season of the bitch

The McCain campaign, in its last throes, has proven itself to be nothing more than the last stinking gasp of the Right for power.

McCain has no message. He simply has people onstage ranting about “the gay” and dropping Muslim names in the vain hope that one will stick enough to carry him into the White House on a tide of fear, blood, and KKK robes. He has cobbled together a campaign from the worst bits of the Bush folks and the lobbyists who he claims to shun, picked a running mate out of a hat because she had a vagina, a special needs baby, and looked good chanting “Drill, baby, drill” in front of a crowd.

He’s latched onto Joe the Plumber, a guy so grasping that he’s already got a PR agent and is standing McCain up at rallies, to buy him some desperately needed working class cred after forgetting how many homes he had and after his party spent twice as much as most people make in a year on his running mate’s wardrobe. Yet Joe the Plumber is just as phony as McCain.

McCain’s doing worse than Bush for three reasons. One is obvious. The economy is crashing around us, and there’s been a Republican in the White House for the past 8 years. Hell, McCain was running ahead of his brand for a while, until the real crisis hit.

Two is that during the debates, when Obama’s numbers really started to rise, McCain looked petulant and sounded condescending and even rude. Americans might want a president they can relate to, but they damn sure don’t want one who talks to ‘em like they’re stupid.

Three is, of course, that McCain has no message. He sold his soul, the one that used to win grudging respect from even the hardest lefties, in the past four years, caving on torture, on troops, on taxes. He has gone from being a soft-line pro-lifer to holding up Justice Alito as a paragon of virtue, gone from a man who lost a primary himself because of race-baiting and fear to a man who uses it and defends it.

I can’t even begin to imagine what a McCain administration would actually look like, other than a full-on charge of all the worst elements in the Republican party–because even more so than Bush, that’ll be who got him elected. The man that many Americans used to respect for standing up to his party will owe more to the racists, the homophobes, the Islamophobes, the pro-birth crowd, than any administration before him.

Nixon claimed that he governed because of a “silent majority.” Reagan won over Democrats left and right with his charm. Even George W. Bush promised to be a “compassionate conservative” (though even now he’s trying to sneak through more deregulation while our backs are turned).

McCain has promised us no such thing. He’s shown us the America that he thinks he governs, and it’s full of people who will lie about being assaulted by a black man, people who think having an Arabic middle name is reason to be lynched, and people who will never see a terrorist attack but who are more afraid of one than of what will happen when they can’t afford health insurance because they’ve suddenly got to pay taxes on it.

Obama has run ad after ad based on his plan, including the other night’s 30 minute ad buy. You might not agree with all of it, but it is out there for you to hear, for you to read. He has offered a vision of a country where we don’t divide ourselves by red and blue, and he has won over states that no Democrat has dreamed of in decades. He has had no ethical scandals, no personal scandals, no steps out of line. He won all three debates.

Let’s face it, if you vote for McCain now, you deserve what you get.

And it might feel like getting fucked with chainsaws.

So I have 8000000000000 things to do right now, but I’m going to take just a moment to comment on something because I think it’s important to note.

The New Yorker’s Obama endorsement makes many excellent points. You should read it. But to my mind, the most important point it made was this one:

Although his opponents have tried to attack him as a man of “mere” words, Obama has returned eloquence to its essential place in American politics. The choice between experience and eloquence is a false one––something that Lincoln, out of office after a single term in Congress, proved in his own campaign of political and national renewal. Obama’s “mere” speeches on everything from the economy and foreign affairs to race have been at the center of his campaign and its success; if he wins, his eloquence will be central to his ability to govern.

See, the presidency is largely a symbolic office. Congress is the body that’s going to have to actually make and pass these tax cuts and health care policies–all the president can do is encourage and sign. One of the reasons I was an early Obama supporter was that he seemed to have a much better grasp of and less warmongering slant on foreign relations. And foreign relations are carried out by, yes, talking. Words. Speeches.

There’s a huge place for performative language in all of this. Timothy Cook outlines this whole process expertly in Governing With the News. The president makes a speech, and policy changes. Need an example? Remember the “Axis of Evil” comment, and how suddenly after that we seem to be dealing with North Korea and Iran increasing their nuclear capacities?

Every time the president makes a speech, it is news. Even now, when the candidates make a speech, it is news. That news gets carried not just to voters, but to other countries and other governments. The reason McCain keeps harping not on Obama’s willingness to go into Pakistan in search of Bin Laden, but his willingness to talk about it, is that he knows that by making a statement the president has to back it up.

A popular president’s speeches could buoy Wall Street just by pledging support; it is a measure of Bush’s lame duckitude that he can’t. Any president can screw foreign policy up majorly just by mistaking the names of countries or leaders; just ask Richard Nixon about Mauritius and Mauritania.

The president has to know when to speak and when to shut up, what to say and what not to say, and yes, be willing to talk to other leaders. Talk doesn’t prevent action, or require some sort of soul-selling to Ahmadinejad like McCain seems to think it does. But it does indeed have an effect on what happens.

So having a president who is a man of “mere” words, as opposed to one who regularly mistakes one country for another (or one Supreme Court Justice for another–ask Justice Breyer if he’s slightly insulted at being confused with Alito this morning) is actually rather important when you think about it.

And after watching those debates, which candidate do YOU think is more likely to shoot himself in the foot while attempting diplomacy, whether it’s face to face or through the press?

I wrote this tonight:

Scared to Debate?

John McCain has proposed “suspending” the campaign and cancelling Friday’s scheduled debate to “concentrate on the economy.”

Problem is, he’s spent almost no time doing his job as a Senator since the campaign started.

Chris Dodd, on the Rachel Maddow Show, said he hadn’t seen “hide nor hair” of John McCain while Congress has been busy trying to agree on a bailout plan to the tune of some $700 billion dollars. McCain has spent the least amount of time in the Senate, a job he is still collecting a taxpayer-footed paycheck for, of anyone outside of Tim Johnson, who nearly died last year.

Among the things McCain did not find important enough to suspend his campaigning for: the Webb GI bill, which was the biggest chunk of “Support the Troops” legislation to make it through Congress this year. Also, the economic stimulus package, which fell one vote short of the 60 votes necessary to stop debate. READ THE REST

I also have had some fun with Tumblr. And of course, Twitter (available in sidebar).

It seems interesting to me that many people have just blown off Palin as a throwaway choice, a stupid move, a bad idea for McCain that will obviously backfire. It also amuses me to see everyone trying to decide if Palin was a sop to the right or a play for Clinton voters, and I see very little acknowledgement of the biggest thing about her: she’s BOTH.

She’s a smart, pretty, accomplished woman that most of us would like if her political views weren’t so damn odious. Moreover, she’s bound to attract the kind of sexist media attention that got a lot of the Clinton base so angry (and so convinced that Obama stole something from them).

She is likable in a way McCain is not.

And yes, she believes in all the things that most of us despise about the Christian Right, and is an oil junkie to boot. So really, while McCain may well have undercut his best argument, he’s also played to both areas of his base–the social conservatives and the oilmen–and at the same time made an attempt to reach out to the gender-essentialist wing of the Clinton fanbase.

I agree with many people that yes, McCain is “doubling down” here, taking a risk on an unvetted candidate with two years of high-level political experience. He’s undercutting his main anti-Obama argument for identity politics and hoping identity politics works because he may well think that Americans only vote that way. He’s condescending, and taking a huge risk.

But to laugh off Sarah Palin because she’s unvetted and inexperienced is, as M. LeBlanc noted, is to assume once again that Republican strategists are stupid. They aren’t. If they were so damn stupid, they wouldn’t have had power for all of my lifetime except the Clinton years, and let’s face it, the Clinton years weren’t bastions of progressive activism either.

Never underestimate your opponent.

McCain may well have shot himself in the foot–Palin could say something dumb (dumber than “what does the VP do all day?” which, well–can YOU answer that? I mean, in Cheney’s case I assume it involves lots of devilish cackling and roasting little babies alive, but…) or the scandal could blow up in her face.

But it could also have the opposite effect–energizing the religious base AND attracting just enough PUMA-types to swing the election his way.

I don’t know if there’s been a case in which the VP choice actually swung an election for a candidate. I know there have been times where they hurt a candidate–McGovern comes to mind, and maybe even Gore (don’t we all wish we’d known what an ass Lieberman would’ve become?). I guess we’ll have to see.

Up at GlobalComment, thanks to Natalia.

John McCain waited until after Barack Obama’s speech to make a superbly-timed announcement of his vice-presidential pick.

Unfortunately for him, he undermined what were his best arguments against Obama with that choice.

Sarah Palin is the first-term governor of Alaska, a large, oil-rich state with a small population, and she’s even younger than Obama. Her only political experience before beating the previous Republican governor, Frank Murkowski, in a primary in 2006 was being mayor of Walsilla.

Palin is a mother of five, including one son who’s off to Iraq and another, just born, with Down syndrome. She is staunchly pro-life and considered a Christian conservative, but, rather obviously, is a high-profile working mother.

She campaigned on ethics reform and is considered (much like McCain) a party maverick. She is also seen as a break from ethically-challenged Alaska Republicans like Senator Ted Stevens. However, Palin is under investigation herself for possibly having abused her office to get her former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, fired from his job as a state trooper, according to the Wall Street Journal. She supports drilling as energy policy, and her husband is a longtime BP employee, but he’s a blue-collar type. Palin has also threatened to evict ExxonMobil and its partners from their drilling rights to publicly held oilfields.

This woman is quite a contradiction, seen at once as a sop to the religious right who have not quite come around to McCain and as outreach to disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters who value biological sex over a record on the issues.  Read the rest

me.

John McCain. (Thanks, Sondra! You rule. you have a blog you want me to link?)

Well, really, Keith Olbermann made me laugh.

It’s been a bit since I’ve done this, since I’ve been unholy busy, but here it is.

1. La Lubu has a comment on Octo’s Feministe post that says a lot of what I was trying to say below far better than I did. Octo also linked to this post at La Lubu’s blog that, well, yeah. Because without the basics, we can’t do any of it.

2. And Octo yet again has a thought-provoking post, this time on individualism. She’s seriously on a roll over there, and instead of freaking out because she’s violating lefty dogma, take a minute to think about it. Then think about what La Lubu said. Then…synthesize?

3. Hilzoy on why John McCain gets scarier every day.

4. A post at Racialicious about the true purpose of satire.

5. Emily about the latest round of trans wars (do we really still have to have this discussion, people?) but more importantly, again: A woman is dead, and her killer got off.

6. Debi has a round-up of things you can DO. She has lots of other goodness, too, including a big kiss-my-ass to everyone who’s treating her like a wayward child. Rock on, Debi. And thanks for the Arcade Fire.

7. The Jaded Hippy actually went to see Tropic Thunder to tell us all about it. Frankly, no matter how much Robert Downey, Jr.  was involved, I wouldn’t have been interested in that movie before I heard anything about protests about its racism and ableism. And she’s aware that she’s white and able-bodied. Something to think about, especially in terms of the successful-satire post above.

8. Finally, I’m stealing this quote from Pop Feminist.

“We have lost the relative strength and security that the old moral codes guaranteed our loves either by forbidding them or determining their limits. Under the crossfire of gynecological surgery rooms and television screens, we have buried love within shame for the benefit of pleasure, desire, if not revolution, evolution, planning, management–hence for the benefit of Politics. Until we discover under the rubble of those ideological structures — which are nevertheless ambitious, often exorbitant, sometimes altruistic–that they were extravagant or shy attempts intended to quench a thirst for love. To recognize this does not amount to a modest withdrawal, it is perhaps to confess to a grandiose pretension. Love is the time and space in which ‘I’ assumes the right to be extraordinary. Sovereign yet not individual. Divisible, lost, annihilated; but also, and through imaginary fusion with the loved one, equal to the infinite space of superhuman psychism. Paranoid? I am, in love, at the zenith of subjectivity.”

- Julia Kristeva (1987)

You ain’t president yet. And after seeing your incredibly shortsighted response to the crisis in Georgia, I hope more than ever that you never will be.

Read This. (h/t LGM)

I must confess that McCain has crept into an elite group of assholes who cause me to turn the radio volume down when they are on NPR. Most of this campaign season, I’ve had no problem with listening, but after the third replay of his asinine declaration that “I know I speak for all Americans, when I say we are all Georgians now” or something of that ilk (I know both clauses there came out of his mouth, but I’m not sure which order, so don’t kill me), I can’t take it anymore.

Anyone who supported or supports now the Iraq war has precisely zero moral high ground to discuss the territorial integrity of sovereign nations. Absolutely none. And the fact that McCain’s attempt to look tough (and against Russia, too, to add to his salivating dream of becoming the Second Coming of Reagan) appears, as noted in the linked post, to actually be affecting Bush’s policy…well, let’s hope that Condi has more sense than her bosses, shall we?

Because I mean really, if we’re bound and determined that the “international community” should be doing something to “punish” Russia, well, what should the international community do to us?

And I think I’d rather, if I’m going to be unilaterally assumed by a presidential candidate to be in solidarity with another nation I’ve never been to and that most people couldn’t find on a map, that it be Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Or Sudan. Y’know, places we might actually be able to help.

But, well, they’re WHITE people in Georgia, right? And not Muslims? (Please excuse my sarcasm. It’s early and I have a vicious head cold.)

But can you imagine how McCain would react if Obama perhaps declared his solidarity with Iraqis, or Sudanese?

Oh yeah, and Natalia has more.

Which presidential candidate do you think was running that ad?

Nope, the other one. McCain. Running an ad in which he claims to have stood up to the president and led the fight on global warming. Yeah.

Political ads are just funny. Does anyone actually believe them? It seems so farfetched.

But I guess most of the world isn’t geeks like me.

Such a big geek that I blog from my blackberry while waiting for my car repair.