Liberal College Kid

On the eve of the Pennsylvania Democratic Primary, the media, the twenty-four hour news networks in particular, are putting on their thinking caps and really revving up the prediction game. With the help of copious amounts of polls and apparently knowledgeable pundits, they will spend most of today and likely all of tomorrow trying to determine who will win the majority of Keystone state votes among various demographics, geographic locations and age groups. In one breath, many of them will acknowledge the fact that they are very often wrong and that polls are notoriously inaccurate (not to mention the drastically different conclusions that each individual poll finds), while continuing to supply we humble citizens with their professional predictions anyway. God bless America.

Today MSNBC has been continuously referring to a poll that they conducted in an attempt to penetrate the minds of “blue collar” voters (a term which has been used so often in the last few months that it may soon lose its meaning). This enlightening poll breaks down Pennsylvania working class voters into four very insightful groups:

1. Hunters

2. Bowlers

3. Beer Drinkers

4. Gun Owners

Ignoring, for the moment, that many of these groups are not even close to being mutually exclusive (particularly groups 1 and 4, which, if we are to believe the ubiquitously referenced logic for pro-gun legislation, should be the same exact people), it is very interesting, in light of the recent charges of “elitism” being throw around so carelessly, that MSNBC would conduct and then relentlessly cite this poll. When Barack Obama remarked at a San Francisco fund raiser that rural Pennsylvanians have become bitter about the economic situation in the state and have been clinging to guns, religion and antipathy towards immigrants in response, there were loud cries accusing him of condescension and failure to understand the small town-mentality. These accusations were amplified and trumpeted gleefully by the media whose members are always happy to portray Democrats as Ivory Tower elitists.

But what was largely lost in the ensuing debate over Obama’s character was the truth that is inherent in his statement. There has been a great amount of speculation as to the true intentions behind it, but I believe that the generally accepted interpretation is wrong. Rather than insinuating that the only reason rural Pennsylvanians and other Americans like them are religious or live traditional lifestyles is because of their economic predicament (an assertion that I don’t totally disagree with), I believe that what the Senator meant, in this case at least, is that when a population is abandoned by their government on economic issues (as many Pennsylvanians have been over the last 30 years), their political involvement becomes focused on issues that they believe they can still have a significant effect on. Year after year, decade after decade, Pennsylvanians have become increasingly convinced that whether there is a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent in office, the economy in their state will still be left out to dry. They have learned that despite all their rhetoric on stimulating job growth and preventing the outsourcing that has devastated much of the state, politicians will never follow up on these promises and that the situation may continue to get worse. In order to prevent a feeling of complete political innocuousness, they turn their attention to issues relating to their religion, to gun control, and to immigration, realms of the political dialogue in which they see they can still be an important factor. Under this line of thinking, faith, gun ownership and similar characteristics of rural Pennsylvania are an integrated part of the culture, which do not exist simply because of economic situations but become amplified and prioritized when a sense of abandonment takes hold of a community.

Now, this is certainly a debatable idea. The argument over the direction of causation between economics and culture/social structure goes back at least to Marx (economics determines social structure) and Weber (social characteristics determine economic activity). My point here is that I do not see Senator Obama’s remarks as revealing his inner elitism and disdain for rural Americans. Rather, I think he is truly trying to view Pennsylvania’s political culture through the eyes of a social scientist, a method that more politicians should probably utilize, regardless of whether or not the particular assertion Obama was making is entirely correct or not.

On the other hand, what I do find insulting and condescending, as a Pennsylvanian who has spent the majority of his time in the less urbanized middle ground of the state, are polls like the one MSNBC is using today and comments that are endlessly made by pundits that reflect that poll’s thinking. Even if you assume the most socially unacceptable interpretation of Obama’s remarks is the correct one (that the only reason why rural Americans are religious and traditional is because they are in poor economic health), to me, assuming that voters in the state are so moronic, so nonintellectual that they are unable to differentiate their participation in a bowling league or their love for Yuengling Lager from their political ideology is far more insulting. At least, under the harshest interpretation of the “bitter” statement, Obama was mapping out a somewhat identifiable process by which the phenomena of religion and nativism occur. The MSNBC poll, however, insinuates to the entire nation and anyone in the rest of the world who is closely following this election, that somehow, there is a direct correlation between a Pennsylvanian’s choice in alcoholic beverage and who he or she will vote for in a presidential election. Interestingly, in the beer drinking category, Obama and Clinton were tied. But the offense I take lies not in the answer, but in the formulation of the question in the first place. Imagine the phone call that Pennsylvania residents must have been subjected to: “Hello ma’am, may I ask you a few questions? Do you drink beer? Do you ever go bowling? For whom are you planning on voting?”

The pundits that subsequently take the information derived from polls such as these and attempt to formulate conclusions about voters only increase the idiocy of this game of prediction that they so love to play. One frequent MSNBC guest, Jonathan Alter, when asked why hunting, bowling and beer are relevant characteristics of PA voters, he responded, “Because there are a lot of them! Have you ever seen the movie Deer Hunter?” If a movie made thirty years ago is the source from which our media establishment “experts” are drawing their demographic information, we are all in trouble. And within his response lies the condescension of which I am speaking. It’s true that a good amount of Pennsylvanians love beer (myself included) and go bowling (myself not included), but for the vast majority of them, these activities have absolutely nothing to do with the way they make voting decisions or how their political ideology is shaped, and to assume that they do is true condescension. If Alter and the long line of pundits that MSNBC has been interviewing all day long really believe that these are significant factors in this race, then it reveals a deeply ingrained misunderstanding of the average and “blue collar” Americans on the behalf of which these experts supposedly speak. Next time, before they begin with the tirades about Senator Obama’s elitism and his disconnect from rural America, they should stop to contemplate whether or not they are truly in a position to attach these monikers to politicians, when they so obviously deserve them themselves. Oh, and Contessa Brewer, if you are reading this, call me sometime.

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It’s March 27. The Democratic race is still stretching on, and apparently, no end is in sight. Every day, at nearly any given moment, the twenty-four hour news networks are covering and recovering the election. They are analyzing every detail of the campaign, ripping through the obfuscation to shed light on the inner thoughts, motivations, intentions and personalities of the candidates. Pundits can tell you why this candidate wore a red tie instead of a blue one. Seconds after the Obama speech dealing with race in America, a Fox news pundit turned to the camera and explained that the candidate was using a teleprompter, “and not very well,” he added. Through this and other similar, penetrating commentary, we can expect to be enlightened; to suddenly, with the help of acute television personalities, see through the façade of campaign politics and focus on the heart of the matter.

We are familiar enough with the following scenario. Two candidates stand (or sit) on a stage. Behind them is a radiant, three storied backdrop emanating red, white and blue, and a three or five letter acronym (CNN, MSNBC). In the studio, the networks are tracking public response in real-time. One candidate punches out a particularly catchy phrase and their ratings begin a rapid ascent, only to level off and fall when his or her opponent responds with an even wittier remark. Pundits wait in the wing, taking notes on the candidates’ postures, the tone of their voice. Did he get a little too angry with that last comment? Why does he keep blinking so much? They are listening closely, predicting with complete certainty that this line will go great with the Latino community, while that last one is really going to appeal to white single mothers.

The debate ends and the candidates shower each other with warm praises and smile for their photo-op; best friends even after two hours of vicious assaults. Coverage moves to the so called ‘spin room’ where each campaign knows for sure that their candidate, in fact, won the debate. There is not so much certainty back in the studio. A fresh debate emerges between warring factions of well groomed pundits, each of whom has detailed, factual reasons why they know who the real winner is. Polls flash onto the screen, showing that voters in this state are leaning towards one candidate, although their African American support could be greater. The moments deemed most significant are replayed, and panels begin anew, dissecting each syllable, each ebb and flow of diction and whether or not the crowd applauded vigorously enough.

The next day the campaigns are back on the trail. The pledges they made the night before vowing to keep the politics clean have faded into history, and all for the better. A candidate tells a group of citizens at a town hall meeting that they have more foreign policy experience than their opponent does. Across the state or country, the other fires back within minutes, redefining experience and sending thousands of emails detailing their record. The blogosphere explodes in outrage when a pivotal word is misused, because behind it lie treacherous intentions. New polls are taken.

The constant buzz of non-stop opinion, ceaseless commentary and back-and-forth campaign slights has marked this election cycle like none before it. That is not to say that there are any fundamental differences between the way these campaigns have been functioning and the way all campaigns have operated for the last few decades. But the level of noise has risen to its all time high.

Rigorous debate is one of the hallmarks of a functioning democracy. Without it, the public becomes lulled into a catatonic state of thoughtlessness, and the official, state sponsored position becomes the only position. But there is a difference between debate and overwhelming cacophony.

When you go to the symphony, dressed in your best attire and excited for the incredible music you are about to hear, you will be angered if the musicians take their seats and play imaginary instruments, filling the concert hall with silence. But you will be as equally dissatisfied if three separate orchestras crowd the stage, one plays Beethoven, another plays Bach and the third opts for Tchaikovsky, all simultaneously.

So it is with political campaigning in modern America. Insight is discouragingly rare because in order to be heard, everyone has to shout. Even the short lived moments filled with genuine vision and maybe even a touch of beauty, as many of us saw in the Obama speech, are quickly turned into sound bites. Those parts of the speech that seemed the most controversial are played in isolation, made to represent its entirety. This site posted the speech in full, with no meaningless commentary, the way it should be. Let the words speak for themselves.

Who is to blame for this mess? Is it the all day media, who, in search for ratings, have turned politics into day-time soap opera? Maybe. Is it the blogosphere and the internet in general, this humble site included, that has flooded the public consciousness with so much information, so much opinion that all facts become confused, all simple actions complicated? Possibly. Could it be the candidates themselves, who have, instead of digging deeper, made themselves comfortable with superficial attacks and subsequent retorts that play easily to a busy and sometimes fickle public? Perhaps.

More likely, it is the combination of all these factors. Advances in technology like cell phones, blackberries, RSS feeds and Wikipedia have trained us all to expect instant information, all the time, with no barriers. My generation, more so than those before it, is often uncomfortable if we are even momentarily cut off from the outside world, whether from events in the middle east or the Facebook status of our friends.

For the next few days, I am engaging myself in an experiment. Although I cannot promise to stay away from Facebook or AIM, I am not going to watch any twenty-four hour news reporting. I will stay away from the blogs I typically read a few times a week or even daily. The emails I get every single day from the three remaining candidacies shall go unopened. My only source of political information will be newspapers or their online equivalents. It will be an experiment in pre-television, pre-internet political thought. Who knows what revelations will descend unto me once the volume has been turned down, the shouting quieted? I will stifle the cacophony, and let the orchestra play as it was meant to be.

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William F. Buckley Jr. died this morning, hunched over his desk, still writing away at the age of 82. He was one of the greatest champions of conservatism that the movement has ever seen, one that’s had an immeasurable effect on the direction of political thought since the end of WWII.

He’ll be missed, not only by conservatives, for whom Buckley was a super-star, but for anyone that values thoughtful, intelligent discourse. His sesquipedalian tendencies will be deeply missed in a age when profound, penetrating debate has largely been replaced by moronic, hate-filled rhetoric. Even though many of us on the left deeply disagreed with Buckley’s ideas, he was the kind of man you could have a serious debate with, unlike many on both sides of the aisle today. The New York Times calls him “liberals’ favorite conservative” - a moniker that personally, I’ll be happy to confirm.

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Back in December, I published a post about William Kristol and his then-recent appointment as a contributor to the New York Times’ Op-Ed page. Since then, I have often wanted to follow up on the original post and attack the kind of intellectually dishonest rhetoric that I predicted he would produce and which he has gladly delivered. But I held my tongue, knowing that readers of this site are capable of sifting through his nonsense on their own.

Today, however, I read his piece titled “Democrats Should Read Kipling,” and couldn’t believe the level to which his manipulative proselytizing had risen. In this column piece, Kristol is attempting to justify the Bush warrant-less eavesdropping program, chastise the House for failing to immediately pass the bill legalizing it, and scare the general public into sacrificing their Fourth Amendment rights for the sake of security; all with the help of… George Orwell? For those of you who see the glaring contradiction in this strategy and are confused by the fact that Kristol and Orwell make extremely strange bedfellows, you are not alone.

Kristol, while apparently perusing a used bookstore in the Milwaukee airport, stumbled upon a volume of Orwell’s essays. One of these, written in 1942, dealt with Rudyard Kipling, the Indian-born British author and poet. Kristol says:

 […] Kipling “identified himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition.”

“In a gifted writer,” Orwell remarks, “this seems to us strange and even disgusting, but it did have the advantage of giving Kipling a certain grip on reality.” Kipling “at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like.” For, Orwell explains, “The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.” Furthermore, “where it is a permanent and pensioned opposition, as in England, the quality of its thought deteriorates accordingly.”

If I may vulgarize the implications of Orwell’s argument a bit: substitute Republicans for Kipling and Democrats for the opposition, and you have a good synopsis of the current state of American politics.

This is very typical of Kristol. He has found a few passages in a five and a half thousand-word essay that he sees can be easily construed to fit in line with his warped world view, and ignored the portions that cannot. It could be acceptable, albeit embarrassing for Kristol, to omit certain ideas contained in this essay, if, because of its length and his tight schedule, he had not read the entire piece. But even if he hasn’t read it all, it seems impossible to have missed these two lines, the first of which comes directly before the portions Kristol quotes (above), the second coming immediately afterwards:

One reason for Kipling’s power as a good bad poet I have already suggested–his sense of responsibility, which made it possible for him to have a world-view, even though it happened to be a false one. Although he had no direct connexion with any political party, Kipling was a Conservative, a thing that does not exist nowadays. Those who now call themselves Conservatives are either Liberals, Fascists or the accomplices of Fascists.

And:

Kipling sold out to the British governing class, not financially but emotionally. This warped his political judgement, for the British ruling class were not what he imagined, and it led him into abysses of folly and snobbery […]

Again, all of these statements are in the same paragraph, which happens to be the last of the essay. Strangely, Kristol has not chosen to include these in his article, because they are not flattering to conservatives in the first instance, and tarnish the one dimensional image of Kipling that he is trying to convey in the second. Instead, he hopes that he can quote the sixty-six year old essay selectively, and because of its age and relative obscurity, no one reading the NYT will know the difference. This is the picture of academic and journalistic deceit.

Kristol’s aim in  writing this piece is to portray the Republican Party, which he considers to be the real “governing” party, as the bearers of an immense burden, that of being forced to make important, complicated decisions. “Many Democrats, on the other hand, no longer even try to imagine what action and responsibility are like,” he announces. This is the worst kind of self-pitying mixed with self-glorification; he means to insinuate that he and his buddies in the GOP are the only ones that truly understand the weight they carry in protecting the country from Evil. He points out that over the last forty years, Republicans have controlled the White House for a total of twenty-eight. That statistic, though it does show that, in general, Republican have had a larger share of power, hardly renders the Democratic Party and all of its members a “permanent and pensioned opposition.” I really, honestly, wonder whether Kristol even knows what the word “pensioned” means in this context, because if he did, he would immediately see the idiocy of this argument. Obviously, the Democrats are not pensioned or resigned to a position of permanent and inferior opposition against the Republicans: they took control of both Houses of Congress, and are in serious contention for the presidency. Kristol is very right when he mentions, at the beginning of the article, that the works of George Orwell are often applicable to modern American politics, but not in this particular instance, and not in the way that he seems to think they do.

After dismissing the Democratic Party as irrelevant and unable to imagine What It Takes To Lead, he applies these assumptions to the members of the House, who, rightly, declined to unquestioningly pass legislation giving law-breaking corporations immunity for past actions. As already mentioned, the bill in question, if passed, would give the president and telecommunications companies the power to eavesdrop on American phone calls, emails, and other types of communication, without a warrant, and in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. Kristol believes that our right against unreasonable searches and seizures should be considered trivial in the face of the threat of terror. He says that:

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of national intelligence, the retired Vice Admiral Mike McConnell, and the attorney general, the former federal judge Michael Mukasey, are highly respected and nonpolitical officials with little in the way of partisanship or ideology in their backgrounds. They have all testified, under oath, that in their judgments, certain legal arrangements regarding surveillance abilities are important to our national security.

Not all Democrats have refused to listen. In the Senate, Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, took seriously the job of updating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in light of technological changes and court decisions. His committee produced an impressive report, and, by a vote of 13 to 2, sent legislation to the floor that would have preserved the government’s ability to listen to foreign phone calls and read foreign e-mail that passed through switching points in the United States.

Even assuming the questionable characterization of these men as being “nonpartisan” is true, this is still an example of how Kristol and his cronies are trying to downplay the implications of the revised FISA bill. The phrase “that passed through switching points in the United States” completely miscontrues what the bill does. Rather than allowing the government to spy on foreign-to-foreign communications only, it allows them to spy on any call or email between any normal American and anyone overseas, whether it be a terrorist in the mountains of Pakistan or your cousin in London. The real danger is the precedent it sets, namely, that warrants are a inconvenient waste of time. This is the most important issue. The government would be free to eavesdrop all they wanted, if they would bother to get a warrant. But they cannot do that, because then they would need a good reason to spy on you. With this bill, they do not. The next step is listening in on every communication, regardless of its destination or origination, even if it is from Cleveland to Columbus. Similarly, he uses the words “certain legal arrangement” to describe the legalization of obviously illegal actions that have been taken by the government. There is a term generally used for this kind of PR strategy: Orwellian.

And herein lies the greatest irony of this article. Kristol attempts to employ the words of George Orwell, the original, most respected, and most articulate critic of the modern police state, in defending legislation that all but establishes one. Orwell wrote 1984 and countless essays warning us of the dangers of allowing the government to monopolize too much power and of surrendering our privacy to them, especially when it is being coerced away from us with fear tactics, threatening us with annihilation at the hands of Goldstein Bin Laden. He is the last person Kristol should be looking to for a justification to trample on the constitution.

Let’s pretend for a minute, as Kristol would like us to do, that the analogy between Kipling and the Republicans is a valid one. I wonder how Kristol would feel when his beloved party was compared with Orwell’s view of Kipling in this passage, also from the same essay:

It is no use claiming, for instance, that when Kipling describes a British soldier beating a ‘nigger’ with a cleaning rod in order to get money out of him, he is acting merely as a reporter and does not necessarily approve what he describes. There is not the slightest sign anywhere in Kipling’s work that he disapproves of that kind of conduct–on the contrary, there is a definite strain of sadism in him, over and above the brutality which a writer of that type has to have.

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While roaming around the web, hitting up all of the most popular political commentary magazines and sites, you may notice a growing trend. More and more, you’ll find articles and opinion pieces that have titles written in question form. For example, these are some just from this week:

• “Is voter turnout better than ever?” (Slate)
• “Are Bush’s Tax Cut’s dead?” (Slate)
• “Was Irene Nemirovsky an Anti-Semite?” (Salon)
• “Is the Dem’s Fox News Boycott Over?” (Salon)
• “Iraq: Dem’s Dream Dashed?” (Mother Jones)
• “Obama, ‘Establishment’ Candidate?” (New Republic)

Now, some of the articles, posts, and opinions that fall into this category are definitely worth reading. Sometimes they are very informative or insightful. But their titles alone often say something about their contents’ substance, namely, “get ready for some speculation.”

Most of these pieces are simply the author playing around with some idea that he or she thinks is novel and original, especially if this idea contradicts what most people believe. In “Are Bush’s Tax Cuts Dead?“, (subtitled “Does McCain’s Victory Doom Them?”) Daniel Gross strings out a long line of hypothetical scenarios and less than concrete assumptions to reach the conclusion that the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire in 2010, will not become permanent. In reality, there is no way of knowing this. True, McCain did vote against the measures when they were first before the Senate (twice, in fact), but Gross assumes that he is lying now when he says he’ll make them permanent, or that even if he is not lying, McCain will see the fiscal irresponsibility of them once in the presidency. He points out that any Republican will be facing a Democratic Congress, as if this changes much of anything. The current crop of Democrats we now enjoy have no problem rolling over for Bush, why not McCain or Romney? Now, what Gross posits could happen; its not entirely unlikely. But there is no way to accurately predict something like this, especially so far in advance, so why bother?

Another kind of question-form-headline is one in which the author is reacting to some recently made claim, again, usually one that doesn’t fit into preconceived notions. For example, the New Republic post, “Obama, ‘Establishment’ Candidate?” Those of us that are familiar with the TNR know that they are generally a right-leaning publication. This particular post is merely referring to a statement made by Mark Penn (of the Clinton campaign) that Obama, rather than Clinton, is the real establishment candidate. But rather than title the post, “Mark Penn Calls Obama the ‘Establishment’ Candidate,” the author or the site’s editor decided to turn it into a seemingly provocative question. Normally, I probably would have never even hit that link, having assumed that this was just another speculative piece like the one mentioned above, just from the title alone. It’s far more interesting, to me, that Mark Penn is trying to manipulate Obama’s image in favor of Clinton’s than it is if some writer is doing it just as some sort of academic exercise, so why not allude to the real story in the title itself?

In general, I think that when you decide to present your piece in question form, it makes your ideas seem weak and unfounded, and frankly, it makes me want nothing to do with them. If you really do believe that voter turn out is better than ever, just say so, and try to prove your case with some hard facts. It’s almost as if the authors of this kind of article or post want to make a point without actually taking on the responsibility for the conclusions it reaches. It allows them to make speculations that are not necessarily grounded in any truth and get away with it. If they turn out to be wildly wrong or end up offending someone (as in the one of the articles listed above), all they have to say is, “Hey, I was just asking a question,” and suddenly it’s as if they do not need to be held accountable for their work and its implications. It’s just a form of cowardice, one that, it seems to me, is becoming more and more prevalent.

****

Updated: I’ve been thinking about this some more since I published this post, and I believe I failed to note an important distinction. The articles that I am specifically referring to here are usually ones that have a “closed-ended” question format, like all of them listed above. In these pieces, there can only be a “yes” or “no” answer, and almost all of the time, it is extremely difficult if not impossible to actually answer them. Yet, the author almost always does have an answer, but would rather not just state it plainly in the title for lack of hard evidence. In this way, the author is merely positing a theory that might not be able to be fully defended, and skirting their responsibility for making it. On the other hand, “open-ended” questions are a different story. For example, Slate regularly posts a column called “The Explainer,” many editions of which are titled in question format. But the questions are on topics such as, “How Do You Learn a Dead Language?” and “What Do the Cops Have On Me?”. These are things most people have wondered about, and “The Explainer” is very good at enlightening the reader. There is nothing wrong with articles like those. Sorry for the oversight, and I hope I cleared up this admittedly somewhat confusing post.

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“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and the obedience of the [U.S.] media.”

“The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or the modern corporation.”

-Noam Chomsky

Following the results of New Hampshire’s primary votes, it seems that John Edward’s presidential hopes are not looking good. It is infuriating, to me personally, that the whims of two states representing a tiny fraction of the American public can have such a substantial effect on the fate of the presidential race, and thereby the republic as a whole. But these frustrations, as much as I would like to now expand on them, are currently irrelevant, and should be reserved for a later date. What I do want to discuss, however, is what the Edwards campaign contributed to the general direction of the Democratic struggle for the presidency, and, vastly more important, the consciousness of the nation.

First of all: an indictment of the mainstream media. Throughout the last two years, as the candidates on both sides of the aisle have traveled around the country, the major news outlets in the United States (CNN, Fox, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, to name only a few) have depicted the Democratic race as a two-sided battle; namely, the battle between the Clinton and Obama campaigns. We would be foolish to think that this has not had a significant, if not vital, effect on the bid for the White House. The mainstream media is an incredibly powerful force. It has the ability to, and general does, shape our view of reality and world around us. The tell us who is a “viable” candidate and who is not (this, of course, is in reference to only one small aspect of the reality that the media shapes for us; the power they have extends far beyond campaigns and “politics,” in the strictest sense of the word). While anyone who considers themselves educated and enlightened acknowledges this fact, we must think further. Why is it that Edwards has been consistently counted out, considered a nearly hopeless candidate? Before you answer this question, try to disassociate yourself from everything you have been molded to think in the last year or two, everything that has told you that Obama and Clinton are strong candidates, and others like Edwards, Biden, Dodd, Kucinich, and even Paul are weak.

The easy answer is that all of the latter campaigns have been very short on money, some more desperate than others. Despite the fact that we live in a “democracy” (a word that, in my opinion, has lost much of its meaning over the last quarter-century), those that do not have adequate financial backing are doomed. This, perhaps, is one of the great tragedies that our nation has had to suffer, and, no doubt, will continue to suffer. But I hope, for the sake of our fate as a nation, that this is not your only justification for supporting a candidate: whether they have the financial assets necessary. Let’s ponder for a moment what having a large sum of money to support a campaign actually means. It means that those with the money will have the most television advertisements and radio commercials; they will have the most signs crowding the landscapes of our neighborhoods; they will have the greatest number of paid staff members to conduct activities like door-to-door recruiting and focus group organizing.

Those of us that claim to be on the Left should have an ideological discomfort with these facts. We tout our commitment to equality and fairness, and yet barely notice when the entire system of nominating a Democratic presidential candidate is blatantly unbalanced and favored towards those who have the most money. This is not to say that a candidate cannot rise from obscurity and become a serious prospect for the nomination. But, there are certain circumstances that must unfold in particular ways in order for this to occur. They must convince those in this society that have the most money to donate that they are justified in supporting them. This is what the Barack Obama campaign has done. The donors that are really necessary to the success of a campaign saw that his chances of winning the nomination were reasonable, and therefore pushed money his way. It’s an easily identifiable cycle.

But there is another, more important reason that certain campaigns are focused on by the media, and others are ignored or portrayed as hopeless. For candidates like Kucinich and the libertarian - turned - Republican Ron Paul, its because their platforms and ideas are, rightly, considered radical. Suddenly the number one issue in the Democratic campaign (and even in the Republican one, to a lesser extent) is “change.” But can we honestly say that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are proposing policy shifts (if you can find any at all on Obama’s side (I know that they are there, but he rarely references them)) that are even comparable to the platforms of Kucinich? The worst part about the entire game is that huge numbers of voters have a feeling in their gut that people like Kucinich and Paul may be the only candidates playing straight, making a priority of honesty, not simply speaking from focus group and poll results. Paul, especially, is the only one of the Republican candidates who really understands terrorism in the Middle East and its causes, yet when he attempts to explain them during debates, the other men jump on him, ridicule him, condescend to him, and make him seem delusional. Even those of people in this country that are the most outspoken about terrorism, specifically that it is simply a manifestation of the terrorists “hatred of our freedom,” must know at some level this is fantasy, and that the a major cause of hatred against the United States is not jealousy or a disdain for democracy, it is a reaction to the imperialistic foreign policies that have been in place since the end of World War II. These candidates are counted out from the beginning, none the less, most importantly because the media says they are. The fact is, that in our culture of twenty four hour non-stop media, no matter how much you canvas a state talking about your ideas, the majority of voters are seeing you through the camera lens. The more politically active and focused members of the country will go out to hear candidates speak in person, the ones that have rational reasons for their vote and can clearly demonstrate why they are supporting one candidate over the other. But in reality, elections are swayed in one direction or another largely because of how voters “feel” about a candidate, not for any identifiable policy factors, and these feelings are a direct result of how the the candidates are portrayed in the media. Its not an obvious process, in fact, in many cases, it is the most sophisticated propaganda system ever implemented. We think that we are making these decisions for ourselves, and to some extent we are, but these choices are made based on ideas and images formed in our minds via the media.

Why, then, would the media choose to raise certain candidates to the status of “viable” while leaving the majority nearly out of the conversation? The answer seems elementary, but it is worth noting.

All the major news outlets in this country are owned by a handful of corporations: the television channels, the newspapers, the magazines, and many important websites. The reporters and journalists employed by these powerful conglomerates are often forced to report what they are told, to shape the issues and the reality of American life into the vision that their bosses have. The alternative is often the loss of their job (see the documentary The Corporation, one version is here.) Like any powerful force in the world, the owners of these conglomerates have certain interests that they must protect in order to achieve their own personal goals, which are generally the increasing of their personal fortunes or the appeasement of their stockholders.

From the beginning John Edwards, like the so called “second and third tier candidates”, was described by the media as a long shot, despite the fact that he was perhaps the second most recognizable candidate on the Democratic side (after Clinton, and before the rise of Obama’s celebrity status). As we have already discussed, if the media deems your candidacy hopeless, it usually is, both because many people will hear and see less of you and because opportunistic but well informed voters will latch onto a candidate that they believe is most likely to be elected (I include myself in this category: many times I’ve passed on supporting my first choice candidate simply because “they’ll never get elected.”)

John Edwards has been one of the most disturbing candidates to the owners of mainstream media and their friends. While all democratic candidates use rhetoric suggesting a dislike for corporate greed and corruption, those who own these interest know that this is probably just an empty platform with which to get elected. Whatever they may say, the major and now the only probable candidates, like Clinton and Obama, still take donations from lobbyists and wealthy corporation owners, hence insuring that they will be indebted to them and their influence once in office. Edwards, on the other hand, refused to take this sort of donation. Despite the enormous temptation to do so, he would not be bought off, and his campaign has suffered for it, both in their financial capabilities and their media portrayal. While reading posts and comments on the internet, I am surprised how many talk about how sincere they think Edwards is (to be sure, not all people think that of him). There are certain aspects of his campaigning that bother me, certain tactics used, like the many sound bites he produces, but these are, unfortunately, a necessary part of campaigning, and beneath them, myself and many many others can see the sincerity from which they stem.

The central idea of Edwards’ campaign has been resisting corporate influence and putting a limit on their powers in the government. This is exactly the opposite of what corporations that own media are interested in. This desire is most obvious in the case of the FCC and the recent loosening of monopoly-preventing regulations under the Bush administration. But it also extends to their friends whose fortunes and power would be threatened were Edwards to win the presidency. NBC, for example, is owned by General Electric, surely one of the largest and most influential corporations in the world. Edwards’ stance on limiting their ability to exploit cheap labor (which in many cases more closely resembles slavery), control the vast majority of the market, destroy the environment and produce harmful products is dangerous to their interests. Consequently, when NBC and MSNBC along with their related outlets have discussed John Edwards, it has been in language that distorts his image and reduces his chances of nomination, as I pointed out in one instance in an earlier post. And they are obviously not the only corporate giants afraid of Edwards. Most pointedly he has attacked insurance and pharmaceutical companies (who, on another note, Mitt Romney said were not the problem), two of the most powerful lobbyist groups in Washington.

Corporations are not only afraid of the attacks they receive from Edwards, but also of who his most important supporters are. Edwards has been consistently backed by the major unions (the few that still exist) in a large majority of the country. It doesn’t take a degree in Labor-Industrial Relations to see the problems this could create for large businesses like Wal-mart that do not allow their employees to organize and pay them near poverty level wages in addition to providing little or no benefits. Raising the pay of these people and giving them health care and other benefits would cut deeply into the pockets of the Waltons, the family that owns the mega-giant corporation and whose members are among the wealthiest in the country. In fact, Wal-mart is the perfect example of all that corporate America has to lose under an Edwards presidency.

Edwards has not yet dropped out of the race. His determination to keep going is remarkable, although its prudence can and will be debated. Even if he does eventually decide to stop running, the impact that he has had on the tone of the campaign will be felt all the way to the popular election and hopefully into the policies of the next administration. Not since the early part of the twentieth century has there been a presidential election that has confronted the growing power of large conglomerate interests and the resulting social stratification it produces. The American public, largely thanks to Edwards, is more aware now, I hope, of all that is being stolen from them in order to line the pockets of the upper echelons of society. Hopefully those that bemoan the welfare state that gives assistance to single mothers (although it is not much) will start to realize that while these programs are cut, corporate welfare in the form of subsidiaries, tax breaks and policies that allow functional monopolies are growing. Both Obama and Clinton have already had to address this issue more than they would have if it would not have been inserted into the discussion so forcefully as is has been by Edwards, and hopefully they will continue to pay it the attention it deserves. Nearly all of the major problems in the United States today can be traced back to the skewed influence of the corporate world into public affairs, and this trend is becoming ever more important and visible. Whether or not Edwards goes on to win the nomination, a scenario that is unlikely now, this election season has been fundamentally altered by his presence, and all of us that believe in real, not just the appearance of, equality and fairness, have him to thank.

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Last nights historic election will be remembered for one reason: Obama. My intention here is not to demean him in any way, and the fact that the young voters came out like never before is also reassuring to me. However, there was another election last night in Iowa, one that seemingly no one is talking about…

<Get down Huck, go head get down>
Mike Huckabee won the Republican nomination by 9 percent. 9 PERCENT!! Huck carried 34% of the total vote leaving Mitt Romney, who had outspent Huckabee by millions of dollars in the dust. The Evangelical vote came out strong, with sixty percent of the GOP electorate in Iowa being born-again Christians. This is why the Republicans should be scared.

Mike Huckabee’s message is about change. He is an Evangelical minister who is not afraid to tell you his fix for immigration is to out law abortion, so that those babies will fill America’s demands for labor. He’s been outspent 15 to 1 in this campaign and he represents a dramatic turn for the Republican old guard. For more on the crazy be afraid of science kind of rhetoric go here.

As Howard Dean put it,

“Iowa caucus voters rejected the mainstream Republican frontrunners, and gave right-wing extremist Mike Huckabee a surprise victory in Iowa last night. He made a last minute surge - without money, and without staff - and has suddenly become a contender in the upcoming primaries.”

The Seattle Times wrote on the Republican results

“They [Republican insiders] realize that what happened Thursday in Iowa could be part of a national phenomenon favoring change, which scares the party now holding the White House. Iowa’s results also could reflect widespread GOP voter discontent, which could portend disastrously low.”

The Republican establishment should not like Huckabee. He’s not a pro-business conservative, he’s not especially pro-war, and he’s yet another Presidential candidate with hardly any foreign affairs experience.  While many on the right are trying to distance themselves from Bush he is still the current leader of the party.  Huckabee, while sharing Bush’s religious view points, would not put business interests ahead of domestic issues close to the hearts of born-again Christians.  This, however, is not what the Republicans need to be afraid of.

The lack of quality candidates is very likely to keep Republicans home come November.  This trend can already be seen just by looking at Iowa.  115,000 people showed up to cast their votes in the Republican caucuses in Iowa last night.  The Democrats had 239,000.  More than 100,000 more people showed up to the Democratic caucus then ever before… More than twice as many people voted in the Democratic caucus than in the Republican one. Iowa is not a state that is particularly blue… They are split almost exactly down the middle 50 - 50 just like the country at large.  This means that Iowa is a perfect model for voter efficacy come November and the national election.

Rejoice my liberal friends, rejoice.

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Tonight will mark the real beginning of the 2008 Presidential race. Finally, we will have something to go off of rather than speculation and polling. That said, I wanted to provide one last bit of speculation from liberalcollegekid.com before the caucus results start coming in.

Before I get into the candidates, however, I think its important that we give Iowa the respect it deserves. While Iowa is seemingly a red state, in 2004 Kerry won 49% of the vote. The state is almost split in half and with all of the unrest and unhappiness in regards to Iraq, Iowa may prove to be a blue state come November. This, of course, flies in the face of Democrats who will claim that Iowa has no business determining who the next President will be. Onto the predictions:

Republicans:

1. Huckabee
2. Romney
3. McCain
4. Giuliani
5. Paul
6. Thompson
7. Tancredo

I see this race being very close between Huckabee and Romney, however, I think Huckabee takes Iowa. Huck’s Evangelical message will resonate with the strong Christian vote in Iowa. As Huckabee himself put it, people in Iowa would rather vote for someone they could have worked with than someone who looks like they could have laid them off. Romney also has to struggle with his flip flopping on social issues now that he is running for the Republican nomination. I think McCain is going to be the big surprise in Iowa, however, and even just a strong third place showing will bode well for him leading up to New Hampshire next week. Finally, Ron Paul may prove to be a spoiler. Paul is very popular with rural America, a group that Iowa certainly has a lot of.

Democrats:

1. Clinton
2. Obama
3. Edwards
4. Richardson
5. Biden
6. Dodd
7. Kucinich

The Democratic race may be even closer than the Republicans, because of the caucus system the Democrats use, in which candidates with less than 15% of the vote must choose another candidate. This means that supporters of the second tier candidates may be forced to join up with one of the big three. Voters for Kucinich are likely to go with Obama, Biden and Dodd supporters will likely move to Clinton, and obviously some people will also move to Edwards. It is important to remember that Edwards finished second in Iowa four years ago at 34%. His populist message resonates with Iowans who are hurting under the Bush economy. All that said, I still think Hillary takes this one. She has the older vote with her, and no matter how much I want to believe that young people will come out and caucus, old people are who really vote every election.

This election and next week’s in New Hampshire will likely see the candidates list shrink. Among those likely to bow out quickly are Thompson and Tancredo on the Republican side and Dodd on the Democrat’s side.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for LCK’s reaction to the Iowa caucus results.

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The New York Times has announced that William Kristol, one of the most outspoken neoconservatives in Washington, will begin writing an Op-Ed Column for the Times starting January 7th. The decision to hire Kristol is an interesting one in light of the strained relationship between he and the paper in the past, one that has seen Kristol repeatedly criticising the integrity of the publication.

Why would the New York Times want Kristol as a columnist? It’s very likely that this move is a response to voices who like to classify the paper as biased and liberal. By showcasing one of the more recognizable conservative figures, they may be trying to distance themselves from that image and appear to be a more “balanced” newspaper. This, of course, is a noble motive, if it is sincerely an attempt to provide an equal voice to opposing points of view and not simply trying to present a facade of objectivity.

But before Kristol publishes his first piece, we can confidently predict the flavor of his column. He is not, as opposed to many of the contributors to the Times Op-Ed page, a sincere observer, aimed only at framing the facts for the benefit of the public good. Kristol is a former student of Leo Strauss along with Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. These men, among others, are the primary shapers of the neoconservative agenda in Washington, an agenda that has little concern with arbitrary concepts like the “truth.” One of the central doctrines of Straussian political theory, in addition to an extreme mistrust and indictment of liberalism, is that of “necessary lies”: the idea that in order to create a good, prosperous and moral society, the vast majority of the public must sometimes be tricked into believing the reality constructed by its leaders, regardless of whether the picture they paint has anything to do with the truth. One of these necessary lies, in the views of Kristol and the other neoconservatives, is religion. Another is the “American myth,” the idea that the United States has a unique destiny in the world and is the possessor of the only political structure that can ever result in anything but chaos, moral bankruptcy and evil. The logical extension of this thinking is that any and all efforts to convert the non-American population of the world into mirror images of itself is justified, no matter how gruesome the tactics or egregious the lies needed in order to attain this hegemony.

Kristol has spent his entire career, which has included punditry, a seat at the Project for the Republican Future, and the job of chief of staff to Vice President Quayle, perpetuating these ideas and myths. Nothing will change when he begins his weekly New York Times column. Rather than being a column containing Kristol’s opinions, it will be a device through which he can further attempt to shape the American psyche into seeing the world as he does: a world divided into good and evil, where America is the only shining light, the only possessor of truth. His commentary was integral to the build up of the Iraq war and the overall “War on Terror” through his use of blatant falsehoods and misleading innuendos. The New York Times knows as well as anyone else what motives Kristol has and that this position will simply allow him to express his “opinions” in an even more legitimate-seeming forum than he can now (he is most prominently featured on Fox News, a network that agrees with Kristol that the truth is irrelevant). Here’s to hoping that either the readership of the Times will be able to see past his rhetoric, or that one of their other columnists will openly criticise his lies which are sure to come.

 (For More on Leo Strauss’ influence on Kristol, Wolfowitz, Perle and other leading neoconservatives, see Adam Curtis’  film The Power of Nightmares.)

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What a crazy year! Of course, I will especially remember 2007 for many reasons. One of which is certainly that LCK started in March of 2007. Rather than go through all of the stories we’ve posted on here, though, I thought I would go through the biggies whether or not anything about them appeared on our site.

* Where better to start than with the Presidential Election that seemed to kick off way too early?

This picture is great because it really shows that despite all of the added time this race has gotten it really hasn’t made that much difference. Well, maybe except in the case of Huckabee who inextricably is moving up the charts in the hearts and minds of Republicans. Other wise, though, the 08 race is exactly where it was at the start of 2007. Despite my best attempts, Kucinich is still waffling on the bottom of the heap and the Obama vs. Clinton match up that everyone was calling in January seems to be exactly what’s on the horizon.

* February was a great month in the news because of one person, Lisa Nowak. To be honest, I felt kind of bad for her. The story as I first heard it seemed like a love story of sorts, two astronauts who fell in love at zero gravity. How romantic right? That is, until it came out that she wore the adult diapers astronauts wear in space on her drive from Texas to Florida to stalk her man.  Nothing says I love you like a soiled diaper…

<Hottie!>

* Then of course is my pick for person of the year: Larry Seidlin. The infamous judge of the Anna Nicole Smith trial, who told stories of his days as a tennis player, his relationships in the past, orange juice, his college days… Words fail me, so here is a good highlight reel of the madness that was the Anna Nicole case:

* The story that perhaps most rocked college students this year was the Virginia Tech tragedy where Cho Seung Hui killed 32 of his peers and then killed himself. The way he went about it, however, is perhaps the most distressing. He sent his own press kit to NBC, depicting him with guns, in camouflage and many other violent and frightening images. The political fall out around this issue is of course unfortunate, with some on the right claiming that had other students been allowed to have guns on campus this killer would not have claimed so many victims. I don’t understand this logic at all, but, in 2007 everything whether it was political in origin or not, became political.

* On August 1st a suspension bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Minnesota collapsed and killed 13 people. This tragedy came with some baggage though. Minnesota and the Twin City area in particular had just approved a tax payer funded new home for the Minnesota Twins. Money was going to building a new baseball stadium rather investing in infrastructure. Of course, immediately after this reports came out that perhaps as many as 3 in 4 bridges in America were not structurally sufficient which led me to one question: why can’t we be building bridges here and not just in Iraq?

* In August, Larry Craig made us all reconsider our public restroom behavior. There were two truly horrible things about this event. The first was how Craig handled the whole thing. He has been and continues to be a bigot actively campaigning against gay rights. And second, who wants to have sex in an airport bathroom? It’s hard enough to bring yourself to just use the facilities in an airport bathroom, you know? Despite all of this, he is staying in office… Good luck with your reelection Larry.

* The evil genius, the architect, Bush’s brain… Call him what you will 2007 saw the end of the great Bush & Rove partnership. Despite him being wrong, in my opinion, on virtually every political front, I will certainly give Karl his props here. He got an idiot elected Governor and then President, then convinced the entire nation that his party would be better for them because of “morals” and “values” which should have been read “profit margin” and “tax break.” Rove may be one of the most brilliant men to ever work in the White House, and he was never elected nor approved. Nonetheless, he was a terrible dancer and rapper. And Karl, for me you will always be MC Rove!

* Our boy Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize! How sweet is that? He won it, of course, for his work with An Inconvenient Truth and shared the award with the UN group responsible for coming out with the report on global climate change.  Gore has taken the issue beyond a partisan debate to make it a sticking point on both sides of the asile and he has now accomplished something very few Americans have: he is a Nobel Peace Prize winner.  You go Gore!

* And then finally and tragically 2007 ended in catastrophe in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was assassinated less than a month from the first formal election since 1999.  She was campaigning for that race when she was killed.  She had been living abroad for the last 8 years after General / President Musharraf seized control of the government in a military coup.  The two had reached an amnesty agreement and had agreed to restore democracy to the country.  Now, however, while the election appears to still be coming on January 8th questions still surround the assasination.  Of course Al- Qaeda is claiming it and there are numerous reports of their pressence in Pakistan.  However, Musharraf has had nothing but support from the US since he seized power and while Bush has condemned the act as cowardly it still bodes well for our strong military alliance in Pakistan as we continue the War of Terror.  Sorry, War on Terror.

Well folks, there it is!  2007 was our first year at LCK and while it had its ups and downs we hope that you will continue to read us from time to time, post some comments about how we’re too young to understand anything, and get into great debates about a Dennis Kucinich  Ron Paul campaign.  Cheers and Happy New Year!

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