Hunger Pangs

Obamagrandma

Fri, 16 May 2008 23:04:38 GMT

My grandma just called me to congradulate me on graduating and to ask if I own The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama.

She said "oh, I was just wondering, because I'm a big Obama fan."

Oh yeah?

"I think this has been the most fun election of my life!"

She's 69 years old and my grandpa is a 70-year-old 30-year National Guard retiree who has teased me about the fact that he is probably voting for John McCain. "McCain's the man," he said gleefully at restaraunt with the rest of my family a few months ago, "he's the guy to vote for!" At the time I told him "you had your 8 years and now we get ours," and he laughed. But he's not entirely Republican, he just votes for whoever has been in the military. I don't think he voted for Bush, though I doubt he ever voted Democrat even once before the year 2000. And I know he hates the Clintons with a vehemence.

We will see what happens. If Obama picks Wesley Clark as VP I think it brings a big chunk of my grandpa's type of voter over. My grandfather is the kind of guy who doesn't mind Obama, but likes John McCain a lot so needs a good excuse to vote for someone else. He wasn't for the war but you have to be very delicate in the way you argue against it; anything that would offend a military family is going to turn him the other way.

I was worried because my other grandparents, on the Catholic side of the family, who are lifelong Democrats, do not like Obama. My full-blooded Italian grandma said she doesn't like him because he won't put his hand over his heart "because of that religion of his." I don't know if they're representative of a lot of other older Democrats. I still think they'll vote Democratic out of habit because they have voted Democratic their whole life. Their families came to the party in the 1930s when they were poor immigrants who always voted with the unions.

Those are the two sides of my family, the Catholic Democrat side and the Military side. So the Military family is crossing over to vote for the Democrats and the Catholic side is more likely than before to cross over to vote Republican. That's how an Obama candidacy turns this thing - he loses some long-time Democrats and gains some long-time Republicans who have children who vote Democratic. They're all among senior citizens, who is Obama's hardest-got group.

But I think my family is pretty liberal as a whole, they're probably all registered independents right now, and I doubt anyone (aside from my grandpa) is going to vote McCain. The younger generations on the Catholic side (my mom's age and younger) are very Californiaesque: materialistic, mildly religious and socially liberal, but often vote on personality. I'm not sure if this tells me anything about where the country's going to go.

Spoons

Fri, 16 May 2008 06:57:10 GMT

There are big spoon days and there are little spoon days, I told him.

That is, days you can be the big spoon and days you need to be the little spoon, you just don't have the energy or strength and hope someone will wrap you up.

So I said P------ today am having a little-spoon day, and he said, "OK I will hold you," because he knows exactly what I mean when I say things even if I'm vague. He was a long way away and all we could do was talk, but I still felt it over my shoulders. And I had a dream that confirmed it for me that night.

I was disappointed because my grades came back worse than I had hoped, and because something I wrote got rejected (well a few things did) and I was having a hard time finding a job. My total college GPA was less than my target GPA, which made me feel, I dunno I said, made me feel like the last 5 years have been a failure. When I was a kid, everybody said I was so intelligent, that based on my IQ test I am supposed to be smarter than 749 out of 750 people and every teacher was always telling my parents "that kid has potential," but since that time I've been on a steady decline. In high school they were calling me "slacker" and "lazy" and in college the kids in the journalism deparment were saying I "don't belong in this profession" and professors didn't know my name. If course I say fuck that, there isn't a day in my life I haven't worked hard even if it's just to sit still and listen to boring shit they teach you (the same stuff again and again). But I don't even meet the minimum requirements for the grad schools I want to go to. That's minimum; not the ideal requirements, the minimum requirements. I know so many things, but I can't put the knowledge together, I lose passion too quickly - even when things are going well I lose passion because if it's going too well it becomes boring - and I can't write it down, I can't put it into a product that I can sell (everything about this culture says what you have is worthless if you can't sell it), and everything I have learned or discovered in my life is going to wasted.

Of course he said no, that's not true. I also knew it wasn't true but I needed to hear him say it. And I needed to know he would do that for me.

I said someday I will be strong for you. Someday I will be the rock and you'll be the church and I will do all I can to hold you up. I'll bite my lip through the worst of it, you know, face into the wind and all that, because that's what we do for each other.

Things are going to turn around soon, you know.

Once I felt love flowing over my left shoulder and that's how I knew where Chicago was, that I was facing south. P------ had gotten some bad news and it was a good time for me to be the big spoon, so I did it, sending it over my shoulder past the cornfields and praries.

That was then, and now it's my turn to be the little one.

California Court Reverses Same-Sex Marriage Ban

Thu, 15 May 2008 18:05:31 GMT

The California State Supreme Court just overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriages, making California the second state, after Massachusetts, to allow same-sex marriage.

Those defending California's same-sex marriage ban argued that since California already gives same-sex couples some benefits, the fact that they coudln't get legally married was not discrimination. The 4-3 decision agreed with gay rights groups who argued that calling same-sex unions something other than marriage is akin to second-class status, and is not permitted by the state's constitution.

Republican governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he would uphold the court's ruling, and will also oppose a ballot initiative to change the state's constitution to reverse the ban. The ballot initiative will likely get enough signatures to appear on the ballot this November for all Californians to vote on it.

My guess is that the ballot initiative will fail, because a similar initiative in Arizona failed in 2006 in a state that is culturally similar but on balance more conservative than California.

California is the most populous state in the United States with about twelve percent of the United States population. Cities in California are magnets for GLBT people from around the country who are seeking a more tolerant cultural environment, so I would guess that something around 1 in 5 American same-sex couples live in the state and will be allowed to marry because of the California court decision.

But same-sex marriage is often a campaign talking-point for Republicans, some of whom have visceral responses to gay marriage and surge to the polls in droves to vote on same-sex marriage ballot initiatives. This is extremely unlikely to overturn Obama's lead in California, where he is polling against John McCain by double-digits, but the enthusiasm may ripple out to surrounding Oregon and Nevada, two crucial swing states, and culturally-conservative Ohio and Virginia across the country. It is still to be seen whether or not the timing of this court decision will result in a bounce for John McCain against Barack Obama nationwide, or if various Senate or House races will be effected by this news.

African-American turnout in November

Thu, 08 May 2008 22:22:04 GMT

Assuming Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, we can guess that African-Americans will turn out in numbers at higher than they did in 2004 for John Kerry. Just how much the African-American vote will impact the election is up for debate - many will point out that the highest African-American populations are found in the Deep South where no Democrat can expect to win. But the nation, as a whole, is about 12 percent African-American, and a 30 percent increase in their turnout amounts to a 3.6 percent bump for Democrats over their total popular-vote score in 2004.

Obama could expect a state-by-state bump proportional to the African-American population in that state in his race against John McCain. Polls usually do not factor this increase in hypothetical matches against John McCain, so it indicates that Obama may outperform the polls. Assuming, again, that the turnout increase is exactly 30 percent over 2004 levels, that leads to the following boosts for Barack Obama against John McCain:

4.08 percent over current polls in Florida
10 percent over current polls in Louisiana
4.17 over current polls in Michigan
3.21 over current polls in Missouri
6.6 over current polls in North Carolina
5.64 over current polls in Virgina
3.18 over current polls in Ohio
2.76 over current polls in Pennsylvania
4.77 over current polls in Arkansas
4.8 over current polls in Tennessee
3.57 over current polls in Texas
8.7 over current polls in South Carolina
2.67 over current polls in Indiana.

I am not including states in the Deep South (where turnout will be countered by equal numbers of white voters who do not want an African American president) and states that are solidly Democratic already.

These boosts would significantly impact the following states because the Obama vs. McCain margin is close to the expected boost in the African-American turnout:

Florida had McCain +1 on 4/26
Louisiana had McCain +11 on 4/9
Michigan had Obama +2 on 4/7
North Carolina had McCain +9 on 4/29
Ohio had McCain +1 on 4/26
Pennsylvania had Obama +9 on 4/26
Texas had McCain +5 on 5/1
Virginia had McCain +8 on 4/12
South Carolina has McCain +3 on 2/27
Indiana has Obama +1 on 4/29

If Obama's African-American support helps put him over the top in any 3 of these states, he is mathematically almost certain to win the election. By this math Black voters should certainly help him secure those numbers. But this scenario depends on the following circumstances:

That Barack Obama increases African-American turnout by 30 percent.

That other factors do not boost overall turnout along with African-American turnout.

That pulls accurately predict or underestimate Barack Obama's support among whites.

That Barack Obama's candidacy does not galvanize or boost anti-Black turnout (among Whites and Hispanics) in crucial states.

Word of the Week - "Anti-American"

Tue, 06 May 2008 01:03:23 GMT

Rising to popularity in the tumultuous era of the early Cold War, is today's buzzword, "anti-American," followed by its accomplice "un-American," which, together, constitute one of the most popular and scathing insults hurled in modern United States politics.

Barack Obama's embattled pastor Jeremiah Wright is the most timely example for what an "Anti-American" is, but in 2004 the term applied to the Vietnam vet. and presidential candidate John Kerry, and in 2002 it was used to describe the Democratic party as a whole. It has been used to describe people on both sides of the political spectrum, from Conservatives accused of suppressing votes to Liberals accused of refusing to wear an American flag lapel pin.

There isn't a clear definition for the terms "anti-American" and "un-American" because, the concepts, as they are used, employ shifting definitions of the word "American." The United States seems to be unique in that its name extends far beyond the nation as a whole; the terms "anti-UK" or "anti-French" are rarely heard because those nations are just nations and not models of a certain kind of spirit. One would reasonably surmise we must first define "American" or "America" as a starting point before we determine on what grounds a person is labeled as being against it.

Possible definitions for "America" include:

The geographical boundaries of the United States; the lower 48 states, Alaska and Hawaii. Here, Anti-American would mean opposing the climate or geography of the United States of America. Do you hate prairies, mountains or temperate coastal forests? Then you, my friend, are an anti-American. You fulfil the milder definition of being un-American if you are a piece of land not within the United States.

The 300 million people who are U.S. Citizens. Here, anti-American would mean being a non-American who supports discrimination against Americans. Do you want to make it illegal for Americans to enter your country or make them use separate drinking fountains or public restrooms? Then you're an anti-American, in the purest sense, which precludes the possibility of you identifying as an American citizen yourself. You are un-American if you are one of the world's 5.9 billion people who does not happen to be a citizen of the United States.

The United States Constitution. Here, Anti-American would mean having a political position that violates the Constitution or the Supreme Court's determination of constitutionality, as currently understood. It includes those who support abortion bans in spite of the finding of Roe v. Wade or someone who supported the women's vote before 1920. It probably also includes those who support changing the Constitution - until they do manage to change it, at which point they suddenly switch to being American and those who opposed it suddenly switch to being the anti-Americans. It would also include British loyalists who are unhappy with the outcome of the Revolutionary war.

The United States military. Here, Anti-American would mean supporting the abolition of the military. While no elected official in the United States supports this, you could find people across the political spectrum who don't think there should be a government-funded military. They include some hard-core libertarians (who may say that the military itself is "un-American"), and Meninites who are religiously opposed to militias. If "American" is the military, un-American pertains to the 295 million people who are U.S. citizens but are not enlisted in the U.S. armed forces.

The current American executive administration. This means that everyone not within the 28 percent of Americans who "approve" of the Bush Administration are anti-American. Un-American applies to anyone outside the 100 or so people who work directly with the White House.

The current body of elected officials. This means that the 80 percent of Americans who disapprove of the current congress are anti-American. The 300 or so U.S. citizens who are not in elected office face the milder definition of "un-American."

Representative Democracy. This is a commonly used definition of the term, and it means that a large percentage of the population living outside the United States is just as "American" as Americans are. All Europeans (including the French), North Americans, Australians, Brazilians, Indians, Russians, Japanese, South Africans, South Koreans or members of any other democratic nation who support their form of government are Americans. Furthermore, anyone in undemocratic nations like China or Saudi Arabia who would support their nation becoming a representative democracy would be Americans too. Those in any country who support overthrowing democracy for the installment of dictators is Anti-American, and anyone who is indifferent is un-American. Fortunately, Anti-Americans constitute the most tiny fraction of the world, however, many Anti-Americans in Saudi Arabia or China are important U.S. allies or trading partners.

Current U.S. Policies. This means that no actual human being is "American," because the word applies to concepts and laws. An anti-American is anyone who wants to change anything about government; this includes all Republicans, Democrats, independents, centrists and Libertarians. Actually, it includes almost everybody, leaving the tiny few who are perfectly content and satisfied with everything they see (such as those who are very drunk or those in a state of meditation) as the elite group that does not classify as un-American.

Blue-Collar Midwesterners. According to Hillary Clinton, this is true; these "Regan Democrats" are the heart and soul of the United States. Saying anything disparaging towards them, or by extension, critical of unsavory attitudes toward African-Americans, Jews or Gays, is an Anti-American statement. Unfortunately, New York and California, you are not American after all, nor are Iowans, Coloradans or anyone from those darned un-American "Caucus States."

My own personal views. This is the most commonly-used definition of "American," with which anyone who disagrees with you can be called Anti-American. Liberals can use it on Conservatives, but more often, Conservatives use it on Liberals, deciding that whatever nuanced boundaries of their political philosophy are the exact boundaries at which a person crosses over into being an enemy of the United States. There are a bajillion ways to be "un-American" under this umbrella and everyone is some other American's anti-American.

Residual Consequences - Weapons Left Over After Conflict

Sat, 03 May 2008 22:25:31 GMT

MSNBC reports that a man in Virginia was killed by a cannonball built during the Civil War this February. The 140-year-old bomb, filled with black powder and lead pellets for shrapnel, was part of Sam White's collection of Civil War relics. It exploded as he was trying to clean and restore it outside his garage.

According to the article, there were about 300,000 non-exploded cannonballs left in the fields at the end of the Civil War, some of which are deactivated in museums or have broken down over time, but some of which ares still buried in rural parts of the United States or in possession of collectors unaware that they are dangerous.

This is usually the last kind of accident policy-makers think about when considering the tragic consequences of war, but Sam White's death is an ominous warning to future generations. If a primitive bomb made under the technological conditions of the the 1860's could still be active a century and a half later, one might predict that superior weapons for modern wars could be killing people in accidents for millennia to come.

Consider that there are still 23 million land mines left in Egypt from World War II and 20 million buried mines in the African nation of Angola from a civil war that began in 1975. Estimates predict between 600,000 and 6 million buried mines in Cambodia and millions more in Serbia, Vietnam and Afghanistan - which, unlike Civil War relics, are nearly all still dangerous. In Libya, 27 percent of farmable land cannot be used because it is covered in minefields, and Vietnam and Mozambique lose significant tracts of land to mines. The toll is more than mere potentiality; all told, 25,000 people worldwide are killed each year by buried mines from wars that have been resolved for decades. (In 1997, most world nations signed a land mine ban in light of problems like these. The United States, Russia and China refused to sign.)

Meanwhile, the Afghani and Iraqi insurgencies have used 1970s-era American-built weapons to fight United States soldiers there. Bombs and machine flooded into the region when the American government was supplying insurgents with artillery to use against the Soviet Union or Iran in the late 20th century. Central and South American governments face similar problems with American-built weapons supplied to fight Leftist governments during the 1970s.

The most high-tech and durable weapons in the world are nuclear warheads. There are about 20,000 existing bombs in all, half of which are "operational," which means they are ready to use. Half of those are in silos in the United States or stationed in Germany, Italy, or Turkey under U.S. military control, while almost as many are in former Soviet states. China and France each have about 400, the U.K. has about 200, Israel about 100, and India and Pakistan each have between 30 and 50 nuclear weapons. 50,000 weapons were dismantled in the 1980s and 1990s by the United States or Russia - so, while they still exist, they are unlikely to detonate accidentally. But if only one tenth of one percent of all existing warheads (which amounts to 20 nuclear bombs) were lost to the control of terrorists or were launched by human or mechanical error , the explosions could still kill tens of millions of people.

To Ezra

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 19:23:41 GMT

A letter to Ezra Pound,
the poet:

My father once questioned my use of the word "tool." He wanted to know if it has anything to do with being used by someone else to accomplish a task, or if women could be tools, or if the point of the term is for the person being called a tool to not know what you mean by it. The definition we settled on was that it is someone of exaggerated self-importance, who holds himself to be more popular than he really is, elite in the face of mass-appeal or appealing when he is actually narcissistic. My big five, for example, is Nicolas Cage, Bill O'Reilly, Tyra Banks, Ryan Seacrest and Tom Cruise. Anyway, I wanted to thank you for crafting a fabulous identity that countless others would follow.

Dear Robert Frost,
the concept:

They put a statue of you on campus here. Guess what they portrayed you doing! No, seriously, guess. I wanted you to know that every time I pass your bronzed figure on a wint'ry morning, alone, I catch it out of the corner of my eye, and it freaks me out. I think there is an exceptionally quiet man sitting near me that I did not notice till we were just 5 feet apart. I also want you to know that this is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever written.

Ode to Walt Whitman,
the old man in the wilderness:

I want to wrap myself in the blanket of your beard and march into the woods.

I want to take my shoes off and slack-line across your poetry, barring split infinitives.

I want to wear shirts with big conspicuous holes like the kids at Naropa do, because god, they freaking love you there.

I want to write everything in anaphora because that's what you would do, and because Ginsburg really knew what's up when he wrote that poem. Yeah, that guy was pretty cool.

Picture Of The Week

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:01:54 GMT

U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jeremiah Wright operates on President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1966, for which Wright received a White House commendation. The man on the operating table is President Johnson, while Wright is the man obscured by the I.V. tube.

Wright is the retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, where presidential candidate Barack Obama attended for 20 years, whose inflammatory comments sparked a firestorm of public criticism and brought Obama downward significantly in the polls.

Ryan McGinley is Back

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:39:43 GMT

My high school photography teacher once whispered to me, I want to show you a book I ordered, but you can't let anyone see. He was a teacher with a reputation for crossing the line, letting students grade themselves, passing out European fashion magazines with photos of topless women in sexual poses, and, according to rumor, smoking marijuana in his office during planning hour.

He pulled me to the corner of the classroom, which was itself in the dungeonlike basement floor of the school, with windowless cement walls and studio props decorating the room. I sat near the teacher's desk, lit by a glowing red buddha lamp with long tassels hanging from the velvet lamp cover. He had me promise I wouldn't make a big deal of the book before he'd let me look at it, afraid of getting in trouble with the school. Flattered by the respect my teacher was giving me by singling me out to see the book, I accepted the invitation.

The book featured the work of Ryan McGinley who, at 24, was the youngest photographer to have his own exhibit in the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City, but was still largely unknown. The photographs - mostly of naked 20-something boys from the city's Lower East Side - were taken in an intimate snapshot setting, blurry, sometimes overexposed, and casual, sometimes indoors, sometimes out in a forest or park. The premise of the collection was that the photo subjects were McGinley's own friends, most of them gay, and in some of the pictures the boys were outright having sex with each other. I remember one photo of a young naked girl leaping through a shower of firecrackers, her flayed pubic hair puffing out from between her pressed thighs, her small breasts tipped outward in opposite directions. Another page revealed a wall of polaroids of everyone who had slept in the photographer's own bed. The most striking photo was a close-up of a man's crotch, his blue jeans spattered with drops of semen.

Ryan McGinley - 2002 Book Cover

This was when I was seventeen years old and obsessed with the city of New York, for exactly the kind of image this book represented. While the Suburban world around me celebrated the seething, venomous sexuality of heterosexual American white teenagers - a role I could neither play nor mimic - the universal sexuality in McGinley's life was inaccessible to me. The closest I came to finding it was through Internet porn, which, even in deviance, still idealized glistening, eerily hairless bodies, biceps the size of spaghetti squashes and artificial bleached-blonde hair. New York City, a place I had never actually been, was a fantasy where I'd go to escape from the world of stripes and squares.

And suddenly I was in on something that lent credibility, prestige even, to the grotesque, Earthy lifestyle that could make room for me, shattering the hegemony of jock-and-cheerleader youth sexuality. It wasn't trashy titillating sitcom entertainment like Friends or softcore porn like Baywatch. It was high art, at levels that the self-obsessed teenagers of Dawson's Creek could never reach because they were typical and boring, and challenged nothing.

McGinley's subjects were mostly skinny white boys, their whiplike arms dangling, ribs protruding, portrayed from random unflattering angles. It was perfectly attainable, natural and innocent. I don't often remember names, but held on to this one, and would google Ryan McGinley every few months from then on to see if any new collections had come out under his name. Usually there was one website with a couple of his cleaner photos, a 50-word blurb in the back pages of an Online art and fashion magazine, and a 10-line Wikipedia stub.

That list is lengthening now, 5 years later. McGinley is rising above the fringes of deviance into mainstream professionalism; he was recently selected to work on the New York Times Magazine Portfolio and produced an extended shoot of actress Kate Moss. His work is more structured than its former happenstance, intimate style that first captivated me; McGinley now hosts casting calls to select groups of young people to take on road-trips across the country, where they're photographed naked in various exurban settings as an overarching theme of McGinley's work. As an age-old question that finally, in my case, strikes close to home - one has to wonder if the art loses something by becoming well-accepted or routine.

If I hadn't grown up Catholic, if I hadn't grown up in a clean-cut suburban community, Ryan McGinley's photographs would have meant nothing to me. The excitement was not only in their wholistic approach to sex and life, but also in their deviance. GLBT civil rights and improved attitudes toward sexuality represent a long-fought achievement and also, ironically, a profound loss. My only hope is that in my life I'll produce something that does for a future generation what McGinley's photos did for me at age 17, offering a long-awaited quiet glimmer of freedom.

Harvardiosity

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 05:29:35 GMT

I used to hope Chelsea Clinton would get into politics. She is remarkably intelligent, and has earned private-sector credentials that many lifelong Democratic politicians - especially those from big political families - skip over. She faced GOP Clinton-bashing during her father's presidency, and in her sensitive formative years was at ground-zero in the biggest sex scandal in American history - winning the sympathy of nearly all Democrats. Unlike her parents, she's never been responsible for any of the scandals and blunders that have tainted the Clinton name, and unlike other famous first-daughters, she's never been caught up in an underage drinking scandal.

Chelsea disappeared for nearly a decade, gracefully bowing away from media attention to complete her education, proving yet again her class as a high-profile figure. We never heard anything about her for years, until she appeared suddenly out of the mist to stump for her mother's presidential campaign. When I first saw footage of her college tour on MSNBC, it struck me then that, unless she gets a job at a laundromat or lives in rural Texas for a while, Chelsea Clinton will never win public office outside Massachusetts.

Chelsea Clinton has the thickest Harvard accent I've ever witnessed, either on TV or in person. You can hear it before she even opens her mouth; Harvardiosity practically leaks out of her pores. It is in the way she dresses and the way she carries herself, careful to keep all hand gestures within a seven-inch bubble around her chest, and a perpetually surprised expression on her face; her composure is more reminiscent of a speaker at a city Water Board meeting or prep school debate team than a tumultuous and empassioned political campaign.

Allow me to take this opportunity to discuss something I noticed recently, when a 50-something blonde woman with big, bushy hair and glasses discussed animal rights as a guest speaker in a sociology class. When she uttered the words, "I first became Vegan at Harvard," it was of no surprise; she may as well have posted her alma mater on a name tag.

If you live in a college town you can learn to identify professors and grad students who went to Harvard. I imagine they're scattered through university campuses across the United States, usually bitter that the school they're working in now isn't as good as the one they came from - either that or they think they're successfuly of-the-people, able to blend in among the inferior, blue-collar crowds at Michigan State or UCLA. They are unaware of how sorely they stick out, most immediately identifiable by their clothing, which comes in the form of expensive earth-tone slacks, layerered vests and ribbed turtleneck sweaters. They like cocking their head to one side and speak in a gentile, soft-spoken, yet subtley condescending tone, and are immensely proud of having stood up for veganism or feminism or gay rights in a culture that is uneducated and backwards on those issues.

There's one layer of Harvardiosity for academic elites in general - which is constituted by most Humanaties professors and grad students who do not smoke weed or roll their own cigarettes - a second layer for those from one of the top 50 American schools, and a third layer for Ivy Leaguers specifically. Those who actually went to Harvard, meanwhile stand at the shining pinnacle of Harvardiosity, elite, excessively cultured, strong-willed, mild-tempered and gut-wrenchingly self-critical. They are a bizarre, ground-zero synergy of old money, extreme liberalism, East Coast cutthroat professionalism and a profound sense of superiority, which even the more laid-back Berkeleyites pale in comparison to. Their politics - and this applies to most white-collar Democrats from the Northeast - are steered towards compassion for social groups, but that doesn't mean you have to be compassionate toward any one person in a competitive world - there is no excuse for intellectual laziness or ignorance.

I don't think people from prestigious schools mean to make you feel unintelligent, but you can tell that somewhere in the depth of their souls, they get a kick out of it. Even if they respect your unconventionality, creativity or oppressed minority status, they will find a way consider you naive or disrespectful. Within five minutes of talking to them you know they've evaluated whether or not you could have gotten in to Yale or Princeton if you were more ambitious, and decided that, if you are of sufficient IQ, you took the path you're on either out of despair or because you grew up persecuted by a Christian church setting. You often wonder if they're using unnecessarily big words on purpose, or if they realize how annoying it is when they drop lines like "if you'd gone to Harvard you would have read from...." or "at Harvard we discussed the..." etc.

I don't know if the way they discuss Chomsky's latest thesis like you were clearly all over that shit is more patronizing than had they prefaced, "Noam Chomsky is a famous liberal academic," assuming you'd never heard of him at all. In the case that they do mention the MIT professor's recent lecture at Columbia, you know they know you hadn't heard of it and were just discussing it to show what world they come from.

I've had professors or met grad students whose Harvardiosity was slathered so thick you wanted to drop the names of French philosophers just to avoid seeming like an idiot by comparison - then praying you didn't reference a brand of European cheese by mistake. "As Reblochon argued," you continue, "identity is a composite of what the society wishes it was not." The Harvarder will not embarrass you, but will instead politely feign ignoriance - "hm, I am not familiar with that line" - then whisper about it to a colleague before selecting another toothpick of port salut at the campus museum's Persian flowerpot exhibit's public opening.

I, along with so many Americans, used to feel sorry for Chesea Clinton. We'd lament how unfair it was that she had to grow up with the pressures of living in a political family, and curse at Rush Limbaugh who compared her looks to a that of a dog when she was just twelve years old. How unfair that she was isolated from her peers and -

- wait a minute, her father is the president, former slave. Lets face it, Chelsea Clinton is one of the most priveledged people in the United States and the world; I'd certainly rank her among the top 100. She met virtually every important world figure and traveled with Secret Service protection while growing up. Warner Brothers made a movie staring Mandy Moore based on Chelsea Clinton's life, but only after Disney made one for TV first.

Chelsea Clinton is priveleged among the priveledged, and it comes through in her voice. Neither of Chelsea Clinton's parents reek of East Coast elitism, though they went to Yale - they are more accultured to the life of populist politics, while Chelsea is fresh out of it.

Barack Obama doesn't have the Harvard accent, though he graduated from Harvard Law, but John Kerry does, even though he went to Yale. Michelle Obama, who also went to Harvard, has a bit of a Harvard accent.

TEST YOUR OWN HARVARDIOSITY RATING

Philadelphia Debate

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 04:58:44 GMT

ABC made an interesting judgment call by choosing former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos to moderate the Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The appearence of a conflict of interest is frowned upon in journalism even if that person can assure neutrality - ABC is the real loser of Wednesday's media spectacle. If the debate itself seemed neutral or favorable to Obama it wouldn't be any real issue, but the debate did seem like a piling-on, and many Democrats are going to be offended by the way it was run.

The debate's real winner is John McCain; both Democrats missed opportunities to make themselves moderate or appealing, and the tone between the two candidates was viscious. Their supporters increasingly hate each other and independents who want to vote for someone who seems fresh and positive will be put off by the bitterness.

The pundits' early reaction to the Pennsylvania debate says that both candidates performed poorly and were hurt by the negativity - but since they are running against each other for now, one must be hurt more than the other. That will appear to be Barack Obama, who was pummeled for the first 45 minutes with questions about his gaffes and personality. His response to the unfavorable environment was unfortunate; he seemed exhasperated most of the time, which doesn't look good even if it's understandable.

Wednesday won't be remebered as a great day for Obama, but Thursday might. Some superdelegates who leaned towards Obama and were waiting to endorse could jump on board early tomorrow morning to neutralize the debate's coverage. If those delegates are big names, they will push the debate to page two.

Obama probably shouldn't complain about Stephanopoulos - bickering about the media makes any candidate look bad - but if a few pundits pick up on ABC's weird choice, the debate will seem more like a gang-up on Obama than a fair match, which will buffer some of the negatives.

This will almost certainly lead to a boost in fundraising for Obama since his supporters will be angered and empassioned by what they saw. But fundraising won't do Obama any good; he's already raising twice as much money as Clinton and outspending her 5 to 1, so the market for his TV commercials is saturated. For Obama to bounce back after this, he needs to get some superdelegates to endorse in the next two days.

Obama needs to come up with some better explanations for his Jeremiah Wright associations and his "bitterness" comment than he gave on Wednesday. My excuse so far has been that he hasn't had a good platform to make new statements; one epic speech per 6-month period is enough to saturate the market for that. But at Wednesday's debate, he had a platform to at least roll out some new lines, and didn't do it. The fact that columnists can come up with more effective lines in his defense than he can make for himself is a problem. He may not want to be a say-anything candidate like Hillary, but he has to be at least a little political, and do it in a smooth and a prepared way. The next best excuse for his failure to generate new material is that he's exhausted - which is a reasonable explanation, but not something that voters consider in a voting booth.

Clinton's biggest downfall is that her ring of advisors are so partial to her and so entrenched after backing her in well over a decade in politics that they've lost their objectivity - they've pushed her into being overly defensive, overly viscious against Democratic colleagues, and far too negative to be appealing. Could Obama be similarly suffering from his campaigns one-sidedness?

Democratic nomination poll!

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:42:49 GMT

I haven't written a Democratic nomination poll in a long time, so here goes:

View Poll: Democratic Nomination Changes

Something to Consider

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 18:21:31 GMT

If Hillary Clinton were to become Senate Majority Leader, two of the three most powerful positions in American politics (Senate Majority Leader and Speaker of the House) would be held by women. Meanwhile, the president could be an African-American.

If things go as expected and Clinton loses the nomination, I am nearly certain that she will become Senate Majority Leader. Harry Reid has done a good job and there's no reason for him to lose the position except willingly, but every Democratic senator who spurned Clinton by supporting Barack Obama will want to make it up to the Clintons and their constituents by supporting Hillary in that role.

Senate Majority Leader is a powerful enough position as it is, but it becomes more important with a Democratic president and even more important if there are more Democrats in the Senate. The way things are shaping up now indicates that Democrats are certain to retain the majority in the Senate and will most likely increase it by 3-6 seats.

Step 2: Relating the Speech on Race to the Case for the Presidency

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:55:48 GMT

Barack Obama's speech on race is being lauded, by some, as one of the best speeches since Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. The presidential candidate tackled accusations of his association with black separatism head-on without throwing embattled pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright under the bus, in an enthralling speech (which he wrote himself, I might add) that reminded his most avid supporters why they cast their ballots for Barack Obama in their state's primary.

While Obama's speech propels the nation a step forward in its racial journey - an act that, in itself, would justify the value of Obama's candidacy even if he were to disappear from politics today - many are pointing out that it doesn't help Obama make his case to be the next American president. It doesn't help him with blue-collar or Catholic voters, and though it might help him with some feminist women who have so far been rooting for Clinton, it doesn't gain him any votes he will need in the general election.

That's where step two comes in. Obama needs to explain how his relationship with Jeremiah Wright makes him more - not less - qualified to be the next president of the United States.

The promise of racial healing is not enough; white, working-class voters who lack a college education (where Obama scores lowest in the Democratic electorate) simply don't care about America's "racial wounds" and need Obama to take his argument a step farther.

In our time of war, with an embattled Republican president who has refused, time and time again, to associate with anyone home or abroad who doesn't cozy up to him, we need a Democratic candidate who has the force and the will to talk to those with a problematic worldview.

And that's where Obama can win. If the candidate can explain that one must be willing to have friends from all over to unite a country and to give America a better standing in the world, he can turn the Jeremiah Wright scandal from a political nightmare to political gold. The Conservative media will rip its hair out over such a suggestion - we already know that their politics forbid one from associating with anyone who scores less than 10 on the "patriotism" scale and dissenters in any sense are challenged as "anti-American." We know they prefer moralistic approaches to approaches that may require uncomfortable compromise but lead to real solutions and save lives. We also know that Bush's approval rating is less than 35; the talking points of the Wall Street Journal and National Review have lost their clout, and more and more Americans agree with Obama's desire to extend a hand as they point a finger. There is a deep rhetorical difference between Progressive and Conservative politics, and that difference is that progressives are more tolerant of dissent, disagreement, and finding key allies in those whose views may be hard to swallow. We'd rather take our fierce critics and turn them into fierce friends than revile until they approach even more dangerous extremes.

If Obama can find Christ through a pastor whose views are so deeply problematic that they leave most of us catching our breath, imagine how he might be able to illicit the support of leaders across the Muslim world into our "War on Terrorism" - essentially letting them fight our fight for us, since they will be more effective and less reviled on their own land. Had we done that from the beginning, our continued occupation in Iraq - as well as terrorist attacks on American citizens on U.S. soil and abroad - could have been avoided.

Jeremiah Wright's troublesome nature is at the core of Barack Obama's appeal, and why Obama's brand of politics are so desperately needed in the United States. Because we know that, while Wright failed to give Obama his own pessimistic worldview on race relations in America, Obama does make skeptics like Wright into patriotic Americans - ask Wright himself what he would think of an America with Barack Obama as president. Our candidate can take the most destructively critical figures and make them proud Americans or American allies. In today's violent world where this country's political capitol is as weak as it could possibly be, such a bridge-building politician is exactly what we need.

How Obama can Gain from his "Pastor Problem"

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:22:42 GMT

Republican presidential candidates rarely fail to defend their continued relationship with anti-gay, anti-Jewish or anti-Catholic Christian ministers who have blamed the disasters of AIDS, 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina on everything from abortion clinics to God's anger at our tolerance for lesbians and gays.

Just this February, John McCain received a well-publicized endorsement from the evangelical Reverend John Hagee, who said that Hurricane Katrina was God's justice for a sinful city. Years ago, the Clintons' spiritual adviser Billy Graham was under fire for his understanding that one of America's greatest problems was the influence of Satanic Jews - an event that caused the Clintons only a fraction of the political damage that Obama is now getting from the Jeramiah Wright scandal.

Let's first make an honest comparison between the comments at issue. Jerimiah Wright's most controversial and oft-quoted phrase is "God Damn America" for tolerating slavery and lynching, for killing hundreds of thousands of people in Hiroshima, and for other near-forgotten tragedies that all contain a genocidal element. Meanwhile, Jerry Falwell's beleif and Pat Robertson's concurrence that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were attributable to the actions of the ACLU, gay rights, and feminists, seemed to damn America for its lack of consensus with their own particular views on sexuality. In one instance, a preacher curses his country with hyperbolic language for social crimes so attrocious and universally condemned that anyone who fails to call them tragic would be reviled in mainstream politics. In another instance, a preacher justifies the slaughter of thousands of innocent people because men and women were falling in love with their own gender.

Robertson, Falwell and Wright, along with Haggee, Graham, Fred Phelps, Louis Farhakkan and countless others are questioned for their views - as they should be - and there is no blatant double standard there. But the Clintons were never asked to distance themselves from Billy Graham, and President Bush was more than willing to link his campaign with Bob Jones University (a dis-accredited Bible college that bans interracial dating and Catholics) when he campaigned for the presidency with a speech he made there in 2000. While the president repudiated some comments made in the wake if 9/11 and Katrina, no one asked him to discuss his relationship with evangelical preachers, no one questioned his judgment in counting them among his friends, and no one asked him to "reject and denounce" their support for his political career except to question their direct power over American domestic policy.

I'm not going to approve of Wright's comments; they were distasteful and certainly were offensive. Even considering the African-American church traidition of speaking in poetic hyperbole in the pulpit, to make outrageous statements in order to get a rallying cry from the congregation - even then, they crossed a line. Even considering that, if there ever were a good reason to say "God Damn America," slavery and lynching are probably the best case you could make - certainly superior to the idea that tolerating gays or respecting womens' rights are the nation's damning curse. Navy veteran Jeremiah Wright is not racist, is employed in a large, liberal, proudly gay-friendly White-run Christian denomination that understood and approved of his work, while Wright's prevailing message was neither anti-white nor anti-American. But words, when taken out of context, can be just as powerful as words in context, and a public figure with the prominence of Jeremiah Wright should have known that they could come back to haunt him. For Obama to Remove Wright's symbolic title as a campaign spiritual adviser was a wise and justifiable decision.

Obama can capitalize on this mess, but it requires him to bite the bullet, resisting the urge to speak the obvious truth that Wright's comments were on par with comments from other religious leaders, and are in many ways less dangerous than comments made by Evangelicals who are fully embraced by political campaigns on all ends of the spectrum. He must leave it to others to make that argument if they want to. He must also avoid pointing out the double standard, that African American politicians are put under more pressure to distance themselves from their radical leaders who are similar to white Evangelicals saying nearly the same thing in different words to a different audience.

Instead, Barack Obama must state an even more obvious truth: that he is not responsible for every word uttered by everyone he associates with, and that his candidacy is one that celebrates the progress Civil Rights has made before it laments the promises that are yet to be fulfilled. Born to a white woman from Kansas and raised by her and her family in the absence of his father, Obama is certainly not an African-American who holds a grudge against America or Whites, and has clearly never uttered the words or sentiment Wright is being criticized for. Obama is not running as the "Black Candidate," and no one in their right mind would recognize him as such. If he can publicly say, as he has, that he is running to represent all Americans and not just Blacks, that his goal is to bring both sides to a place of dialog and mutual benefit, and if he can explain his grattitude for living in a nation that tolerates a diversity of lifestyles and opinions even as extreme and troublesome as those expressed by Jeremiah Wright, and if he can say so with the grace and articulation that has been characteristic of his campaign since the beginning, then I beleive, with confidence, that Barack Obama will be the next president of the United States.

The Avalanche

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 03:24:53 GMT

Never in my 23 years in this country have I seen the horizon glowing like it is today.

Never in my 23 years of waiting, waiting have I seen the oceans tremble with this haunted hidden thunder of redemption.

And if we lose I know we are winning, because the gates have been thrust open and this avalanche if put on hold is sure to come through with increased determination. It has been promised. It has been sung. We have been to the mountain top and seen the future, it is sweet, sweet.

We will crack this nation open. We will make the first to be last and the last ones first. We will puff our chests and take pride in the soil of our birth for the first time since we were too young and simple to criticize ourselves.

We will run - don't walk - to Pennsylvania
we

will run - don't walk - to North Carolina
we

will run - don't walk - to Indiana
we

will run - don't walk - to Montanna, Oregon, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, we
will run don't walk to Washington to the White House we will shake this nation and then raise our goblets to each other in the colors of red, white, and blue.

It is a promise, ringing, first a whisper, then like laughter, then a roar:

Yes we can!
Yes we can!
Si se puede!
Yes we can!

2008!

Barack.
Hussein.
Obama.

MSNBC Boots Tucker Carlson

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:55:26 GMT

MSNBC is booting libertarian-conservative program host Tucker Carlson to replace his program with one hosted by political correspondent David Gregory. Gregory is a leading White House correspondent for NBC and has helped to host some of NBC's presidential debates.

Like many liberals, I once considered Tucker Carlson a massive tool who seems snide and arrogant about his anti-populist political positions. I take particular issue with his discussions on race (he sometimes has Al Sharpton on just to call him ridiculous) and his seeming insistence that, because of Affirmative Action and "reverse discrimination," white men are more discriminated against than women or African-Americans.

But I'm actually sad to see Carlson go. He is not a down-the-line right-winger and he opposes both the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq. His discussions with his regular guests from across the political spectrum are remarkably civil when compared to Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly bashing their guests and claiming to be far more moderate than they actually are.

MSNBC has taken a remarkable shift to reporting from a more liberal perspective, not as a way to advertise or promote a set of views, but because it has been a lucrative decision. First, Fox found that faux-news (they call it "infotainment") and partisan sensationalism won it more viewers than any other channel. When MSNBC's sole left-leaning program host, Keith Olbermann, became a hero to partisan Democrats, more and more people with those views gravitated towards the channel. It wasn't long before Chris Matthews started seeming more liberal and Dan Abrams got his own program where he would be highly critical of Conservative "scare tactics."

Carlson was a good balance for where the rest of the channel was going, because, though he is a right-winger, he can present it in a way that liberals and intelligent people across the spectrum like. He gives us a good sense of what upper-class swing voters and moderate white Republicans are thinking.

The three major cable news networks have settled themselves into clear political niches; Fox is still strongly conservative, MSNBC follows the intellectualized liberalism of college-educated Democrats and CNN is the new populist news network which draws most strongly from the elderly.

To make it a little more clear, Fox = Bush, CNN = John McCain and Hillary Clinton, MSNBC = Barack Obama.

How a Head-to-Head would go

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:50:46 GMT

Here's some good news for Obama supporters who are worried about a Clinton nomination:

Survey USA polls show that BOTH DEMOCRATS could potentially win the election in November, though Obama has a much more comfortable margin.

Hillary Clinton actually loses every Western state except California. Even highly Democratic Washington and Oregon tip for John McCain (Oregon by a lot). But she also gets a (narrow) win in Florida, and she is more popular than Obama in Pennsylvania, so she squeaks by with a few more electoral votes than John McCain.

There is a big "if" here: if John McCain choses Charlie Crist as VP, Clinton loses Florida and the election. This explains why Charlie Crist wants Florida to re-vote and to help Hillary Clinton to be the nominee - because he gets to be Vice President if it would in fact lead to Clinton's nomination. If Obama is the nominee, Florida won't be crucial because Obama wins even without Florida, so Crist won't be picked.

Obama ties with John McCain in most of the "swing" states that Hillary Clinton is now saying are crucial, and loses some others. He loses Florida and Pennsylvania, and he ties with John McCain in New Jersey.

But Obama wins Colorado by a huge margin, he wins North Dakota, he wins Michigan (which Clinton loses), he wins Iowa (which Clinton loses), he ties in Missouri (which Clinton loses) and - get this - he TIES IN NEBRASKA. WHAT?

The take-away from this is that Clinton keeps all the battleground states in the same places they were in 2000 and 2004; it's Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio that determine the outcome. Obama turns the Western population centers into Democratic areas, and his swing states are Missouri, Virginia and New Jersey. But these states are also less crucial for Obama because he is generally farther ahead in electoral delegates. New Jersey has been a solidly Democratic state, so if it does not tip for John McCain after all it means Obama wins by an even greater margin. Virginia is crucial for Obama, but with Webb as the VP nominee, he has it locked down.

Here's an easy way to figure out what would go where: If it's a remotely moderate state that grew in population between 1990 and 2000, Obama wins while Clinton loses. If it's a moderate state that dropped in population between 1990 and 2000, Clinton wins while Obama loses.

As a matter of fact, even non-swing states like California and Texas, which are both growing, show Obama beating McCain by a far bigger margin than Clinton beats McCain (California) or losing by a far smaller margin than Clinton loses to McCain (Texas). The only growing state this is not true for is Florida.

And isn't that the epitome of what this race is all about - Obama's optimistic, youthful, forward-looking and inspiring message wins in states that are doing well economically, and Clinton's establishment, unionesque, its-the-economy-stupid message that throws back to Bill Clinton's economic success does well in blue-collar states that are hurting economically.

Here are the polls:

http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/2008/03/06/electoral-math-as-of-030608-clinton-276-mccain-262/

http://www.surveyusa.com/index.php/2008/03/06/electoral-math-as-of-030608-obama-280-mccain-258/

"Hillary's New Math Problem"

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 03:04:56 GMT

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter explains why Hillary can't win the nomination even with breathtaking wins in all the states she's expected to lose in.

She could win with more-than-breathtaking wins, but if they are run-of-the-mill breathtaking (with something that seems like a 95% liklihood), then she's out.

I'm guessing she's just doing in it for the veep spot now, though Alter disagrees. Still, it looks like we're just going to have to wait it out, and watch the party take all the trouble from Clinton before the general election begins. There's no use in rooting for it to be over soon. There may be a bright side - maybe Clinton's illusion of potentiality will help her serve as a lightning rod for Republican criticism that would otherwise be directed at Obama. It might also give him some time to prepare more fine-tuned responses to the attacks he will get.

Voila.

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:00:35 GMT

I couldn't get the file to transfer well to JPEG, this is the best I could do. The bitmap versions look better.

Clinton Banks on a Brokered Convention

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 06:39:55 GMT

The Tina Fey factor is a real thing in 2008. It's hard to say the entertainment media doesn't have power, after one late-night comedy program was able to spark an onslaught of negative press that stalled a potential Obama upset in Texas that would have effectively ended the Clinton campaign.

Hillary Clinton won Texas and Ohio by a popular vote on March 4, in a near tie that represents a huge drop from the 15-point lead she saw three weeks ago but will be claimed as victory nonetheless. The timing of this contest serves to block Obama's 12-win streak, and means that a brokered convention is more likely to occur. Obama won Vermont by a large margin, but as the smallest of 4 states voting on that day, it doesn't prevent the psychological victory from going to Clinton with big wins in the hard-fought contest.

Yet Clinton's victories failed to encroach on Obama's lead in delegates. It's almost mathematically impossible for Clinton to attain a delegate lead in the primary contest, and similarly unlikely - though not impossible - for her to become the Democratic nominee. But Clinton does position herself to stir things up in the party by playing with the Michigan-Florida deadlocks and by ensuring that intra-Democratic negative campaigning continues for months to come. This fight will almost certainly extend past Pennsylvania, which won't vote for a whopping 7-week stretch on April 22.

Two weeks ago this contest result would have been considered a loss for Senator Clinton, who, as of February 12, needed to win 55 percent of all remaining delegates to win the nomination. By getting less than 55 in these states, she is now required to win that much more in all remaining contests; to become the de-facto nominee she would now need roughly 62 percent wins from now until the last states vote in June. Since Obama is nearly sure to win some of the remaining states, Clinton needs 75 percent wins in states that are in play for her just to be a contender in a brokered convention.

Pennsylvania's demographics mean a probable win for Clinton, but Obama will have near guaranteed wins in two oft-overlooked states voting in the next week, Mississippi and Wyoming, that could tip by large margins. He is also going to win Montanna, South Dakota, and Oregon, which vote over the summer.

A recently leaked internal memo from the Obama campaign - which was printed in late January - predicted the huge 12-win streak that propelled Obama to where he is now. The memo also predicted losses in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island, and a win in Vermont. With a 100 percent accuracy so far, it indicates an ultimate nomination for Barack Obama, but also predicts a loss in Penssylvania before subsequent wins put him over the top.

If that is true, it shows why Obama can brush these expected losses off with breezy confidence (and in spite of these losses he has a virtual lock on the nomination, though it won't be without suffering a few more stinging blows from the Clintons), though few would deny it would have been the best thing for everyone to put this contest away once and for all. Clinton has angered many Democrats on all ends of the party by indicating that John McCain is "more prepared" to be President than Barack Obama, probably intended to position herself as a candidate who is more likely to beat McCain but effectively weakening the person who is most likely to be the Democratic nominee.

A brokered convention nominating Hillary Clinton with a weaker popular vote and fewer delegates would result in a likely Democratic loss in 2008, along with Democratic losses in the House and Senate, but there is some upside to the hard race if the contest ultimately lands on Barack Obama. It will spark an exciting press-frenzied convention that builds enthusiasm for democracy, even if it means Obama's nearly sure-fire victory is weakened to a 50-50 chance or even less. It also increases the chances that Hillary Clinton will be the vice-presidential nominee, which means that the first African-American presidential nominee will be accompanied by the first woman vice-presidential candidate. It also strengthens Barack Obama as a politician, so that even if he loses, future elections let a stronger and more experienced candidate return to the national scene.

Feminism and the Clinton Campaign

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:11:56 GMT

On March 2, the Los Angeles Times ran a story about the frustration women supporting the Clinton campaign are facing now that Hillary's presidency seems to be slipping through the cracks. "I'm worried that if Hillary doesn't get elected, I am never going to see a woman president in my lifetime," said one concerned voter.

Others indicated that the Democratic primaries follow a narrative all too familiar for them: a young, attractive man with less experience trumps a woman who has more experience.

Not all feminists are for Clinton, though; the National Organization for Woman is evenly split, and most can agree that either candidate, if elected, would turn out to be the most avidly feminist American president to date. Women under the age of 65 are evenly split between Obama and Clinton, and though women over 65 favor Clinton by dramatic margins, women in this older demographic group are less likely to consider themselves feminist and are more likely to say they are voting for Hillary as a hope for return of Bill Clinton's presidency.

In some cases, the conversation has turned into a tit for tat over who is more discriminated against - African-Americans, or women. But the fact that African American women are breaking for Obama indicates that those who experience both worlds like Obama better. White men - who experience neither world - also like Obama better.

That is not so for the GLBTQ community, which seems to support Clinton by greater margins, and with much greater vehemence. It is likely that they associate sexism with homophobia and are thus more likely to vote in patterns similar to women.

Lets go back, for a moment, to the complaint of the woman quoted in the Times article worrying that Hillary Clinton represents her last chance to see a female president. Clinton's current success certainly breaks the field wide open for a woman to be a serious contender for future nominations, and Obama's success proves that it doesn't necessarily have to be a woman who is well known for a decade before the election. But there are a few rising stars in the Democratic party that may become serious contenders within the next 20 years.

Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Speaker of the House, is currently the highest ranking woman in U.S. government, and is the highest ranking female U.S. government official in American history (unless you count a Supreme Court justice as higher). Third in line to become the president of the United States if a disaster takes out both the president and vice president, and standing on an 18-year record in the House of Representatives, she seems to have a good launching pad for a presidential bid.

Pelosi sparks ire from countless Republicans and Moderates across the country - which is probably attributable to little more than sexism. Before the 2006 midterm elections that brought a tidal wave of Democratic victories to the legislature, the leading line among Republicans was "do you want Nanci Pelosi to be Speaker of the House? I mean, come on, NANCY PELOSI!?" Few knew anything about her beyond her name and her critique of being an "San Fransisco Liberal," but the hate was still there.

In the end, I have to say that Pelosi probably wouldn't be a successful presidential contender. On superficial attributes - which have a role to play for both women and men running for office - she may be too fragile-looking to be a believable commander-in-chief. More importantly, House Speaker is probably too partisan a position for a candidate to attain the universal appeal a female contender would need to win the White House. But many Democrats would be more than willing to support her - at least in principle - if she were to drop in a bid.

Claire McCaskill

Now a newly-elected Senator of Missouri, the bellweather state, she has a good position as a moderate yet strong Democrat and as a woman who can get votes from Conservatives, leading her to beat the incumbent, Jim Talent, in 2006. She rose to power without a powerful political husband, so can in no way be criticized as a throw-back to a previous administration the way Hillary Clinton can. By serving on the Armed Services Committee, the Commerce Committee, and the Homeland Security Committee, she's positioned to rise in stature with the main issues general-election voters care most about. She is mentioned often in national politics, and may well end up on a future executive cabinet.

Michelle Obama

Why not? If Bill Clinton's presidency gave Hillary Clinton the platform to run for her first elected office as a senator of a state she didn't even live in, Michelle Obama could easily find a place in Illinois politics if her husband became president of the United States. She could likely win a House election from Illinois even if Obama remains a U.S. Senator. As a popular and outspoken figure and a succesfull private-sector leader, she has the savvy and intelligence to make a splash in politics and work her way up to the national scene.

The reason why a Michelle Obama candidacy is unlikely isn't that she couldn't do it, it's that she probably doesn't want to. One of Obama's favorite talking points in his books is that his wife often wishes out loud that they could leave politics and raise their two daughters like a normal family. While she is supportive of her husband's ascent as a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, it's doubtful that they would leave the two girls in daycare as both parents become elected figures. It's possible to see Michelle Obama in politics 10 or 15 years from now, but don't expect it in the near future.

Barbara Boxer

At 68 years old, California senator Barbara Boxer may be too old to run for president, since she will be 72 in 2012 and even older in future elections. But John McCain is now the oldest nominated man at age 72, and it's well known that women live longer and stay healthier than men do, so a Boxer campaign is a possibility. She could run as a symbolic bid to keep the presence of women in the race strong even if she woudln't take it very far. She has been in the United States Congress since 1982 and the Senate since 1992, and serves on the Foreign Relations Committee.

Boxer wouldn't only be the first woman president; she would be the first Jewish American in that office as well. Some may say that her religion and gender together would be insurmountable, but if odds like that stopped ambitious people from running, the Democratic field would be painfully small and the 2008 final contenders wouldn't have gotten so far.

Barbara Boxer is already gearing up for her 2010 campaign where she may face current California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. A lose there would likely put her out of politics for good, but a win in re-election bid against such a well-known Republican could giver her the credibility to seek higher office.

Mary Landrieu

Landrieu was once considered a possible vice-presidential running mate for John Kerry, and is now a leading critic of the federal government's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. She is a vehement moderate, standing aginst the liberal wing of the Democratic party as much as she stands against Republicans, and crossed over to ratify the Patriot Act. That moderate stance is a position she needs to be in since she won her senate seat by a razor-thin margin and a mass exodus of Democratic voters from New Orleans after the hurricane leaves the state bearing a marked shift to the Right. If she wins again with such odds, she will prove to be a near-invincible Southern moderate who is young enough to build credentials for a future presidential bid.

Blanche Lincoln

Lincoln is the youngest woman in the Senate, at just 48 years old, and represents Arkansas, a conservative Southern state giving this Democrat the ability to win difficult regions. (The second youngest woman, Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, is just 4 months younger.) Currently in her second term, she was the youngest woman ever elected in the Senate in 1998 at age 38. She was another potential running-mate for John Kerry in 2004, and is sometimes mentioned as a possible running-mate for Barack Obama, who could use the boost in support from the South.

Lincoln is another strong Centrist, often voting conservative on social issues, which tends to cost Democrats in primary elections but would seem appealing to general election voters. Her last name would certainly run in her favor, and her position on the Finance comittee gives her needed credentials.

Hillary Clinton

Whether Hillary wins the Democratic Nomination (and ultimately the presidency) or not, she will still be representative number-one for women in politics. At 60 years old, she isn't young but she isn't too old to contend in future elections, either. There may be some strong Clinton-fatigue after the contentuous 2008 contest, but Hillary Clinton won't go softly into the night, and many of her let-down supporters are going to want her to run again. Unless she further angers Democrats by knee-capping the party in her vehemence against Obama, we can expect, at the very least, Clinton as Senate Majority Leader.

Presidential Match-ups

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:14:14 GMT

To win in the general election, a Democratic presidential candidate has to take two of three crucial swing-states, they say; those states are Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Hillary Clinton supporters would want to point that out more than anyone, since, while Barack Obama does much better overall against John McCain in hypothetical matching polls (winning 48-43 while Clinton loses 44-47), Hillary Clinton is doing better than Obama against McCain in two of those crucial states - Florida, and Pennsylvania.

But that seems to conveniently ignore one fact about how the Barack Obama campaign has worked in Florida and Pennsylvania. Obama is the unknown, and repeatedly does poorly in a state until he shows up, after which point he surges ahead of Clinton in the Democratic Primary and in general appeal. Coincidentally, Florida and Pennsylvania are the exact two states that Barack Obama has never campaigned in.

Clinton loses to McCain in those states too, according to many polls, but unlike Obama, she doesn't have the same kind of momentum appeal that Obama has; they've known Hillary for years across the country, so she would have to fight much harder to boost her favor. She has a "glass ceiling," so to speak, which coincides with her unfavorability rating in any given state. Since her "likeability" in polls is not much more than 50 percent overall, it's unlikely she will get votes exceeding that, because it would mean getting votes from people whose attitude toward her is unfavorable.

Meanwhile, the argument ignores another powerfully important fact involving states like Colorado, Missouri, and Michigan, where Obama is favored to beat McCain (by huge margins) while Clinton is not (she loses by big margins). The truth is that a landslide of small states tip for the Democrats with Barack Obama as leading candidate.

The updated polls at PresidentElectionPolls.com currently show Barack Obama with a 277 to 250 electoral delegate lead against McCain among all polled states; that is, without winning in Florida, Pennsylvania or Ohio. He also loses in Virginia by that count, though Virginia is one state where high turnout among African Americans could tip the balance in his favor. Meanwhile, Clinton loses in electoral delegates by 211 to 271. It's true that she could come ahead and close that gap a little, but it also seems true that Obama is a safer bet for a Democrat winning against John McCain.

Especially considering how Barack Obama could come back in Florida and Pennsylvania when he finally gets on the ground there.

Anyone's guess

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 07:43:59 GMT

Here's my prediction for the Democratic nomination. I made as Wisconsin voted, and since things seem to be shaping up as such so far, I'll go out on a limb and say this is what I expect.

Barack Obama will win Texas by a comfortable margin. Hillary Clinton will win Ohio by a slight margin, so while their delegates from Ohio will be virtually the same, Obama will widen his lead because of the Texas delegates.

Hillary Clinton will drop out of the race in the morning of March 5. Barack will make a tremendous speech about how she didn't just "break through the glass ceiling for women in politics, she shattered it, and there isn't a twelve-year-old girl in America who doesn't beleive that she, too, can be the president of the United States thanks to what Hillary Clinton has done." Clinton will praise and endorse Barack Obama and everyone will thank her for being in the race.

Obama will make the speech again at the convention in Denver this September. He will add that there will be a woman president in the 21st century and that there will be more than one woman president in the 21st century. He will not nominate Hillary Clinton for the vice presidency (and she doesn't even want it anyway); he will find a white man about a decade older than him with a strong military background.

It will take about a week and a half for Hillary Clinton supporters to start liking Barack Obama and focus their criticism instead on John McCain. There will be an initial spurt of anti-Obama talk but it will dry up within a couple days. Obama will be a popular president. Four years and eight years from now, there will be a dramatic increase in the number of young elected women across the country, and a less dramatic but still notable increase in the number of young elected African-Americans.

I beleive this is the trajectory we are on now; obviously a minor change can drastically move that trajectory as time goes on, and I certainly cannot predict a future speech word for word. But for now I can say that things are looking pretty firm for Barack Obama to be the next president of the United States, and he will lead one of the most diverse presidential cabinets in recent history.

Academy Awards

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:08:58 GMT

Is it just me, or was the first soldier on video conference from Iraq who read the first Oscar-nominated short documentary just a liiiiiitle bit flamboyant?

For a military guy, no less. It's "don't ask, don't tell," but those who are familiar with the policy know the military has sneaky ways of getting people to out themselves so they can be discharged. That being so, we can be sure they're pretty desperate to keep people enlisted right now if they let that guy get through without something coming up. I am told that the big part of the reason why the military insists on excluding gays is for it's image; they don't want to turn away conservative men who are most likely to join, and they want to hold up their long-held reputation of being a man's man's institution. But how does it effect the military's buff-and-burly image when they advertise someone so overtly flamboyant in the most public way possible?

This irony is compounded by the fact that the film that the young soldier announced, which ultimately won, was about a lesbian police lieutenant who was dying of cancer and wanted to leave her pension to her partner, but was not allowed to because the two were not legally married.

I don't follow Hollywood, but Jon Stewart is hilarious and I heard he would be hosting the event, so I had to see how he does this thing. But two hours into it, I can say that Hollywood has gone downhill.

But Jon Stewart looks so much like my dad that it's creepy. Their voices are somewhat similar as well.

I'm wondering if there is always a montage highlighting several dozen past winners of any given award before announcing who won this year. I'm hoping the presence of the montages in this year's presentation is just a product of this year's writer's strike, and not an indication that Hollywood - which represents America to half the world - has really gotten this cheezy.

The intro to the whole show was like a ride at Universal Studios. That is what a friend told me about his take on the 3-minute computer-generated animation, and his definition was better than mine. What I had said previously was that it was exactly what I would have produced if someone had asked me to produce an intro for the Academy Awards when I was 8 years old.

Does anybody know what the little gold statuette of a naked man holding a sword has to do with movies?

Micael Moore did not win this year; he hasn't won anything since his controversial speech in 2003 after receiving an award for Bowling for Columbine, and probably won't win again after that controversy. The winning full-length documentary was about a 22-year-old Afghani man beaten to death by American soldiers while being held without charge. Discovery Channel and HBO bought the rights to show the film but neither plans to show it until 2009, after George W. Bush, whose policies on torture are criticized in the film, has left office.