Will they drink the Koolaid?

The media, which is to say Big Business seems to be doing its damndest to make Hillary Inc. seem inevitable, as no doubt is Terry MacAwful's plan. I have been trying to ignore politics and keep reminding myself that the front runner Last time was dead in the water before New Hampshire and we really won't know until the votes start coming in who they will actually be for. But it does seem like enough Democrats may drink the Koolaid that we will end up following Hillary off a cliff giving us 4 or 8 more years of who knows what awfullness.

But while I have been ignoring political news and blogs, our carnival on The Biggest Obstacle To Electing The Right Presidential Candidate has had a number of entries:


CapitaL eLs

It's Not Ron Paul and It's Not Hillary Clinton

capitalels.blogspot.com/2007/11/its-not-ron-paul-and-its-not-hillary.html


Techfun

Political Gossip Clouds The Issues

blog.techfun.org/political-gossip-clouds-the-issues


What's Wrong Around Us?

wherein Tiffany decries the media culture and voter ignorance


whatswrongaroundus.blogspot.com/2007/11/biggest-obstacle-to-electing-right....

The Thin Red Line

I reply to Tiffany's post

blog.libdrone.org/2007/11/librarians-as-anti-dote-for-media.html

Catholic Inside

Is "voting your faith" even a meaningful concept in today's political climate?

catholicinside.blogspot.com/2007/11/voting-your-faith-is-it-possible-in.htm...

Techfun

Single issue voters are a big part of the problem. This is partly in response to Tiffany's "Too many voters" point.

blog.techfun.org/sacrifice-your-issues

Along the Grey Path

Where have all the investigative journalists gone?

greytheory.blogspot.com/2007/11/he-who-asks-questions-answers-questions.htm...

Sub Lumen

A very in depth analysis of the question

www.sublumen.com/2007/11/biggest-obstacle-to-electing-right.html


After much discussion and much consideration, it has been decided to continue the carnival through the end of the year and plan to do publicity in early January. So if you have a political or personal blog, please do a post with Your take on The Biggest Obstacle and add your link to the thread or email it to me-- libdrone at gmail dot com.

It's Not Ron Paul and It's Not Hillary Clinton

When rockstories suggested we try something different and each blog our own take on

The Biggest Obstacle To Electing The Right Presidential Candidate

I figured this would be another slam-dunk kind of post to write. My first temptation of course is to name Ron Paul as the biggest obstacle. (Ron Paul is THE crack cocaine for authors of political blogs these days; the mere inclusion of the man's name in a post title practically guarantees a blogger a slew of new readers, a bunch of Diggs and a slew of comments both on the blog itself and on Digg and I am as susceptible as the next hack to the temptation to "give 'em what they want" and draw all those eyeballs to my words and ads.) But try as I might, I can not fashion a cogent argument that the Gentleman from Texas is any obstacle at all. America is not going to elect a Libertarian running as a Republican, no matter how many genuinely committed and Internet savvy supporters he can muster.

IMHO, the real effect of the Ron Paul campaign will be the political awakening and activation of those supporters, some of whom will no doubt go on to become involved with other more successful campaigns and perhaps become political players in their own right, in the manner of several currently prominent liberal bloggers who got their starts in the Howard Dean campaign.

My second thought was to cast Hillary Clinton as the biggest obstacle to electing the right President. I quite agree with techfun who has argued that electing Hillary would insure we have another four or eight years of deeply divided government that is primarily focused on political in-fighting and incapable of effectively addressing the myriad real problems we face as a nation. And I yield to no one in the depth and strength of my disdain for Mrs. Clinton. But if I am to be honest, I do not believe that Hillary is electable, and for all the copy she generates and all of the passions she arouses, both negative and positive, I can't honestly say I believe that Hillary is our biggest problem. (She is at most a symptom of the problem or obstacle rather than the obstacle itself.)

So having ruled out the easy and obvious answers, I'm forced to look deeper. I gaze into the mirror over the sink in my bathroom and realize the obstacle is staring me back in the face. The real obstacle to electing the right President lies with the citizens who will cast their votes this week next year rather than with any of the candidates they will blacken an oval or pull a lever for. The real obstacle I believe is that we Americans by and large have lost the ability to speak with and more importantly Listen To people we disagree with.

Whether we listen to Rush Limbaugh or Air America, watch Fox News or PBS, read The Nation or The New Republic and get our political news and world view from Red State or daily Kos, most of our political intelligentsia preach only to the choir and most Americans who care about politics pay attention mostly or exclusively to media (both old and new) that reinforce and re-affirm their convictions and beliefs and actively urge, if not outright require, that they see their political opponents only as enemies, to be fought and battled against and vanquished rather than as fellow citizens who care as deeply as they do about the country we all share and claim to love and want what's best for.

Whether Ron Paul or Hillary Clinton (or any of the other candidates) would make a great President or a terrible President is a question for another debate. But to my thinking it really isn't debatable that we will never be able to agree upon and elect the Right President until we learn again to talk civilly and substantively with people we strongly disagree with and learn to see again that all of us-- liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, red state-ers or blue-- are first and foremost Americans. Our inability to see that and use it as a starting point for trying to understand each other and find a common ground we can share is the biggest obstacle to electing the right Presidential candidate.

Al-Jazeera

Amid the universal refusal by all of the candidates we are told are "electable" to commit to ending the Iraq War debacle as a solid majority of Americans want them to do and the daily positioning and finger pointing and scandal du jour that has too often dominated so much political discourse of late, including I have to admit at times my own, that sometimes those of us who think and write politics lose sight of big picture issues.

Like the fact that 9/11 was caused by Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and not by Iraq and Saddam Hussein. And that the Arab world remains a very troubled and troubling place and one which we Americans seem to pay insufficient attention to, busy as we are desparately defending civil liberties, watching our jobs and incomes off-shored and just trying to survive in Fortress America that the flurry of attention once gained by the then upstart Arabic cable news network Al-Jazeera has largely faded and much foreign affairs coverage related mostly to the posturing of politicians in Washington and Arab global neighbors ignored or treated as a football in the politicos' own complicated game plans.

Which made this 2005 history of the Al-Jazeera news channel that passed under my scanner today timely. A reminder that while we are making a mess of things in Iraq we have made pitifully little progress at coming to understand the huge chunk of the world for whom Al-Jazeera is a primary source of information, a base understanding which I believe is pre-requisite to any serious discussion of addressing the terrorism issue, which would benefit enormously by losing the hyperbolic "War" rhetoric and a shift to focus on effective law enforcement, reasonable rather than excessive security measures, and a serious effort at brokering a workable and lasting peace among the the diverse peoples of the Arabic world and their global neighbors.

It is worth pointing out that had the security measures that were in place and on the books on 9/11/2001 actually been followed, none of the four hijackings would have been successful. The fact that boarding an airplane is now very nearly as invasive and unpleasant an experience as being booked in to jail has made us no safer than had we merely followed the procedures we already had in place. But I will likely be accused of treason for saying so, and never mind that it is an obvious fact.

If you do not speak Arabic, there is an English language version of Al-Jazeera, although I was unable to find specifics about cable/satellite system availability and pricing. There is also an English language version of Al-Jazeera online. It is worth checking out from time to time so as to be aware of how global events are perceived and reported in the Arabic world. For similar reasons I also strongly recommend reading news of the United States in the International coverage of the UK Guardian.

The Corpse Is Still Breathing

To hear the talk around the political blogosphere today you'd think that Barrack Obama had dropped out of the Presidential race and conceded the nomination to Hillary. The postmortems are thick on the ground though a quick check of the Obama 08 site suggests that the campaign is still in business.

Perhaps today's best post comes from blogger Kyle E. Moore on the blog Comments from Left Field. Why Obama Won't Win is an in-depth analysis of the Democratic Presidential Primary. Moore argues that Obama's gift for seeking consensus, finding middle ground and finding ways to work with political opponents would make him an ideal general election candidate with an excellent chance of beating any of the Republicans in November. Unfortunately, Moore also believes that Barrack has zero percent chance of getting the nomination since the partisans who vote in Democratic primaries are furious after 7 years of being ignored and will be hungry for red meat and not conciliation. I honestly don't know how much credence to give this theory, but if Moore is correct Obama is toast.

Blogger Talk Left is also quite pessimistic about Obama, though for very different reasons. The Problem With Obama, according to this blogger is that he is not a fighter. He

refuses to fight for Democratic and progressive values. He holds them of course. But he does not fight for them. He believes in finding "common ground" and, in the process, simply does not fight. He does not work to persuade the persuadable. As a politician fighting for issues, he fails (while perhaps succeeding in burnishing his own image.) If you are committed to Obama, you can be pleased with his political style. If you are committed to Democratic and progressive values, I think you can not be satisfied.

That's a pretty strong condemnation and one I find hard to rebut. And finally, just one more example of today's eulogizing for Barrack, Mike Lux in an excellent diary at Open Left argues the problem with the campaign is that a unique candidate with a great message and new campaigning style is being badly managed by the same old hapless Democratic campaign managers who are So intently running the same old hapless Democratic campaign that they completely fail to utilize their candidate's assets and abilities.

I think I would agree with Lux and Talk Left that Obama desperately needs better management and a campaign that comes out swinging against Hillary, Inc. But I fear that Mr. Moore's analysis is the one that will prevail-- Barrack is just too conciliatory to win the Democratic primary this time out.

Touching The Third Rail

My post yesterday on the War On Drugs, its casualties and its existence as a third rail in American politics, an issue politicians can not Even discuss without being painted as horribly soft on crime and rendered instantly unelectable was quite an experience for me. 62 Diggs, 150 new unique visitors many of whom stuck around and read more than one of my essays. And then there were the really great comments.

In comments here and on Blog Catalog, I suggested to rockstories that it sounded as though she had written a very different post with the same title I'd used. And now she has. I urge you to go and read This Isn't My Post which I would have titled Touching The Third Rail.

No Joking, Run Stephen Run!

Forget about Ron Paul and Hillary Clinton. Forget about Barrack Obama and Rudy Giuliani. The political blogosphere is completely ABUZZ about the real and unreal Presidential candidacy of Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert, who may or may not be running as both a Republican AND a Democrat in the South Carolina Presidential Primary Election and whose campaign/non-campaign may or may not be illegal under FERC rules.

And I am wondering why anyone is surprised. While Comedy Central is not the Viacom division that has "The News more Americans trust" as its slogan Colbert and his Daily Show counterpart Jon Stewart are about the only people on television talking about politics and serious issues that have Any real credibility left with the American people. So I enthusiastically welcome Colbert to the race and hope those enthusiastic supporters DO move beyond freeping online polls and actualy get his name on the ballot and run to win.

With our recent history of hiring has been movie actors for the job, an up and comer from a hit show couldn't fare any worse in the Oval Office. And if somebody can assure me he isn't married to an astrologer I will be sold.

Ron Paul-- Will He Get Zapped by WOD Third Rail?

I touched on the subject of immigration reform in the post on Social Security so I had figured to do a follow up post on immigration, and looked up Ron Paul's position, I found that I completely agreed with everything he said. That does increase his palatability in the general but does not make for an interesting blog post. Ditto Ron Paul's position on Iraq. With over 70% of Americans wanting to bring our troops home, Paul's position is for once positively Mainstream.

And then I read Ron Paul's position on the War On Drugs. And again I agreed, but this issue is, imho, meatier for a real discussion on the theoretical Hillary vs Paul in November question.

The War On (some) Drugs (users) has been a third rail in American politics since Jimmy Carter pledged on the trail to de-criminalize marijuana and found the issue untouchable once he got to Washington. And while it is widely acknowledged by sensible people that the United States' War On Drugs has been a costly failure that has caused far more harm than it has prevented, no politician has ever been willing to go Near this issue.

It's an issue I feel strongly about. Just last night I was sitting at a restaurant table and the name of an old friend who has moved away came up and we recalled how horrible it was when her son was murdered. Her son had been a heroin addict. He had gotten himself clean and had been off the junk for over two years when he was killed soon before he was scheduled to testify against his dealer, which he had been more or less forced to do to keep his own hide out of jail. Let's be clear here. This bright, handsome young man did not die because of drugs. He died because of Prohibition.

My own cousin, who was a number of years younger than me, and who had been a kind of little brother to me at family gatherings through the years died of a drug overdose. And I always felt strongly that if it were not for prohibition, his death would likely have been avoided. Drugs purchased pharmaceutically of a specific and known strength and dosage are much less dangerous than street drugs that may be tainted or 'cut' with who knows what and if unexpectedly purer than expected can cause an accidental overdose. In any case, my argument that my cousin was Not well served by our present system seems incontrovertible, even to those who would argue that in this case it was drug abuse and not Prohibition that killed my sweet, funny cousin.

A part of me is thrilled to see that Ron Paul agrees with me about ending this horrid and destructive 'war' that we will never win and which is largely fought as a cash cow for the prison industrial complex (one of the few true growth industries in Bush America) just as Iraq is primarily a cash cow for the Halliburton wing of the Republican party, regardless of the justification du jour for our misadventure there.

But another part of me strongly suspects that if and when the media comes to feel that they can Not continue to largely ignore Ron Paul they will attack him hard with the soft on drugs, soft on crime meme that the Rove wing of the Republican party often uses successfully against politicians who defy the playbook. And the fact that the Rove wing would be operating via Terry McAwful and the Hillary campaign should not surprise anyone who's been paying attention.

So my questions are-- how long can Ron Paul stay under the media radar on the WOD Third Rail and is there any way he can survive the attack when This story gets its 15 minutes of fame?