslaught (although, to their credit, Edwards and Obama did not join in the attack — unfortunately, Clinton did). This behavior gives the right wing encouragement to continue with their attacks.

I sincerely hope that the other two front-runners repudiate this.

(Hat tip to Kagro X of the Daily Kos for the blog piece inspiring this entry.)

Share|
Tags: , , , , ,

February 6, 2007

War Against Bloggers

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 7:11 pm

John Edwards has shown courage and class in deciding not to fire the bloggers after a rather dirty mini-campaign to smear him because of what they wrote in their private blogs. He could have done the easy thing, the thing that most politicians would do, and fire these people in the face of media onslaught — but instead he kept them on, “talking to them” as he said to the press (because you have to tell these people that you’re doing something or they’ll never leave it alone). That has reinforced my support of him quite a bit, the fact that he doesn’t cave to demands from the media machine.

I have no statement on the controversial comments themselves. I do realize that it is VERY common for bloggers, especially under protection of their online identities, to say things that they probably wouldn’t say under other circumstances. Blogs on all sides of the political spectrum are often very politically incorrect, often vulgar, and generally highly emotional. It’s the nature of the beast.

People really like it, too. Otherwise blogging wouldn’t have taken off like a rocket in the past few years.

Blogging, in fact — citizen media, as it’s being called in some circles — is becoming a major threat to the domination by mainstream media. It’s a funny thing; news from mainstream sources is often politically correct to a fault. A major problem with the news in recent years has been the stubborn determination to present “balance” — even if one side of the issue is patently wrong and has no facts to back up its point of view. There are some purported news sources that taint their product with sprinklings of political or ideological bias (*ahem*FOX*ahem*), but even from these sources, the bias isn’t in-your-face in the way that blogging is. It’s subtler.

However, the political scream shows on CNN, FOX, and MSNBC are a different matter altogether. Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson, Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, etc. — the shows where a self-styled pundit is given a microphone and allowed virtual free rein. Beck is the host who insulted Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, by demanding that he say that he “wasn’t working with the enemy” as a “Democrat, a Muslim, saying cut and run.” This level of discourse is easily just as bad as anything that John Edwards’ bloggers may have insinuated about Catholics.

And let’s not even look at political talk radio. Just don’t go there. The level of racist, sexist, and pseudo-religious vitriol on those shows far exceeds anything that is present on the respected political blogs.

The Edwards blogger “scandal” was a trumped-up sideshow blown completely out of proportion by the mainstream press, which is feeling very threatened by this new form of media that they cannot control or buy up. Kudos to him for not giving in.

Share|
Tags: , ,

October 26, 2006

Major Blogger Takes Up Swiftboating

Filed under: Politics — PolitiCalypso @ 6:55 am

I have watched with increasing irritation as the blogosphere castigates John Kerry and Evan Bayh for not donating as much to the DSCC as a small, anonymous blog site would purportedly wish them to.

And then, after Kerry does something he had planned to do for days, they take credit for “persuading” (read: strongarming) him to do it.

I hate to attack fellow Internet activists, but you know, sometimes you have to call it what it is.  It’s swiftboating.  It is a group of people unfairly leaping on any accusation made against Kerry, who has been doing precisely what they themselves have advocated doing this year.

It started with the now-defunct startup blog “heyjohn.org,” which claimed to have been administered by anonymous top Democratic Party officials, claiming that Kerry and Bayh had been miserly with their money. This claim is false.

Then Markos, the proprietor of the major blog site Daily Kos, who worked for the Dean campaign in 2004 and apparently harbors a lasting grudge against the man who beat Dean, globbed on to the attack and issued a vulgar smear against Kerry’s spokesman for calling out the anonymous site. He attempted to convince his flock that the calling-out was somehow aimed at him, his friend Bowers at another blog, and their readership.

It’s worse than disgusting when purportedly liberal bloggers act like Karl Rove, which is exactly what has happened with this trumped-up “scandal.”

Markos quotes Wade’s slam of the anonymous attack site HeyJohn.org:

“Cowards can hide behind anonymous Web sites,” Mr. Wade said, “but Democrats out in the country, party leaders and real net-roots activists know how hard John Kerry has fought to win these elections.”

The comment was specifically in reference to heyjohn.org, a smear site claiming to be set up by Party members. NOT to Chris Bowers’s campaign to get unchallenged or under-challenged House incumbents to donate money to contested races. Because…. the Bowers campaign was targeted to safe House incumbents. Not Senators, and specifically not potential 2008 presidential candidates. In the era of billion-dollar campaigns, it’s insane to suggest that a potential major party presidential candidate should give up his war chest, besides being a slap in the face to those thousands of people who donated to the individual with the intention that their money be used in a future presidential run.

But Kos pretends that the Wade comment was somehow directed at Bowers, him, and the blogosphere in general.

Bowers doesn’t look that anonymous to me. Nor am I.

Now that is a very good observation. Bowers isn’t that anonymous, and neither is Markos. So maybe… he wasn’t talking about them?

It gets worse, with Kos completely ignoring the facts of what Kerry has done.

Ask any campaign around the country at this stage what they would prefer — a campaign visit from Kerry (or anyone else save the Big Dog), or cold hard cash, and guess what they’ll answer? Money and volunteers will help us close this election strong. Not campaign appearances that is more about Kerry building support and chits for 2008 as it is about helping our guys this year.

Several things wrong with this.

1. False dichotomy. It’s not a choice of campaign visits or donations, and it’s certainly not as though Kerry’s done one and not the other.

2. Kerry has been doing far more than making campaign visits. He has donated over $3.2 million of his own campaign war chest this election cycle to candidates and committees.

3.That’s not including what he has raised for other candidates, using his own campaign’s money to pay for fundraising on an email list that he could easily have used to raise money for himself instead (ahem, Hillary). That figure is in the double-digit millions. What’s more, this is not an “incumbency protection racket” in which he only supports safe incumbents who have zero chance of losing their seats. He’s supported the people-powered candidacies of Lamont, Webb, Tester, etc. His last appeal was for the four tightest races: Menendez (NJ), McCaskill (MO), Ford (TN), and Webb (VA), the four races that will determine who wins the Senate. He’s spent campaign money on this advertising, and a lot of it. These fundraising appeals are not cheap.

4. Kerry has used his email list to mobilize lawyers for election protection and poll watching in several key states. That’d be “volunteers,” I would say. What’s more, it’s a very important part of the election to observe the voting process. With so many races tight, you can bet your arse that there will be voter suppression and other shenanigans taking place. It’s all the Neocons have left.

5. Kerry’s organization will use its email list to recruit volunteers for local campaigns nationwide.

6. If I donate money to someone, it’s because I want to express my support for that person. Not because I want him to forward the money on to someone else. This is especially pertinent for potential 2008 candidates: People donate to them now because they support them for 2008!

Whatever your opinion of Kerry may be, or for that matter of Markos, it’s only fair to call them as we see them. Markos has a personal grudge against someone and he is using that to spread distortions and lies against that person in the exact same style that Rove does — pretending that he is being attacked and playing the victim, while marshalling his troops with the same accusation against them: “By insulting me, he insulted you.” It’s Rovian to the core and it’s how Rove keeps his fundamentalist troops in line. If we are going to act this way, we should do it against Republicans, NOT against our own.

Shame on you, Kos. Shame.

To major bloggers’ credit, not all of them leaped on Kos’s smear bandwagon. Jerome Armstrong, a former blogger for Mark Warner, didn’t buy it. He called the argument hogwash.

If you still want to call out the ’08 wannabees, make it for where the money is most needed– at the numbered 25-100 House seats, not in the committees.

That’s exactly what Kerry has been doing. He’s donated $3.2 million of his own funds to those races, as well as raising money for Democrats in 2006. If you donate directly to the campaign, you know where it will be used, unlike general donations to the party. As a matter of fact, this was a criticism of the DSCC and DCCC by the blogs, that they didn’t allocate enough money to particular races.

Try telling that to the likes of Markos, who is so blinded by leftover resentment from the 2004 primaries that he disregards the facts.

Then, when Kerry did what he planned to do all along, or at least since October 9, and donated half a million to the DSCC and DCCC, Kos took credit for it.

Shame on you, Markos. Shame.

Also to bloggers’ credit, a majority of respondents called him out on his smears, although he did not recant. They didn’t like seeing Democrats attacked in a major election year such as this one, particularly Democrats who have done a lot to help take back Congress. Perhaps this one bad seed has shot his credibility now. One can only hope. The liberal blogs deserve a better spokesman than a Rovian distortionist.

Share|
Tags: , , , ,
Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress. This theme is a heavy modification of the WordPress Classic theme planned to match the layout of ErinThead.com. Because of its very specific and personalized nature, it is not available for public download. Content copyright ©2005-2009.