Just a Regular Old Hockey Mom: running for vice prezI’m trying to make sense of the Republican convention.  I’m also trying to rise above the righteousness I see on both sides and put myself in someone else’s shoes, but I sort of feel like Cinderella’s step sister.

Two nights ago, I had dinner with some family friends and we started discussing the election.  Barry, a 60-something, Jewish, Republican, lawyer man said to the entire group, which included four Democratic women around my age of 40, “I bet you all are happy McCain chose a woman.”

My sister-in-law, Lisa, who is also a lawyer, mouthed, “You gotta be f**king kidding,” and I thought he was.  But he wasn’t.  He loves Sarah Palin.  Thinks she’s feisty and thought she showed the world how much she knows about oil.

Lisa said, “How can you agree with off-shore drilling?”

Barry said, “She’s from Alaska, she knows her oil,” and it became clear to me why McCain picked this unknown, right-wing, woman Senator from Alaska.  Because people are so afraid of the rising cost of gas and they think she knows her oil.  

Barry didn’t respond to Lisa’s question.  He went off on Obama, calling him Obuma, I think as a way of saying he’s a bum, but it’s hard to say because his logic was impossible for me to follow.  It wasn’t a conversation, not even a back and forth.  Barry kept cutting us off and spewing his own version of the facts, which seemed so different from ours.  

Lisa said, “Why aren’t you listening to a thing we’re saying?”  

He didn’t answer.  He wasn’t listening.  

I tried to think about what was going on for Barry.  Maybe he felt out numbered?  Maybe he felt insecure about his political ideas?  Or maybe he was just a pit-bull without the lipstick?

This has been my experience of the current political debate: It’s like half the country speaks Red and the other half Blue and even if they’re in the same room talking to each other, neither side can understand the other.

I’m trying, but I don’t speak Red.  

I watched the Republican Convention.  The commentators on Fox News told us before Sarah Palin began that she was going to win us over with her "every-woman" charm and grace.

I thought Palin was a bitch.  I’m sorry to use that sexist term, but she was snarky and condescending and to be fair to our sex, so was Rudy Giuliani.  Palin said, “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”  And then she smirked and the Republicans in the audience laughed.

I felt sick when I saw that.  In my opinion, community organizing should elicit more respect than serving the nation as a soldier at war.  Community organizing is serving the nation peacefully and directly.  Our soldier, Obama, served in the South Side of Chicago, where people had lost their jobs.  He could have joined a corporate law firm and made tons of money for himself, but he didn’t.  

How can Palin mock Obama for serving his country and come off as charming? And how can she put herself out there as a hockey mom?  I don’t think you can be a hockey mom AND run for Vice President when you have a 4-month old baby.  

I said this to Victoria and she said, “Are you saying women with small children can’t have big jobs?”

I said, “I think women can and should do what they want.  As men do.  But I don’t think you can say you’re a hockey mom and pretend to uphold family values, and at the same time neglect your four-month old baby.”

But somehow in the Red language, Sarah Palin is the model mother, even if one of her teen-age daughters is pregnant.  Ooops.  

I can’t understand that.

Andrea Askowitz, author of My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy, guest blogged for Jewcy over the past week.  This is her last post.

Feministing points to rumors that male Democrats are split between voting for Obama and McCain. Given the way The Washington Post has handled comparable news about female Democrats and the Obama/Clinton split, they came up with this totally hilarious mock-up for next week's Post:

Tonight brings the final debate in the Democrats' nominating contest before the crucial primaries of Ohio and Texas, and possibly the final Democratic debate period. Jewcy is here to liveblog all the action. How will Hillary Clinton attempt to knock Barack Obama off his stride? By killing him with kindness? By insinuating that he's a substanceless phony (p.s. his middle name is 'Hussein')? By attacking the media? All three at once?

Palpable tension is in the air; the anticipation is feverish. Check back at 9pm EST, when the proceedings kick off, and don't forget to hit the refresh button.

8:45 (pre-show): Keith Olbermann is warming things up announcing the worrsssst perrssson in the worrrllllld. Here are the crucial questions going in: Will Obama simply try to coast, or will he take the offensive? How far out on a limb will Hillary go trying to bring Obama down? Presumably, if we're going to see the vaunted "kitchen-sink strategy" in action, it'll be in a free media venue like tonight's, since the Clinton campaign can scarcely afford to waste their remaining paid-media funds on aimless scattershot attacks.

Substantively, how much time will be given over to yet more soporific bickering on health care mandates? Hillary Clinton evidently believes this is the big issue where she can put daylight between herself and Obama, but there are a couple of problems with this line of attack. For one thing, David Cutler and Ted Marmor, the two best health care economists of the center-left in this country agree that mandates just don't matter that much for achieving universality (and also, ceteris paribus, more economic freedom is better than less --- not that that's a catchy argument among Democratic primary voters). For another thing, Obama has proven perfectly capable of holding his ground and defending his non-mandate position. Maybe Clinton believes there's a massive constituency that's clamoring not only for universal health care, but also a specific health care mechanism, but she's, um, wrong about that.

8:55: Chuck Todd plays up the interrogative skills of Tim Russert. If your idea of an argument is the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says, rather than a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition, then Todd's got a point.

8:58: Todd says take a drink when Clinton says "shame" or Obama says "we agree." I say take a drink when someone says "mandate" (see above).

9:01: It's another sit-down debate. That usually makes them more reticent to launch attacks.

9:02: No opening statements? Williams launches right in with video of Clinton's schizophrenia strategy.

9:04: It's the Mark-Penn-Hillary right out of the gates. She became very disturbed over the last few days by fliers that have been circulating at least since the beginning of February.

9:05: Clinton again claims Obama's plan would leave people out. It's true; so would Clinton's plan.

9:05: Clinton denies any connection to the Somali-garb photo. Says she would fire anyone who plays that sort of politics. So she'll tell Stephanie Tubbs-Jones to take a hike?

9:07: Obama gets the first mention of "mandate" (and the second and third). Drink!

9:08: Have I mentioned that Obama is substantively right about this? The meta-point: Clinton's sent out plenty of anti-Obama fliers too; Obama hasn't been whingeing about it.

9:09: Clinton points out Obama includes a mandate for children. Is the ability to give consent that difficult a concept to grasp?

9:10: This is getting really nasty, really fast.

9:11: Obama says they agree, but doesn't say "we agree." Drink?

9:12: Like I said, average voters simply aren't equipped to sift through the minutiae of health care policy. The only relevant point is that Obama is holding his own, so the whole thing becomes a wash, and undermines Clinton's claims to be better-versed in policy.

9:13: Clinton goes back to Obama's "mandates for children" again. Honestly, adults can consent to things, children can't, it's not difficult.

9:14: Last point about health care: If you're going to propose a meaningful mandate, you have to propose an enforcement mechanism. Saying you have a mechanism (which Hillary does) is not the same as proposing a mechanism (which she doesn't).

9:16: Ah, onto NAFTA. They're both free-traders and they're going to lie their fucking heads off.

9:17: Awesome, Clinton whinges about the format, references a dumb SNL sketch. There's your kitchen-sink. A handful of boos, well-deserved.

9:18: Clinton claims she's always been an opponent of NAFTA. Um, right. She proposes a "trade timeout." What could be better for an ailing market?

9:20: Obama claims "the net costs of trade agreements can be devastating if they're not properly structured." The last qualifier is broad enough to make almost anything that comes before automatically true. But he's trying to pretend he's not a free-trader.

9:23: Russert confronts Clinton with her litany of pro-NAFTA remarks. She splutters, vows to renegotiate or pull out of NAFTA.

9:24: I'm obviously very biased. Does this look to anyone else like the most desperate effort ever? She can't decide whether to hate Russert, Williams, or Obama the most.

9:26: Russert asks Obama whether to opt out of NAFTA. Obama says they agree again. Drink!

9:27: Obama's really hedging hard on his past support of trade agreements. In the interest of balance and all that.

9:28: Russert's definitely going easier on Obama than Clinton. Much easier. Wow.

9:31: Clinton finally calms down and gives a good answer on the loss of jobs in upstate New York. Not good in the sense that she actually made any informative points, good in the sense that she hits the right keywords and has stopped looking like she's there for a streetfight.

9:33: Williams asks Obama about Clinton's comparison of Obama to Bush on foreign policy experience. Obama: I have better judgment than Clinton; I voted against the war. Kind of a softball --- will she ratchet up the attacks?

9:36: Williams to Clinton: are you prepared to say that Obama is unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief? Clinton: Obama gave a good speech in 2002; there, there.

9:37: Wow, Clinton claims that "Obama threatened to bomb Pakistan." This is getting surreal. Incidentally, the subtext of her argument is that they have precisely the same issue-profile on foreign policy. Even if it were true, how is that a point in her favor?

9:39: Obama rightly points out that he did a lot more than give a speech; points out Clinton criticizes George Bush's judgment while trumpeting her own agreement with George Bush's judgment. Again, I can't look at this without bias, but this seems to be getting more embarrassing by the moment for Clinton.

9:41: Russert asks Obama whether we can make good on his pledge to withdraw from Iraq. He says yes we can.

9:42: Same question to Clinton; only Russert won't let her answer. He asks Clinton whether she would reserve the right to reinvade Iraq in the event of a disaster. She calls bullshit on Russert's Tomclancying. Good for Hillary.

9:45: The next Clinton attack: Obama hasn't held oversight hearings on the NATO commitment in Afghanistan. Obama: I became head of the oversight committee at the beginning of this campaign. That might not play well, but the fact is that any senator campaigning for president is going to be derelict as a senator.

9:47: Williams tries to cut to break, Clinton tries to cut in, Williams cuts her off and cuts to break.

9:49: First break. Maybe this just seems to be going fast and everybody seems to be agitated because I'm trying to watch and blog at the same time. On the other hand, apart from the gang-tackling the Republicans did on Mitt Romney in January, there hasn't been anything remotely like this in this campaign. Hillary is using every question to take a personal swipe at Obama. Will that win votes?

9:51: To be sure, Williams and Russert are doing their best to provoke a fight. To be further sure, nobody made Hillary trot out that stuttering sarcastic attack on "change."

9:54: Okay, the real problem with the kitchen-sink strategy is that it doesn't involve any themes that Clinton hasn't been hitting the whole campaign, she's just getting a lot nastier about them. But these are the very same attacks Obama has been practicing replying to for over a year, and he's gotten pretty good at it. So he comes off looking confident, she comes off looking like Ross Perot ("Can I finish? Can I finish?").

9:57: More economic bullshit from Clinton on interest rates. She is really, dangerously wrong about this.

10:00: Obama: "Clinton said in a previous debate that she voted for a bill, but hoped it wouldn't pass. Generally, when you hope a bill won't pass, you vote against it." Not exactly verbatim. Expect that to get replayed a lot.

10:02: Russert asks why Obama won't keep his word on public financing. Specifically references the McCain attack. Obama comes back pointing out McCain's own public finance waffling (McCain's, unlike Obama's, is probably illegal). Clinton is sketching out a note. I sense an attack coming. From a candidate financed by a rolling international financial crimewave.

10:04: Russert asks Clinton why she won't release her tax returns. Interestingly, Clinton for the first time floats the possibility of releasing her tax returns before becoming the nominee. She will "work towards releasing."

10:06: Just as I was about to point out how slanted Russert has been towards Obama, he tries to grill Obama on (unsolicited) support from Louis Farrakhan. And then tries to stick in the Jeremiah Wright shiv. And somehow brings Israel into it. This is disgraceful.

10:11: After Obama repeatedly repudiates Farrakhan and anti-Semitism, Clinton suggests Obama courts anti-Semitism. And there go the last dredges of her shame. She did just win both the VDARE and the Weekly Standard primary, so, congrats on that. (The subtext here is a Likudnik campaign to pretend Obama is an anti-Israel fifth columnist, based on the fact that he gets advice from --- cue sinister music --- Zbigniew Brzeziński.)

10:23: After Russert decides spreading innuendo about Obama's ties to the Nation of Islam is a good use of his time, there's a relatively pacific discussion of Russia and the succession from Putin. Neither of them knows the successor's name. It's Dmitry Medvedev.

10:26: Both are asked if they'd take back any decision. Clinton says she'd take back her Iraq vote. Yet it's still not a mistake. Obama says he should have stopped the Terri Schiavo circus. He should have.

10:28: Obama pre-empts Clinton and takes the high road: "I've been absolutely honored to be campaigning with Senator Clinton." Sure.

10:32: Clinton's last opportunity to show some class. Will she take it?

"It's been an honor to campaign with Barack Obama?" But, but....

10:34: No buts, she touts her own record. Reasonably decent way to go out, but anybody who watched this disaster needs a shower, stat.

Afterword: The defining moment of the night was the first one, Hillary Clinton citing Tina Fey to launch an attack on the press and the entire nominating process. It only got more petulant and off-putting from there. Give her credit for trying. But it failed, on pretty much every score. And there was the moment in which she insinuated that he's a covert anti-Semite. It's hard to see how this could have gone worse for her.

People tend to perceive the Democrats as unified and the Republicans as trapped in internecine brawling, but in his column today, David Brooks argues that ideological fissures within the Democratic party are bound to erupt if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is the next president. The idea is that the new Democratic president will either withdraw from Iraq, or not, and will either make good on ambitious domestic proposals, or not. Either way, Barack or Hillary will inevitably split the party's liberals and moderates apart.

Well, maybe. Forecasting this far in advance is not a terribly productive exercise. Nobody has any idea what Iraq will be like in a year, and no one is certain what the domestic political and fiscal circumstances in a year's time will portend for the next administration.

Reading Brooks's first paragraph, I was hoping he would push back against the deeply-ingrained conventional wisdom that there are no significant policy differences between the Democratic candidates. Instead, he takes it for granted. Here is why it's wrong.

Continue reading...

Seoul: Anti-war protesters held a candlelight vigil to demand the safe return of kidnapped South Koreans and the withdrawal of South Korean troops from Afghanistan.

• Democrats lead by $100 million. [The Wall Street Journal]
• Secretary of Defense Robert Gates breaks with Bush over Iraq. [The Huffington Post]
• Gawker's Explications on Rupert Murdoch and Dow Jones. [Gawker]
• Ja Rule and Lil' Wayne arrested on gun charges. [New York Daily News]
• Bloomberg bid would help Clinton win Florida. [Political Wire]
• In Memphis, ladies-in-bikinis landscaping company. [MSNBC]
• Juan Cole rounds up Turkish elections, US raid on Iraqi mosque, and Sistani unsafe. [Informed Comment]
• Vigil in Seoul for hostage South Koreans in Afghanistan. [The New York Times]

Babe In The CityThe National Jewish Democratic Council is asking for the removal of Indianapolis Republican Mayoral candidate Bob Parker from the Mayoral race for this comment:

"I personally see Israel going into Iran and Syria in the next couple of months," he said. "I'm sure you realize -- well, most people don't -- millionaire Democrats outnumber millionaire Republicans four to one. It's mainly because of the Jewish faction inside the Democratic Party. Most Jewish people are Democrats and they bring that wealth. My opinion is, if Israel would go into Iran, Democrats will follow that cause. I really do believe that," he is quoted as saying.

Barbara Streisand is sick of Bush and is putting her wallet where her soapbox du jour is.The actress/singer is donating the maximum contribution to each of the three Democrats running in the primary. John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton will all be receiving $2,300 toward their respective campaigns.

Said Babs:

Because I want to see the front-runners have the financial backing they need to be competitive during this process, I’ve decided to make the maximum allowable primary donation to Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama.

Given the fact that the Dems have most of Hollywood in their court, I don't think staying financially competitive should be too much of an issue for the Party.

There are Klingons in the White House. Representative David Wu (D-Oregon) says so.

Makes you wonder what they're smoking in Oregon these days. Or at least, who's writing their speeches.

In a column published yesterday, Slate's Jacob Weisberg characterizes this congressional election's nearly-unprecedented campaign shit-slinging as a "specifically conservative contribution." Republican candidates are running attack ads insinuating, or in some cases outright declaring, that Democrats are homosexual, pedophillic, flag-burning, drug-abusing, sex fiends -- and hippie peaceniks, too!

It's just so unfair, Weisberg laments throughout his piece, predictably rehashing just about every other tedious article written in the midst of an electoral season in which everyone pines for an illusory yesteryear when campaign ads were, apparently, edifying Bill Moyer documentaries.

Weisberg takes the media ritual a bit further by actually blaming it all on the other team; his observations seem less that of a detached pundit than of a man suddenly worried about losing a game he assumed he'd won (this isn't insight; it's bad sportsmanship).

How else to explain the absurd claim that the contemporary attack ad's origin stretches back only to the 1988 Willie Horton ad run against Michael Dukakis. Try 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Peace, Little Girl," equated a vote for GOP candidate Barry Goldwater with dropping a nuclear bomb on a beautiful, blond, wide-eyed toddler. In comparison, a pedophillic, flag-burner isn't that bad.

Viciousness isn't the issue; it's certainty and conviction -- two things Republicans do better than Democrats these days.

For the last two decades, starting with Jimmy Carter onward, the American political narrative has been primarily framed in neoliberal terms. Age of big government is over, market versus state control, globalization and so on. Democrats and Republicans were basically on the same ship.

Bush, in his first year in office, seemed amenable to the narrative. Then September 11 happened. A major inflection point can be pinpointed with Bush's national security statement delivered in 2002 which outlined 3 guiding principle: 1) there are universal values -- liberty, democracy, the free market -- that should be universal for the whole planet (though the values happen to be American 2) Preemption, and 3)America is an empire and better start acting like it (bold military hegemony, etc.).

This was a bold document that turned the neoliberal narrative on its head. No less a neoliberal bastion than Business Week editorialized after the statement that the new direction may be harmful to the global economy by damaging the international community that would invariably feel threatened by such American unilateralism and arrogance. Some people see this moment as marking Bush's departure from neoliberalism to neoconservatism -- they see a pre-and-a-post-9/11 Bush.

That would be a simple reading. From the beginning, Bush and his policies have not fit neatly into any ideological box. His first act was No Child Left Behind, which marked a degree of federal involvement in education unmatched in American history. Onto an expansion of medicare, the interagency council on homelessness (which is a far more inventive program to combat homelessness than anything produced by the Clinton administration), his limits on late term abortion, the institution of marriage, granting religious institutions an increased role, the patriot act. This was a bold assertion of federal powers for conservative ends (a bit of an oxymoron, really).

What's interesting is that while this usage of the state is almost unprecedented going back to FDR, the bushies have stayed strictly away from articulating anything remotely close to a big government ideology. Why? That’s the question. Karl Rove knows ideology and intellectual coherence don't win elections. Americans vote on personality. What Rove has successfully formulated is a politics of values, and more importantly, a politics of certainty (which, admittedly, has reached its vitriolic apotheosis in this election's campaign ads).

Whatever else he is, Bush is sure to convey certainty about where he's going and how he feels. For an unsettled and frightened population, religious and moral certitude coupled with a renewed nationalism is comforting -- ideological coherence be damned.

Can the Democrats create an alternative discourse to certainty besides Weisberg's "it's not fair!" lament? Right now, for the 10 percent of undecided voters who determine elections, even a false sense of security is better than an accurate--and nuanced--sense of reality (or for that matter, fairness).

Lets face it: the body politic is in need of some serious surgery, and now is no time to start complaining about the presence of a little blood.

It's obvious by now that John Kerry was trying, in his gorilla-on-ice-skates sort of way, to have a crack at the president's poor academic performance and further trying to tie the executive IQ to the "quagmire" in Iraq. He was not mocking U.S. servicemen and servicewomen as morons. However, listening to Kerry's plodding and inarticulate delivery, it's easy to see what the fuss has been about. I don't know what's worse: That the RNC, which has been at its absolute nastiest this election year, is purposefully misleading voters and troops with low enough morale that the junior senator from Massachusetts is as presumptuous, elitist and out-of-touch as he looks... or that Kerry is all of those things but is paying for it for the wrong reason.

I should include myself in the list of bungling misinterpreters, as anyone who read yesterday's Today's Jewcy can attest. My apologies.