The GOP's Prime Directive now: Stop Clinton!

They know if she runs no Obama nuevo will show up in the Democratic Party to end-run her, and no GOP possible can beat her. Even Chris Christie, who'd likeable but will probably be murdered by Krispy Kreme before 2016.

So they're desperate. Yet they also know she's so popular they can't attack her directly--not yet.

The first step, then, is to delegitimize the State Department she heads.

Hence the phony scandal called Benghazigate. It's not about Susan Rice--she's just a stand-in for the one they're really after.

Especially since the GOP depends on being able to fool Americans into believing that Democrats are always timid and inept internationally--especially in war--despite Obama being demonstrably superior in these regards to the strutting mediocrity who was the last Republican president (making Ike spin in his grave).

What the Demos' superdelegates should do

Should the Democrats' superdelegates accede to the majority of Democratic primary voters?

Both Clinton and Obama say so--only Clinton says it should be everyone who voted, while Obama says it should only be voters whose votes were accepted by the Democratic Party's rulegivers.

By some amazing coincidence, each would win if we counted the votes the way each of their quest for impartial justice would dictate.

But there's a problem. Some states nominated by caucus, others by conventional voting, others by some arcane combination. Some primaries were limited to registered Democrats, others were open.

So it's not a level playing field, and just what the majority is...is open to considerable question. And the two candidates' statements are too self-serving to count for much.

And remember, the next president won't be determined by the popular vote. It will be determined by a winner take all system (in most states) funnelled through the electoral college, which means that in most states even if 49.9% of the voters voted Democrat their votes would count for exactly nothing, as long as the Republican got 50.1%--and vice versa.

Here's how I'd figure out how to vote if I were a superdelegate:

1. If I were a legislator, I'd see how my district voted. That wouldn't be determinative, but at least if I went against my district's vote I'd know I had some serious explaining to do.

2. I wouldn't take into account the votes in all states that will for sure vote for one party regardless--those overwhelmingly Red and Blue states. If all 400 Democrats in Utah picked Obama, so what? Utah's electors will all go for McCain. Period.

3. Only consider the votes in the s0-called battleground states that could go either way. If either candidate turns out to have a strong advantage after all the primaries are over, I'd vote for that one.

4. I wouldn't take into account the sulky vote--those who say they'd never vote for Clinton or Obama if they couldn't get Obama or Clinton.

Discrimination

Blacks gripe about racism, women about sexism, old coots about ageism...yet the three current candidates with a clear chance of becoming President of the United States are a self-identified Black, a woman, and an old coot (not self identified, but the guy's in his 70s).

No one in politics complains about religionism.

Okay, I made that word up. Because political discrimination against people who aren't religious is so pervasive, so much a given, that there's no need for a word to describe it in the public discourse.

Instead, many religious people constantly claim that they're being discriminated against.

I'll answer that simply. Does anyone claim that a professed atheist could become President of the United States, regardless of his or her qualifications? How about a Senator from any state? How about a Congressman from anywhere but a few urban/college town districts?

Our President could be a woman, a Black, an old guy--but not an atheist.

Nonreligious people amount to some 4-10% of America's population. And not one of them could run for president.

I think you could make a plausible argument that that's the largest minority in America which is categorically excluded from the highest office, not by law, but by practice--a practice that a majority of Americans find not just acceptable but mandatory.

So tell me why again that I should concern myself with discrimination against Blacks, women, etc. when they can be President...but I can't?

Who's discriminated against more--blacks or chicks?

Today there are 43 self-identified blacks in Congress and 86 women. Given the numbers of so-called blacks and women citizens in America, that means women have HALF as much representation in Congress as blacks do.

Moreover, blacks got the vote in 1865 (OK, 1965 in the South), while women didn't get the vote anywhere in the United States until 1920 (women got the vote earlier in Utah before it was a state, but had to disenfranchise them in order to join the Union).

Lastly, if you look at all the talk about Clinton and Obama and filter out actual political commentary, you'll find vastly more invective aimed at Clinton based on her gender than you'll find aimed at Obama based on his putative race.

And no, I'm not saying any of this because I favor Clinton over Obama. I do, however, favor reality over fantasy--and I do believe that identity politics has greatly harmed our country's politics, both from Republicans and Democrats. They just pander to different identity groups, then blame the other side for practising identity politics. This is how tribal minds work.

What I want to hear from the candidates

I want to hear Clinton & Obama say what they'd do when pork-stuffed spending bills from the Democratic Congress reached the White House.

I want to hear McCain discuss the situation in Iraq--not his stance (stay 'till the last dog is hung). He's spoken about his stance nonstop. I want him to describe the situation--what's going on with the Sunnis, including Awakening factions and Al Qaeda-leaning ones, and where their support is coming from abroad (Saudi Arabia via Jordan and Syria mainly); The Shia, including the conflict between the Sadrists and the Maliki-"led" faction, and Al-Sistani, and where Shia support is coming from relative to these factions (that would be, by and large, different factions in Iran, one led by Ahmadinejad, the other by less hard-line folks, both opposed weakly by more liberal politicians, mostly out of office now).

Because while I don't think much of Clinton's braggadocio (next thing you know she'll be talking about how she was nailing snipers with a 50 cal. machine gun, hand-held) or Obama's attempt to become black after an totally unblack upbringing by attending the blackest church in Chicago and kissing off his white family to some extent, I think even less of McCain's apparent ignorance about who's who in Iraq. I appreciate his military background--that's fine with me. But just as I don't think Rev. McNasty was being taken out of context, and I don't think Clinton just misspoke, I'm not buying McCain's having "misspoke" either. I'll assume he's either ignorant or borderline senile until he speaks on Iraq enough to convince me that he knows what's going on there.

Obamaphiles miss the real issues again

Frank Rich wrote another Sunday column for the NYTimes praising Obama and excoriating Clinton and McCain (http://www.nytimes.com/
2008/03/23/opinion/
23rich.html?_r=1&oref=
slogin).

I wrote this response:

Granting all you say against McCain and for Obama--you still haven't acknowledged what could give McCain the gig:

(1) he supports the illegal alien invasion of our country slightly less than Clinton/Obama, and
(2) he has vowed to veto earmarked/bloated spending bills and Clinton/Obama haven't.

We who are centrist independents are inclined to vote for a president of whichever party isn't dominant in Congress, in recognition of the fact that neither party can govern itself, much less the country. And the disappointing continuation of the GOP's corrupt practices by the Democratic Congress hasn't allayed this fear.

Plus Rich's Beltway blindness to the impact of illegal immigration continues to warp his judgment.

Of course he doesn't live in--or apparently recognize the existence of--the American Southwest, where the illegals have concentrated, dragging California's school system to nearly the bottom of the states' rankings, choking our ERs, stuffing our prisons, and presenting us with the dismal fact that second- and third- generation descendants of previous amnesties of Mexican illegals (the last in 1986) have not assimilated into American society like other immigrant waves have. They speak English of a sort but they stay firmly rooted to the bottom of the economic ladder and the top of the ranks of high school dropouts.

This has contributed to the third worldization of the Southwest. And the advocacy for illegals by Clinton/Obama/Rich says less about their "humanity" than their determination to let the ruling elite of Mexico outsource its overpopulation problem and social welfare infrastructure to America.

And news flash--America had no part in Mexico's population booming from a comfortable 20 million in 1940 to a seam-busting 100 million in 2000. They did that all by themselves, primarily due to the dominance of a church that calls condoms murder and today instructs its American adherents to break American laws when they conflict with Church dictates.

None of these facts appear to have penetrated Rich's consciousness, which makes his political commentary parochial and lopsided.

One out of eight Americans is a Californian. And the likes of Rich are contributing to turning my state (along with Arizona, New Mexico and Texas) into an American Quebec. Even today the most-watched TV station in LA broadcasts only in Spanish. And the children of illegal immigrants will be a majority of Californians by 2050. Thanks heaps, Rich.

on L'affaire Ferraro (when she said Obama benefitted from being Black)

Washington Post columnist Colbert King wrote an editorial lambasting Geraldine Ferraro for her remarks about how Obama benefits from being black. See it at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/14/AR2008031403017.html Here's my response to the column and the reams of reader comments on it:

Unlike most commentors here, I don't have a dog in this fight. All three contenders believe Mexico's ruling elite should be allowed to determine America's demographics by outsourcing their overpopulation problem and their social services infrastructure to this country. That said, neither this columnist nor most commentors have acknowledged a simple fact in America today: a Black man with a college education who looks and talks like a network news anchor has it made, even if a homie with dreads whose pants are saggin' and draggin' doesn't. Sure, maybe a college grad Black will still have trouble catching a cab in D.C. at midnight--but every corporation will be dying to hand him a plum position. And though he may have trouble reaching the very top...well, so would most people, regardless of skin color or gender.

And that's what Ferraro meant.

Moreover, if you follow the fountains of invective burbling over this campaign, you'll see bloggers and media commentators treating Clinton way more viciously than Obama. I'm not talking about legitimate issues--conflicts of interest, voting records etc. I'm talking about stuff like Limbaugh saying nobody wants a wrinkled old woman in the White House, or nasty remarks about Chelsea Clinton's looks (those have simmered down now that she's grown up beautiful, but it was a different story when she was an awkward teen).

I've concluded that misogyny is still acceptable to a remarkable extent, while overt racism isn't. Yes, yes, yes, there's plenty of covert racism. But survey the blogosphere and the editorials and you'll see that I'm telling the truth.

It even goes so far as names. In the Old South, judges and cops always addressed Blacks by their first names--a condescending, false familiarity. No one dares do that now. Unless it's a woman. The pundits are constantly referring to Clinton as "Hillary," while Obama gets the dignity of being called "Obama." Just as Whites are called "Whites"--never "European Americans" while Blacks are usually referred to as "African Americans"--even when their racial heritage is 50% White, as is the case with Obama.

Decades ago Tom Wolfe wrote a fine piece of journalism titled "Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers" in which he described the how well-spoken Blacks are privileged in liberal circles (again, not in the eyes of cabbies, to be sure), and how some Blacks make a living from race-baiting government agencies, politicians, and vulnerable corporations.

Obama hasn't done that, which is why he's a viable candidate and the Al Sharptons and Jess Jacksons of the world aren't.

I might add that lower-class Whites are heavily discriminated against because of the way they talk and look--often far more than educated, well-spoken Blacks are.

In other words, classism often trumps racism, and sexism also often trumps racism. Racism exists but it ain't the only -ism we should be worried about.

So many people who've suffered from discrimination seem to think that only the group they belong to has truly suffered. Feminists, paraplegics, Blacks, you name it. I'm in none of those groups, yet I suffered from intense discrimination up to and including physical abuse due to being raised in blue-collar communities and having a high IQ. Of course that high IQ has served me well since then. So how is my experience any different from what a smart Black might have experienced growing up in the prejudiced White communities I lived in, before going on to college and corporate success? Or a smart woman? Etc.

It's not. Blacks have legitimate grievances. But so do lots of other people. And Blacks do themselves no favor by playing the race card constantly. Save it for the real deal. Because even when you do succeed in browbeating Whites and Women and others into shutting up, they will say what they think when they vote and when they make decisions in private.

King's excoriation of Ferraro is such an example. The clamor of you and your co-religionists got Ferraro dumped, all right. But you did Obama's campaign no favor. He will only succeed by avoiding the kind of race-baiting that so many Black politicians do daily.

He might well say "God save me from my friends. I can handle my enemies myself."

You Choose, You Lose

What's a centrist to do? It seems like none of the real presidential contenders are running for President of the United States. Instead each is running for a slice of the job. McCain is running for Commander in Chief; Romney for Our Nation's CEO; Obama for Chief Social Worker; and Clinton for Chief Administrator. Each of this is a valid, important role--but it's far from the whole enchilada.

And each seems to be seriously flawed from a centrist viewpoint. McCain simply isn't as smart as the rest, and his apparently higher integrity compared to the rest is coupled to him being very far to the right on abortion, yet kind of a left winger on illegal immigration, and certain to nominate more right wing judges than a Democrat, in the context of a Supreme Court that's mainly divided between hard right Republicans and more moderate Republicans.

Romney is sharp, but he has taken hard right positions on everything across the board, including the environment, abortion, and Supreme Court nominations. And he consistently uses uncompromisingly hard right language and nasty tropes in his campaigning. He cannot unite the country when he represents himself as purely and solely representing the ideas and prejudices of no more than a third of the country. Despite his opposition to illegal immigration--his saving grace--Romney offers the prospect of four more years of acrimonious gridlock in Washington. Like Bush, he treats those who disagree with him contemptuously.

Obama is the only candidate promoting driver's licenses for illegal aliens. He has adopted the illegal aliens' marching chant "Si se puede" as his own, both in Spanish and English ("Yes we can"). Meanwhile he has nothing to say about how employers have exploited abundant illegal alien labor to drive down blue-collar wages 10-25% and bust unions. And he has certainly not pledged to veto spending bills stuffed with pork and earmarks. So he presents the prospect of an out of control spending spree comparable to what Bush and a same-party Congress did for six years.

The same can be said of Clinton--she hasn't pledged to veto porky spending either, and she's vying with Obama to see how much she can pander to identity politics such as treating Latin Americans as Latinos first and foremost and Americans only as an afterthought. But because she hasn't been quite as spineless as Obama in the regard, I find her preferable. Which is too bad, because a president Obama--just the fact of it--would be a great start in repairing the damage Bush did to us internationally.

Fortunately we won't have to choose between four candidates this September--just between two. That will make choosing slightly less painful.