Listening to Douglas on VPT tonight was like…

…Eating cardboard while wearing sandpaper underwear.

It’s your turn.

During a phone call with the press twenty minutes ago, US Senator Patrick Leahy announced he is endorsing Barack Obama for the Democratic Presidential nomination. This is the latest in a string of high-profile endorsements for Obama in recent days, and is particularly significant given Leahy’s high national profile, and his position of leadership as Chair of Senate Judiciary.

It also seems to be part of an Obama strategy of rolling high-profile endorsements that have a cumulative impact. It’s true that any one endorsement is only worth so much, but a steady flow of them would seem to be greater than the sum of the parts. Brilliant.

Clinton still holds the lead in superdelegates, but Leahy just did his part to close the gap.

UPDATE: Welch follows suit. From his office:

“I have great admiration for all the Democratic candidates in the race. But it is Barack Obama who has brought new energy into the political process, inspiring all Americans to believe that it is possible to restore America’s promise at home and in the world.   Senator Obama’s campaign and his remarkable personal journey are helping us reach across a partisan divide and renewing a sense of hope and possibility in our country that we can shape our future by working together and by emphasizing what unites us, not what divides us. Barack Obama embodies the type of leadership America needs to overcome our many challenges.”

Below is a post from Allyson Villars, wife of impeachment marcher John Nirenberg. This is not just a coutionary tale. This is a new and stark reality. Thank God Peter Welch is protecting the major league home record from steroid fueled batsmen.

Dan

Yesterday, I was ecstatic to be able to surprise John by being at the end of his march from Boston to Washington. But my excitement suddenly turned to shock when we went with a few rally participants to view the actual Constitution. Upon entering the National Archives building I was stopped and told that I could not enter wearing my yellow rain poncho. When I asked “Why,” I was told that they don’t allow anyone in the building wearing a protest slogan on their clothing. My poncho read “Save the Constitution” and continued with “Impeach Bush/Cheney…Tell Speaker Pelosi (202) 225-0100.” Finally it listed the web address: www.marchinmyname.org.

I was pulled from the security line. The guard said, “Step over here,” and unhooked the cordoning rope so I could move aside. The man behind me, Larry, was wearing a light jacket over a green t-shirt that said “Impeach Bush.” He made Larry move out of line as well.

I tried to talk to the guard about my goal in being in the building – simply to see the Constitution of the United States. He wasn’t convinced and kept repeating his mantra, “Just take off the poncho and you can go in.” I asked him what was wrong with my poncho. He replied that they do not allow protests inside the building. I said that I was not protesting, that I was just an American citizen visiting the most important document of our country.

He kept talking over me. I said I wanted to speak to his supervisor and asked a friend in line to call the press and tell them that I was being barred from visiting our Constitution because of a message on my clothing.

Captain Judd and C. Bethea arrived quickly and identified themselves as supervisors and made an effort to explain to me why I could not wear my poncho. I calmly but forcefully asked them, “How it is that I was denied my freedom of expression if I was not actively protesting, or carried a sign, or in any way disturbed others?” I also mentioned that other people went into the archives with protest t-shirts and baseball caps saying, for example: “Stop the War for Oil,” and “Vote for Hillary.” Apparently those people were allowed in by mistake and officer C. Bethea said he would make certain they would be found and escorted out. But Captain Judd corrected Bethea and said that those wearing election campaign garments like “Elect Edwards” or “pro solar power” t-shirts were okay since they were “for” something. I responded, “Well I am for Saving the Constitution.” That did not convince him. He was now in mantra mode and simply repeated his command, “Just take off the poncho and you can go in or leave.”

Larry, with the green “Impeach Bush” t-shirt, buttoned his thin jacket, moved back into line and proceeded through the security checkpoint. I asked for the guards’ names. They wrote them down and when asked to tell me who their boss was so I could call him or her on Monday, “I was told to look it up on the Archives website.”

Then, I asked for a copy of the policy that mandated I remove my objectionable clothing in order to see the Constitution. They would provide nothing. They were unmoved. I asked them to tell me what they would have done if Larry didn’t have a jacket. Would they require him to take off his shirt and then go into the building half naked? They basically said they wouldn’t respond. Larry’s shirt was not an issue anymore…I asked them how the policy is practiced – that knowing how they interpret and implement the policy might help me understand the policy or law I was violating. They simply and finally said, “You will have to leave if you do not remove your garment.”

I chose to leave. I chose to leave because I refused to give up my rights to see the very document that provided those rights. I told Captain Judd that he might want to consider the good Germans who were part of the 3rd Reich machinery that took away the freedoms of Jews, and ultimately their lives. And, as I was turning to leave, I told him he was part and parcel of the reason that I found it necessary to articulate my point of view to “Save the Constitution,” on my clothing. “You might want to read the Constitution before you leave work today to find out what this is all about.” I said as I left.

I stood outside in my poncho in a silent protest until my friends returned.

I learned that a woman who cleared security wore a t-shirt that said “Impeach Bush.” Security guard C. Bethea later found her and made her borrow a jacket or leave the building. He also found my husband who was wearing a baseball cap that said “Impeach Cheney?” and made him take it off.

My thoughts go to those of you who see this as a small thing…perhaps even trivial. To those who believe this was just a ridiculous over-escalation in response to a security guard doing his job, let me tell you that our Constitutional rights are being stripped away one at a time and that it seems that most Americans who take these protections for granted will not “get it” until they, too, have their rights denied. Our being denied our rights is happening with more mind-numbing frequency than ever, and gets worse with each one of these new “trivial” moves.

I suppose I shouldn’t expect people to be upset about this is they are not upset about having lost their right to know what they are being charged with when they are arrested, possibly tortured and denied a speedy trial.

It may be just one more, sad instance of our rights being denied us, but remember, as it says on the outside wall of the National Archives, “Eternal vigilance in the price of liberty.” I hope you will take this seriously and decide where you will draw the line, what you will stand up for, what you will stand up for.

(Be advised: What follows is just a political musing. Enter with care. You should also be warned that I have occasion to include pictures from both Star Trek AND comic books, so JD might want to run screaming…)

In norse mythology, the pantheon of gods, with their internal conflicts between Aesir and Vanir, and ongoing battles with evil, as personified by beings such as Loki and the Midgard Serpent, was predestined to an unavoidable doom. They were caught in a cycle of destruction and renewal hardwired into their cosmology, and there was nothing to be done but ride it out. This was “ragnarok” – the twilight of the gods.

Regular readers are familiar with the regular conflict on this site – to third party or not to third party? GMD was, of course, set up by liberal Dems who, by their choice of affiliation, lean towards the latter option (although there are undoubtedly front pagers who prefer to keep their options more open). Not to rehash, but for my part, again, I see it as the fundamental structure of our elections; with a distinctly elected executive, power inevitably polarizes out into the party of the executive versus everybody else. This is what happened to the Whigs, the original Progressives, the Know-nothings or whoever. Every new, insurgent political party in our system faces one of two fates – either they supplant one of the existing ones and take their place of prominence in the hardwired two-party system, or they simply fail completely. I'm not saying its a good thing – in fact, it's probably not – but it is an inevitable result of our system as laid out in the Constitution.

And it is the political ragnarok ultimately faced by the divided left in Vermont. 

In Vermont at present, we are living through a period whereby the “winning” left-party will gradually sugar out over time. Given the direction and the progress the Progressive Party has taken, it would seem to inevitably be that the Democrats will maintain their systemic primacy. In fact, Anthony Pollina's gubernatorial candidacy will only accelerate that, one way or the other. Either Pollina loses, and the Progressives' abiding faith in their ability to draw Republicans and Democrats alike into a silent revolution (if only there is no Democrat in the race) stands shattered before electoral reality, or Pollina wins, and he must put together an executive branch without a Progressive political infrastructure that is developed enough to support such a government without depending primarily on Democrats to make it work.

This latter possibility is the most intriguing, and it lays out the real fallacy to a third party pursuing Pollina's top-down model (go for one of the top spots, such as Governor and fill in the rest later), as opposed to sticking with the grassroots, bottom-up model (work more patiently through city councils and state legislative seats, as has worked so well for them in Burlington): if you build from the bottom up, you not only build a case for executive power, you create a body of experienced public officials on which to build your executive infrastructure once you're in.

But that's not Pollina's (and apparently the Progs') way. Ironically, this means a Pollina victory would lead to his Party's being absorbed into that of the Democrats – probably losing several moderates, but gaining disaffected lefties – but a merger nonetheless that leaves us, again, with two parties.

A merger of this sort is the other possible manifestation of this political ragnarok, and is itself hardly unprecedented. Consider Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, or DFL. In 1944, the Democrats merged with the Farmer-Labor third party and have been a potent force ever since, sending several representatives to Congress. The thing is, once in Washington, they're all simply known as “Democrats.”

Which is what they are. Democrats. The “F” and the “L” were completely absorbed by the “D” in all but name only. That's not to say it wasn't a good thing, moving the Dems to the left, but the two-party structure remains.

So it would seem to be a doom, of sorts. We in the left just wait around, dealing with the left wing schism that has led us to so much frustration on both sides around the race for Governor. Ragnarok is coming – either the Progs will whither away or be absorbed in a merger – its a question of when, and how many elections we stand to lose in the meantime. It's a process completely out of our control.

Or is it?

In Norse mythology, the first sign of Ragnarok was the death of the god Balder, who could only me harmed by mistletoe. The story goes (at least in one version), that Loki didn't want to wait, tipped an arrow with mistletoe, and did the deed himself, bringing on the change.

Well, grassroots activists in both parties have access to a little mistletoe themselves…

If the grassroots crowds in both parties got tired of waiting, they could simply bring on a merger by fiat. Imagine activists committed to a merger running for leadership positions across the state – first at the city level, then the county, and then – inevitably and inexoribly – the state. Unless the law has changed, one can't hold offices in distinct and parallel party governance structures, so activists would have to work in teams.

It's a fun thought experiment for a couple of reasons.

One: imagine the scenes among local committees. There would be a lot of contention of course, but I suspect a surprising number of activists on both sides would be all for it. Obviously there are plenty of [ Democrats / Progressives ] of the “better dead that [ Progressive / Democrat ]” persuasion – but just how many would be interesting to see.

Two: If a movement like this were to actually get any momentum, leadership of both parties would likely plotz. It would threaten entrenched powers-that-be, dug in rivalries, and obsessive ideologies like nothing else.

But, if there were actual grassroots support, there is little anyone in either party's leadership could do about it.

One could further imagine it bringing the party's leaders together in a truly ironic way. In the film Star Trek VI, the looming success of a peace treaty between the Federation and the Klingons brought bitter enemies together behind the scenes to scuttle it, rather than be forced to leave their bitter war behind. Kirk, in grappling with his own ingrained prejudices opines “how will history get get around people like me?”

Maybe a coordinated grassroots effort to force a peaceful merger of the two parties despite themselves would finally bring the powers-that-be in both organizations together?

Let me be clear: I'm not advocating for anything – not by a long shot. This is just a little mindgame.

But its one that would drive Progressive and Democratic leadership equally crazy if it became reality.

And that makes it kind of a fun thought, no?

Governor Stuff #1. From VPR, emphasis added:

The gubernatorial campaign of Progressive Anthony Pollina says it’s raised $100,000 in contributions and pledges in the last two months.

Heh. “And pledges.” Wonder what the ratio of contribution-to-pledge is, and how conditional those pledges are…

But I’m not trying to mock. If there’s one thing that’s been consistent about the Pollina campaign, it’s how, since November-ish, they’ve made all the right moves.

One gambit – putting out the uber-reasonable sounding word that they would back off if a “top tier” Dem was interested – backfired a bit when a top tier Dem (Racine) actually did show strong interest (woops), but you can see why they took that rhetorical gamble. The only serious stumble has been Pollina’s apparent unwillingness to pro-actively press the flesh among the grassroots Democratic organizational structure (Town and County committees), despite many folks (myself included) urging his people that he should do just that, if they indeed were serious about a unity paradigm on the left. Frankly, it seems like the obvious step (unless, of course, he really does still find Dems to be too icky). If he’d gone that route starting back when he suggested he wanted to reach out to rank-and-file Dems, he’d be in a dramatically better position already. Very odd, that.

Governor Stuff #2: VPR’s Vermont Edition also had Peter Galbraith on, talking about (among other things) a possible run for Governor (which he says he is “seriously considering”), and he will also be appearing before the Democratic State Committee on January 26th discussing the same topic. He says he is currently “traveling around the state, meeting with people.”

I guess he missed the word from Freyne way back in November that he’d already “ruled it out.”  

(Good news for proponents of IRV – promoted by JulieWaters)

(Cross posted with minor edits from VermontIRV.)

Vermont Speaker of the House Gaye Symington says she supports instant runoff voting, is well aware of S.108 and wants to see that bill passed out of committee.

The ‘Q’s are questions I submitted to Speaker Syminton, and the ‘A’s are her responses in her own words.

Q. Are you familiar with IRV and what it does?

A. Yes.

Q. Are you familiar with S. 108 and what it does?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you support IRV?

A. I am in support of IRV. If IRV were implemented it would empower voters and save Vermonters money.

Q. Do you support sending S.108 to the floor of the house for a vote?

A. (The following has been edited to reflect what the Speaker meant. Original text: “I have asked the Democratic caucus for their support in passing this bill.”) I have asked the House for its support in passing this bill.

Q. Are you aware IRV is used by local communities and states throughout the U.S.?

A. I am certainly aware that Vermont legislators are not alone in their support for IRV. It is my understanding that jurisdictions in Maryland, Minnesota, Washington, California, Colorado and Florida have already adopted IRV.

Q. Are you aware Hendersonville, NC recently used IRV in a multimember district race?

A. I was not aware of this.

Q. Are you aware four post IRV election surveys have been done with results released to the public?

A. I am not aware of these specific surveys. However, I am certainly aware that the response in Burlington to IRV has been very positive and that Burlington voters approved a charter amendment to adopt IRV.

Q. If you favor IRV what can folks do to move IRV forward?

A. I would encourage supporters of IRV to talk to their State Representatives and urge them to vote in favor of IRV. I would also encourage IRV supporters to write letters to the editor outlining the reasons why they support IRV.

Per today’s Brattleboro Reformer:

If Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is closed in 2012, an Entergy spokesman said, it will be at least a decade after that before the decommissioning fund reaches the level necessary to pay for cleanup of the site.

But if it closes in 2032, the fund will have grown to the point that cleanup could start right away. In fact, there would be so much money left over after cleanup that every household in Vermont would get a refund check.

In other words, if you let us stay open we’ll be able to pay for closing the plant, but if you don’t, you’ll be stuck with the bill.

Now here’s the thing: it’s not that Entergy doesn’t necessarily have the money for this cleanup.  It’s that they don’t have it in their allocated fund.

Let me present a simpler example:

I make a deal with a local farmer, telling him “I’d like to use your land for a composting project for the next five years.  It will be a mess, but I’ll clean everything up when I’m done.”  He asks “how can I be sure you’ll clean it all up?”  “I’ll set aside a portion of the profits for the cleanup so I’m sure it will be fine.”  

Then, five years later, I tell him “well, there isn’t enough money in the portion I reserved for the cleanup to do it right, so it will take another ten years for me to get that fund to where it needs to do the cleanup properly.”  

“Okay, I’ve had it,” he tells me, “just clean this stuff up and get off my land.”  

“But if I do that,” I tell him, “I won’t have the money to do the clean-up.  I need to keep the business open for another ten years to be able to pay for it.”

“Don’t you have any money from other sources to clean it up?”  

“Well, sure,” I explain, “but that’s not part of what I put aside.”

“You can’t use that other money to clean up my land?” he asks.

“Of course not!  All that money is in different funds.  If I use that money to clean up your land then I won’t be able to pay for the clean up over at Mrs. Henderson’s place.  That’s just the way it is.  If you don’t like, you’re screwed.”

“Maybe I should sue you.”

“I’ve got five lawyers in my family and if you try to sue me over this, they’ll keep it tied up in court for the next ten years.  Better to just let me keep operating for those ten years.”

You get the idea.

Just a couple of points from my perspective:

1) I turned it off after about ten minutes for two reasons. First I was disgusted with MSNBC going to extremes to keep Kucinich out of the debate.

2) The whole first ten minutes was about Clinton v. Obama “race baiting” and Clinton’s “emotional moment”.

These two points leave me with a question. Why didn’t the three of them walk off the stage?

If the Democratic Party and it’s leading applicants for the Presidency favor democracy and the little people so much, why didn’t they stand up for Kucinich and walk off the stage?

Why didn’t they walk off the stage as soon as the “race baiting” and “emotional moment” were brought up?

In the end this helps to illustrate why I don’t think we’re going to see any real difference between and Democratic and Republican president. The words are great and highly effective when it comes to getting votes, but the actions make a lie of those words.

It is, after all, actions that make the words honest or not.

Former Governor Kunin (a Hillary Clinton supporter) has an op-ed in the Washington Post (h/t Hemingway) that would seem to reduce the entirety of the New Hampshire primary results to a very simple calculus:

Women came out in droves for the recent Democratic voting in both New Hampshire and Iowa. The numbers in the two states were nearly identical — 57 percent women and 43 percent men. But in New Hampshire those women supported Sen. Hillary Clinton over Sen. Barack Obama 46 to 29 percent, while in Iowa they backed Obama 35 to 30 percent.

Why the difference?

Aside from having elected a woman as governor, New Hampshire has become accustomed to seeing women wield the legislative gavel…. electing women is contagious. The more you see, the more you get…

They have the further effect of demonstrating to the voters that the diversity that women bring to the political process has its rewards: new ideas, priorities and leadership styles….

The difference became clear when Clinton’s voice quavered and she showed deep emotion while meeting with a group of women at a diner. It was a “just us girls” moment, when she felt she could let her hair down and they would understand.

A lot of New Hampshire women apparently did.

It’s easy to infer while reading this piece that Kunin is looking at a piece of the NH equation discretely, until she applies her theory without qualification or contextualization on the upcoming primary states:

When the campaigns turn to Nevada, South Carolina and beyond, will women continue to turn out for Clinton in large numbers? South Carolina will be tough. It has the distinction of ranking at the bottom in the percentage of women in its legislature: 8.8 percent. There are not many female role models to guide voters, and the tradition that a Southern woman’s place is in the home still lingers in some quarters….New Hampshire is ready. As for the rest of the nation, the next primaries may give us the answer.

Kunin starts by laying out a common-sense, positive point that can’t be repeated too often – diversity is in and of itself a desirable goal in institutions – particularly government.

But from there, she makes an astonishing projection onto the entirety of the Presidential Primary process: a State’s vote for Hillary Clinton is a metric of its level of gender equality and justice. If Clinton wins, it means your state has no problem with women in positions of power. If she loses, it’s because your state is still too prejudiced to accept women in power. The Clinton vote will “give us the answer” as to which states still believe that a “woman’s place is in the home.” Change in X equals change in Y.

Much as I’m trying to read otherwise, that seems to be the message. Kunin’s argument is to wholly reduce the Democratic primary to a gauge of our social construction of gender. There is no room given for a dialectic that considers the candidates as individuals, or their policies.

It seems to me that this makes for a simplistic and reductive analysis, and is couched in terms that run the risk of being essentializing.

What do you think? Does Kunin have a point? Does she have a piece of a point? Is she entirely off base? As a poster at dKos just put it, does this reasoning suggest that a state’s readiness for a black leader and a state’s readiness for a female leader are inversely proportional?

crossposted on five before chaos. 

Time and time again, many of us are bringing home the point that this “baby steps to change” approach in this country is killing us, whether it be social economic, healthcare or energy policy.  It's finally getting out into the conversation (a nd perhaps even reflected in the electorate) that the only way that real change may indeed happen is by something radical and far reaching (along the lines of the New Deal or Great Society).

Of course, this is complicated by the limitations of our two-party system, where the corporations hedge their bets in both parties, by and large with the national Dems being only a little less harmful than the Repubs. And so many of us, lacking instant runoff voting and other methods to break the firmly entrenched two-party stranglehold, at least try to do our best to move the Democratic party further to the left, by presenting primary challenges to Democrats who repeatedly sell out the nation. I've been reading quite a bit about netroots favorite Donna Edwards, who's taking on the corporate shill incumbent Al Wynn in Maryland's 4th Congressional District Democratic primary. I'd like to use her as an example of what needs to be happening in the Democratic Party. I know, it's not Vermont politics, but there's a lesson to be learned here. More below the jump…

Have a look at Edwards' answers to the Progressive Democrats of America questionnaire.

On healthcare:

Affordable health care access for all is sound social nd economic policy that needs to be addressed immediately. I will work toward a universal, single-payer health care policy that meets the health care needs of the ever increasing millions of Americans and the nearly 800,000 Marylanders who are without health care and those additional millions who have inadequate care. I will work to prioritize preventative health care delivery, long-term care, and equal access to affordable prescription drugs. In the current system, I will work to ensure that all large employers pay their fair share of their employees' health care in order to be fair to those who adequately meet employee health care costs.

[snip] 

I am a strong proponent of comprehensive, quality, accessible and affordable health care for all – a universal, single-payer healthcare system or Medicare-for-All system. Medicare is a proven system – we know it works. We need to move swiftly toward a major overhaul of our health care delivery system that does not rely on an insurance model. 

Notice she doesn't shy away from the “single-payer” term. Good. Time to stop treating it as the same as “Stalinist”.

On energy:

The time has come to say “no” to our ever growing reliance on fossil fuels and “no” to subsidies for outdated, last-century energy production. In the 21st Century, a sound environmental policy means good jobs, good business, and good policy…

[snip]

The first step towards achieving this end is to make limits on carbon emissions mandatory. Voluntary emission standards are not working. If we are serious about addressing global warming we must create a benchmark of 20 percent reductions of carbon emission by 2020 and 80 percent reductions by the middle of the century. 

Beginning to see a pattern here? Mandating polluting industries? Not just saying “reduce our dependence on foreign oil” as most politicians say ad nauseum (and with the GOP, usually followed by a call for increased domestic drilling), but acknowledging that we need to get off of fossil fuels altogether? The answers to her questionnaire read like a progressive wish list – out of Iraq, pro-impeachment, anti-poverty. She doesn't try to mince words, buy into right-wing frames and talking points, or call for mushy, band-aid type fixes. She is smart enough to acknowledge that some transitional policies will need to be in place – but they're transitional, not the solution themselves. She's going after one of the most corrupt Bush-dog Dems in the House, and if she does indeed win, other candidates should take notice. These are winning issues. Too bad she's not running in Vermont. Her energy and ideas would definitely give Peter Welch a run for his money.

Now, I bring this up not to shill for a particular candidate (although if you do want to kick her a few bucks, her ActBlue page is here), but moreso to show that it is indeed possible to reform the Democratic party into a more progressive, forward-thinking model. It's going to take hard work, as well as a courage to take a stand (which also has the effect of slowly waking up the populace that these ideas aren't so crazy after all), and lots of primary challenges. A vibrant, healthy democracy should expect nothing less. 

And let me clarify… I don't bring this up because I feel that those of us working for change outside of the two-party system should just kick back and forget about it. But there also needs to be an acknowledgment from the naysayers that right now we do have this two-party system for better or worse, and that's the current reality, and that to completely sit it out or ignore the efforts of people like Edwards is to do a great disservice to the notion of progressive change.