The blog you take is equal to the blog you make

Well, folks, if you've noticed the lack of updates lately, there's a good reason. After a post-comps return to blogging, I happily began a post-comps return to writing--actual writing that I want to pursue and try to publish. It feels like it's been forever.

So I've decided to put on some clothes, move out of my mother's basement, and shut down Crazy Little Thing Called Blog. But before I close the thing down for good, I'm going to do a "Best Of" series of posts, in which I dredge through the archives and repost my favorite things. This is very self-indulgent, I know.

I'm starting by linking to the posts that really started it all: reviews of David Horowitz's shitty book, The Professors. The posts are way too long to include in one post, so here are the links:

The review

Leftover thoughts

****

In completely unrelated news, after last night's debate, I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton if she is the Democratic nominee.

I want to stop posting about Hillary Clinton. . .

but her campaign keeps trying to paint Barack Obama as a Republican. They've compared his campaign tactics to Karl Rove's, and Paul Krugman insinuates that Obama is merely a Republican in Democratic clothing. The latest, from Clinton's spokesperson, Howard Wolfson:

I for one do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is not the way to win the Democratic primary.

Wow, really? Ken Starr? I understand the Clinton campaign has a lot of ground to make up in the delegate count, but a campaign willing to be this intellectually dishonest offends me.

John McCain: Fraud or Fool?

My second video:

Dear Paul Krugman

Hi, Paul Krugman, a word, please: Stop writing about the Democratic primary. Yes, yes, you support Clinton and think Obama would be a mistake. Fine. But when you write paragraphs like the following, it upsets me:

Now, nobody would mistake Mr. Obama for a Republican — although contrary to claims by both supporters and opponents, his voting record places him, with Senator Clinton, more or less in the center of the Democratic Party, rather than in its progressive wing.

See, you write for the New York Times, and despite the continued op-ed presence of Maureen Dowd, there are certain standards. You're smarter than this "Obama as Republican" meme, and the "more or less" shows it. You're fudging. And then you write this:

But Mr. Obama, instead of emphasizing the harm done by the other party’s rule, likes to blame both sides for our sorry political state.

So when Obama criticizes the Iraq war, the Bush tax cuts, or the shoddy state of health care, he's not criticizing Bush? Really? And, by the way, I think you know that the Democratic party has enabled Bush in a lot of ways. You're aware of this, right? Good, just checking.

That — along with his adoption of conservative talking points on the crucial issue of health care — is why Mr. Obama’s rise has caused such division among progressive activists, the very people one might have expected to be unified and energized by the prospect of finally ending the long era of Republican political dominance.

Now, you've been trying this one for a while, this "conservative talking points" angle. Would you mind being specific about those conservative talking points? Has Obama been calling Clinton's plan socialized medicine? Have I been missing that somewhere? In his votes (in both the Illinois and U.S. Senate) to spread affordable health-care coverage, has he been arguing against health care as foundational to a major world economy? Oh, he hasn't? Then I'm a little confused, I guess. But you do end on a good point:

All in all, the Democrats are in a place few expected a year ago. The 2008 campaign, it seems, will be waged on the basis of personality, not political philosophy.

You're right: the Clinton campaign signs that read "Hillary!"? Those are totally about political philosophy. Totally.

For more on this, go here.

Why I will vote for Barack Obama in the Ohio Primary

I do not believe that Barack Obama's presidency would immediately and automatically transform the world. I am not a dewy-eyed idealist who believes his presidency would end poverty, make us all love one another, and eradicate the problems of partisanship forever. I am not a member of some irrational cult of Obama.

And that is, in part, why I wholeheartedly and happily endorse Barack Obama for president. He's an inspirational speaker, an electric presence--but that's not what makes him such a great candidate. Here's what does:

• His legislative record demonstrates both progressive ideals and a willingness to focus on issues that are critical but not politicized. In the Illinois Senate and the U.S. Senate, he's helped make health care more affordable for children and adults. He's worked to curb nuclear proliferation, he's supported women's rights (including at 100% voting score from NARAL), and he's fought for ethics and transparency in government. Consider how deeply important this last issue is in light of the Bush presidency.
• He's demonstrated an impressive ability to adapt and turn his weaknesses into strengths. In early Democratic debates, Obama didn't perform well. He seemed to stumble, unable to use the forum to articulate his ideas. Twenty debates later, he answers questions clearly and openly, pointing both to his record and to his specific ideas. As much as people like to parody his repetitions of "hope" and "change," the debates have shown he's invested in specific policy, not "just words."
  
• He's thoughtful and self-aware. Read his memoirs. They have a lot of the hallmarks of political memoir, but they also show a man willing to acknowledge his mistakes and grow from them.
• He inspires legislators from both parties. There are various kinds of bipartisanship (and I wish we had more than two parties, by the way). One is full, active resistance. I'd point to recent Democratic examples, but there simply aren't many. Another is capitulation by the weaker party. On so many issues of foreign policy, the majority party in Congress, the Democrats, have given in, serving as a functional minority party. The third, which Obama has embodied, is one that treats issues as neither liberal nor conservative, but broader. Consider the example of his passing legislation in Illinois to ensure the human rights by making police videotape interrogations (there had been a high rate of forced confessions in the state). Go read Hilzoy's endorsement of Obama for more details.
• He will dramatically reshape the image of the United States across the world. Not only will Obama institute diplomacy instead of the many-times-over failures of the Bush administration's foreign policy, he will, as an African-American, as a candidate who has no foundation of political nepotism to run on, embody a major step forward for American culture.
  

Obama isn't perfect; where Clinton supported the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, Bush's ticket to move closer to war with Iran, Obama did not vote. (Interestingly enough, John McCain was the only other senator not to vote.)

But politicians can't be perfect. I don't have any illusions about a potential Obama presidency. I just look at his record and see a candidate willing to act openly and honestly, to represent progressive issues and work beyond media- and party-dictated positions. Vote Obama.

Insomnia is the new black

I made this video. (You have to sit through a bit of Clinton's new "Beware of the bogeymen in the night" ad, but it's worth it.) [Ed. note: the video is fixed. No watermarks.]



Maybe Tina Fey should have said, "Bitches get stuff done, unless they're sleep deprived."

Also, watch Bill Clinton "endorse" Barack Obama (hat tip to Andrew Sullivan):

Tee hee

Why I will not vote for Hillary Clinton in the Ohio Primary

[Ed. note: given my blog's enormous readership--it almost extends into the tens--I felt it important to make clear my endorsement for the Democratic presidential primary. My state votes on Tuesday. I endorse Barack Obama, and I'm taking two posts to do so. Today's installment: Why I'm not voting for Hillary Clinton in the primary. Within a few days, why I am voting for Obama.]

This has been a very difficult post to write, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. But here are some of my failed opening ideas:

• How often do people vote for a candidate as much as they are voting against a candidate?
• How well does a campaign suggest what a candidate would actually do in office?
• I spent one semester in junior high school with Chelsea Clinton and was in A Christmas Carol with her, but I don't know her very well. But I remember the Secret Service operative who was backstage during rehearsals and performances; he was nice.
  
• I have a hard time understanding people who feel emphatically positive about Hillary Clinton as a candidate or a potential leader.

Somehow, each of these failed to get my post going, which surprised me since I've been thinking about this post (and its eventual counterpart) for several days. The upshot: though I will probably vote for Hillary Clinton if she is the Democratic nominee for President, I will not vote for her in next week's Democratic primary.

So why not Hillary? Criticizing her outside the context of why I'm voting for Barack Obama might seem a little odd, but I don't want to break the Internets with a too-long post. Plus, I don't necessarily think she'd make a bad president; honestly, though, I'm hard-pressed to say what makes a good president. I'm ambivalent, at best, about Bill Clinton, I actively dislike both Bushes and Reagan, and I only lived through a year of Carter's presidency. And I don't trust the idolatry-based view of American history, where putting faces on coins and hillsides serves as a shorthand for greatness.

But here, in no particular order, are what I see as the major strikes against her:

• She campaigns badly. Her state-by-state organization has failed, in large part, because she didn't expect a serious primary challenger. She assumed for a long time that she would be the nominee, even saying so to Katie Couric in November. Also, her higher-ups make spurious claims against Obama, she and her staff disparage voters on a regular basis, and she overreacts to criticism of her or her campaign (though I admit that, given her history with the media, I understand why she overreacts). All these campaign problems stem from what I see as another strike against her:
• She's been a candidate for president because of who she was married to. That may seem crass; it's a long, disparaging way of saying she has acted entitled to the nomination. Obama's opponents criticize him for his lack of experience, but few people mention that she's not had much legislative experience, either. Early on, her high polling numbers had more to do with name recognition than anything else.
  
• She blatantly lies, and badly. In last night's debate, she claimed that Obama said he would bomb Pakistan. Two days after calling his campaign's tactics Rovian, she completely divorced something Obama said in response to a hypothetical question last year, and she only did so (as has McCain) to attempt to discredit Obama on foreign policy. She probably wouldn't have done so if she weren't behind in the polls.
• Her health-care plan has no chance. I admire the legislative work she's done in making health care more widely available, but she simply hasn't shown that she can sell her plan to Congress, whether it's led by Democrats or Republicans. As she showed with her first attempt at universal health care in the nineties, she's very reluctant to compromise on the issue; her critiques of Obama's health-care plan and her insistence that this is no time to be bi-partisan suggest that she won't be able to persuade initial opponents of her plan. She's simply not savvy enough. Also, if she were to take office, massive government debt, driven by the war in Iraq, would stand in her way. Her plan requires tax increases (which, as long as they focus on the wealthy, I support) and major spending increases. Ironically, she claims that Obama wouldn't be able to lead as she could on Day One, but her plan assumes fiscal conditions that don't bear out.
  
• She voted for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, which suggests she hasn't learned from her mistakes. That amendment was a thinly veiled attempt by the Bush administration to move closer to war with Iran. If not for the National Intelligence Estimate stating that Iran stopped its weapons program in 2003, we would likely be close to war with Iran right now.
  

Those are the main reasons. As I said above, if she wins the nomination, I will probably vote for her in the general election. I support universal health care, and I think the dramatic historical change of a female president of the United States is absolutely necessary. But against Obama, who I'll write about soon, she has too many strikes against her.

A few good points

Go read Frank Rich's column on why Hillary Clinton's campaign has lost so much ground over time to Obama. His point toward the end about Bill Clinton seems off to me--it's awfully reductive, for one thing--but otherwise he makes a lot of apt points.

Hillary Clinton's Bush desperation

A thought experiment: If you were to compare Barack Obama to famous American politicians, who would appear in the top ten? Or to approach this another way: How far down the list would George W. Bush appear?

I ask because, as the Ohio and Texas primaries move closer, Hillary Clinton has begun comparing Obama to, of all people, the current president. In a speech yesterday criticizing fliers Obama has been sending out for a little while, Clinton said, "Let's have a real campaign. Enough with the speeches and big rallies and then using tactics that are right out of Karl Rove's playbook." She went on to say that Bush campaigned on a platform of change--she specifically cited his "compassionate conservatism" and said, "He promised change, didn't he? The American people got shafted and we're going to have to make up for it."

While the fliers she's referring to fall somewhere between accurate and misleading, the fliers come nowhere close to Rovian, and she surely knows that. Politically, Obama leans no closer to Bush than Clinton herself, and in some instances, he's further left (to my mind, an absolute plus). But I think it's worth noting the desperation of this comparison, Obama as Bush.

As any sane person has, I've opposed Bush from the beginning, but I've also noticed over time how the mere mention of his name has become an easy in for speakers with left-leaning audiences. Cheap Bush jokes serve as ice breakers, no matter how weak the joke. After a while, that's gotten boring. (NB: I'm not against Bush jokes; I think he should be impeached. To borrow a line from Jerry Seinfeld, I'm offended as a comedian.)

Throughout the campaign, Clinton has referenced Bush and his misdeeds both because she's right that he's been a destructive force, possibly the worst president in history, and because criticizing Bush gets easy applause. So it's sad to hear Clinton trying to compare Obama to Bush. Paul Krugman, who I usually agree with, did the same thing in an embarrassing column a couple of weeks ago, writing, "I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again." The utter ridiculousness of that comparison is reason enough for Krugman to be kept from writing about the campaign until after the primary.

For all of Obama's faults (full disclosure: I'll probably vote for him when my primary comes up), he's no Bush; he's no Rove. Clinton's dire need for primary victories has somehow led her to rhetoric that seems wildly desperate, nothing more than the shallowest attempt to pull in voters who may not know any better.

Hey Douchebag! John Dickerson Edition

I know I'm posting a little too regularly for someone who claims to be on hiatus, but John Dickerson's latest nonsense on Slate required another addition to my occasional "Hey Douchebag!" series. (For more, click here; for an explanation of the "Hey Douchebag!" series, click here.)

The background: David Geffen, founder of Geffen Records and co-founder of Dreamworks, said the following in an interview with Maureen Dowd: "Everybody in politics lies, but they [the Clintons] do it with such ease, it's troubling." Geffen also called Hillary Clinton an "incredibly polarizing figure." Geffen's no right-wing hack; now a Barack Obama backer and fundraiser, he used to donate lots of money to Bill Clinton.

In response, the Clinton team demanded that Obama sever ties with Geffen and renounce his comments. Given the Clintons' history with politics and money, that demand is incredibly ironic, to say the least. (Note: Generally speaking, I like the Clintons, but they have some major moral failures I cannot reconcile with my own personal beliefs.) Obama's communications director, Robert Gibbs, responded thusly:

"We aren't going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters. It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom. It is also ironic that Senator Clinton lavished praise on Monday and is fully willing to accept today the support of South Carolina State Sen. Robert Ford, who said if Barack Obama were to win the nomination, he would drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because 'he's black.'"

Pretty apt, and a fair defense. Sure, it's a negative response, but it's certainly fair. Geffen's an independent person with no obligation to vet his public views.

Dickerson's Douchebaggery: Dickerson claims Hillary Clinton looks better in this battle because Obama has vowed to run a campaign without mudslinging. Here's the relevant portion of Dickerson's piece:

"The response from the Obama campaign was good, old-fashioned hardball. You call me a hypocrite, and I'll respond by raising something out of your ugly past. But that wasn't the way Obama has said he'll play the game. It's very hard to run in the political system while simultaneously running against the system, but that's what has seemed so audacious about his campaign rhetoric. He has promised to lay down a lot of political weapons, and voters will reward him for taking that risk. But apparently, the weapons are still in his back pocket. (An Obama aide says I'm "overthinking" things.)

Does the Clinton team look a little thin-skinned? Yes, but they'll take the rap for being thin-skinned if they can show their opponent to be a hypocrite."

Ridiculous. Dickerson's first problem: Gibbs' response was accurate and fair; if every campaign had to disavow every statement from a contributor and return donations, campaigns would have little money. Politicans are responsible for what they and their staff members say, not for what their supporters say.

Dickerson's second problem: He says the Clinton team looks "a little thin-skinned." Actually, they look very thin-skinned, shrill, and unnecessarily reactionary. There's something very desperate about their behavior. One of Clinton's top advisors, Howard Wolfson, absurdly refers to Geffen as Obama's "finance chair," even though Geffen is only a fundraiser. Plus, he calls Gibbs' response an attack on "personal behavior." Actually, no, how one uses the White House to repay big donors and relies on endorsements that make baldly backward claims (Ford) is political, not personal. Of course, the Clinton campaign is apparently pointing to Dickerson's piece as support. Douchebaggery all around.