“Liberal intellectuals have largely abdicated their responsibility to provide unblinking and rigorous analysis instead of paeans to Obama’s image. Hardly any prominent liberal thinkers stepped forward to question Obama’s rationalizations about his relationship with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. Instead, they hailed his ever-changing self-justifications and sometimes tawdry logic — equating his own white grandmother’s discomfort in the presence of a menacing stranger with Wright’s hateful sermons — as worthy of the monumental addresses of Lincoln.” Ma! Sean Wilentz is being an asshat…again. Just in case anyone takes Wilentz seriously anymore — like publius, I’ve gotten to the point of doubting his scholarship — Cliopatria has compiled a list of worthy responses. [Link via Ted.]
Category: Politics (2007-2008)
PUMA: Don’t Believe the Hype | Bill & Ed, Sssh.
Looking over the coverage from afar, it seems much is being made at Salon — naturally — of the PUMA crowd (particularly given that tonight is Clinton night.) Well, don’t believe a word of it. I happened to catch this exact same “protest” yesterday afternoon, and there couldn’t have been more than fifty people involved. Frankly, I’ve seen bigger protests by the third party and no party types than I have the stark raving Clintonites, and they don’t seem to be getting any coverage. As far as overt protests by the ex-Clintoners go, Salon, and related media outlets, are trying to make a mountain out of a very feeble-looking and tenuous molehill.
That being said, over in his corner Bill Clinton still seems to be keeping up with his protest of one. “Suppose you’re a voter, and you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that candidate can deliver on anything at all. Candidate Y you agree with on about half the issues, but he can deliver. Which candidate are you going to vote for?” Honestly, Mr. President, get a grip.
Update: Rendell’s off the reservation too. “Barack Obama is handsome. He’s incredibly bright. He’s incredibly well spoken, and he’s incredibly successful — not exactly the easiest guy in the world to identify with…He is a little like Adlai Stevenson.”
The Chameleon, Undercover.
For those looking for movie news amid the politics: While enjoying an outdoor microbrew last evening, I happened to notice Jeffrey Wright walking down the street, and — while political pundit types like Ron Brownstein were getting swamped by onlookers — it seemed exactly nobody else noticed him. (I would’ve snapped a pic, but the camera was out of juice.) I mean, c’mon people, that’s Colin Powell! Journalists and pols come and go, but I still get excited whenever I happen to see an honest-to-goodness movie star.
Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble.
“And in the end, after all that’s happened these past 19 months, the Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago. He’s the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital ten years ago this summer, inching along at a snail’s pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands, determined to give her everything he’d struggled so hard for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the affirming embrace of a father’s love.”
Next up, of course, was Michelle Obama, who delivered a personal testimonial for her husband and his belief in “the world as it should be.” [Transcript.] To be honest, I thought some of the beats in her speech — the necessary nod to Clinton, the “this is why I love my country” bit — were a tad too deliberate. That being said, Mrs. Obama was pretty much given a thankless chore in having to smooth her edges and homogenize herself for the easy-to-swallow consumption of “the undecideds” — It’s a weird rigamarole we put our political spouses through. So, with that in mind, I thought she did a great job.
Steady Teddy.
Now, that‘s a great introduction. However you feel about Sen. Kennedy, he undoubtedly stands like a liberal colossus over the straits of our times. In one of the darkest periods in our history to be a lefty, Sen. Kennedy has kept the flame alive, from the horrors of ’68 through Nixon, Reagan, 41, and Dubya. Given everything he and his family stand for, it’s hard to think of a better or more moving way to commemorate this week’s passing of the torch. Get well, Senator — We want you back in 2012.
The D.C. Rules.
In any case, it’s good to refortify in here before venturing forth for another day of the “DC RoE.” For, however hospitable Denver has been thus far (and so far LoDo seems like a great place — I wasn’t expecting such a walking-friendly downtown), it’s clear the most aggravating tendencies of District life have thoroughly infected this entire municipal area for the week. Like I said yesterday, having spent the past several years ensconced in academia (which has its own occasionally exasperating mores to navigate), I’d forgotten how fundamentally irritating the DC ratrace can be. Consider this full-immersion therapy.
Rule #1 of the DC life: Access — and thus the appearance, if not the fact, of exclusivity — is everything. For example: Yesterday evening, a friend of mine from CQ and I looked to catch a drink somewhere nearby. We eventually found one, thank goodness, but not before having to negotiate with doormen, list-bearing aides, and sundry other “boundary mavens” in front of many, many bars, restaurants, and hotel lobbies. Everything was cordoned off, invites and VIPS only, unworthies please move along. Now, I understand the lobbyists gotta do their thing — If only this sort of thing was restricted to private parties. Alas, DC life, I have since been reminded, is basically one big rope-line. Every doorway involves a plethora of multi-colored passes, even those that lead nowhere particularly important. Every event here, even ungodly boring ones they can barely fill, have byzantine rules for crossing the threshold, and strange, unspoken hierarchies which determine who gets in and in what order. Get three people together in the District and one of ’em will start working on setting up the cordon. Frankly, it all gets a bit exhausting. (I’d like to say the special dKos couch I was joking about yesterday is a parody of this impulse, but it’s really just another sad manifestation of it.)
Which brings me to Rule #2 of Washington: You’re only as interesting as your status in The Hive. The District being a company town, the main thrust of virtually every social encounter in DC is “Hi-Hello-Who-do-you-work-for?” (I’ve heard LA operates much the same way, which makes sense, given that politics is basically showbiz for short and/or ugly people.) I can’t tell you the number of times during my Washington days when people I’d recently met would “switch on” once they ascertained I had a moderately important-sounding job. (It wasn’t really, of course, but Carville occupied his own unique tangent in Clinton-era Washington, so the rabid political climbers always assumed I had more pull than I ever in fact did.)
As such, people tend to accord you respect only in direct relation to your perceived clout, and if you don’t have any, you’re just not worth talking to. In DC, the most remorseless practitioners of the political arts — and thus often the most successful — will be endlessly scanning the room around you during your conversation, looking to see if there’s someone more important they should be talking to at that moment. It’s a peculiarly virulent form of douchebaggery that you really can’t escape if you venture into the politics business, and it, sad to say, has been very much in evidence here in Denver.
Like I said, I found this endless reducing of people to their places of employ tremendously irritating even when I occupied a relatively privileged position in “The Game.” Now that I’ve been out of the scene for awhile — having cashed in my chits, so to speak, to pursue the PhD during the Dubya years — and my hive status is lower than even drone, it’s that much worse. Now, here in the blogger tent, everyone — give or take a few e-celebrities, of course — seems very friendly, down-to-earth folk, and journalists, I’ve found, rarely traffick as baldly in this sort of behavior as the politicos (which is a lot of the reason I tended to hang with reporters and non-profit types while in DC.) But, get around the actual honest-to-goodness political people, who are obviously everywhere right now, and hoo boy. After an hour or two of being constantly Sized Up and Found Wanting by weaselly-looking guys in suits, it’s enough to send you screaming into the streets.
Ok, had to get that off my chest. I am having a great time here, honest! Still, it was a bit of a shock on my first day to be resubmerged so quickly and so thoroughly into the DC-politico culture. Oh yeah, it’s like that.
Things to Do in Denver…
MDT Morning.
Hey y’all — So, as of late last night, I’ve arrived in Denver to partake of the DNC milieu as best I can. At the moment, I’m reporting in from the Big Tent, a few blocks over from the Pepsi Center, where they’re housing and attempting to satiate the new media types. (In fact, I may currently be sitting dangerously close to the fluffy couches reserved for dKos.) All in all, it seems like a pretty nice set-up, with a large amount of workspace here on the first floor, a stage up above for various scheduled talks and events over the next few days (some sort of rainbow choir was performing when I got here), and goodly amounts of free stuff already being handed out (including a swag bag of eco-friendly mugs, Skype headsets, progressive–minded books, etc. etc.)
On the down side, while we seem to be in the midst of the action media-wise, and democratic happenings seem to have taken over all of the nearby environs (Lower Downtown, or “LoDo”) — I stumbled into 2 or 3 just checking out the nearest bookstore and looking for a croissant — these Big Tent passes don’t appear to be transferable to the actual convention floor. (I may look for alternate methods of getting down there, if I manage to run into any of my old DC friends, acquaintances, and/or employers.) Also, I left my camera wire back at my Denver base (a high school friend’s home in Wash Park), so any pictures will have to wait. Finally, PC battery time is at a premium, so –even with my extra laptop batteries on hand — updates around here look to be relatively scarce during the day. Still, it looks like it’s shaping up to be an interesting week.
The Ticket.
As many surmised (and I hoped) earlier in the week, Sen. Obama has apparently chosen Senator Joe Biden of Delaware as his running mate and future vice-president. In brief, I’m very happy with this choice (and particularly considering the evening’s early word suggested Bayh.) As I said the other day, Obama-Biden seems both a good match and a winning ticket to me. Bring on the convention.
Update: “Joe Biden is that rare mix. For decades, he has brought change to Washington, but Washington hasn’t changed him.” The ticket is unveiled in Springfield, Illinois. And other than Ron Fournier, embarrassingly having the AP carry water for McCain (again), and a handful of Clintonite dead-enders (to which McCain is now making blatant appeals), the pick seems to go over swimmingly.
That’s Me in the Corner…
As far as Sen. Obama’s talk went, it was about what you’d expect, if you’ve been keeping up with the election so far. It focused heavily on the economy and bread-and-butter issues such as health insurance and education, gave the GOP a lot of guff for their usual idiocies and fear-mongering antics, and was also considerably more earthy and populist than much of his primary rhetoric. (But that’s the general for you, and particularly when you’re facing a candidate amazingly unable to count up his number of McMansions.) In any case, at the end of the proceedings, I was close enough to shake the Senator’s hand on the rope line, and got to tell him “I’m looking forward to January.” And, hey, aren’t we all?
So, however my flitting around the convention hall turns out next week, I’m happy to say I got in a choice Obama sighting before even getting on the plane to Denver. (And now I feel much less bad about missing out on tix for the nomination speech next Thursday.)