Becoming Somebody

A recap of the primaries, courtesy of Keith Olbermann and Countdown.

The Associated Press: Obama clinches Democratic nomination

WASHINGTON (AP) - Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.

I wouldn’t hold my breath on a civil ending to this process, though.

A few nuggets — with my own commentary added — from the Financial Times, in a story about Barack Obama’s inability to win votes in West Virginia because, in essence, he is intelligent and black (click here to read the full story):

1. “If [Obama] is the nominee, the Democrats have no chance of winning West Virginia,” said Missy Endicott, a 40- year-old school administrator. “He doesn’t understand ordinary Americans.”

Well, Missy, I think you just helped explain why your state has the lowest college graduation rate in the country. If you are one of the people responsible for educating children, then it’s pretty clear the poor tykes in your care have an uphill climb ahead of them.

What about “ordinary Americans” doesn’t Barack Obama understand, Missy? What is an “ordinary American” anyway? Something tells me, according to your narrow, redneck mind, “ordinary Americans” must believe in God, own at least three guns, be unable to read words of more than three syllables, and religiously TiVo episodes of “American Idol” and “Cops.” And what does understanding “ordinary Americans” have to do with carrying out an effective foreign policy or fixing a broken economy?

2. None of the 22 Democrats interviewed by the Financial Times at the Clinton rally would commit themselves to voting for Mr. Obama if he became the nominee, and half said they definitely would not. … Most people questioned said they mistrusted Mr. Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and “values,” stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding “anti-American” sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim — an unfounded rumour that has circulated on the internet for months — despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr. Wright’s church in Chicago.

Where to begin breaking down the stupidity in this passage? Let me start with this whole notion of patriotism. Here’s the thing: You can’t measure it. You can’t prove that someone is more patriotic than someone else. Questioning someone’s patriotism in the Bush-Cheney era has become this generation’s version of McCarthyism. It’s a bogus slur without any base, and anyone with half a brain knows it — which explains why West Virginians are so preoccupied with it. My hope is that history will one day show today’s Middle-American, flag-waving faux-patriots to be nothing but ignorant pawns used by crooked politicians as a means to their evil end, that they did more harm to this nation than those of us who truly cared about the ideals outlined in the Constitution, things have nothing to do with lapel pins and Bibles.

I would also like to ask people in West Virginia which of Obama’s “values” they doubt. If recent political history is an indicator, I would guess that these include, but are not limited to, his valuing of fairness and equality (he doesn’t think homosexuals are minstrels of Satan actively working to destroy this Christian nation); his valuing of a woman’s right to make medical decisions and the importance of privacy between a doctor and a patient (he’s pro-choice); his valuing of generosity (he’s a liberal, after all, which is just a dirty euphemism for someone who wants to use tax money to help poor people do stuff, like send their kids to good schools and see a doctor when they’re sick); his valuing of not killing people for no reason (he was against the Iraq War). I could go on, because I’m sure there are many other objectionable values flowing through Obama’s heart, but I’m more interested in hearing how John McCain and Hillary Clinton’s “values” trump Obama’s.

Moving on to Obama’s cosmopolitan background. I didn’t know that not knowing your father; being raised by a single mother who used food stamps to put dinner on the table; moving all over the world as a child, even living in a place like Indonesia; working your ass off in the classroom to get scholarships to college and law school — the only way you could otherwise afford it; and passing up corporate jobs and tons of cash to work as a community organizer in the inner city constituted a cosmopolitan background.

Next on the list: his exotic name. Huh? You have doubts about his exotic name? Are you serious, West Virginia?

I’m passing on the Reverend Wright thing because it’s such a tired issue. At this point, there’s nothing you can say to convince a stupid person that the things Wright said, at worst, are just as atrocious as some of the hateful rhetoric spewed by white Christian clerics (see: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, the pope). The bottom line is that all religious leaders are batshit insane, and their comments should be treated as such.

Finally, West Virginia, repeat after me: Barack Obama is not a Muslim. If you hate him for belonging to a Christian church pastored by an “anti-American,” then how can you also hate him for being a non-Christian, which he would have to be if he were a Muslim?

And, for the record, who gives a shit if he was Muslim, you racist, xenophobic assholes? Not all Muslims are terrorists hellbent on killing innocent people. I think you’re confusing Muslims with evangelical Christian presidents from Texas. Zing! Gotcha, West Virginia!

3. Josh Fry, a 24-year-old ambulance driver from Williamson, insisted he was not racist but said he would feel more comfortable with Mr. McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam war hero, in the White House. “I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president,” he said.

Oh, Josh Fry. You are my favorite of them all. Please know, Josh Fry, that as I sit here in my ivory tower, in this bastion of sin I call home, where I live out of wedlock with a woman and wipe my ass with the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Revelations while silently worshiping my college diploma, I am not just listening to NPR, reading The New York Times, and using my elitist Mac laptop to instant message with an openly and unashamedly gay friend. No, Josh Fry, that is certainly not all I do here. You see, I am also wishing for your death and the death of all people who think and speak like you. You are what make this country an awful and embarrassing place, and things would be so much better if you simply didn’t exist.

And another thing, Josh Fry. Not only are you racist, you’re also a Nazi. When you say that you want a “full-blooded American” to be president, you are saying that only pure, white people should be guaranteed the rights and freedoms of this country. Well here’s a little newsflash, Josh Fry: I guarantee, if we did a genealogical examination of both you and Barack Obama, we’d see that your “full-blooded American” status is about the same as that of the guy with brown skin and a silly name. Seeing as how this country was founded by immigrants who killed, raped, and pillaged their way from sea to shining sea, I think it’s safe to assume there aren’t too many “full-blooded Americans” out there. Besides, even if there were, they’d be too busy to be president. They have casinos to run, after all.

I mentioned in a post last week that the current debate raging between the three remaining presidential candidates over whether a summer moratorium on the federal gas tax, and the particular caveats in the enactment of that moratorium, is the only interesting, substantive policy question to arise since the Iraq War troop surge. I then derided people for focusing on bullshit, tangential issues instead of this far more important matter.

Of course, like a true political blogger, I fell victim to the very social plague I railed against, skipping right past the substance while taking great pride in pointing out how everyone around me was a big moron. Well, as it turns out, I am the moron. Shame on me for being so hypocritical. Allow me to rectify the situation now.

The federal government, as everyone knows, taxes gasoline at a rate of 18.4 cents per gallon. The government uses revenue from the tax to pay for the building and repairing of roads and bridges and other things of somewhat high-level importance. For all intents and purposes, it’s a pretty good tax. The public pays into a system and is rewarded with improvements to the services provided to them by their government. If all tax spending worked as efficiently and transparently as in this particular case, I think it’s fair to suggest people would stop bitching so much about paying taxes and be glad their money was being used to provide them with things they need and want, but I digress.

Somewhere along the way, John McCain, Hillary Clinton and the people who advise them got the idea that cutting the federal gas tax during peak summer driving months would be a good idea. In reality, though, it is completely asinine. And it’s not just a little asinine. It’s so asinine, in fact, not a single economist backs either McCain’s or Clinton’s plans — this at a time when you can get a so-called credible expert to support even the most egregious falsehood (see: the build-up to the invasion of Iraq).

To be clear, Barack Obama is the only reasonable one of the bunch. He has called out the gas-tax holiday for exactly what it is — a cheap political ploy that panders to voters but does nothing to help them. Of course, by once again treating the American people like adults capable of understanding the long-term benefits of not cutting a tax, Obama is taking a huge political gamble. The American people are notorious buffoons and suckers for the promise of extra cash.

McCain and Clinton, on the other hand, continue to talk to voters like they’re grubby, money-loving children and, as such, have slightly different versions of the plan. McCain’s proposal, as you’d expect, is the more ass backward of the two, at least on paper. The very senior Senator from Arizona wants to cut the tax without compensating for it, something most experts agree would cost the country the money it needs to maintain its infrastructure. Countless construction jobs would be lost, bridges and roads would continue to crumble, the economy would slip further into recession.

Now, I’ve come to expect such half-assed schemes from McCain, because, well, he’s not very bright. Unfortunately, bravery and the ability to withstand years of torture don’t counteract the effects of aging on the mind. He’s simply lost, like grandpa, full of piss and vinegar and crazy ideas, not to be trusted with anything more important than keeping the crystal stocked with rock candy.

But Clinton, for all her flaws, of which I humbly believe there are many, is usually a bit sharper, especially on more complex issues like this one. Her plan also calls for the temporary suspension of the federal gas tax, but unlike McCain she proposes to pay for the holiday — that makes it sound so fun — with a “windfall profits tax” on oil companies. The windfall profits tax would charge oil companies a 50 percent tax on profits exceeding a certain dollar amount, something they can certainly afford considering how much money they’ve made in recent years.

There is only one problem with this idea: The windfall profits tax doesn’t exist and has little chance of getting passed by a legislative branch as inept and dysfunctional as this one. Even if Congress could get its shit together, I think it will take a bit longer than the month or two between now and the time when Hillary wants our little vaycay to begin. Throw in the fact that any increase in taxes on oil companies will likely be passed on to the consumer, thanks to our wonderful free-market capitalist system, and Clinton’s plan starts to sound even dumber than McCain’s.

For the faithful who still choose to believe in either McCain’s ill-conceived economic lunacy or Clinton’s adventures in a legislative fantasy land, perhaps because the hope of thirty extra bucks is just too enticing, there are more reasons why the gas-tax holiday makes no sense whatsoever.

First, there is nothing at all to suggest that gas-station owners will pass the tax cut onto consumers. This type of trickle-down economics never reaches the customer. We’ve seen it time and again since Reagan first introduced this mind-bogglingly stupid theory. Those at the top of the pyramid drown in excess profit and those at the bottom continue to struggle. The most likely scenario would see those who own gas stations reducing prices at the pump only slightly, while pocketing the difference saved by the repeal of the tax.

Following the money, then, thanks to the consumer frenzy likely to ensue once the “holiday” is announced, it becomes more and more clear that the oil companies would benefit most. The best either plan does to ensure that prices are set fairly is to “monitor for manipulation,” an empty, unenforceable promise from Clinton.

More importantly, though, the gas-tax holiday does absolutely nothing to get at the root cause of the ridiculous spikes in prices. In fact, it would make the problem worse.

Getting rid of the federal gas tax would only encourage people to drive more, increasing the demand for gasoline, which is already in short supply. Therefore, as any high-school economics student knows, the underlying cost of gasoline will only increase. The only way to keep things stable is to increase both supply and demand at the same rate. Unfortunately, McCain and Clinton don’t seem to be thinking that far ahead.

Increasing the demand for gas would also hinder the progress made by technology companies working to increase fuel-efficiency standards or the use of alternative fuels. The environment simply cannot take the postponement of these advancements.

Gas prices have surged for numerous reasons too complex for me understand or attempt to articulate, but these reasons are directly related to broader issues like the war in Iraq, the weakening of the U.S. dollar, and the increase in the number of oil companies owned by foreign states, namely those controlled by Venezuela and its America-hating president Hugo Chavez.

The issue has deep geopolitical roots that require long-term solutions and big-picture thinking. Attempted fixes involving anything less, like this ridiculous gas-tax holiday, simply miss the point, ignore the real problems, and dupe the public in as transparent and shameless a way as we are ever likely to see.

Does anyone else feel like all the information we’ve gotten about and from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in these last few weeks — the Jeremiah Wright conversation, Hillary’s White House schedule, etc. — would have been a lot more helpful to all of us had we received it, I don’t know, sometime before the primaries began? Perhaps then we would have had a full slate of knowledge upon which to base our decisions. I’m not sure any of it would have done a thing to change my mind, but it would have been nice for the media to have reported on the candidates this thoroughly before we were forty-four contests deep.

Related: The Democrats’ anti-momentum, by Walter Shapiro (from Salon.com)

I am suffering from information overload. A brief rundown of the top ten things swirling about my brain these last couple days:

1. Eliot Spitzer: The guy has a taste for hookers. Expensive hookers. He broke the law, though the impetus for and the circumstances behind the investigation seem sketchy. Pardon me for not trusting the Department of Justice and the FBI these days. If I believed in god, I’d pray that this situation does not open the door for a fascist regime to eventually take over my state under the leadership of Rudy Giuliani or Mike Bloomberg.

2. Admiral William Fallon: I find it a little creepy, and brazenly insulting to my ability to evaluate cause-effect relationships, that the head of the U.S. military in the Middle East “resigned” immediately after an article in Esquire — which I read the night before the commander’s surprising and sudden resignation — revealed his staunch disagreement with the Bush administration’s posturing toward Iran and other nations in the region. To quote the article: “If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it’ll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it’ll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. … And time will tell whether being reasonable will cost Admiral William Fallon his command.” Turns out it did.

3. My refrigerator: It is empty, more or less. I and Nicole must go food shopping.

4. Geraldine Ferraro: After consulting my history book to remind myself who the hell this cantankerous, old hag is and why I or anyone else should care what she says about anything, I realized that I’ve been right about my presumptions re: Hillary Clinton’s primary base of support. They are old and not too bright. The candidate, by not separating herself from Ferraro and Ferraro from her campaign, is coming off just as out of touch, borderline racist, and unintelligent as many of her backers. It is a shame, too, because the candidate ought to aspire to be better than that. Unfortunately, it is her aspiration to victory, to attain it any cost, and not to decency that is fueling her these days.

5. My professional future: I don’t have one. I scoured the Internet today looking at jobs that might interest me. I found myself most interested in a farmhand position at a sanctuary farm that provides lifelong shelter to rescued animals. It pays $16,000 per year — or slightly less than one semester of education at Syracuse University, my alma matter. Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. Your boy is destined to disappoint.

6. The popular-vote margin: This has been, perhaps, the last bastion of hope in the Clinton campaign’s waning chances of victory in the Democratic nomination race. After Obama wins in Wyoming and Mississippi this week, the popular-vote deficit Clinton now faces is approximately 700,000 votes. Everyone knew this thing would end with Obama having won more individual contests and more pledged delegates than Clinton. However, there was still a chance, depending on what ultimately happens in Florida and Michigan, that Clinton would eek out a popular-vote victory. As Obama’s lead on that front creeps steadily upward, though, that is looking more and more improbable. This is simply no good argument to strip him of the nomination.

7. Florida and Michigan: They moved their primaries up, knowing the consequences of their actions, because they wanted a greater say in who the nominee would be. Had they stayed where they party instructed them, they would have had that say. Now, they have been reduced to little more than political theater. As I mentioned, regardless of what happens in either state, the results will most probably yield the same conclusion: Obama leading Clinton.

8. A new tattoo: I am bored with the two I have now. I want a new tattoo. However, because I ultimately want something I like looking at, and not necessarily something with profound meaning, I cannot come up with any interesting ideas. Artist suggestions are welcome.

9. The mainstream media: I hate you. First you canoodle with John McCain over ribs and chicken, swinging from his tire swing and presenting gifts to his wife, then you laugh at this embarrassment of a president mocking in song many of the scandals you should have been exposing. There is nothing funny about Katrina and Brownie. Or Harriet Miers. Or Scooter Libby. Or any of the other things you couldn’t help but gush at during the Gridiron Roast. You are a seedy little insiders-only club and a disgrace to the people whose interests you should be serving. Now you know why I’d rather feed chickens and shovel shit out of a barn than join your ranks.

10. Mary Ann loves her some Mary Jane: I always knew, if I was ever forced to choose between her and Ginger, that Mary Ann would be the Gilligan’s Island vixen for me. I just never knew why. Until today. Party on, Dawn Wells. I salute you.

I’ve been making this argument for a month, but my audience is about a hundred per day. I think Stephen Colbert does a bit better. But I’m just guessing. Either way, the word is out.

** Update (Tuesday, March 11, 11:32 a.m. ET): This was pretty sweet, too. I have a thing for the 1972 presidential campaign. Sorry, but I’m a nerd. A huge, huge nerd.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to understand exactly where Hillary Clinton is going with her latest, most recent strategy. Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. She cannot win the nomination. Well, she can, but it would come at the cost of the general election. She would need to somehow weasel Florida and Michigan into the delegate fold, in which case she’d still trail Obama, though by a smaller margin, and then convince a healthy number of superdelegates to piss off the entire party and put her back on top.

There’s just no way to win it without bargaining for it, tearing the party in half, and more or less handing the presidency to John McCain. And as much as she’s been tickling the tender underbelly of that beast, I just cannot believe she wants a Republican in the Oval Office more than a member of her own party.

So why, then, has she spent the last two weeks ripping Obama down and, at the same time, building herself and McCain up? It makes sense to attack the front runner, so that part of her ploy isn’t that strange. If she wants to overtake Obama — even though the math makes it virtually impossible — she needs to position herself ahead of him where it matters. But how does the McCain rub and tug fit in? Why is she making arguments that seem to best support her potential opponent?

Well, I finally have the answer. Get ready for it, folks. The endgame here can be summed up with these four words: Vice President Hillary Clinton.

As I and everyone else with a calculator has stated, the chances of Clinton overtaking Obama’s pledged-delegate lead are slim, at best. The only real chance she has of securing the nomination rests in committing some form of political suicide, destroying her and her husband’s already diminishing legacy. And the Clintons are legacy whores. They love holding the keys to the Democratic party. They can’t just go away without a fight. But that’s precisely what the math dictates they must do.

The party has also moved away from the politics-of-old mentality that the Clintons represent. While not signaling an outright rejection of that paradigm — the uneducated and aging still LOVE Bill and Hill — Obama’s rise in the party, at least for this election cycle, has put the power of the party in the hands of a more intellectual, youthful faction of Democrats. That said, there is a lot less room for a Clinton on the general election ticket. So not only was Hillary facing an unlikely loss in the primary, she was faced with the realization that she wasn’t even needed on the ticket. Her message of experience is stale and boring. Obama shouldn’t need or want that from his veep. His pool of running mates needed to be someone who represented his mantras of hope and change. It simply could not be the person who spent the entire campaign telling people how stupid and naive they were for believing in all that mushy stuff.

On the other hand, it had become indisputable fact that should Clinton ever figure out a way to evade all rational thought and broker the nomination for herself, she would have to take Obama as her running mate. That is the only way to quiet the potential riot that would erupt in the streets of Denver, or at least a cyber-riot led by hundreds of angry nerds with blogs who have spent the better part of a year Baracking man-crushes on the Illinois Senator.

But then Hillary started scaring the shit out of everyone and saying things that basically amount to, If that Obama guy is in the White House, all of your children are going to die. Hell, even McCain can keep you safer than Obama. Of course, this is an absurd strategy. It makes no sense. As Keith Olbermann has said time and again, using the strengths of the nominee of the other party in order to defeat your opponent in a primary is not only ludicrous, it is without precedent in presidential politics. It’s also stupid. And Hillary Clinton is not stupid.

She is deftly using the seven weeks between now and the Pennsylvania primary to reemphasize the importance of experience in the minds of Democratic voters. She is moving to make herself a vice-presidential front runner after being relegated to a vice-presidential afterthought. She is saying to Obama, You can’t win in November without me. Take me with you. Take me with you.

And the tactic is going to work. By making McCain’s arguments for him, Clinton is implicitly saying that she is the only one who can thwart his attacks once he begins making them for himself. Furthermore, by saying that she has everything that McCain has (buzzwords: strength and experience), she is telling the Obama people that adding her to their ticket will make the Dems unbeatable in November. It’s the best of both worlds.

Of course, most people already knew this. That’s why there’s been talk of the possible Super Ticket. But, like I said, it made no sense previously for Obama to share his ride to Pennsylvania Avenue with someone like her. Now, thanks to some shifty maneuvers and a head-scratching strategy, though, it seems like Obama has no choice but to bring her along. And once the two of them did their thing and secured eight years in power, washing away all of the bad blood that has developed between the Clintons and the rest of the party this primary season, Hillary will be back as the inevitable presidential nominee in 2016. And that’s exactly where she wants to be.

I hope the majority of voters are as logical in their analysis of campaign strategy.