What Today Means

Today is not just about voting Barack Obama into office. It’s like a national colon cleansing. Today, hopefully, we will vote to restore the rule of law and the Constitution to their rightful places. Today, we will vote to end the doctrine of preemptive war, dial down the militarism, and begin focusing on fixing the problems we have in this country rather than starting new problems in other countries. John McCain would indeed continue the failed policies of George W. Bush, but voting for Obama is not merely about making sure McCain doesn’t become president. It’s about removing the Republican Party from power and in so doing, sending its operatives a clear message that we will no longer stand idly by as our nation engages in war, terror, and torture in our names, under the moniker of protecting the “homeland.” We will no longer watch as we are told that the government is not here to help us, that we should not help each other, but that we should fend for ourselves, and if we lack the wealth or imagination to do so, then so be it.

For eight years I have not been proud of the United States. It has engaged in atrocities that I had never thought a country as grand as ours could engage in. Most cynically, the president, vice president, and the Republican Party used the spirit of cooperation that existed after September 11 (Karl Rove’s imagined memories to the contrary) as their ticket to pure, unbridled power. In attempting to analyze why things have happened the way they have, this is the conclusion I come to: power. Though we often want to ignore the more animalistic parts of our brains, the limbic systems of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and others are alive and well and thirsty for control. I can think of no other explanation.

The machinery that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton designed to prevent the concentration of power is failing us as the executive asserts ever more “powers” that are not to be found in statues or the Constitution. As long as the Republican Party remains in control of the country, that machinery will continue to deteriorate.

This is not to say that the Republican Party has always been bad. It was once the party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. It was once the party of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who helped create the America we know today. Even Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency; but Nixon’s contempt for the law was his own, not the party’s.

But the Republican Party has mutated into something that none of the above people would recognize today. Even Ronald Reagan, the venerable godfather of modern conservatism, would not recognize the Republican Party. Its sleaze knows no bounds: like a feral dog, it resorts to its most primal responses when threatened. As it has sensed, over the past few weeks, that its time is up, it has tried to associate Barack Obama with terrorists, socialists, Marxists, Muslims, and anyone else it thinks are evil. When that has failed, experience has shown us that it will resort to trying to forcibly stop people from voting, by placing “observers” at polling places to question legitimate voters’ registrations (in swing states only), intentionally delivering too few voting machines to Democratic precincts, or attempting to cut Democrats from voter lists altogether.

Karl Rove’s attempts to create a “permanent majority” have led to an undeniable fact: the Republican Party of 2008 does not care about anyone but itself. It seeks to enrich itself, to place its operatives in positions of power so that those operatives can amass wealth, and most of all, power. The party that clothes itself in patriotism is, underneath the bloody flags it wears, virulently unpatriotic. “Patriotism” involves respect for the nation and its people. The modern Republican Party has nothing but contempt for the nation and its laws, especially when those laws get in the way of its quest for power. And the people? The modern Republican Party doesn’t care about anyone who is not an elite member of the party. George W. Bush would be perfectly happy to throw Joe the Plumber to the sharks — if, that is, he didn’t need Joe’s vote.

And then we come to soldiers. Time and time again, President Bush has shown that he doesn’t care about soldiers. He wants meat that can absorb bullets in his ill-begotten, ill-fated War on Terrorism. Once the meat comes home to its family, brimming with trauma — both physical and mental — from the experience of war, President Bush has fought as hard as he can against paying for that meat, which it turns out, is a living, breathing human being that must now be taken care of.

Today is probably the nation’s most important day in many, many years. A vote for Obama is a tourniquet to stop eight years’ worth of hemorrhaging caused by a party that couldn’t care less about anyone but itself. A vote for McCain is a vote to continue things as they have been, despite his protestations to the contrary. McCain has demonstrated — not the least through the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate — that the modern Republican Party will continue to play an intimate role in the operation of the United States, as it has for eight years. Four more years of that will run our country’s veins dry.

Barack Obama does represent change. He represents hope. He represents a return to the Constitution, a return to the values of equal protection under the law, a return to a nation that defends itself when actually threatened and not a nation that attacks other countries due to perceived threats. A President Obama will lead a nation that we can be proud of again.

Republicans, Real America, and S&M

John McCain’s arguments about Barack Obama’s tax plan rely upon a misunderstanding of how taxes work, in much the same way intelligent design proponents rely on a misunderstanding of how evolution works in order to get people to believe them. The Internet would call this tactic “FUD,” which stands for “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt,” and it is largely the way McCain has run his campaign. By planting fear of Barack Obama (he “pals around with terrorists”), uncertainty about Barack Obama (he’s inexperienced) and doubt about Barack Obama (he hasn’t even done anything significant in his time as a senator) in the minds of American voters, McCain can focus more on the qualities Obama lacks than the qualities that he, McCain, possesses.

On Meet the Press Sunday, McCain said that “CEOs” of companies like FedEx pay a 35% marginal tax rate. This is an intentionally misleading statement; CEOs do not personally pay any taxes for their companies. A “corporation” is created for the purpose of doing business without fear of personal liability. If the corporation incurs debts, then it is the corporation that is liable for those debts; the personal assets of the employees of that corporation cannot take the place of the corporation’s assets.

The separated assets of the company and its employees mean that the company doles out salaries to its employees. The corporation has a payroll, and employees – which includes CEOs and other executive officers – are compensated out of that payroll budget.

CEOs pay 35%? No, “CEOs” don’t pay 35%. Their companies pay 35%. They don’t personally pay anything, except their own personal taxes. A company pays 35% on its revenues. A person pays depending on his salary. Now, a business owner may decide how much to pay himself as an employee, but that does not change the fact that what the business makes and what the owner makes are separate things. As Obama has observed, 90% of small businesses make less than $250,000 and are therefore incapable of paying their owners an amount that would cause the owners’ taxes to go up. How many small business owners do you know who pay themselves more than $250,000? And if a small business owner does personally make more than $250,000, then he can certainly afford the tax increase. That’s the point of a graduated, or progressive, tax: the marginal tax rate increases as income increases because people who make a lot of money can afford to pay more than people who don’t.

The argument behind giving tax cuts to people who make a lot of money is that they are in a better position to take that tax cut money and purchase things or reinvest that money in the economy. This is called “supply-side” economics because it works on the side of people who, theoretically, provide the economy with goods and services; i.e., business-owners. Give business owners more money and they will employ more people – that is to say, people on the “demand side” of the economy. This is often referred to as “trickle-down” economics because the benefits of tax cuts given to the people at the top (in terms of income) will eventually trickle down to the people at the bottom (in terms of income).

Whether or not the trickle will ever come is unknowable. In the last eight years, we’ve seen the wealthiest classes increase in size, while the middle class has decreased in size. In 2007, the median household income in the United States was $50,740. 4% of households made $200,000 or more. 18.9% of households made between $50,000 and $75,000. In 2000, 2% of households made $200,000 or more, while 19% of households made between $50,000 and $75,000. On average, American households as a group have become wealthier, but only a small group of people has actually been the beneficiary of that wealth.

Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around” sounds very much like the system Marx envisioned: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” The question is, what’s wrong with that? To criticize a plan as “Marxist” is to deploy an ad hominem attack, an attack that addresses the person arguing but not the argument itself. Calling a particular tax plan “Marxist” does not address the argument: okay, if it’s Marxist, what does that mean? What’s wrong with that? Conservatives use “Marxist” as a proxy for “bad” without ever mentioning what is actually bad about the plan.

S&M

The “S&M” from the title of this article, as you probably guessed, is not that S&M. It’s socialism and Marxism. The word “socialist” has been bandied about of late with regard to tax plans and bailouts of the banks. Either through willful or deceptive ignorance, the people who throw this word around ignore the extant socialist components of our economy. We have a government that collects taxes at all; we have regulatory agencies that limit the things that businesses can do; we even have socialized health care in the form of Medicaid (government health care for impoverished people), Medicare (government health care for the elderly), and the Veterans Administration. Yes, our American veterans, who spent their lives defending our freedoms, are beneficiaries of socialism! Any veteran can walk into any VA hospital anywhere in the country and get treated. And you, the taxpayer, are paying the bill.

Even Alan Greenspan, champion of capitalism, was hypocritically in charge of a government-chartered bank that holds tremendous influence in the free-market economy. And he never once denounced that institution.

There was a time in American history when the economy was more capitalist than it is today. Do you remember having to memorize, in American history class, all of the various “panics” that occurred from 1789 to 1945? Every ten to twenty years, there was a “panic” that crippled the U.S. economy. Each successive panic resulting in either the passage of legislation designed to stop whatever activity caused the panic or an infusion of cash by the government. The Panic of 1907 was notably stopped by J.P. Morgan himself, whose company injected money into the economy to keep it going. The Federal Reserve Act was passed into law six years later, creating the modern-day Federal Reserve system.

The Federal Reserve System helped put a stop to regular panics, but even more important was the influence of a British economist named John Maynard Keynes. Prior to Keynes, the government was viewed by politicians and policy-makers as just another consumer. The government bought things from private industry, entered into contracts with private industry, and collected taxes. But it was still seen as being on par with a consumer or company. And as such, conventional wisdom dictated that it should act like a private company or citizen. When the Great Depression began in 1929, Herbert Hoover’s response was to cut spending and raise taxes. For an individual, this would seem to make sense: when faced with declining revenue and a worsening economy, cut your spending to save money. Raise your taxes (if you’re the government) to increase the money you can bring in.

But that only made things worse. The government, said Keynes, is far more powerful than any single consumer or corporation. With its essentially unlimited capacity to borrow money, the government can influence the economy in ways that individuals cannot. In a time of crisis, the government should cut taxes and increase spending in order to inject money into the economy. Even though this will cause the government to incur a deficit, it should be done in order to repair the economy. When the economy recovers, the government should decrease spending and raise taxes in order to pay off the debt it incurred during the recession. This process of government intervention is known as Keynesianism, and it has been employed by the U.S. government since World War II. And guess what? No more regular panics. The first economic depression since World War II was the oil crisis of the 1970s, caused by a combination of inflation and recession (something that economists didn’t think was possible, by the way).

These calls of “socialism” fall mostly on ignorant ears. Socialism is already here! If you pay taxes, you’re engaging in socialism. The question is, what degree of socialism are we talking about? Some countries have national monopolies that are endorsed or partly owned by the government. Think of Telefónica in Spain, Petróleos Mexicanos, or Petróleos de Venezuela. The United States would have to go a long way toward purchasing ownership stakes in our industries. Although, at least one industry – the railroads – are partially owned by the government. The U.S. government took control of the railroad system in the late 19^th century in order to cut down on corruption. Today, the government still owns the railroads, but not because of corruption. It’s because the costs of running railroads are so high that railroad companies would go bankrupt without government support.

Socialism is alive and well here, and it’s helping Americans in ways that they may not be aware of.

The End of Conservatism As We Know It?

As the days pass, the news gets better and better for progressives. Republican pundit Bill Kristol had to publicly contradict himself about the efficacy of the McCain campaign strategy he once pushed for. McCain and Palin are in disagreement about whether they should create pitchfork-wielding mobs or not. Sarah Palin, an independent investigation concluded, had abused her authority as governor. That bailout bill had to pass without any debate even though it gave the Treasury unlimited power to do anything it wanted and had no oversight and no guarantees. But that doesn’t matter because any legislation is good legislation right now, and if we don’t pass this thing then the Earth will crash into the sun! Remember that one? And how, once it passed, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has continued to tank, now roughly a mere 25% lower than it was a month ago?

Oh, crap. And Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize for Economics.

It’s not a great time to be a conservative. The party that has run the country — first the executive branch, then the legislative branch, then both — for the last twenty-eight years (with only two years completely on the outside) is on the outs. The Republican Party, once the object of admiration by even the most liberal admen for its unified, coherent image, is publicly fighting with itself over what tactics to use next.

Extreme conservatism is on the way out. Eight years of extreme conservatism has turned the United States into a shell of its former self. That stuff’s poison!

Consider that unilateral militarism has proven to be, not a force of good, but a force of confusion, corruption, and destruction. Supply-side economics has made the poor poorer, the rich richer, and the middle class smaller. The United States is no longer regarded diplomatically; a ludicrously botched war has made us the laughingstock of the international community — when, that is, that laughter isn’t interrupted by contempt. Health care costs are rising, but the response of conservatives is to let the very same market that permitted those costs to double in eight years continue as is. In fact, McCain even wants more deregulation of health care.

But that’s just a start. You get the point. As a theory of governance, extreme conservatism should never work with government, anyway. In fact, many extreme conservatives never believed the government should be there in the first place. It’s hard to do your best at a job that you don’t think should even exist. The best-case scenario would be that the government gets dismantled, everything becomes privatized, and everyone goes home to the consulting firms they started in order to get lucrative government contracts. Grover Norquist would like to drown the government in a bathtub, but not drown it so much that it can no longer sign checks.

The nation is at a crossroads, except this crossroads is over a river of liquid-hot magma. Which direction will you choose? Liberalism? Or conservatism? Make it fast because your shoes are melting, and you can’t afford to buy new ones. If this election goes the way it looks like it might go, with Obama and the Democrats handily defeating the Republicans, extreme conservatism will have to pack its bags and redefine itself in a more moderate form.

The fact that the southern vote might be in question is proof enough that something’s going on, here.

Extreme conservatism — and with it, the mantra that The Market is a powerful force to be feared and obeyed — has failed to deliver on its promises for every American. True, it has enriched a few, but that has too often been at the expense of the poor or the American taxpayer. Apologists of the completely unchecked Wild West Market want to privatize the gains, but socialize the losses. This is why we are now paying $700 billion, on the outside, for a few firms to enrich themselves tremendously. We went through this before, remember? In 2001, with Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco. We put those guys away because they found new and interesting ways to purchase a $15,000 umbrella stand and then leave taxpayers with the bill once it all came crumbling down.

It’s not just people with investments who stand to win with more regulation and less reliance on The Market to police itself. Consider the 47 million Americans without health care–conservatism could continue living out the rest of its days unencumbered in the knowledge that people might be dying of curable ailments, if only they had enough money to afford them.

The people who claimed to know best are now unable to solve the problems plaguing our democracy. The Bill Kristols of the world, championing the cause of William F. Buckley, are powerless to help us get out of Iraq, fix our economic problems, and repair our world image. All they offer, to quote Joe Biden, is “more of the same.” Because it’s that same that has hurt us for so long. After a person has been punched in the face for eight years, it’s easy to find a cause for that person’s headaches. President Bush’s stock response of “trust me, I know what I’m doing” is now obviously a facade.

A weary nation realizes that the policies of the past eight years are no longer sufficient to solve the problems caused by the policies of the past eight years. Too little, too late? Perhaps, but better than not at all.

The End of the American Honeymoon

A week or so ago, when he was interviewed on several American media outlets, such as Larry King, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated implicitly and explicitly that he believed that the period of the American Empire was at an end. For a demagogue and false populist like Ahmadinejad, who is trying to please his electorate by taking a slice out of America’s pride and security, I don’t know exactly what to make out of his proposition. Does he believe that America is going to lose all influence in the world, in which case the second-tier states and nations would step in to fill our regional role? Or was he simply trying to rub our noses in our own misfortunes due to our greed and avarice? Is this like when he constantly jabs us in the ribs for our troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan, basically saying to the world, “See? They can’t do everything that they claim they can do.” It’s probably a combination of all of the above. Now, God forbid that I would agree wholesale with Ahmadinejad, a thoroughly disreputable Holocaust denier, religious fanatic and possible sponsor of Hizbullah and other miltant groups in the Middle East, but I do introduce my note with his views as a sort of segway for my own beliefs on the future of America. In one narrow respect, I would tentatively agree with the unbalanced, Iranian: America is mortal. If you hit us hard enough, we will bleed. I believe furthermore that the sky is not the limit, we do not have manifest destiny from God because of the “nobleness” of our institutions, and we cannot go on spiraling upwards towards infinite prosperity. Let’s face it, America’s honeymoon is long over.

What do I mean by “honeymoon”? I mean that great immigrant urge and ideal from the 19th century that hard work, high moral standing and a wing and a prayer would take you all the way to the top. It was certainly true for America during most of that century and most of the twentieth even, but I think we’re witnessing the end of it at the beginning of the 21st. When I think of this immigrant ideal, I tend to have this image come to mind of wagon trains of immigrants surging towards the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevadas, their tools ready to tame the wilderness and their voices raised in a rousing chorus of “who gives a damn, we’re on our way!.” OK, so that is the last part was from “Paint Your Wagon,” but you get the idea. I have even seen their legacy first-hand on my trips out west. In the southwest corner of Colorado, in the San Juan mountains, there are holes in the mountains everywhere above tree line. These are the hard-rock mines that the miners desperately created by hand that go hundreds of feet into the spine of the Rockies. These miners often hailed from towns that were built above 10,000 feet, where the temperature on a sunny day in July rarely exceeds 60 degrees. One such town had a post office, a theater and a bowling alley at its height in the 1880s. One can either admire their ingenuity and persistence or you can pity their arrogance and idiocy in the face of Nature’s might. I tend to swing between the two poles.

I see a lot of the immigrant spirit in the conservatives of America today. They are religious, optimistic in the face of daunting evidence, opportunistic, stubborn, down-to-earth. They are also inclusive of outsiders only to a point, have no qualms about “striking it rich” at the expense of others, and are voraciously individualistic. These are generalizations, but they are generalizations with a grounding in some fact, I believe. There is something so deliciously cavalier and charismatic about the Republican Party’s optimism and sureness, I must admit. It would be charming, if it weren’t becoming so dangerously out-of-touch. Conservatives tend to get so angry by what they see as the “Europeanization” (am I coining a cultural term here?) of America, and the “frenchifying” and softening of American pioneers into lazy elites and intellectuals. What I really think underlies these stereotypes is a fear and a refusal to believe that the America of today is not quite the same America of the Founding Fathers or of even a century ago. We have run out of free land to exploit without harming ourselves or our natural resources in the process. American laissez-faire policies (for those of you despise French words so much, it means “let it go,” or “let it do it’s thing”) have exposed their ugly side, not once, but several times, in the last one hundred years, and most times, government intervention was a God-send. Americans are no longer (for the most part) fleeing religious persecution and now have found plenty of things to keep them happy and fulfilled besides organized religion. I may be unfairly called a turncoat for this one especially, but America can no longer win wars by tweaking out our armed forces with the latest gadgets and drones or by the “righteousness” of our cause or because “God is on our side.” We have experienced that the idea of the uneducated, down-to-earth man rising through the ranks to the highest positions of power is not always such a rosy American myth. Not everyman on the street should become a leader, and sometimes you need elite “intellectuals” to run elite “intellectual” enterprises, like businesses and whole countries. Lastly, and I state this one with some sincere sadness, the institutions of the American farm and small business are in serious jeopardy, oddly enough because of the very competitive, globalizing tendencies of American business which are so very familiar to the Republican Party platform. We are largely no longer a resourceful, do-it-yourself society of immigrants living on a “Main Street,” insuring that our childrens’ tomorrows will be better than our yesterdays simply because they’re “good, hard-working people.” Like it or not, America now has more in common with all the opulent, decaying empires of the past than with the robust, thriving democracy which we started out as. We need to accept the changes and reinvent ourselves without losing the better angels of our American character.

I think that two of the greatest assets which we can pull out from our old pioneer tool belt are our diversity and our adaptability. At a time when we’re so concerned about how people are getting into this country, perhaps we would do well to ask ourselves what these people can contribute to the American experience. Sometimes, when a group is bogged down in its own quagmire, the best solution is for an outsider to offer his/her perspective. American history is replete with examples of emigrant populations offering their two cents worth on the problems that this country has faced throughout its history. Definitely related is the idea of the individualistic, free-wheelin’, free-thinkin’ American inventor. Just as the American pioneers viewed a pristine valley in the San Juan Mountains of southwest Colorado during the 1870s and envisioned a town called “Tomboy” at the very edges of what is humanly possible, so can someone today convert that same old attitude to a healthier direction by taking a fresh and optimistic attitude to the economic, demographic, financial, societal and political problems which we face today. I like to believe that even though America has changed, and not always for the best, we still have a common cultural heritage to draw from to go forward in the future. After all, the immigrant spirit transformed the spot which I am sitting on in southwestern Michigan from a sandy wilderness into the comfortable apartment and town that I know today. Being a heady pioneer doesn’t have to be all bad.

Do I believe that America is going to turn into a nation of decadent and lazy couch potatoes, more intent on what’s on their iPods and reality shows than the suffering that’s going in their own inner cities? Not exactly, no. I have more faith in us than that. Do I believe that there is nothing good in cherishing the tenets of the past and that all conservatives are ostriches with their heads stuck in the ground? As I said, that was a generalization on my part. But I do firmly believe that America has changed significantly from its youth, and that there are those whose refusal to adapt to those changes who may be holding the rest of us back. The old idea of “expansive horizons” in every sense of the image is gone. We have run out of breathing room in virtually every aspect of American life. If America is to have hope and room to grow, it will have to come through with some ingenuity and painful compromises. I certainly hope that we’re up to the challenge.

The Future of Choice

Several years ago, I spent some time as a campus organizer for the Missouri affiliate of a reproductive health advocacy group. Much of our time was spent “in the field,” attempting to find ways to engage students on a relatively conservative campus, in the crucial swing state of Missouri.

A few weeks ago, I was wandering around the website of my hometown newspaper, and stumbled across a small piece about my former employers. My state affiliate and their board of directors made a decision to disaffiliate from their national organization. This reflects a larger trend, at least in my home state, in which much of the choice community has given up on the ability to protect reproductive freedom at a federal level, and has instead turned their attentions to preserving and protecting choice on a state level.

Has the choice movement simply given up on the idea that every woman is entitled to comprehensive reproductive health care? It often seems so, when a national agenda is largely abandoned and attention is turned to preventing further destruction of the right to choose in the few states in which the right still exists, often in some highly adulterated form. The national movement focused on preserving Roe, while conservatives pushed for restrictions that served to weaken its protections at the state level. For years, this shift in strategy went seemingly unmet by reproductive health advocates, as they deigned to let the courts tackle problems and allowed Roe to become their watchword. Even in liberal states, legal protection drifted toward the center, with the passage of dangerous parental consent laws and waiting period requirements. The choice movement is only now catching up, realizing that there may be no way to protect a constitutionally-guaranteed right to choose - especially with the anti-choice extremist McCain/Palin ticket. Is the best strategy to focus on protecting the right where it is still likely to exist, even if Roe is overturned? To make sure that there are still places in this country where one can still go to terminate a pregnancy, even at great distance and at her own expense?

While painful to admit, there are advantages to this approach, one with which anti-choice advocates have had enormous success when they decided to focus their attention on state, rather than federal, law. Focusing on a state-by-state approach allows a more tightly-focused battle, a stronger message that can be tailored to appeal to the demographics of the state. Even here, though, problems exist - the horrendous South Dakota referendum that sought to ban abortion entirely was defeated only because the text of the law did not contain a provision for the life and health of the mother. Planned Parenthood and other organizations campaigning against the initiative jumped on this as a reason vote against the referendum. A wise choice in the short term, it is also an easy provision to add the next time around - and what then can they use to campaign against it? One can’t fault them for a winning strategy, but it was hardly a long-lasting one.

I receive far more material in my mailbox and inbox from my state affiliates of NARAL and Planned Parenthood, than from the national office. Whereas legislation on reproductive rights at the federal level receives attention rather infrequently, the availability of comprehensive reproductive health faces a consistent level of assault on the state level. Their efforts have been effective; several times now, they have mobilized to beat back legislation that would have made Missouri the state with the most restrictive abortion ban in the nation - even more draconian than the South Dakota law defeated in 2006.

The idea of giving up on the federal government’s ability to protect our sovereignty over our own bodies is, frankly, terrifying. However, the legislation passed over the last eight years is such that we can no longer trust it to do just that. The neoconservative political dominance of the 1990s and early 2000s brought about legislation and court decisions that allowed states to pass laws determining when physicians could perform abortions, banned specific types of abortion, and granted fetuses protection under the law. The direction of the Supreme Court, thanks to President Bush, has been set for years to come - and stare decisis doesn’t look like a doctrine the current court is determined to follow.

I’m thankful that I live somewhere now that offers strong protections toward a woman’s right to choose, but I know that, across state lines in Missouri, it’s only getting worse. At the end of the year, all but one clinic in the state will be forced to close. Referendums and state laws chipping away at comprehensive reproductive health succeed at a disconcerting rate. I know that my former colleagues, and my friends at NARAL and Planned Parenthood will do what they can to keep fighting back against the anti-choice crusaders, and I’ll continue to help them in whatever ways that I can. They’re running out of options, though, and when that day comes, there may not be a federal backup plan that can save them.

The Navy Man and the Celebrity

On October 28, 1980, the country was in the midst of a precipitous economic decline, faced steep gas prices, felt saddled with an unpopular incumbent President, and had been recently and very visibly humbled on the world stage by radical elements in the Middle East. In the final act of their election contest, an aging and tired-looking former Naval officer took the stage for his first (and only) debate with the man his campaign had portrayed as a dangerous, impulsive, Hollywood celebrity who lacked both the experience and the soundness of judgment to respond to far-flung threats in foreign fields.

We all know what happened next.

Governor Reagan, bruised and bloodied by this tireless ad-war, came across (to many who were seeing him for the first time), as smooth, likable, and imminently worthy of the job. A few days later the election was decided in one of the biggest landslides up to that time, and, good or bad, the country has never really been quite the same since.

The story is only noteworthy in our present context because it is our present context. Pundits arguing this past week that debates have little impact on elections have cited data points ranging from the first Kerry-Bush debate (which Kerry won to very little effect on the race) all the way back to the first Reagan-Mondale debate (which Mondale won to even less effect). Those pundits have, to this author’s thinking at least, missed the story completely.

The problem is that not all election contests are created equal. John Kerry’s big debate win in 2004 didn’t have much effect on the contest because the 2004 election was a culture war, with both sides locked-in well in advance and almost no one left in the middle to persuade. Fritz Mondale’s big debate win in 1984 didn’t have much effect on the contest because, in 1984, Mr. Reagan could have taken the stage dressed only in a fig leaf and spent the entire ninety minutes speaking in tongues, and he still would have carried 39 states. To include either of these two races in a regression to determine the significance of debates, is to short-change the potential for debates to matter in elections where the electorate had not completely made up their mind about one candidate or another prior to the debate(s).

Specifically in those races where one candidate is decidedly less palatable, but the other candidate is “scary” or “new” enough to not have yet pulled away, do debates seem to afford their best chance to really shake up the dynamics of an election. In other words, an election where voters want change, but have yet to be completely convinced that they can trust this change. We’ve had three such elections since the advent of televised debates, in 1960, 1980, and 2008. And the “scary” candidate has won the first two, just by taking the stage for his first debate and not being scary. The first debate has thus been what has put the “new” candidate over this threshold of acceptability as a viable alternative to the failing status quo.

Very few among us remember how fatigued the country was with the Eisenhower Administration in the summer and autumn of 1960. Several scandals had broken more or less at once, and the Powers affair had wrought a devastating blow to American pride, prompting renowned Columnist James Reston to skewer the incumbents in language that seems more fitting for today’s scrappy environment, and also eerily adaptable to the current occupants of the White House.

Against this backdrop, Mr. Nixon could only base his argument for the job on the un-readiness of his opponent, a young, good-looking, and little-known Senator. Wisely (indeed uncharacteristically wisely), Nixon left to his surrogates the question of what effect Mr. Kennedy’s Catholicism might have on his governance. But no matter: The race was decided by Mr. Kennedy’s Presidential appearance and his calm demeanor. If there was no longer any reason to fear Kennedy, there was also no longer any reason to vote Nixon.

Twenty years later, one might have expected the sharp cookies in the Carter Administration to assume that Reagan would not play directly into their hands by throwing his bellicose weight around on stage. But Carter was unpopular not just for the devastating economic malaise that had descended over the country, but also for the humiliation of the Iranian hostage crisis, which was first-lead on the evening news for the comfortable majority of the 555 days over which it took place. Carter’s only card was that people should be scared of Reagan. When Reagan no longer seemed scary, the public decided it had seen enough to make up its mind.

There is obviously still time for Senator McCain to break this cycle (not to mention time for current events to shift to a more favorable playing field on which he might show his strengths). But with each passing day, almost with each passing hour, it is Mr. Obama who comes nearer and nearer to passing what Karl Rove once famously referred to as “the living-room test.” Would the American public be comfortable hearing from this man, for four to six minutes a night, on their evening news, and not be scared of what he might say? It would seem the answer to that question got a lot less qualified in the minds of many voters after the first debate. And that’s a trend that Senator McCain must shatter to pieces with an act far more brazenly game changing than a “mere” suspension of his campaign, if he still hopes and expects to become our nation’s forty-fourth President.

It’s the Public, Stupid!

In the throes of what could become the toughest economic times since the Great Depression, everyone’s worried about “saving the economy.” Perhaps this single-minded obsession is a throwback to the ’92 election—many of us will remember the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid”—but it’s time for a reality check.

This time, it’s not the economy… it’s the public.

On the basis of the current government’s ineptitudes, it’s best to break it down. First, there’s the war in Iraq. Irrespective of its validity or necessity, the United States has spent over $550 billion (as of August ’08) fighting to secure Iraq from insurgents, outside forces, and ultimately its own citizens. With the cost of the war growing by an estimated $200 million per day–that’s roughly $138,000 per minute—and an unknown number of belligerents and civilian casualties, the “liberation” of Iraq will ultimately cost the United States far more than the current $700 billion in proposed corporate bailouts. The damage we’ve caused to our international reputation and the fabric of the international system itself has yet to be fully felt, however.

The second major issue is the war in Afghanistan. While forgotten in many Americans’ eyes due to the overwhelming popularity of the “Bombs over Baghdad” campaign, we’re still shelling out blood and money to restore the country to normal operation. We spend $2.3 billion per month in Afghanistan —about a quarter of the Iraq War’s cost—with very little to show for it. Taliban fighters still make raids from safe havens in the mountains, or from Pakistan; at best, intelligence needs to be taken with a grain of salt; Afghani soldiers are far behind their Iraqi counterparts in training and discipline; warlords still maintain authority over many of the regions outside of Kabul; and insurgents have begun using American military tactics against our soldiers. In short, Afghanistan is analogous to the administration’s view of our economy: undervalued and teetering on the edge of the abyss.

…and then there’s the economy, with its strong “fundamentals” standing beside its collapsing infrastructure. I’m not an economist, but common sense suggests that, when half a dozen of your economic powerhouses either collapse or need rescued from their own bad decisions, the fundamentals of the economy—measured risk-taking, a sound credit line, and long-term stability, in my opinion—are lacking. Amid this turmoil, taxpayers are being asked to spend more money (that many Americans don’t have, by the way) to bail out the corporations who squandered our money in the first place. Taxpayers are also being asked to do this immediately, with no guarantee that such a corporate stimulus package will fix the problem. Oh, and to oversee the operation, Washington’s asking the taxpayers to trust the same government who lifted New Deal bank regulations and allowed such shady deals to progress on their watch.

Finally, the global demand for oil acts as a perpetual thorn in working-class America’s side. With gasoline prices surging twenty cents in a single day, then taking four weeks to return to normal, one must consider whether the record-setting profits made by petroleum conglomerates are indeed the result of peak production… or the result of taking their powerless consumers to the cleaners. Increased fuel charges, of course, trickle down through the economy: everything from food to pharmaceuticals now costs markedly more than it used to.

With all of these issues converging on the taxpayer, most people have started the Blame Game. Democrats blame the Republicans; Republicans blame Democrats; the banks blame everyone but themselves, and the public blames whomever’s closest. In reality, however, the public is the source of this mess. We’re the ones who bought into mortgages that were too good to be true; we’re the ones who put our government into office and allowed them to cow us into submission; we’re the ones who grumble at the gas pump and do nothing about it; and ultimately, we’re the ones who pay for issues that we shirk off, saying “there’s nothing I can do about it.”

And until we’re willing to fix our own mistakes, we’re right.

Big Doings in the Golden State

Earlier this summer, the California Supreme Court ruled gay marriage bans unconstitutional under state law. The Supreme Court gave the various state counties ninety days to find a system for implementing the ruling, which would require that the state grant same-sex couples the same rights to “marriage” that heterosexual couples have. A variety of conservative groups urged Attorney General Jerry Brown to obtain an injunction enjoining enforcement of the court ruling, pending the results of November’s Proposition 8. Proposition 8 is a proposed amendment to the state constitution which reads, in full, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Brown refused, saying that getting an injunction would be difficult, and that same-sex marriage was the law of the land.

Brown further earned the ire of conservatives when he changed the title of the proposition from “Limit on Marriage. Constitutional Amendment” to “Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry Initiative. Constitutional Amendment.” This is actually the correct wording, since the state supreme court ruled that same-sex couples do have the right to marry, but the constitutional amendment would take away that right.

Meanwhile, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proved that he is just as tough with the State Assembly as he is with the Predator. The state is in a budget crisis that is very similar to the federal budget crisis that actually shut down non-essential federal offices in 1995. The Assembly is trying to find a way to close a $15 billion gap in the 2008-09 budget: Schwarzenegger wants to cut all state programs by 10% and keep tax rates where they are. Democrats want to keep state funding where it is and raise taxes. (California’s annual budget is a little over $100 billion.) Schwarzenegger, like George H.W. Bush before him, rode into Sacramento on a platform of “no new taxes,” funding his capital projects by floating bonds — bonds that will someday mature and whose holders will come calling.

In order to force the Democrats’ hand, Schwarzenegger has refused to sign any legislation into law until a budget is passed, which means “any budget that Schwarzenegger likes.” The governor has made one exception to this rule: he will sign into a law a bond issue that would provide $9 billion in funding for his pet project, a high-speed train between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

We’ve been told for years that such a train will be coming Real Soon Now. Arnold wants a legacy beyond the one he already has at Blockbusters around the nation.

California voters will also deal with parental notification for abortion, an initiative that was rejected in 2005 and 2006. Apparently proponents think that California’s voter base has changed wildly in two years?

Meanwhile, the battle for Schwarzenegger’s cybernetic chair is beginning already. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and Attorney General Jerry Brown (formerly mayor of Oakland, Governor of California, and three-time presidential candidate) have all indicated that they would like to run for governor when Der Gubernator’s term is up in January of 2011.

The Buckeye Ground Game

Fall in Ohio usually means changing leaves, a crisp breeze, and Ohio State Buckeye football. However, this fall, the best ground game in the state may not belong to the scarlet and gray.

While all of us, including yours truly, overanalyze polls and election models, there is something happening in Ohio and elsewhere across the nation that could be much more predictive of which man becomes the 44^th President of the United States.

One the main advantages of the protracted primary fight between Senators Obama and Clinton was that it laid the Obama organization for the important fall campaign to come. As the long primary process dragged on, Democrats gained in registration all over the country. Coupled with gains in Democratic registration, Senator Obama got at least a two-month head start on Senator McCain in the all important ground game. As polls tightened during the month of August, the mainstream media wondered why Obama was not using his superior resources to outspend Senator McCain on the airwaves. But as the pundits chirped, Senator Obama’s ground game was quietly being built behind the scenes.

Recent reports have shown that Senator Obama has more field offices than does Senator McCain in all of the battle ground states except for Florida. Topping the list of battle ground states with the most field offices is Ohio, with 57 field offices according to a campaign email on September 3. To find out more, I decided to visit one of these field offices over the Labor Day weekend. The Shaker Heights, Ohio field office, one of the main arteries for the Obama campaign’s efforts in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, was bustling with enthusiasm. I was told by a staffer that the Cleveland area alone had eight teams of eight full-time paid staffers, roughly as many as the Kerry campaign had in the whole state of Ohio in October of 2004. Many of these staffers are very young, but gained invaluable organizing skills in three, or in some cases, four or five primary states this past winter and spring.

As I hit the suburban streets to canvass, I was actively recruited to come back during the month of October and the weekend before Election Day. A little known Ohio law that was passed in 2006 has created an early voting period from September 30 to November 3. With the state’s registration deadline being October 6, this law has created a unique window between September 30 and October 6 where one can essentially have “one stop registration and voting.” Many believe that this period could give Senator Obama at least a hundred thousand vote advantage before a single vote is cast on November 3. Senator Obama’s campaign took advantage of similar laws during the primary season in states such as North Carolina and Montana, organizing its supporters to get out and vote early. This strategy allows for more micro-targeting on Election Day itself as many supporters have already voted and can concentrate all their efforts on getting others out to vote. This strategy also will be especially valuable in urban areas, where many voters may find it much more convenient to vote early and avoid Ohio’s infamous long election lines.

Meanwhile, Senator McCain will try to make up for lost time and attempt to match President Bush’s famous 2004 ground game. Bush’s voter outreach efforts were credited with bringing hundreds of thousand of new evangelical voters to the polls in Ohio and Florida. (Bush won Ohio by only 118,000 votes in 2004.) It remains to be seen whether or not McCain can overcome a lack of enthusiasm from his base and match these efforts in 2008. Sure, 90% of Republicans are behind McCain, but voting for McCain is not the equivalent of having the enthusiasm to go out and motivate others to vote for McCain. McCain’s selection of right-wing conservative Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate is an attempt to narrow this enthusiasm gap.

Overall, efforts on the ground will always fail to get attention when compared to polls and ad campaigns. However, like in football, politics is won in the trenches. As such, Obama’s ground team is ready for an all-out push to begin September 30, just three days after the scarlet and gray take their ground game into the Big Ten schedule.

My Conditions for Voting Republican

I’ve been stewing over the last several days about this election season. Who can blame me? Political feelings are at their height with the two conventions so close together, and so people from all sides of the political continuum find this to be a very convenient time to throw their opinions into the public forum. I’ve wanted to do it in a more complete manner than by simply typing in heated status updates on Facebook, but haven’t entirely known what to say until now. I suppose this bit of writing is a first attempt at expressing my political expectations and reactions so far for this season.

In the end I decided on a sort of list of ‘demands,’ things that the Republican Party would have to do or work towards if they wanted to gain the vote of a slightly left-of-center independent voter such as myself. Here they are, in no particular order:

-Ditch the Rove: There is no one, and I mean no one, in the Republican machine whom I despise more (even including Cheney and Bush) than Karl Rove. The man must be absolutely soulless to have come up with the Republican election scheme of divide and conquer, watering down a complex world of issues and concerns, and slandering your political opponents through a mix of 3rd party “swift boaters” and sleazy push-polling tactics. Seriously, I see the man or hear his voice and I feel a mix of nausea and rage all wrapped up together. I understand that there are other masterminds and think-tanks involved in Bush’s otherwise unexplainable hold on power over the last eight years, but Rove is the most vocal and the most visible. If McCain had told Rove ‘thanks, but no thanks’ from the very beginning of his campaign, I would have had a great deal more respect for him, but as it happens, McCain has involved Rove in his campaign, I don’t know in what exact capacity, but he’s behind the scenes somewhere. I will not vote for a Republican, even at the state level, until that jerk-off is publicly shunned by the party leadership.

- Drop the “I’m-so-white-it-hurts” smack talk: Did Palin say anything about the issues in her VP acceptance speech? Or did she just walk up to the podium, give a shout out to her sisters in the AK, form gang symbols with her hands and challenge Harry Reid to an all-out rumble with John McCain? This is another tactic widely used by Republicans in recent years: when you realize that you either have no new platform or your platform is so extreme that it will scare off the majority of American moderates, just talk trash about the other party and hope that no one notices that you said nothing about the actual issues. Sarah Palin did just that at the convention. I know that there have been accusations from the Republican side (and even from people like Jon Stewart) that people are only following Obama because he is promising change and hope and a place on the Big Rock Candy Mountain, but that is not at all why I have supported him from the beginning. I supported him because he was more concerned with talking about the issues as if we were in this together. Imagine that. Americans of all creeds and races sharing many of the same problems. Could it be because, despite our ideological differences, we might share a common humanity and country? Why don’t we drop the smack talk, Obama says, and focus on our approaches and solutions to the issues? What a fresh idea!

- Rupture with the Rapturists: I understand that religion, faith and morals will always have a place in the public forum. There are ideals that many of us hold very close to our hearts and consider the foundations of our lives. I have a problem, though, when religious leaders realize how much power they can potentially exercise from the political podium rather than from the pulpit. I strongly disagree with the recent practice of Republicans going before religious leaders (and only conservative religious leaders at that) to accept their blessing from that leader. It reminds me just a wee-bit too much of the Holy Roman emperors going before the Pope to have him bless their kingship. Let me reintroduce a neglected idea: a person can be a very capable leader and public administrator without holding to religiously orthodox views, or any religious view for that matter. Even John Paul II was not fond of the Republican Party’s policies, a mood shared by the current pontiff, facts that many conservative American Catholics tend to conveniently ignore. It’s one thing when religious leaders and institutions try to voice their concerns in the public forum of American politics. They have every right to do so, so long as they frame their arguments as the concerns of their particular group. When I’m told by those leaders that I’ll rot in Hell for voting for a candidate who happens to be pro-choice with an otherwise amazing platform, I tend to shy away from them. I’m an adult, and I have the right and the ability to form moral judgments for myself. Don’t try to guilt me into voting for your Republican candidate by threatening my soul with eternal damnation.

- Stop Rudy from talking about 9/11: Seriously, Rudy, shut your mouth. You were rightfully popular for your immediate response to said national tragedy in the days and weeks following, not to mention for your record against crime in New York City, but quit framing the entire political discussion in terms of “I’m the hero of 9/11, so if you vote for the other guys, you’ll find a 737 barreling into your city’s office buildings.” Your party does not hold a monopoly on the willingness and ability to exercise military resources to protect this country. I believe that Joe Biden and his years of foreign affairs experience is just one of many other potential examples to demonstrate that Democrats know a thing or two about national security. What fear mongering and baiting we’re hearing when Bush implies that the other party will leave you for dead to the terrorists, or will let the terrorists win! For those of you who argue that the Republicans have a stronger record on national security and the use of military force, and that they were simply arguing that they would be the more experienced party for handling security issues, I have just one question. Why didn’t the Republicans just say that, rather that insinuating that a vote for the other guys was a vote for defeat? The first involves cool and calm dialogue, the second fear and powerlessness. It’s obvious that they were trying to scare people into the GOP camp.

- Stop parading minorities and women around on the platform to get votes: From the moment I saw that McCain selected a woman to be his vice presidential pick, I suspected that it was raw, political pandering for the votes of former Hillary supporters. It reminds me of how Bush selected people like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice for his administration, two highly-qualified public servants to be sure, but also people who were conservative enough to have very little in common with most of the African-Americans whom they were breaking ground for. I know that some critics wondered if Bush had selected them mostly to make his administration and party look more progressive and diverse. Palin strikes me as more of the same. It’s like they thought that the progressive women who had sincerely hoped that Hillary would shatter the glass ceiling would vote for McCain to get back at the “patriarchal” Obama-Biden ticket. Does McCain expect those same, progressive women to review Palin’s beliefs on contraceptives and gun control and not be paralyzed with fear? Yes, Palin has experience as a governor and mayor. She’s not, admittedly, completely green. But I really believe that her selection by McCain was more about her reproductive organs and hard-hitting hockey mom rhetoric rather than anything that she has previously accomplished. Yet another Republican minority member or member of the historically-excluded gender using their power to go against what most of their confederates believe in. Nice going.

Last, but certainly not the least:

- Kick the Neo-cons to the curb, baby: These people, the neo-conservatives, are not in the mold of Reagan. They are not like Ike was, and they are not your traditional, fiscal conservatives. They are frightening, frightening people whose political motivation lies in the apparent humiliation of the American military during the Vietnam War, and they would love nothing more than to pay the world back (except for Britain, of course) for that loss of power that we experienced. And how do they plan to do this? One, by turning the world into an American commercial and quasi-military empire. In this way, they are no better than Vladimir Putin and his recent nationalistic expeditions into Georgia, and Putin has wasted no time in pointing out the hypocrisy of us chastising Russia for invading a sovereign nation when we did the same with Iraq. Two, they believe that stronger executive power will absolve the office of the Presidency of the embarrassment it suffered during Watergate. If only the judicial and legislative branches of government would bow down obediently before the president and his cabinet, they argue, the loss of faith in the office of the Presidency that happened when Bill Clinton was gettin’ his piece would never have happened. This means, of course, that the two branches which are designed to introduce our ideas for legislation and to protect and define our rights by law are being subordinated by the branch which can, according to neo-conservative theory, do whatever the hell it wants, so long as there are signing statements and war powers to fall back on. They’re not interested in your well-being. In fact, they have a distaste for your intelligence and your criticism of the executive office. In their model, as well, only the biggest businesses are vital to the success and well-being of the American dynamo. Without big money and investments to trickle down to the middle and working classes, America is hopeless and worthless (and that includes you, the average, middle-class American voter who was too stupid not to invest money in the stock market to make yourself independently wealthy). They are not Christian in practice, even if they sometimes promote that image for their policies. They are cold-hearted, aggressive and extremely ambitious. We should be terribly afraid of them and angry with them. They tend to destroy everything grass-roots and diverse about this nation. And they were behind the scenes of most of the Republicans in the primary, including McCain. If you think that McCain will bring change, think again. The cancer that made Bush’s presidency such a disaster has spread to the McCain camp. Don’t think that he won’t be influenced by them.

So there you have it, my demands, my manifesto, so to speak. These days, I feel as if I am defining myself by what I hate in the Republican Party rather than what I admire in the Democratic one. Many people reading this would probably think that I am a die-hard Democrat. That’s not true. They don’t fully speak for me. I am an anti-Republican by virtue of the things listed above, and in this two party system of ours, what other alternative do I have when I turn away from the current stench of the GOP? You tell me.

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