The wonders of the internet (or you may be coining a phrase without even knowing it)

I've been a user of the internet for a very long time, and a talk show fan even longer.  The reason these intersect is how both have broadened the participation in opinion-making and creating catch phrases.  What got me started thinking about this has been the 'Bradley effect' question being brought up in relation to the Barack Obama campaign.

For those unfamiliar with the term, the 'Bradley effect' refers to the 1982 campaign for Governor between Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and state legislator George Deukmajian in California.  Bradley was the first black to win the Democratic nomination for Governor, facing the white Republican common referred to as "Duke."  Polls all the way up to election day had Bradley handily winning the gubernatorial race, then the strangest thing happened:  "Duke" won.  What many opined is what happened is that white voters were telling pollsters what they thought would make them look non-racist, as in supporting Bradley, then when they got in the polling booth they voted for the white guy anyway.

Which brings me back to the subject of my post here.  I was living in California at the time that happened, working as a night watchman at a leather tannery and listening to the San Francisco talk radio station KGO (unlike most of today's con or lib stations, it was a nice mix of both at the time).   I was feeling disappointed in the election results and listening to KGO's late night talk show host Ray Taliaferro discuss what the election switch was all about.  I decided to call and suggested that we give this a name, "The Bradley Effect."  Ray liked it, and as far as I know, I was the first to give that electoral surprise it's name.

That might have been my only contribution to the American political vocabulary.....until the internet got going.  On the web, I think I did it about 3 more times.

Let me set the stage a little first.  I've been a politics junkie since 1972 but always had to wait 2 years for election campaigns and my 'fixes'.   Then came a politics addict's dream - the internet.  I no longer had to wait for election years and the opening of campaign offices to get my high, all I had to do is log on and there it was.  There was daily political news but then I found Nirvana - there were actual chat rooms about nothing but politics filled with other junkies just like me!! 

I was in heaven!

By accident, I also discovered something about the internet - namely, you never know who you're talking to or who is reading what you have to say.  One day during a politics chat room session, the subject was how political points are repeated to get them across and how it was particularly successful for the conservatives to much of our dismay.  Offhand, I referred to this habit of the right as a 'mantra' (a particular phrase repeated over and over during meditation).  The next day, in the bad old pre-Air America days when we who loved talk radio were stuck listening to only rightwingers, I heard none other than the 'great' Rush Limbaugh refer to the left's mantras - a term I'd never heard him use before.

Was he in the chat room when I posted that or was it just coincidence?  Who knows?!!

The other two catch phrases that I think I started weren't accidental at all.  It was the election of 2000 and the Republican members of the Supreme Court had essentially assured the first term of George W. Bush by stopping a statewide recount in Florida.   The fury of us on the left-of-center side was palpable at what we saw as the theft of a national election, and it didn't stop at the Republicans as we watched the Democrats roll over and let it slide instead of fighting (seemingly an never ending and aggravating trait of the Party of D).

I decided, after cooling down a little bit, that these thieves didn't deserve the names supporters of other Presidents who won fairly had earned.  Reagan had his Reaganites and Clinton had his Clintonites - I decided the Bush people didn't deserve such honors. So I went for something that I thought would demean them a bit - I called them "Bushies" at every opportunity on the web.  In fact, I'd decided that theentire conservative movement deserved a taste of that for doing the deed of making the #2 guy the President no matter what.  So, again online, they were no longer right wingers - they were to be "righties".

And I'll be durned if that didn't catch on to the point where I was seeing "Bushies" and "righties" everywhere I turned.  Again, I don't know whether I started those terms or not, all I know is that I was the first and only one to use those terms where I went online for quite a while before they started popping up in calls to CSPAN and liberal opinion pieces.

Whether that could happen now is a good question - back when I believe I started some phrases the internet was much smaller with fewer platforms than the thousands of political chatrooms, blogs and email groups there are now. 

Can it still happen?  I think so...I mean really, I can't have been the first to refer to John McCain as "John W. McSame"....could I?

 

 

 

Why Obama, Why Now

Between now and November, you're going to be seeing a lot of fluff and stuff about the major candidates:  who misspoke when, who's staff is doing what to who, etc. etc.  You'll be seeing and urged to read all manner of policy papers and positions.  Various ads will be on your TV, radio and in your newspapers telling you that that guy is plain awful, and our guy is the greatest candidate ever to walk upon the Earth. All very important, but when it comes right down to it you're going to be asked to separate the chaff from the wheat and decide who gets your vote.

 

I'm going to make my pitch for that vote to go to Barack Obama.

 

First, a little about myself.  I've been active in Democratic campaigns for 36 years, mainly in California and now in my adopted home state of Oregon, so understand up front that this is not exactly going to be unbiased.  I've worked in campaigns for everything from state legislators to Presidents.  I've heard great speakers and ones that desperately need help to keep from putting the audience to sleep.  I've been chairman of a county Democratic Central Committee and currently an elected Democratic precinct committee person going on my 3rd term.

 

I've been around a while and I'm not given to seeing any candidate as a messiah or savior, having seen all of them as the humans they really are.

 

This year has been a strange one for me, in that I would have been happy no matter who had won the Democratic nomination but my choice from before he even announced was Barack Obama.  Was it his speaking style?  No, I've heard better.  Is it his outstanding stands on the issues?  No, he's kind of liberal some of the time, moderate most of it, and only varied by slight degrees from everyone else who ran as a (D).  I even understand that he'll be fortunate indeed if he gets near half of what he's promising on the campaign trail through Congress and sent to his desk to sign if he wins in November. 

 

What got me on the Obama bandwagon was a simple message that he's never wavered from:  we really need to pull this country together if we're ever going to get anything done.   Now, I'm a happy partisan and unabashed liberal who will battle any Republican or conservative anywhere, anytime beit in print, on the air, online, or in person.  It's a fun way to pass the time because neither me or you reading this (unless you're an elected officeholder, of course) really get to set national policy.  However, when that battling isn't just among us pundits - paid or amateur - that means the country is in a bad way.  We just can't afford to keep going this way.

 

I know, I know - every candidate for President promises to bring us all together and claims to be "a uniter, not a divider"  in one form or another.  The difference with Obama is that this guy really means it.   He said it giving the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and he's repeated it everyplace he's stopped during the campaign.  I've even seen him say it live and in person and what struck me most is that this is no put-on.  Listen close when he talks too - he doesn't say he will do this, he calls on us to do it with him.

 

Don't misunderstand this position - this doesn't mean the man is a wuss who will avoid all conflict to achieve this unity.  He understands that there are people with a vested interest in the divide and conquer approach to American politics and he doesn't give them even the hint of a break.  What they represent is mainly themselves and really couldn't care less if the country does well as long as they do.  If that means they'll lie to you, let the lies flow.  If that means fostering distrust and dislike, then pump up the hate.  I don't need to tell you who they are.  They speak from the floors of Congress, the boardrooms, out of your radios, and through your cable.  Their country is the United States of Me and they will do any and everything to take care of #1.  Those people we don't unify with, those people we stop.  Now.

 

As to the rest of us, I and I think Obama consider us all patriots who want to see the best for our county - we just disagree how to get there.  We can talk about the disagreements but we must seek common ground for our common good.  We have a great country but we also have great problems that need fixing.  We'll never do that as long as half of us is busily tearing down what the other half is building.  Imagine what we can do if the whole of us are the ones solving problems and building a better nation.

 

Barack Obama is imagining that, and so am I which is why I'll be voting for him in November.  I hope you'll join me.

Wow

I guess it's been more than a little while since I've made a post here, so I guess I should get around to it.

So, we've survived the Democratic primary season and have a nominee.  Hillary made a hell of a run and I'll leave it at that, beyond saying that she should not be Barack's choice for the #2 spot.  A little personal note on the historic Obama nomination - besides enjoying being a participant in such an event, this will make just the 2nd time the person I first picked to support for the nomination actually won it.   To give some idea about my track record, the last time I supported the Democratic nominee from announcement to nomination was George McGovern in 1972.

I do, however, believe that I will be participating in a personal first this year - supporting a Democratic nominee from announcement to the White House. 

Why Obama from the start?

I was impressed by the man from when he gave the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic nomination, and no it wasn't because he was this enthralling speaker.  With over 30 years of Democratic activism under my belt, I've seen and heard better and worse than Obama.  What hooked me was the man's message, then and now.  The bottom line is this:  we can fight other Americans over the direction of the country forever, and stay bogged down, or we can start to come together and get things done.

I've done my share of battling with the right, online and otherwise, but most of the time I do respect the other side (excepting the genuine looney fringe who aren't conservative but all the way reactionary) for this - they, as well as us more to the left, are patriots who care deeply about the country.  We all want the best for it and us - we just disagree on how to get there.

As we approach the day the most divisive President in my lifetime finally leaves office, jumps into his pickup and drives off into the sunset, it's time to start thinking about how we really put this country back together.  Obama is certainly no messiah and, like most candidates, will be lucky if he gets half of what he wants to accomplished in even 8 years, but he does have the right idea here.  It's fun and games for some great argument therapy, but we really can't go on with the idea that one side is exclusively right and the other eternally wrong and evil.   Enough with the red/blue, right/left, con/lib warfare - disagree we will, but this doesn't have to be a mother of all battles all the time on every issue.

Going back to the first man I supported from the start to the nomination, George McGovern was asked about the two sides in the political debate.  Paraphrasing here, he said that we really need both in America - we need conservatives to slow things down when liberals get overzealous and we need liberals to speed things up when the conservatives drag their heels too much.

Not an unreasonable position if you ask me.

Of course, we're still going to have to deal with the haters on the right.  Even if we do get it back together, there'll still be the Coulters, Limbaughs, Savages etc. trying their damndest to tear it back apart.  I'm old enough to remember when those types were considered to be nothing but hateful crackpots, deserving of nothing more than ridicule and dismissal.  And as the once-powerful voices like the John Birchers, KKK etc. faded away, so will these.  We do go through these cycles from time to time, and their day in the sun is starting to go dark as it beginning to get brighter on our side.

About time too.

A Pleasant Daydream

It's March, 2009. 

The inauguration of the new Democratic President is over, as is the installation of the additional 30 new (D)s in the House as well as the 10 brand new Democratic Senators.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is underway, and the horror stories are being proven wrong as UN and Arab peacekeeping troops move in after serious diplomatic efforts bear fruit.

The President sits down with the new Democratic leadership in Congress to discuss healthcare.

"Remember what I campaigned on for healthcare reform?  All that good stuff about making healthcare insurance affordable for all and leaving the insurers in place?" says the new President.

"Yes, Mr. President." say the leaders. (Hey, this is my daydream here and the next President isn't named 'Clinton' in it!)

"Well," says the President, "I don't want you to pass any of the legislation I proposed in the campaign."

"WHAT?!!" say the shocked Congressional leaders.

"What indeed.  What I want is for Congress to send me a single payer, universal health care bill.  Oh, I'll act suitably uncomfortable with the bill and say all the right things about how I'd prefer you all had gone with my plan - but I'll sign the bill into law."  said the President.

"Well, we certainly have the bills introduced to do just that - the question is, is this what you really want?"  said the Democratic Speaker of the House.

"And now the damn Republicans can't filibuster it to death." said the Democratic Senate Majority Leader.

"Exactly." said the President.  "As to the Speaker's concerns, yes - this is exactly what I want.  I couldn't run on universal health care, the Republicans would have lied and smeared it into extinction and I probably wouldn't be sitting here now either.  This is going to be political theater to be sure, but damn it, Harry Truman wanted to do this back in 1949 and it took until the middle Sixties just to get the elderly into it."

"Yes, sir." said the leaders.

The President continued, "It took us a long, hard slog to get to where we are.  We're doing what the people want by getting out of Iraq, now it's time to continue that by giving the country what it overwhelmingly supports:  single payer universal health care.  We'll do a bit of psycho-theater to get there, but that's what I'd like from Congress.  Do what you need to do to get this passed, and do so with my complete - if a bit undercover -support."

The leaders rose, shook the President's hand and began to leave the Oval Office.  As they left, the Speaker stage-whispered, "About damn time."

The President quietly smiled.

....and then I woke up.....

Progressive talk, part 2

I've been getting some interesting responses to my earlier post about progressive talk shows having rightwing guests on them.  After careful consideration, I have come to this conclusion: 

Progressive talk is still blowing it.

"But, we must hear the other side to know what they're up to!" the detractors say. 

Oh really.  Progressive talk has to do this for you.

Hmmm.

You mean to tell me that listeners to progressive talk can't find a rightwing talk show to hear for themselves what they're up to?  I find that hard to believe.  OK, if Rush and O'Reilly grate on your last nerve, I can understand that.  Don't have cable or Fox News?  OK.  I can take care of that for you too, and you don't even need cable.  I know you are online because you are reading this - if you really don't know what the far right thinks after all these years of a Republican Congress and President, have I got some sites for you! 

Take a quick little trip to these two sites - WorldNetDaily.com and NewsMax.com - and there you can find all the insight you need on the thinking and "issues" of the modern "conservative movement".  Read them at your leisure.  If those two aren't enough, you can always add in CNSNews.com and thedrudgereport.com.  That should clue you right in. 

Now, if you need to have those sites debated for you, I suggest mediamatters.org and conwebwatch.com.  There's always some excellent blogs that will give you that ammo for "winning the water cooler wars" too - DailyKos.com, Firedoglake.com, Sirotablog.com, and the granddaddy of them all, Bartcop.com.  Just to name a few.

There, now there's no more need to have anyone on progressive radio from the Heritage Foundation, Richard Viguerie, Pat Buchanan, or anyone else who represents the nutcase right.  Ever.  What they have to say is already there, repeated endlessly on various rightwing radio bloviators' shows and the internet.

Why is this important?  Here's a good example:  A.N.S.W.E.R. (http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage) is organizing a large anti-Iraq war demonstration in Washington, DC on September 15th.  Hear about it?  If all your information is coming from liberal talk, I can guarantee you haven't.  Mr. Rightwing Nut gets time on liberal talk and they don't.

Things are getting better.  Big Ed Schultz offhandly offered his entire 3-hour program to any Democratic candidate who wants to come on.  Dennis Kucinich took him up on it, and all of the other candidates should too.  We need more progressive talk like that - don't just say we need to get involved, tell and show us how and where.

As to bringing on the right to fight them, I thought that was why we needed progressive talk in the first place.  Tell the right when they want to come on your progressive talk show the lyrics from that West Side Story song:

"Stick to your own kind, stick to your own kind"

 

The unquiet desperation of the trash right

Hey, guess what?  All 60%+ of us Americans are all surrender monkeys again, ready to "retreat and surrender" out of Iraq!  And if we don't stay, there'll be a bloodbath, just like there was in Vietnam!  Oh, the horror!

Or so the cowardly, stay-at-home couch war supporters say. 

I have a real simple message for them:  screw off.

As Prezidunce Bush wants to kick the occupation down the road so anybody but him gets blamed for it, the idea here is to blame the people against the war for "losing" the war.  Not the architects, not the supporters, we people who were never for Bush's Glorious War of Oil Liberation in the first place are going to be blamed for this debacle.

Yeah, right.

Here's a few things they are clinging to as they see final defeat for the neo-nuts looming:  we - the only true, white, right thinking neocon patriots - really had the right idea about Iraq, it was just handled badly.  You stupid Americans just aren't wise enough to bow to our wisdom, and it's not our fault. 

What a pantload.

Here's the real deal for the rightwing fantacists.  Iraq still had nothing to do with 9/11 or Al Qaeda under Saddam, no matter how many times you repeat your lies that it was otherwise.  The war was an unnecessary war of choice that had nothing to do with protecting us and everything to do with padding your bank accounts.  There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when we went in, there are none now. The war against terrorists was in Afghanistan - the war to realize your dreams of a Middle East oil control empire is in Iraq.  I don't care if you call it a "surge" or pink cotton candy, your escalation of that imperial war is a failure.

Here's the bottom line for the rightwing bottom feeders:  You lost in 2006, and you're going to lose again in 2008.

And don't they know it!  Repub congressmen are bailing out left and right so they aren't defeated next year.  The far trash right is flailing out in all directions (they're even trying to re-write the history of Vietnam) to keep those paychecks for peddling hate coming in.  The people aren't with them, and the best they can hope for is to wring the last few dimes out of the ever-shrinking Bush cult true believers that are left.  Their leaders in the White House arebeing dismissed as delusional and out of touch by most of the country - heck, its gotten so bad for them that a majority of Americans have already said they won't trust that lip-sticked pig that will supposedly be the Petraeus "report" before it's even been fine-tuned by the GOP failed wizards and released.

So, thrash and crash and moan, righties.  The country's political pendulum was headed leftward in 2000 (combining the votes for Gore and Nader, 2000 was the first time in 20 years that the majority of the vote went center-left) - that was derailed for a while after 9/11.  You had your moment in the sun, but the pendulum has finished it's jog to the right and is headed left again.

The right didn't only lose the elections in 2006, they lost the argument well before then and it hasn't turned around for them.  Enjoy their wailing and gnashing of teeth - they're done.

 

 

 

 

Tags: Rightwing-nuts, iraq

Democratic ARRRRRGH

"The Democrats!!!  They're enough to make you scream!!!  What to do, what to do?"

Let's talk about this and do another reality check.  First of all, we won in '06 but we didn't win enough.   I know, I know - that's just excuses and we should be tougher on the Republicans and blah blah blappidy blah but there it is.  We did well in the House and weren't supposed to take the Senate...but we did.  Now we face a GOP ready and able to block whatever we do, and we just don't have the numbers to stop them.

This doesn't excuse "the Democrats" from caving on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) ..if that's what "the Democrats" actually did.  Despite the current meme going around the web, the numbers don't hold up.  There are 237 Democratic members of the House of Representatives:  41 of them voted for the Bush FISA bill as well as all of the Republicans.  28 Democratic Senators voted against the Bush FISA bill, leaving 17 Dems voting for it as well as all of the Republicans.  I don't know how you do math, but it appears that "the Democrats" voted against the bill, with a few strays going over to give the Republicans the margin of victory for their bill.  Since not even one Republican voted against this, the talking point is really that the Republicans passed the bill.

This doesn't let the minority of Democrats off the hook for letting this pass, and I know the urge is to go after these Democrats come voting time next year. 

I'm going to borrow from Air America talk show host Thom Hartmann and pass along his suggestion on how to handle this because I think this is what is going to actually work.  Instead of rooting around for primary challengers for the Democrats who voted with the GOPers, I say we send them a different message.  We contact those Democrats' offices not with anger but with this message:  We're not happy with how you voted.  We want you to vote the right way on (insert issue here) with the understanding that you have our support if you do.  Do the right thing and we'll have your back. 

All those Democrats who are in nominally conservative districts are hearing is what bad things will happen to them from the rightwing in their states and districts.  What they need to hear is that the people who voted for them support them in doing what they voted for them to do.  If all they're hearing is how they'll pay if they vote against Bush and the Republicans, they will cave.  If they hear that their support for voting the right way is not only appreciated, it will be backed up on election day they won't.

We may not give them an immediate spine implant, but we can start by giving them back support.