Letters to the Editor
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Democrats Need to Understand the Republican Strategy
Given that fear is one of the most powerful human emotions, and given that Rudy Giuliani, and likely other republican contenders, plan on exploiting it to the maximum possible extent http://counterpunch.com/lamb04262007.html, the Democrats will face a difficult race to the White House.
Democrats need to articulate a vision based on hope and on exposing the kind of extreme fear mongering the Republicans are engaging in. They also need to break out of the control the Israel Lobby and have a made-in-America Middle East policy (easier said than done).
"The fact that AIPAC, which is ranked as the second-most powerful lobby in the country (trailing only AARP, but ahead of the NRA) virtually dictates U.S. policy in the Mideast has long been one of those surreal facts of Washington life that politicians discuss only when they get near retirement -- if then. In 2004, Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings had the bad taste to reveal this inconvenient truth when he said, "You can't have an Israel policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here." Michael Massing, who has done exemplary reporting on AIPAC for the New York Review of Books, quoted a congressional staffer as saying, "We can count on well over half the House -- 250 to 300 members -- to do reflexively whatever AIPAC wants." In unguarded moments, even top AIPAC figures have confirmed such claims. The New Yorker's Jeffrey Goldberg quoted Steven Rosen, AIPAC's former foreign-policy director who is now awaiting trial on charges of passing top-secret Pentagon information to Israel, as saying, "You see this napkin? In twenty-four hours, we could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.""
- Gary Kamiya
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/03/20/aipac/index.html
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Less Editorialing and Mockery Please
I have read a large number of Walter Shapiro's columns and reports on salon.com and find him usually palatable, but often annoying. This latest report on the "debate" among the Democratic contenders is more than usually loaded with Shapiro's editorializing, sneering cynicism, and armchair mockery masqueradimg as commentary. It's one thing to give the horse laugh to a candidate who puts a foot in his/her mouth - witness the recent gafs by Giuliani and McCain - but another to sneer at the ones who are trying to say something serious and valid. In contrast, I appreciated Gary Kamiya's response (above) to the Shapiro article. It was well written, factual, and informative, as are all of Kamiya's, but Shapiro seems so intent on being the know-it-all wise guy that his attitude seriously detracts from the story. These "debates" are always politically calculated shows, certainly, but it's awfully early in the race, so why don't all the bloviators give the honest candidates a break ?
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less mockery indeed
I didn't see the debate, but I read an item in the LA Times, which discussed the Gravel-Obama exchange, thusly:
The format for the 90-minute debate allowed each candidate a total of 11 minutes to talk — giving Kucinich and Gravel, both of whom have a negligible showing in polls, equal time with the front-runners, which they used to take aggressive hits at Clinton and Obama.
The dynamic produced at least one memorable exchange, in which Gravel knocked Obama for saying he would not rule out any options in responding to Iran's nuclear program.
"Who the hell are we going to nuke? Tell me, Barack," Gravel said.
"I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike. I promise," Obama said, his words muffled by audience laughter.
Obama will get credit for disavowing his previous comment that "all options are on the table", while also being able to finesse his position in suggesting he was just joking, and is "just as tough as ever" in his stance towards Iran-- and undoubtedly he will do so shortly. Call it gestalt politicking.
But you are wrong, Mr Shapiro, to dismiss Kucinich and Gravel as mere protest candidates. Do you want to be one of those people who cavalierly frame our political debate the way a Maureen Dowd or a Chris Matthews would? I suggest to you that millions of Americans are scared ***tless by the nonchalance with which the major presidential candidates discuss a possible war with Iran, but most of them either
1.don't support Kucinich or Gravel because they don't think they have a chance, partly because fancypants journalists tell them so,
2.or they haven't even heard of them, in part because of the afore-mentioned fancypants journalists, who can't be bothered less they seem uncool for engaging in unseemly thoroughness.
In the meantime, the democrats who meekly supported war in 2002 appear unwilling to learn any lessons from our recent past. Gravel spoke up. Good for him.
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A gun in the house
When Williams asked all eight candidates if they had ever lived in a home where someone had a gun, only the front-runners -- Clinton, Obama and Edwards -- admitted living a completely firearms-free existence.
Hillary Rodham Clinton lived in the White House for eight years. Pretty sure she knows she's lived in a home where someone had a gun and has in no way lived a firearms-free existence.
The actual question, transcript wording, was: "How many of you in your adult lifetime have had a gun in the house?" Not as obvious as in Shapiro's phrasing, but Senator Clinton should still have raised her hand.
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Lack of money means the candidate is unviable and open to mockery
All the 'front runners' are for sale to a financial elite who decides who the choice of candidates will be. Those candidates not bought and paid for by a financial elite are sutomatically subject to open contempt by the media, to the extent that they are not ignored.
No doubt about it, we got the best damned democracy money can buy.
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Missed the Good Stuff
C'mon, Walter: You left out some of the best lines of the evening.
Surely Richardson's "Stubbornness is not a foreign policy" deserves a mention, if not a highlight.
And shame on the Democrat whose heart didn't soar at Kucinich's lonely defense of his Cheney impeachment resolution.
When he pulled out his pocket copy of the Constitution and reminded the audience that he had sworn to uphold the Constitution, and that it was therefore his duty to impeach a vice president who has violated that Constitution, I burst into tears.
Gravel made some good points, too - and made them with a passion that none of the others except Kucinich could muster.
In truth, any one of them would make a damn fine president, and any of them would make a good nominee.
Except, of course, Hillary.