BroadSnark

Art isn’t usually the first thing on the agenda in a crisis. It isn’t fundamental to basic survival. But art is fundamental to addressing many of the issues that have gotten us into this mess in the first place.

In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration started several federal programs which provided funding for artists. On the most basic level, the programs put artists like Jacob Lawrence to work. It also promoted United States art and culture, chronicled life in different parts of the country, and sometimes sponsored projects which tackled difficult social issues.

Seventy years later, public buildings throughout the United States are covered with murals steeped in history. Archives are filled with photographs of American life taken by New Deal artists. Museums hold paintings reminding us of the struggles that took place in securing the basic safety net that we take for granted today.

Perhaps this legacy doesn’t seem important to you, but hasn’t one of the main themes of this election been breaking down the divides between red state and blue state? Haven’t we been talking about the lack of understanding between different groups in the United States? Haven’t we been talking about the lack of understanding between us and the rest of the world?

Art teaches us about other people by enabling us to see the world through someone else’s eyes. Art appeals to the heart as well as the head and for that reason has the ability to transcend boundaries, to represent, to connect, and to mobilize. A Diego Rivera mural, a Bob Marley song, or an Almodovar movie help us to understand the worlds the artists are living in. They help us to create a dialogue. And in a world where so many problems require coordinated effort – poverty, environmental degradation, war – we need dialogue more than ever.

A new federal arts project would put American artists to work. It could document the road we have traveled to get here and the historic time we are in. Projects could show our common histories and values and help us visualize a new and better American identity for the future. It could help us share that vision with each other and with the rest of the world.

Barack Obama picked Rick Warren to speak at the inauguration. When I heard it, I was appalled. And what rational, compassionate person wouldn’t be pissed that a man who compared homosexuality to pedophilia and incest was chosen for this honor. Take a gander at Rachel Maddow’s take on the issue:

But while I am still pissed about the choice, I do find one thing rather interesting. Just a short while ago, I found myself writing a post to try and dispel the myth that African Americans were to blame for the passage of Proposition 8 in California. And I still keep hearing people blab about how African Americans are more homophobic than white people.

So isn’t it ironic that it is the black religious leader at the inauguration who supports gay rights and the white guy (from the oh-so-liberal left coast) who is the homophobe?

The benediction is being given by The Reverend Dr Joseph E Lowery. Not only is the Reverend a respected civil rights leader who has come out in support of gay rights, he has also been supportive of the leftest of the lefty causes (like showing up to lead prayers for Camp Casey peace activists).

Watch him speak at Coretta Scott King’s funeral. Watch the crowd go crazy when he says that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Note how he points out King being against homophobia.

Can people finally shut up now about how black people are so homophobic?!

Thanks to dmac and Pam’s House Blend for bringing this story some coverage.

It is now official. Hillary Clinton is Obama’s pick for secretary of state. I am really bummed.

During the primaries, Obama consistently said that Clinton showed bad judgment in the biggest foreign policy decision of her career, Iraq. Was he just being a slimy politician, saying what he thought would play, even though he didn’t believe it? Or does he truly believe that Hillary Clinton has poor judgment, but he is appointing her anyway because he thinks it will keep the party together. I’m not sure which scenario is more disappointing.

I’m particularly disappointed for what this means for Israel policy. Clinton has consistently come out on the side of the uber-Zionists, even when faced with massive evidence of human rights abuses and violations of international law by the Israeli government. Check out this report on the Lebanon war and Hillary’s speech at the end.

That speech was during her senate race in New York. Her democratic opponent was Jonathan Tasini. He is a Jew who lived in Israel and has seen first hand the situation on the ground. When he asserted that Israel had violated international law, Clinton spokespeople said his comments were “beyond the pale.” Tasini responded to them with a letter calling Clinton out for her irresponsible policies. I should note that human rights organizations agree with Tasini and that a 2007 Human Rights Watch report found that:

Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes, not Hezbollah’s shielding as claimed by Israeli officials, caused most of the approximately 900 civilian deaths in Lebanon during the July-August 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The Israeli Palestinian conflict is a vitally important focus for any secretary of state. It isn’t just the conflict itself, but the backlash when we are seen as taking Israel’s side no matter what they do. World opinion polls consistently rate Israel as having a mostly negative effect on the world. We cannot dismiss this as pure anti-semitism. There are very legitimate criticisms to be made against Israeli government policies. When Bishop Desmond Tutu is comparing your policies to apartheid in South Africa, it’s time to listen.

The fact that the U.S. so rabidly defends Israel, including consistently using our UN security council veto to block resolutions related to Israeli crimes, is a major sticking point in any effort to improve our moral standing in the world. How do we turn over a new diplomatic leaf with an old, compromised hoe.

Whenever anyone talks about Florida, they always make it seem as though winning Florida hinges on the votes in South Florida. But Florida is a big state and who wins or loses depends on more than just a handful of Cubans and Jews in South Florida.

In fact, South Florida is in the bag. It always votes democratic, despite the heavily Republican Cuban vote. In the 2004 presidential election Miami-Dade County favored Kerry over Bush 409,732 to 361,095. Broward County, where Ft. Lauderdale sits, was even more democratic with 453,873 voting for Kerry and only 244,674 for Bush.

In the 2000 Presidential Election Gore received 39,275 more Miami-Dade County votes than Bush. And Gore received a whopping 209,801 more votes than Bush in Broward County. That’s about 69% of the vote. If it were up to Dade and Broward Counties, Florida would have gone democratic in both of the last presidential elections.

I would expect to see those democratic number rise even higher this election. George W. Bush’s disastrous presidency will certainly push the votes in that direction, but so will demographic and generational changes. Look for an increase in votes from the citizen children of non-citizen immigrants who arrived from the Caribbean (particularly Haiti) beginning in the 1950s. Their children can vote, and I’m guessing they will.

Further, the Republicans’ main voters in South Florida are an aging group of white Cubans. Their children may still be Republicans, but their ideological dedication isn’t nearly as strong. What’s more, later arrivals (many of whom are Afro-Cuban and have more ambivalent feelings about the Cuban government) may have a more open mind.

Regardless of how much Obama wins by in South Florida, it is northern Florida where the race will be won. It is northern Florida, which more closely resembles Georgia, that usually votes Republican in national elections. Duval County (Jacksonville) favored Bush in each of the last two elections. In 2000 it was 152,098 to 107,864 and in 2004 it was 220,190 to 158,610.

Duval County is about 30% African American, but only 60% of of African American voters in Duval showed up in 2004. A significant increase in black voting in Duval could turn the county democratic. If northern Florida counties turn democratic, and I believe some of them will, Barack Obama wins the state comfortably.

Another northern and Central Florida trend to keep an eyeball on is the influx of Puerto Ricans to the area. While the Puerto Rican community in the Orlando area has been growing for some time, it is only recently that they have been moving to places like Sarasota. Puerto Ricans tend to vote democratic.

McCain’s campaign seems to have assumed that they would continue to pull in the Central and Northern Florida counties that have traditionally gone Republican. Or maybe, as Adam Nagourney reports in the New York Times article While McCain Looked Away, Florida Shifted, they believed that “Mr. Obama, as an African-American, would have trouble winning support from two of the state’s key constituencies: Hispanics and Jews.”

If his report is true, it is delightful. Republicans have been trying to convince us that we hate each other and that we do not have common interests for so long that they actually started to believe their own hype. Once again, they counted on racism to help them win an election. But this time it is going to backfire in a huge way. Sweet.

Republicans have consistently and explicitly used racism as a political strategy. Sadly, their tactics have all too often worked. They are trying it again this election, but this time it seems to be failing. If it fails, especially if it fails big, does the Southern strategy finally die forever?

Racism in Republican Campaigns

In my lifetime, I have come to know the Republican Party as the party of white people; specifically, old, white, Protestant, men. The Republican Party has encouraged this perception and still managed to win quite a few elections.

When Nixon talked about “states rights” in the south, what he really meant was that the federal government shouldn’t make Southerners integrate. When Ronald Reagan began his run for the presidency talking about states rights in Mississippi, in the very county where three civil right activists were infamously murdered, he was sending a very strong message.

When George H.W. Bush used images of a black felon who committed horrible crimes (Willie Horton) in his race against Michael Dukakis, he conjured up images of the scary black man to win an election. And when George W. Bush’s campaign flyered the South insinuating that John McCain had an illegitimate black baby, Bush rode racism all the way to the Republican nomination.

Republicans Moment of Demographic Realization

Bill Clinton’s popularity and success depended in large part upon the votes of women, Latinos, African-Americans, and young people. It took Republicans a while to catch on, but some time during Bill Clinton’s presidency they realized that demographics were against them. In fact, in just thirty-four years, white people will no longer be the majority of the U.S. population.

In 2000, the Republican National Convention looked like Sunday in Harlem (literally, the 2000 convention featured a black gospel choir). Republicans started trying to appeal to black voters and to court Latino voters (particularly Christian conservative blacks and Latinos). Prominent Republicans were even apologizing for their use of the Southern strategy.

McCain’s New Southern Strategy

This time around, Republicans seem to have conceded the black vote and nearly conceded the Latino one. The possibility of the first African-American president is as exciting as the Bush administration’s response to Katrina was infuriating to black voters. Their support of Barack Obama is strong. Latinos are angry at the anti-immigration Republican vitriol that has often turned just plain anti-Latino, and especially anti-Mexican. The GOP is losing them as well.

This leaves John McCain with only one way of winning. He has to make sure he appeals to the most base conservatives of the Republican Party (no that’s not a typo) and bring them out in force. He must make sure every fearful, racist shows up at the polls to vote against the black guy with the funny name. He needs women to show up for the Republicans, as white men alone won’t get them a win. Republicans thought they covered their bases by choosing Sarah Palin as a running mate. She is certainly appealing to anti-abortion zealots, Christian conservatives, racists, and aging cold warriors. Just check out some fan videos.

The Southern Strategy Backlash

Of course in trying to appeal to the fringe elements of the Republican Party, the party was bound to lose some of the moderates. They are betting on the fact that there are enough fanatics and racists out there (men and women) to bring the election home for them. But the gamble doesn’t appear to be working.

Moderate Republicans and true conservatives are abandoning ship. Colin Powell just came out in support of Barack Obama, specifically citing the tone of his campaign and his choice of Sarah Palin. William F. Buckley’s son, conservative columnist and writer Christopher, also came out in support of Obama citing the same reasons. A friends father, who hasn’t voted for a Democrat since the seventies, is voting for Obama in large part because of the Palin choice.

In fact, it seems that the Southern strategy may be pushing the numbers in Obama’s favor in some battleground states like Florida and Virginia. Polls there have shown Obama’s numbers jump since McCain has gone increasingly negative, trying to paint Obama as an outsider, un-American, and suspicious.

The End of the Southern Strategy

I’ve spoken to a lot of people who worry about the ugliness of the campaign. They are afraid that appealing to racism will work yet again and wonder what happens then. A better question is, what if it doesn’t work? What if it fails so spectacularly that no Republican politician running for national office will ever believe that he can win using those tactics?

A rout this election will not only give democrats a win, it will give fiscal conservatives and Libertarian Republicans an opportunity to end the days of the Southern strategy. It will give them an opening to end the stranglehold social conservatives and neo-conservatives have on their party. Let’s hope they take it.

During the recent community service forum at Columbia University, Obama said the ROTC should be invited back to Columbia and other college campuses who don’t currently allow them. He said that he recognized the “differences in terms of military policy,” but felt it was a mistake that “young people here at Columbia or anywhere at any university aren’t offered the choice, the option, of participating in military service.”

Now it so happens that I agree with Obama, if only because I don’t feel I have the right to impose my morals on others. But by copping out with a weak statement about “differences in terms of military policy” he avoided talking about some issues that we really need to be talking about.

First of all there is the dreaded P word. No, I’m not talking about Palin…or Pig…or Pussy. I’m talking about Pacifist. Now I don’t expect any politician to be one (god forbid), but it’s like they can’t even say the word. We revere Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and yet being a pacifist is seen as naive and weak. If a presidential candidate uttered the word, would their candidacy immediately go down in flames?

Perhaps even more importantly, military service is not just about sacrificing and laying yourself on the line for others. It is about taking other peoples lives. It involves joining an institution that expects its members to follow orders, even when those orders turn out to be disastrous. Willingness to serve in the military isn’t just about willingness to sacrifice, it is about trust in the people who are going to be asking for your sacrifice.

In my father’s generation (he was born in 1929), military service was far more common. World War II was heinous, as all wars are, but soldiers felt honored and honorable when they returned. They felt they were fighting the good fight. People trusted that their government was sending them where they needed to go.

Many Vietnam-era conservatives will tell you that it was lack of support by traitorous hippies that made Vietnam different. (Ironically, the same conservatives who scoff at distrust of the military will swear that government is incapable of doing anything right when it comes to anything else.) But the truth is that any lack of support from the American people was well deserved by a government that lied to us repeatedly (and continues to do so).

Obama speaks often about taking us past the old battles of the baby boomer generation. He talks about revitalizing a culture of service (military and otherwise). He talks about restoring faith in government. If he really wants to do those things, he can’t avoid discussing the issues at the root of our distrust, and apathy, and unresolved anger.

Recently, John McCain opposed a bill requiring equal pay for women. He received a maelstrom of blogosphere criticism for his assertion that what women needed was “education and training.” Let’s, for the moment, set aside the fact that we were talking about women with equal education and training. Was what John McCain said really so different from the same tired lines we always hear about education?

Education as a panacea

Both Barack Obama and John McCain’s websites highlight our failing educational systems. McCain focuses on public schools “cultural problems” and lack of choice. (Read: Fearful parents should be able to remove their children from schools filled with the other.) Obama wants to provide funding, improve teacher pay and make a college education affordable for everyone.

Regardless of whose position you most agree with (and I admit that I agree with Obama’s), the implication remains the same. Without education, children will fail in life. They will not be able to get good jobs. They will be poor. They will always struggle. And all of this joblessness, poverty, and struggle will be the result of their poor education. You will be hard pressed to find anyone who will disagree with that statement. No one seems to question it at all.

What do we mean when we say education?

About a year ago, I was on a mini-tour outside of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. My boyfriend and I were on our way to some natural hot springs called Las Fuentes Georginas. Sharing the van with us were two other tourists, one woman from DC and one from Australia. As we drove the winding road to the hot springs, passing Mayan farmers working their fields, the Australian commented on the impressiveness of their mountainside agriculture. The American quickly responded that the Peace Corp had come in and shown them how to do everything.

Now, for those of you who do not know, indigenous people of the Americas have always been some of the most gifted agriculturalists in the world. Their efforts over centuries have brought an incredible array of foods that the world relies on to survive, most importantly corn and potatoes. In fact, recent scholarship has focused on how to undo some of the western agricultural practices imposed on indigenous people by our so-called experts and on learning about their much more sustainable traditional ones.

The point of my story being that the American could not conceive that someone without a formal education could know something. It was easier for her to believe that a twenty-something Peace Corp volunteer would know more than a 40 year old farmer who had centuries of knowledge passed down to him or her.

When we say education, we mean formal education. We mean education that comes with a piece of paper. We mean that someone who has already been certified as worthy confers on us this same worthiness. We can then show this paper to the world and say, you see, I deserve to make a decent living.

Is formal education just stratification?

For employers, the formal education system is, at best, a shortcut. Presumably, that piece of paper evidences a certain level of knowledge and ability that the employer can rely on. But since not everyone has the opportunity to get that piece of paper, it also acts as a barrier and as a means of conferring status from one generation to the next. If you are wealthy and one of your parents went to college, you are far more likely to go yourself.

Employers are not necessarily conscious of the prejudicial filtering effect of this system. Every nonprofit I have worked for has been chagrined at the lack of diversity in their offices. They often set up diversity committees to figure out what is going wrong. They think of elaborate ways to recruit a more diverse staff.

The reason non-profits are not diverse (ethnically or economically) is simple. Minorities are disproportionately poor. They have less opportunity to go to college. Since nonprofits require a bachelors to sweep the floor, they filter out good people who had less opportunities in life. (On top of which, the main entry point to the world of nonprofits and government is through unpaid internships, which no poor person can afford to take.)

What is societies responsibility to business and vice versa?

There was a time when business was required to provide training to their employees. Then, at least, if an employer was going to make money from your labor, they had to provide you the skills to do it. Today, we are expected to obtain the skills ourselves. Employers want society to provide education. They want their employees to have previous experience. For-profits don’t want to waste a penny of their bottom line on training. Non-profits use the excuse of few resources.

In fact, university education itself has changed. It is no longer about a liberal arts education. It isn’t about pondering the meaning of existence or critical thinking about the issues of the day. It has become, more and more, about simply providing the skills that businesses are looking for. If our entire education system revolves around what business wants, is it any wonder that business has taken over our political and personal lives as well?

Does an “uneducated” person deserve their fate?

When we were kids, my father used to tell my sister that, if she didn’t improve in school and go to college, she would end up flipping burgers in Wags Restaurant. (Wags was a lot like Denny’s, if you’re not familiar.) This was said with absolute certainty, without any doubt as to whether or not this most terrible fate would be deserved (or if it was a terrible fate at all).

When I was in high school, a classmate of mine was stabbed to death. During the trial, the defense brought up his poor performance in school as evidence of his inherent badness. The logic went that, if he performed poorly in school, he must be one of those bad kids. If he was one of those bad kids, he must have done everything that the defense said he did. They bought it and the murderer got off.

Whenever we hear about a farmworker making pennies and living in a cardboard box, or an inner city youth who can’t find a job, or an Appalachian former coal miner barely surviving, our response is that they need eduction. The implication is twofold. Without a formal education, it is acceptable that someone can’t even make enough to feed their family, regardless of how hard they work. And without a formal education, a person doesn’t have the ability, knowledge or skills to contribute to society in a way that deserves decent compensation.

What role should education play in our lives?

I’m not suggesting we all embrace illiteracy and ignorance. I’m saying that knowledge from a professor duly authorized by the university system is not the only kind of knowledge there is. Not only people with graduate degrees deserve to live humanly.

Perhaps we need to start questioning the motives of people for whom formal education is their answer to everything. Perhaps we need to ask ourselves how much our idea of education should revolve around certification of the skills some well-paying businesses want and more around how to produce a just society in which everyone can participate.

Looks like it’s going to be Obama vs. McCain in the general election. One has freely admitted former drug use. The other’s wife is a recovering addict. Back when Bill Clinton was running for office, his non-inhaled pot smoke caused an uproar. This time the controversy surrounding Barack Obama is that he may not have done as many drugs as he seemed to indicate in his autobiography. Does this mean the change voters have been clamoring for may extend to drug policy?

Drug Policy and Past Presidents

I was born in 1973, just a couple years after Richard Nixon kicked off his war on drugs. I grew up in South Florida where the uber-wealthy did lines on their yachts with impunity, while crack houses in Liberty City were raided on the five o’clock news for everyone to see the dark face of the drug problem. In those years, the drug war was the political issue. Anyone who needed a bogeyman, from Hollywood to the Whitehouse, just pulled out the archetypal evil drug dealer.

Every successive president tried to outdo the last in a violent, futile hypocrisy-fest. Ronald Reagan escalated the drug war, while at the same time illegally supporting the Contras in Nicaragua (many of whom were, according to congressional testimony, known to be involved in the drug trade). Then there was his successor, George Bush, with his now debunked claim about buying crack in front of the Whitehouse. And Bill Clinton who went out of his way to prove how tough on crime (ie. not a bleeding heart liberal) he was by presiding over an administration which saw the U.S. prison population grow by leaps and bounds – in large part due to drug laws.

Obama and McCain on Foreign Drug Policy

The basic tenets of U.S. foreign policy related to drugs have been:

• Push to ensure other countries make illegal the substances we want illegal
• Push for harsh penalties for violating drug laws
• Provide money, weapons, and logistical support for police and (more often) military
• Eliminate the “source” of drugs using crop eradication

Not only have these policies been ineffectual, they have side effects. Eradication programs have killed food crops, displaced rural communities, damaged ecosystems, caused health problems, and exacerbated international conflicts. And, as drugs and democracy in Latin America so clearly shows, our support for military solutions within countries (solutions that would be illegal in our own country) have contributed to violence, human rights violations, and the weakening of civil institutions.

Unfortunately, there is little evidence that either a McCain or Obama presidency would change our foreign policy regarding drugs. Neither have challenged the basic tenets of our policy. Both McCain and Obama have come out in support of the Merida Initiative (increasing counter-narcotic support to the Mexican government). They have also supported Plan Colombia.

McCain, for his part, said in a speech to The Florida Association of Broadcasters that “our security priority in this hemisphere is to ensure that terrorists, their enablers and their business partners, including narcotraffickers, have nowhere to hide.” Obama, when questioned at a foreign policy event I attended about how to handle opium growing in Afghanistan, said that we need to look at bringing in agricultural experts. While his looking at the root of the problem (the need to make a living) and not resorting to a knee-jerk military response is laudable, crop substitution programs have been tried and failed.

Obama and McCain on Domestic Drug Policy

On the domestic front, things are somewhat more hopeful. There seems to finally be some recognition that our policies have failed. The two main areas of movement are:

• Medical Marijuana and Marijuana Decriminalization
• Alternatives to Incarceration of Drug Offenders

McCain opposes decriminalization of marijuana. Obama has, in the past, come out in favor of marijuana decriminalization, but he recently did some very disappointing backpedaling. Both McCain and Obama have stated in the past that they would respect state’s rights and end the federal raids on state medical marijuana patients. It is McCain who has backpedaled some on that issue, but Obama still says that arresting medical marijuana patients and raids are not a good use of federal resources.

Both McCain and Obama have advocated alternatives to prison for first time users. In fact, the only place you will see drug issues listed on Obama’s website is under the civil rights section. There he advocates rehabilitation through ex-offender programs (including substance abuse treatment), elimination of sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine, and the expanded use of drug courts (which even the U.S. Department of Justice admits reduces recidivism).

Questions for Obama and McCain

While there appears to be some improvement on domestic policy, we still have a long way to go. Here are a few questions about drug policy I would like to see asked of the candidates in a debate:

• Would you agree that a law is a rule we as a society agree to live by? If nearly half the population is breaking a law, wouldn’t a reasonable conclusion be that the law may not be appropriate or just? In 2005, the Department of Justice reported that 46%, or nearly half, of all adults surveyed had used illicit drugs in their lifetime. Would you send half the population to prison?

• Senator Obama, you have in the past said that you supported marijuana decriminalization. Recently, your campaign stated that this was a misunderstanding of the term decriminalization – which means to remove criminal penalties. Are we to take it that you support criminal penalties, including jail time, for possession of small amounts of marijuana. If so, please explain why, aside from its current illegality, it is a good idea to send people to prison for marijuana possession.

• Both of you have supported continuing Plan Colombia and ratcheting up support for similar programs in Mexico. Does this include support for eradication programs, which have been shown to have disastrous effects on food production, caused environmental destruction, had negative health effects on populations, and caused potentially explosive border disputes with neighboring countries? And does it take into consideration the fact that it was a supposedly successful eradication campaign in Mexico in the 1970s that actually pushed drug production into Colombia in the first place – the well documented balloon effect.

• If a business has been cheated or stolen from, they generally have options as to how to address that problem. They can call the police. They can sue in civil court. They can go to the newspapers. If a drug business has a similar problem they have only one option, violence. Wouldn’t it follow, that by opening up other options, by legalizing drugs, we might be able to curb the violence plaguing places like Mexico and Colombia? Senator Obama, in a recent speech to the Cuban American National Foundation you criticized sticking to “tired blueprints on drugs and trade, on democracy and development.” Aren’t our current tactics in the drug war the most tired blueprints of them all?

Now I don’t expect the candidates to have an epiphany, but I do think there is a chance in this election that we might get some thoughtful answers for a change. Perhaps this is a public discussion we are finally ready to have.

My mother waffled back and forth between Clinton and Obama. She ultimately went for Clinton because, she said:

• She has more experience
• She doesn’t have a penis

The second one isn’t a direct quote, but it is the gist of her argument. I’ll save my comments on the all-too-prevalent lack o’penis argument for another post. For this post, lets just focus on the experience argument.

The two burning questions are:

• What constitutes a wide breadth of experience
• And does size matter (sorry, couldn’t help myself)

Clinton’s Experience Claims

In the democratic primary, Clinton sold herself as being more experienced and many people (including most of the pundits) seem to have bought it. A few, like Alissa Warters and Scott Kaufman on History News Network, did question the validity of Clinton’s claims. But even when democrats were up in arms about Hillary’s suggestion that she and McCain had experience and Obama had only a speech, people rarely challenged her.

These days, Clinton is still using her ready on day one argument to try and sway superdelegates. But they would be crazy to pick her based on experience. Is she really going to try and run against McCain based on experience? He’s got all the traditional pre-presidential creds.

• War hero – check
• Bazillion years senate experience – check
• Life as a white male people want to have a beer with – check

Judging by what looks to be the outcome of the democratic primary, it appears Clinton’s experience argument swayed some older voters like my mom, but didn’t do much for the rest of us.

Now comes the real test. Did the experience argument not sway because people don’t think experience matters or because of the gaping holes in Clinton’s experience claims?

So far, Obama has chosen to counter the experience argument by pointing out that people with a lifetime of experience (like Dick Cheney) are the ones who got us into this mess in the first place. Obama claims it is not Washington experience, but life experience that matters. Even more important, he says, is having good judgment.

Experience, Not so Great After All

Obama’s claims have been effective, but they don’t explicitly challenge the whole idea of experience being mostly positive and sometimes neutral. I’d like to make a clear argument for the opposite. Often experience is a negative.

It’s not a given that people learn from their mistakes. Experience does not always mean wisdom. Sometimes, experience so corrupts a person that any value gained from having seen the mechanisms by which things work is far outweighed by the myopia and emotional baggage that comes with that experience.

Hillary Clinton is a perfect example of someone experience has not been kind to. Her lifetime of experience told her that a president needed to be seen as tough, as able to be Commander in Chief. She spent her political career trying to look tough and ended up running for president at a moment when we were all tired of cowboys (or cowgirls) who want to “obliterate” Iran.

McCain has been corrupted by his experience as well. His experience showed him that, unless he sucked up to Bush and to the right wing of his party, he would lose his bid for the presidency in another barrage of nasty attacks and innuendo like the Rove assault in South Carolina in 2000.

Bill Clinton has been a walking argument against experience. The saxophone playing, smooth as silk, empathizer-in-chief turned into a sad, petty, race-baiting, fact-fudging shell of his former self. (O.k., we all knew about the fact-fudging, but he was so much smoother about it before.)

Getting through life without becoming jaded and compromised by your experience is a difficult thing to do. That is especially true for people in power. Many people see Clinton (and increasingly McCain) as being too compromised. Obama, on the other hand, is right on the precipice. He has enough experience to run an incredible campaign organization, but not so much experience that he seems completely tainted – yet.

Of course, nobody knows how long Obama will be able to keep that mojo going. He too will likely be corrupted by experience some day. Lets hope it takes a few more years.

Hillary Clinton isn’t going anywhere. She is committed to continuing, knowing full well that she will not have as many elected delegates as Obama has. It appears that she is going to try and convince the superdelegates that she is more electable and that they should therefore overrule us.

The pundits are trying to guess what will happen if the superdelegates chose to ignore our wishes. Some have said that democrats will come together and support whichever candidate they put forward. I believe that would be true if it seemed that the candidate won fairly. If the superdelegates decide the election in favor of someone who received less votes and less elected delegates, I for one will not be able to support the democratic party. How can you support a party that doesn’t actually believe in democracy?

Republicans always accuse democrats of being elitist. If superdelegates decide our election, the democratic party will prove them right. What could be more elitist than a group of powerful superdelegates deciding that we the people are too stupid to chose the right candidate?

Some time during the Clinton years I became so fed up with the democrats move to the right that I registered as an independent. I re-registered as a democrat to vote for Barack Obama. But I warn you democrats, my support is tentative and conditional. I support you as long as you show some vision, some backbone, and some belief in real democracy. If you give up on us, I for one will give up on you. I doubt that I am alone.

My prediction – If Hillary appears to have stolen the election with a backroom superdelegate deal, many of the young, excited new voters will stay home and be turned away from politics for a long time to come. The number of registered independents will continue to grow while the democratic and republican parties will become more and more mummified.

Anyone know whose running in the Libertarian party?