Burnin’

Rocky Mountain News asked Ralph Nader, an independent candidate for President, if Barack Obama is any different than Democrats he has criticized in the past, considering Obama’s pledge to reject campaign contributions from registered lobbyists.

Nader’s response is on the shocking side, which makes sense as a media strategy. Although I suspect this is how Nader really thinks and really talks, no matter who might be listening.

“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a Democratic presidential candidate. He’s half African-American,” Nader said. “Whether that will make any difference, I don’t know. I haven’t heard him have a strong crackdown on economic exploitation in the ghettos. Payday loans, predatory lending, asbestos, lead. What’s keeping him from doing that? Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn’t want to appear like Jesse Jackson? We’ll see all that play out in the next few months and if he gets elected afterwards.”

“I mean, first of all, the number one thing that a black American politician aspiring to the presidency should be is to candidly describe the plight of the poor, especially in the inner cities and the rural areas, and have a very detailed platform about how the poor is going to be defended by the law, is going to be protected by the law, and is going to be liberated by the law,” Nader said. “Haven’t heard a thing.”

“He wants to show that he is not a threatening . . . another politically threatening African-American politician,” Nader said. “He wants to appeal to white guilt. You appeal to white guilt not by coming on as black is beautiful, black is powerful. Basically he’s coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it’s corporate or whether it’s simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up.”

I love that we have someone, anyone, willing to speak truth to power. Doing so is heroic in these times. It might not be welcome, or even all that smart, politically or otherwise, but still I respect that Nader is doing it. He’s a man of action and he would like to see some people in D.C. snap to attention, as improbable as that eventuality seems.

On a totally unrelated note, I wish Nader had some sharper looking creative. Obama really has the graphic designers in his camp.

Poster courtesy of Changethethought

Speaking at a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida yesterday, Barack Obama said, “It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid.”

“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

If we’re lucky, the establishment has a right to be afraid. But not of Obama’s blackness, or his age. His message of change is positive for the people, but it could mean an upset apple cart for arms dealers, oil companies and their ilk. We all know they’re going to fight tooth and nail to protect their interests. It’s the American way, as sure as exposing the bastards is the American way.

[via Reuters]

Ken Brociner, writing in In These Times, claims an Obama presidency would look a little too much like Bill Clinton’s to please progressives.

The Democratic presidential candidate who can most help progressives bring our vision of transformative change into sharper focus is a man who ran for president 36 years ago. By looking back to the unfulfilled promise of George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign, we can learn some valuable lessons for the long journey ahead.

For starters, we can see what a genuinely transformative political program looks like. McGovern’s platform was nothing less than visionary. In fact, McGovern was the most progressive major party candidate for president in American history.

In 1972 McGovern ran on a platform that not only called for an immediate end to U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam (on Inauguration Day!), the senator from South Dakota also proposed an “alternative military budget” that included deep cuts in military spending - with the bulk of the savings going toward efforts to end poverty and fund programs that would guarantee a decent paying job to every American who wanted to work.

Nixon also handed McGovern his backside. Maybe Obama is a more practical candidate. Clinton, as we know now, was too practical. His desire to win at all costs pushed the Dems too far to the right, a move the party is still struggling to come to grips with.

Hillary’s offering keeps the Dems in the middle. Obama moves them to the left and the nation with it. But not far enough left too motivate transformative change. When you look at the world today, could it be any clearer that transformative change is exactly what’s needed, and quick? Perhaps, Obama intends to pull a “W”. Maybe once elected, he will let his more radical self out to play.

Now that Barack Obama is the Democrat Party’s “presumtive nominee”, it’s time to address the real roadblocks he’s going to face in the general election.

According to The Washington Post, (and my own observations) racial hatred is still commonplace in America.

For all the hope and excitement Obama’s candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed — and unreported — this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They’ve been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they’ve endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can’t fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: “It wasn’t pretty.” She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn’t possibly vote for Obama and concluded: “Hang that darky from a tree!”

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across “a lot of racism” when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: “White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people.”

Naturally, Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive. But let’s be brutally honest, we all know people at work, at church or in our families who harbor racist views.

Once the Republican hate machine starts running commercials that paint Obama and his wife as radical, uppity blacks, moderates are going to move toward McCain and in all likelihood those moderates in working class states like Pennsylvania and Ohio will deliver the White House to the Grand Old Party, once again. I’d like to be wrong, but that’s how I see it unfolding.

Hill’s spitting fire in Ohio. The former First Lady doesn’t like people to criticize her. You’d think she’d be used to it by now, but maybe it’s not something one gets used to.

This map shows that the population of New York City is equal to the population of four western states and Maine.

[via very small array]

[UPDATE] I also like these maps of Manhattan neighborhoods.

With both candidates claiming victory, I had to click through several sources today to get a sense for last night’s winner on the Democrat side. Finally, I found this MSNBC report which says, “it looks like Obama, by the narrowest of margins, won last night’s delegate hunt. By our estimates, he picked up 840 to 849 delegates versus 829-838 for Clinton; the Obama camp projects winning by nine delegates (845-836). He also won more states (13 to Clinton’s eight; New Mexico is still outstanding), although she won the most populous ones (California and New York).”

Yet, Clinton maintains a slight delegate lead going in to the next round of primaries.

2025 delegates are needed to be nominated.

[UPDATE] The troubling thing about the race being this close is the fact that Democratic Party super-delegates will likely decide the nominee. Katrina vanden Heuvel of The Nation says the Democratic Party uses an antiquated and anti-democratic nominating system that includes 842 “super-delegates” - un-pledged party leaders not chosen by the voters, free to support the candidate of their choice, and who comprise more than forty percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination.

In a clear attempt to protect the party establishment, this undemocratic infrastructure was created following George McGovern’s landslide defeat in 1972. It was designed to prevent a nominee who was “out of sync with the rest of the party,” Northeastern University political scientist William Mayer told MSNBC.

Fall Saturdays in South Carolina are known for big hits and rough play. But not in January. January is more genteel. Except for yesterday. Yesterday, as the votes were counted in the Presidential primary, all the sporting analogies came out.

John O’Connor at The State got in on the action with a racing allusion.

Barack Obama left the Democratic field in his red clay dust Saturday, easily winning South Carolina’s first-in-the-South Democratic presidential primary.

Second place finisher, Hillary Clinton jetted off to Nashville, wanting to put South Carolina behind her, quick like. Despite his third place finish in the state he won four years ago, John Edwards pledged to continue to fight for those with no health insurance, the poor and those worried about their jobs.

“Your voice will be heard in America and it will be heard in this campaign,” Edwards said.

Obama supporters, such as former Gov. Jim Hodges, said the margin of victory bodes well for later states. Obama’s win, he said, cannot be written off as Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 S.C. caucus victories were. Sadly, for Bill Clinton, he did suggest just that yesterday afternoon, mid-route.

“It was a first round knockout,” Hodges said. “(Jackson) didn’t win like this. Nobody’s won like this.”

BONUS CLICK: Obama’s victory speech from Columbia, SC.

Tomorrow is the South Carolina Democrat primary. I have the opportunity, along with many other citizens, to vote for the Palmetto State’s native son, John Edwards. His daddy worked in the mill. You might have heard.

It certainly does not appear that he’ll be elected President, but Edwards would make a great VP or Attorney General, in my opinion. So, a vote for Edwards tomorrow is a vote to keep him in the race, where he can win delegates and wield some bargaining power as the field heads to the nominating convention.

I like Obama too, but I don’t buy that he’s a real change agent. I see him as more of a player, a careerist, willing to say and do what needs to be done to get ahead. In other words, he’s like the Clintons.

Of course, I’d prefer to cast my ballot for Cleveland’s radical dreamer, Dennis Kucinich, but sadly he withdrew from the race the other day.

A political reporter showed up for work yesterday. His name is Glen Johnson and he works for Associated Press. While covering the Mitt Romney for President campaign, Johnson tripped up the candidate, not with a line of questioning, but with a direct challenge as to the truth in a Romney claim.

Romney said he didn’t have any Washington lobbyists running his campaign (the presumption being that others do). Johnson begged to differ. “That is not true. Ron Kaufman is a lobbyist,” said Johnson. The fact that he did so publicly inside a Staples store in Columbia, South Carolina with cameras rolling, confounded the man who would be President. And it angered his travelling press secretary, Eric Ferhnstrom, who scolded Johnson repeatedly, saying, “Don’t get argumentative with the candidate.”

Ferhnstrom’s response is maddening and outrageous. What would Mencken say?

How about, don’t lie to the press unless you want everyone to know about it.