Blog: Politics

This secret email was recently leaked from John McCain and Hillary Clinton's draft email folder:

CONFIDENTIAL/URGENT POLITICAL PROPOSAL

Dear Sir

First we must solicit your confidence in this issue. This is by virtue as being utterly confidential and "top secret".

We are SENATOR HILLARY CLINTON, the wife of the former United States head of state, PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, and also SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN, friend and associate of current head of state PRESIDENT GEORGE W BUSH. We got your contact through business inquiries as we were searching for contacts of a citizen who can help save our and our family's political careers since our country has been frustrating us.

We are top officials of the United States Senate Government who are interested in importation of oil into our country with funds that are presently trapped in the FEDERAL TRANSPORTATION TRUST FUND dedicated to improving transportation. We wish to send this money to overseas accounts in the MIDDLE EAST but cannot due to restrictions in Congress Transportation Equity Act requiring that this money must be spent to build roads, bridges and high speed trains.

If you accept we will deliver to your a sum of 30 DOLLARS in the summer 2008 in form of a "GAS TAX HOLIDAY". You will then deliver this money to accounts of our friends in Middle East by taking it to your nearby gasoline station where they have information to forward the money. Please supply your bank account, social security number, address and your vote in DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES AND NOVEMBER GENERAL ELECTION.

But bear in mind that this transaction requires absolute confidentiality. Do not visit WWW.GASTAXSCAM.COM where there is information about dangers of our proposal and a petition to stop us from this diversion of funds.

PLEASE NOTIFY US URGENTLY OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF THIS PROPOSAL

Awaiting your rapid response

Yours truly

SENATORS HILLARY CLINTON AND JOHN MCCAIN

Read more and sign the petition at www.GasTaxScam.com.

OpenLeft analyzes the politics involved in Hillary Clinton's recent proposal to eliminate the gas tax for the summer, a stupid gimmick that would make things worse and not help consumers. Her own advisors admit that this is a cheap trick to win votes, done purely for the political value. She is only proposing this because it is such a bad idea that it has no actual chance of passing.

Now, not content with scoring her own cheap political points, Clinton is calling out each Member of Congress to stand with her on the gas tax. She is even using right-wing language like "with us or against us," declaring that Members who don't support this policy are standing with the oil companies, even though this proposal doesn't "take on the oil companies" at all.

Colorado Democratic Senate candidadate Mark Udall blasted Clinton's behavior:

Senator Clinton claimed yesterday that I either stand with her on this proposal or stand with the oil companies. To that I say: I stand with the families of Colorado, who aren't looking for bumper sticker fixes that don't fix anything, but for meaningful change that brings real relief and a new direction for our energy policy. We can't afford more Washington-style pandering while families keep getting squeezed. It is exactly the kind of short-sighted Washington game that keeps us from getting real results to our energy problem.

Chris Bowers asks, if we're seeing this now from Hillary Clinton, we can expect more of the same in a Clinton presidency—not so unlike the worst of the other Clinton presidency, actually.

Are we to suffer through another Democratic President who will make impromptu, right-ward shifts toward bad policy, justified in nonsensical, Orwellian language, all the while claiming such a move must be done because it will score huge political points even though it is ultimately a bad political calculation, and then threaten the entire Democratic Party to fall in line behind such a move or else? This is basically all of my worst fears about Hillary Clinton becoming President rolled up into one giant ball of tin-foil and dropped on my front porch.

President Bill Clinton steered our national dialogue around conservative frames and left the Democratic party disorganized and hapless while chalking up only a few progressive accomplishments. We know know that President Hillary Clinton would do the same. President Obama has certainly had his moments of buying into right-wing frames, too, but Clinton's willingness to adopt craven political gimmicks that would actually hurt our country is in a whole other league of awful.

The big story of the day is how bad last night's ABC Democratic Presidential debate was, with George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson studiously avoiding any intelligent questions in favor of rehashing the campaign's inane "gotcha" moments long past.

The Minnesota Monitor was able to obtain a secret list of questions that ABC had planned, but ultimately cut from the debate. As you can see, we're all poorer for their editorial decision not to tackle these key issues:

Gibson: There is ample evidence that the public is tired of all the partisan turf battles in Washington--all the red vs. blue, day after day. Are you prepared to tell the American people -- here, tonight -- that you will set aside the red and the blue and tell us what some of your other favorite colors are?

Stephanopoulos: Senator Clinton, if you win this nomination, you'll be running against John McCain, a man who once joked at a Republican Senate fundraiser that the reason your daughter, Chelsea, was so ugly was that Janet Reno was her father. She was just a child then, an awkward teenager in braces. Do you take pleasure in the fact that, these many years later, she's turned into a total hottie?

Gibson: Senators, let's talk about white-collar crime. Your opponent John Edwards, before he left the campaign, spoke tirelessly of the need to rein in the depredations of corporate America. Tonight ABC News has learned that Martha Stewart, who spent time in prison for insider trading, has lost her beloved Chow, Paw Paw, to kidney disease. Surely that must move you at least a little? I mean, her dog died.

Stephanopoulos: Some media critics have bemoaned a growing conflation of politics and of celebrity media culture -- a tendency, even on the part of ostensibly serious journalists, to see everything through the lens of personality and character and to ignore issues. My question for you is, what's your most trusted source of celebrity news? And are there some celebrities who interest you personally more than others?

My grandmother wanted very much to live to see a female President. Unfortunately, that was not to be, and moreover, increasingly likely not to be this year for the rest of us either. I would very much like to see a female President in my lifetime. But I'd prefer a different Democratic candidate this year. I've been holding off any new posting about Obama-Clinton out of respect for Grandma Gloria, but it's time.

I actually don't share many of my friends' reasons for disliking Senator Clinton. I don't approve of her war vote, but there are many areas in which she'd probably govern more progressively than Obama and many in which she'd govern more conservatively. For me, the choice comes down to one issue: I don't trust her senior advisors.

Her inner circle comprises the same people who invented triangulation and stopped trying to lead the public toward understanding progessive viewpoints. They're the same people who criticized the 50-state strategy, the idea of organizing in every state and every district rather than focusing on the narrowest 51% needed for victory while ignoring everyone else. The senior people running Clinton's campaign presided over a tremendous decline of the Democratic Party into a frightened, small-c conservative and in many ways large-C Conservative bunch who think if they say as little as possible (what Lessig calls tiny speech) and talk to as few people as possible, they can hang on to power just a little longer.

In The Nation, Ari Berman chronicles the Clinton camp's cold war with Howard Dean—undermining his efforts in 2006, preparing to build a parallel DNC last year. The DNC used to be nothing more than a fundraising machine that lost all its institutional memory every four years. Now it has built a powerful, ongoing base of funders and databases of voters to organize over the long-term. The fact that Clinton's people like James Carville and Rahm Emanuel would choose to throw away what so many have worked so hard to build shows how short-term and out of date their thinking is.

From their beginnings in the early 2000s, through the 2004 election, to the Congressional victories in 2006 and on to today, progressive political blogs have pushed many issues but one major narrative underlay them all: Democrats need to be less cowardly. When they speak up for what they believe and fight for what is right, people respect and vote for them; when they hide in fear, as they did on Iraq even with majorities in Congress and an unpopular President, they lose respect. Strength and conviction win elections. But the Clinton advisors do not believe this, and their ascendancy in the party would turn back the clock to old strategies and more failure.

We don't know for sure how Barack Obama will govern on the issues. But we do know he practices the strong form of politics. When Clinton attacked him with the "red phone" ad, Obama fought back—successfully. When Republicans attacked him for not wearing a flag lapel pin, Obama didn't race to get a flag tattoo, he explained himself coherently.

This is the kind of President we need. I don't know if Obama would appoint a bunch of Republicans to his cabinet. But I do know that his senior advisors won't tell him to half the states in the country, fire the new organizing talent in the party, and wish that blogs and grassroots activists would just write a check and shut up the way the Democratic rank and file did in the 80s and 90s with we-know-what success.

It may be pure fantasy, but with the unfortunate passing of Democratic Rep. Tom Lantos, a Democrat from mostly San Mateo County (northern Silicon Valley), some folks are suggesting the perfect next Congressman would be Professor Larry Lessig. There's a Draft Lessig Web site and a Facebook group that's up to 1,558 members. Nancy Scola has a good article on TechPresident about why this is not entirely (though almost) farfetched.

Every election, Californians have to deal with a bewildering array of propositions to vote on, many of which are arcane matters the state legislature ought to be dealing with. But they can't, because California law requires voters to approve every change in another law voters have approved, making it necessary to vote on propositions concerning expanding the authority of the BART police force to cover light rail trains and minutiae like that. Even when the propositions matter, there are so many of them as to make this parody, by Laughing Liberally comedian James Adomian, not far off:

I don't know if Melissa Arrington's friends listened to Rush Limbaugh-style hate radio, but that type of attitude, plus an unhealthy dose of anti-bicycle mentality, cost her six and a half years of her life. After killing a cyclist while driving drunk, Arrington was sentenced to 10½ years instead of the minimum of four because, after hearing that "an acquaintance believed she should get a medal and a parade because she had 'taken out' a 'tree hugger, a bicyclist, a Frenchman and a gay guy all in one shot,'" Arrington remorselessly agreed. "Reminders," as the Charleston Post and Courier put in in their putting-it-mildly headline, "that drivers can be intolerant of cyclists."

I'm glad Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus. Despite serious reservations about Obama's habit of rhetorically running against progressives, I also like much of what he believes, and he is bringing new people into the Democratic Party. And very importantly, Obama has the best chance of defeating Hillary Clinton for the nomination. I believe her Presidency would continue the entrenchment of right-wing frames and hawkish security policies that have been so destructive. (Larry Lessig articulates the case for Obama and against Clinton well.)

Watching CNN last night, I was struck by the lengths to which the commentators went to avoid talking about policy. It was all "the energy of the supporters" and Obama is young and about change and yada yada yada. The excerpt they replayed from Obama's speech was perhaps the most inane piece, the part about independents and Republicans coming together for him (huh?). In the speech, he did talk about policy (a little), and I believe that Hillary Clinton's war vote and ongoing support of saber-rattling in Iran cost her.

But CNN's Candy Crowley actively disagreed when Wolf Blitzer asked her if Clinton's war vote played a part, saying Clinton had changed her position and has been a staunch opponent of war with Iran. That's only true on the surface (she moves us closer while vehemently insisting on her opposition in carefully qualified language). But the surface is all that matters if you're CNN.

Earlier this month, Barack Obama released his plan for technology policy at a speech at Google. Larry Lessig immediately endorsed it, and Public Knowledge had lots of praise. Lessig, PK founder Gigi Sohn, and many Silicon Valley executives have been advising Obama, and their positive influence is clear on the plan.

Read more...

Karl Rove would "like to learn a little more about that Drinking Liberally group." Max Cleland, former Democratic Senator from Georgia, "indentified with ... Drinking Liberally."

On Thursday, William Beutler attended the Yahoo! conference "Citizen 2.0: Radically Rethinking Democracy in the Political Age," which showed a video that mentioned Drinking Liberally. In their subsequent keynotes, both Rove and Cleland referenced the clever name which had caught their attention.