Gary Hart on "the Democratic party (at its best)"

From Gary hart on Huff Post


... the Democratic party (at its best) is the progressive party, the party of the future, and the Republican party is the party that wishes to hold onto the past. When the Democratic party is truly the party of the future, for change, for experimentation, for adaptation, we win. When we "triangulate," we may create enough confusion to get ourselves elected, but we have no mandate to govern and we sacrifice our identity.

on Yahoo!

The best Democratic leaders, those who succeed as national leaders, are those who define the future and show us how to get there. It shouldn't surprise anyone that those rare leaders, like Barack Obama, also have a "liberal" voting record, especially when, as Senator Obama accurately points out, right-wing ideologues make sure the voting deck is stacked to reflect the old divisive agenda they've perfected. But, as he also points out, "as president, I would be setting the agenda."

On Superdelegates

From a response to Susan Estrich on Superdelegates
This is a somewhat unconventional view from an Obama supporter.

Posted By: The Wise Bard on Tuesday, February 19, 2008

The world has changed quite a bit since the time Susan is discussing. Many more states have elections and broad-scale caucuses. And the complexion of the superdelegates has changed to something more (if not fully) representative of the party, and of America.

There is a long time between the Iowa and New Hampshire contests and the Convention, and as we are learning, things can change quite a lot over the long primary season. Superdelegates provide a useful set of non-pledged delegates who can respond to these changing conditions, including the identity of the opposing major candidate(s) and things learned about the competing Democratic candidates over the long process of testing leading to the conventions. Ideally the superdelegates should stay unpledged until the convention (which many are not currently doing). If their participation in deciding the nominee reeks of a back room deal objectionable to a large faction of voters, the Party and its candidates (beyond the Presidential nominee) are likely to suffer in November--and the superdelegates know that.

And some followup in response to a challenge from another reader:
Posted By: The Wise Bard on Tuesday, February 19, 2008

In response to the gratuitously nasty comments of Mr. Thelen:

A large proportion of the superdelegates are elected officials--elected, that is, by the people, and responsible (and ultimately accountable) to them. Who exactly are the "regular" delegates? Can you name five of them, anywhere in the country? To whom are they accountable, particularly if the Convention goes beyond a first (committed) ballot?



If there were a single national primary, the likelihood of an insurgent candidate successfully challenging the "Establishment" is virtually nil. Insurgent movements build over time (at least if the insurgent is not a billionaire able to self-finance a campaign), and require proving oneself over time, best done in smaller jurisdictions (not necessarily Iowa or N.H.) less dependent on tv commercials and more open to retail-style politics. Obama, for instance, wouldn't have had a prayer of prevailing against Hillary Clinton in a one shot national primary. Tonight, here in Wisconsin (and with my enthusiastic support) he is taking his ninth straight event against the previous establishment favorite. Further, in a Presidential (as opposed to Parliamentary) system, with no "shadow Cabinet", the primary process, over time, provides a useful test of relevant leadership capacities of the candidate and his/her team, and tends to improve their abilities as campaigners and future leaders. That improvement has been evident in the Obama, Clinton, and Edwards campaigns this year, not to speak of the Republicans.

Perhaps we might have a system in which all states follow the same rules, but conduct their primary elections over time, to meet the objections to a single national primary. I would have no great objection to that, but I am inclined to favor a mix of primary elections and caucuses, which seem to do a better job of measuring enthusiasm and depth of commitment of each candidate's supporters, which may also favor insurgent candidacies.

It is also worth noting, contrary to Mr Thelen's initial remarks, that the superdelegates have a potentially significant impact on the ultimate nomination only in cases of close and prolonged contests, not where a candidate clearly prevails in the primary process. We heard little, if anything, about superdelegates in 2004, 2000, 1996...and my memories are not that clear about 1992 or 1988. We have to go back probably to 1984 for a clear instance of their impact.

To be sure, any political mechanism ultimately depends on the behavior of human beings, and can be subverted by bad behavior. My strong preference is that superdelegates withhold public statements of support or endorsement prior to the Convention. My guess this year is that an effort, say, by Clinton forces to "steal" a nomination earned by Obama would be self- (and party-) defeating, much as was the 1968 fiasco--and the superdelegates are likely to understand that. Of course, I could be wrong--and the fact that I can imagine the Clintons pursuing such a strategy is one among many reasons I am supporting Obama.

Posted By: The Wise Bard on Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Here is an interesting piece from Slate on the complexities of superdelegate voting, and the limitations of oversimplistic appeals to pure democracy:



http://fray.slate.com/discuss/forums/101526/ShowForum.aspx?ArticleID=2184677




















The primary process, like our system of government more generally, is not designed to be a pure democracy, but a more complex mechanism responsive to multiple concerns. The state rules for selecting their delegates vary pretty widely, and test candidates in a variety of ways. If we wanted pure democracy, we would have a national primary. There are some pretty good reasons that we don't.


We might well consider varying strict proportionality (perhaps adopting winner-take-all by Congressional district, not by State), and perhaps reducing the proportion of superdelegates in the overall mix, to reduce the likelihood that superdelegates will have the determinative voice in a close and prolonged primary battle, but I think the flexibility that they add to the process makes some sense, if exercised wisely.

Was Bill Clinton smart to pick a fight with the White House?

Slate Magazine:By John Dickerson

For Democrats, this little episode highlights the promise and peril of a Hillary Clinton presidency. On the one hand, President Clinton spoke for many in the party who are furious about the Libby decision. As Hillary Clinton's team is quick to point out, she and her husband know how to fight. This is proof of it. On the other hand, Clinton has given the White House and Republicans an opportunity to muddy the issue by dredging up his past. Whatever you may think about the merits of the Rich pardon versus the Libby commutation, the debate is one the Bush team wants. The White House would rather have everyone debating the relative merits of the two than debating the inconsistencies in the Libby decision alone.

If Hillary Clinton is elected president, how often will this phenomenon be repeated? With each piece of legislation Hillary Clinton proposes or each assertion she makes, Republicans will offer an analog from the Clinton years. They'd do the same with any Democratic president, of course, but another Democratic president would have an easier time walking away from such attacks. The Clintons will be compelled to answer them. ... The question for Democrats is how much of this friction they will want in the machine in the next Democratic administration.

Where Democrats come down on this question is very important to Barack Obama, who is trying to use Bill Clinton to paint Hillary as a woman of the past. Talking about Clinton, Obama said the country needed to move past the "harsh partisanship and old arguments."

Frances Fox Piven on "The Vanishing American Left"

From Dissent :By Frances Fox Piven

...On the other side, the political bulwarks of the New Deal–Great Society era are weakened, in part simply by ongoing changes in the American economy. The mass-production industries are shrinking, and the unions that emerged from them are on the ropes. The working-class communities once nourished by jobs in nearby factories and mills are unraveling, weakened from within by the influence of television, and from without by suburbanization and dispersal. The Democratic Party, once it had been shorn of its southern wing in punishment for caving in to civil rights demands, might indeed have become something like a working-class party. Instead, it is penetrated, and its messages diluted, by the influence of big money and by the compromises promoted by the Democratic Leadership Council.

ALL THIS IS TRUE, and I suppose it is what is meant by the vanishing American left. Still, I understand the left as a constellation of political forces dedicated to greater social equality—of material goods, of respect, of cultural recognition, and of political access and influence. Understood in this way, there are many lefts. If the New Deal Left saw the working class as its vanguard and the workplace as its context for organizing, other lefts identify different vanguards, organize in different institutional contexts, and advance different ideas and programs....

THE OLD NEW DEAL LEFT, and indeed the labor movements spawned across the globe by industrial capitalism, were galvanized by a dream of power through the mass strike. Organized workers could shut it down, and because they could, they had the power to transform society. The variegated contemporary left has not yet settled on a comparably electrifying idea. Still, the awesome possibilities are there in the complex and fragile organization of a global political economy that depends on the widespread cooperation of ordinary people everywhere. We may look back on these years to see not the vanishing left of the New Deal but the birth of a new era of left power made possible by the institutions of a complex global society.

Todd Gitlin on Democratic Dilemmas

Democratic Dilemmas... :From Dissent: By Todd Gitlin

The better part of wisdom, as we try to dig out of the Bush disaster, is to think of the Democratic Party as the ensemble of all those who, whether they belong to liberal movements or not, understand that the right-wing Republican Party is the enemy of everything they hope for. If they want a sustainable energy policy and a foreign policy that works better than raw military power; if they want health care and decent wages; if they want some right to abortion (and even to contraception); if they take their Christianity from the Sermon on the Mount and not from Pat Robertson or if they’re steadfastly secular; if they want a balanced budget or don’t care about that so much, then they must evict the Republicans from the seats of power. If the Democrats are to investigate the executive crimes, lies, malfeasances, abuses of power, and thunderous errors of recent years, they must isolate the Republicans as the party of the radical right and embrace the Democrats as the party of everyone else.

FOR THE HARD, plain, unblinkable evidence is that, for the foreseeable future, there are not enough liberals to elect a majority party; that is, a party capable of governing, or playing a sizable part in governing, or even effectively opposing the ruling party. As William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck put it in their 2005 article “The Politics of Polarization” (www.third-way.com), “When American politics turns into a shootout between liberals and conservatives, conservatives almost always win.” The exceptions consist of the very bluest states. But there aren’t enough of those to win back either the Senate or the House, let alone the presidency, in 2008. ...

In 1953, the barb-tongued Bertolt Brecht sarcastically urged the East German government to dissolve the people and elect another one. In 2003, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld reminded us that you fight a war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had. If I may take a moment out for a chuckle, Democrats and progressives have to learn to cross Brecht with Rumsfeld and conclude that you fight for political power with the people you have, not the ones you wish you had. ...

Corruption issue besets House Democrats, again

From csmonitor.com:

The indictment comes at a tough time for Democrats. Public assessment of their performance since taking charge of Capitol Hill in January has been worsening, polls show. On Democrats' other big election issue – the war in Iraq – they disappointed antiwar activists last month by approving President Bush's war-funding request for this fiscal year.

'The Jefferson case was much less important to Democrats when they were in the minority,' says Julian Zelizer, a congressional historian at Princeton University in New Jersey. 'Coming after a watered-down ethics bill, the story is about failing to reform a system they promised to change.'

'For those frustrated on Iraq as well, it becomes part of an ongoing story on whether the Democrats can follow through on what they promised.

Are the Democrats Not All Exactly the Same?

From "Joe" at Accidental Blogger: :

Biden thinks the U.S. should use military force to stop the genocide in Darfur. The rest of the Democrats were asked to raise their hands if they agreed with Senator Biden. Clinton refuses to engage in these kinds of 'abstract hypotheticals,' which is understandable, because it's not like she attended Yale Law School or anything where presumably she would have learned how to reason through hypos rather than feeling the need to duck for cover. Obama agreed with Clinton: 'I don't want to raise my hand anymore.'

One and only: The Wise Bard quotes Robert Novak

Murtha's Friends - washingtonpost.com:

Jack Murtha, the maestro of imposing personal preferences on the appropriations process, looks increasingly like an embarrassment to Congress and the Democratic Party. But there is no Democratic will to curb Murtha, one of Speaker Nancy Pelosi's closest associates. Nor are Republicans eager for a crackdown endangering their own earmarkers.

So far as I can tell, Jack Murtha's sole redeeming feature is his military credibility as an opponent of the Iraq War. For that, he deserves both kudos and appreciation.

But this old style pol otherwise exemplifies everything wrong with get along, go along politics as usual, especially on the ethics front. Having nearly been elected House majority leader with Speaker Pelosi's strong support, he is, as Novak suggests (even broken clocks are right twice a day) an acute embarrassment to the Democrats' ethics platform in the last election, and, with the cave-in on funding for the War, a threat to the Party's credibility with its own supporters, not to speak of the wider American public.

It is worth remembering that however critical one may be (and I am) of Newt's 1994 contract on America, the Democratic Congressional majority of the time was corrupt and largely ineffectual (think of its fragmented and disastrous performance on health care reform), and richly deserved to lose, as it did, "big time." Too bad there wasn't a better opponent to take charge. (Ralph, where were you then, when we needed you? Actually, if memory serves, Nader was speaking out...)

Bottom line: Dems, get your act together, and keep your promises to your supporters and the American people! No more politics as usual. Leadership should lead, not be complicit. Insist that Murtha, and other opponents of meaningful political reform, start to behave themselves-- maybe for the first time in their careers.

The Wise Bard does not hew any party line.