New Hampshire is Up For Grabs

Readers at American Power know I'm pulling for John McCain in the Republican primaries. So it's probably no revelation to know that I'm giddily intrigued by the recent tightening of the race in New Hampshire, where voting takes place on January 8.

The good news keeps coming out of the Granite State, in any case, as major media reporting this morning indicates that McCain's chances continue to improve, at the expense of Mitt Romney.

Here's a bit on Romney's evaporation in New Hampshire, from the Los Angeles Times:

As recently as last week, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney seemed to be holding a secure lead in New Hampshire, even as he was losing ground to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Iowa.

But a Boston Globe survey released Sunday showed that the former Massachusetts governor's numbers were slipping in the Northeast as well: Romney, the poll said, now holds a 3 percentage point lead over Arizona Sen. John McCain in New Hampshire, down from 15 points in November.

The threat to Romney's early state strategy -- which aimed for a one-two win in Iowa on Jan. 3 and in New Hampshire on Jan. 8 -- appears serious enough that Romney has started criticizing McCain by name at a time when most campaigns are trying to stay positive.

At a Peterborough town hall Sunday, Romney tried to differentiate himself by telling voters that he wanted to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent.

"Right now, Sen. McCain and I are both battling for your support and your vote. He's a good man, but we have differing views on this," Romney said. "He voted against the Bush tax cuts, he voted against eliminating the [inheritance] tax forever. . . . I believe in pushing taxes down."

In 2001 and 2003, McCain did reject the Bush tax cuts as too tilted toward wealthy Americans but now says he would make them permanent.

McCain's senior advisor, Mark Salter, fired back that Romney's remarks stemmed from his angst over McCain's gains.

"Welcome to Mitt Romney's bizzaro world, where everyone is guilty of his sins," Salter said in a statement. ". . . Give it a rest. It's Christmas."

At an "Ask Mitt Anything" forum Friday night in Rochester, the candidate was questioned about whether his position on the Bush tax cuts had shifted. In 2003, the Boston Globe reported that he had told Massachusetts lawmakers he would neither support or oppose the Bush tax cuts.

Romney told the audience that as governor, he did not weigh in "on federal issues."

"Sen. McCain is different. He voted against tax cuts twice. I was the governor of a state, not a senator," Romney said.

McCain, who won the 2000 New Hampshire primary, was heavily favored here going into the 2008 presidential contest. But many conservatives were angered by his moderate position on immigration, and some liberal supporters were troubled by his close association with the Bush administration's Iraq war strategy.

Romney's well-organized campaign took advantage early on, going on the air with his first television ads in February.

But McCain's campaign has gained momentum of late with several newspaper endorsements, including the conservative Union Leader newspaper in Manchester, the Portsmouth Herald on the state's coast, and the Salmon Press, which publishes 11 smaller newspapers throughout the state. He also won the backing of Romney's hometown newspaper, the Boston Globe, and the Des Moines Register in Iowa.

The Wall Street Journal has more:

The Republican primary in New Hampshire next month is shaping up to be as frantic and unpredictable as the race in Iowa, though focusing on a different set of issues and cast of characters.

Mitt Romney remains a contender in both states. But while his closest rival in Iowa is former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, in New Hampshire, Arizona Sen. John McCain is closing in quickly. The increased competition, especially from Mr. McCain, is a blow to Mr. Romney, who has invested more time and resources in both states than his rivals.

A Boston Globe poll released yesterday shows the Arizona lawmaker threatening Mr. Romney's lead in New Hampshire, with 25% of voters supporting Mr. McCain compared with 28% for Mr. Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts and a part-time resident of New Hampshire. With the poll having a margin of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points, that is a virtual dead heat and a dramatic shift from just a few weeks ago, when a Zogby poll put Mr. Romney 18 points ahead of Mr. McCain there.

At least some of Mr. McCain's success seems to have come at the expense of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has dropped in the New Hampshire polls from the mid 20s to the mid-teens.

The Globe poll shows changes in the Democratic camp as well, with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama gaining the support of 30% of voters, putting him neck and neck with the 28% supporting New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has led for much of the year. Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards trailed with 14% of the vote, followed by New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson with 7%.

But the upheaval in the Republican race is particularly notable, and is requiring Mr. Romney to attack his opponents differently in the two states. New Hampshire's Jan. 8 primary comes just after the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses.

The Boston Globe story is here:

Senator John McCain of Arizona, whose bid for the Republican presidential nomination was all but dead this summer, has made a dramatic recovery in the Granite State 2 1/2 weeks before the 2008 vote, pulling within 3 percentage points of front-runner Mitt Romney, a new Boston Globe poll indicates.McCain, the darling of New Hampshire voters in the 2000 primary, has the support of 25 percent of likely Republican voters, compared with 28 percent for Romney. Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has slid into third place, with 14 percent. A Globe poll of New Hampshire voters last month had Romney at 32 percent, Giuliani at 20 percent, and McCain at 17 percent.

A McCain win in New Hampshire might give the Arizona Senator enough momentum to cruise into the South Carolina primary for a win in the Palmetto State, or a strong second place showing. In that case, McCain could wrap-up the nomination with a series of big wins on February 5, where about 20 states are voting in what likens to be a "national primary."

Trolling the Clinton Campaign

Bloggers know all too well the trouble with trolls. It turns out the Clinton campaign's learning about web trolls as well, according to this Wall Street Journal article:

In Norse mythology, trolls steal babies and leave their own shape-shifting offspring behind. On the Internet, they just steal attention.

As candidates increasingly use the Internet to build political bridges, their message boards have become homes for trolls, users of an online community who leave messages that are ideologically opposed, off-topic or off-color.

Brian O'Neill, a 33-year-old part-time bartender and full-time college student, has been marauding on Sen. Hillary Clinton's Web site for the past few months, even though his posts attacking the candidate are frequently scrubbed from the site within hours. Mr. O'Neill turned to Mrs. Clinton's site after being booted from online forums of former Sen. John Edwards, Sen. Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee.

Although Mr. O'Neill says he isn't familiar with the term "troll," he has been labeled as one -- and not just once. "I thought they were calling me like the, you know, little garden trolls," Mr. O'Neill says, "and I'm, like, 'I'm not a garden item.' "

Mr. O'Neill, who lives in this small town outside Cincinnati, has a "special blogging place" two levels underground at the library on the campus of Northern Kentucky University in nearby Highland Heights. On a break between classes, he sits down at a bank of computers in the back corner of the stacks, places his large cup of nutmeg-seasoned French roast coffee on the table and logs on.

While many of the students browse the social-networking site MySpace, Mr. O'Neill gets right to work posting an unfavorable article from the online Drudge Report to a bulletin board on Mrs. Clinton's site. He keeps looking for disparaging news before finding a link to her personal financial disclosure filing. He adjusts his chair and leans in toward the screen, muttering, "Let's get me some dirt." Grabbing a piece of unlined copier paper left on the desk next to him, he begins scribbling notes about her stock holdings for his next raid.

Mr. O'Neill is hardly alone. Although the number of trolls can't be measured, they regularly haunt online political sites, which have mushroomed in recent years. Technorati, which follows blogging trends, now tracks 40,000 English-language politics blogs. "The ability of trolls to gain attention, to secure an audience, if ever briefly, is much greater than before," says Derek Gordon, a former vice president at the company.

Sites try various weapons to combat trolls. Campaign trolls popped up en masse in 2004 on Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean's Web site. Dean supporters batted them back with a "troll goal," donating money to the campaign's coffers each time they spotted an offending post. The supporters crowed about each sighting, eliminating the trolls' incentive to disrupt.

Most campaigns and individual bloggers invite readers to report offensive comments, and others approve each comment before it appears. At the liberal discussion Web site Daily Kos, "trusted users" can block people whose comments regularly offend members.

Daily Kos has another tactic: the recipe. When a troll attempts to start a conversation at that site, loyalists post recipes instead of engaging them. With so many trolls, the recipes have proliferated -- enough so that Daily Kos compiled a 144-page "Trollhouse Cookbook," including crab bisque inspired by President Bush's second inauguration and "Liberal Elite Cranberry Glazed Brie."

While that approach seems comical, the problem is real. Michael Lazzaro, a Daily Kos contributing editor who goes by "Hunter," says about 10 people are banned each week, but many return by setting up new accounts. One person, easily identified by his writing, has opened more than 100 accounts since 2005, he says. "He basically comments for awhile really nicely and then out of the blue he'll start ranting about women or Jews or something like that," Mr. Lazzaro says.

The Clinton campaign simply yanks the posts of Mr. O'Neill and others. "We have very clear-cut terms of service that we ask people to read before posting to the site," says Peter Daou, the Clinton campaign's Internet director. The terms of service prohibit content that is "harmful" or "defamatory," among other things, and lets the campaign delete comments for any reason. Mr. Daou declined to comment on Mr. O'Neill's posts or the extent of the abuse at the site.

This guy Brian O'Neill cracks me up! I love the part where it says:

While many of the students browse the social-networking site MySpace, Mr. O'Neill gets right to work posting an unfavorable article from the online Drudge Report to a bulletin board on Mrs. Clinton's site.

As readers of American Power know, I'm a regular commenter at opposition blogs. I used to comment at the nasty old Fire Dog Lake, but Hamsher's henchmen switched to a new blogging platform which requires site registration, blocking trolls on the front end. (Daily Kos requires registration, and if they didn't I'd be trolling up a storm over at that place!)

I've certainly had my own experience with trolls. The nastiest by far are the Paulites, who're know to perform blog searches for Ron Paul blog posts before descending in for the kill!

What's a blogger to do?

Little Green Footballs tried out a new system recently that deletes troll posts on the reader's side, but leaves the comments available to the poster, so they think their comments are being read. That's giddily diabolical, or at least the LGF guys think so:

As we noted earlier today, the San Francisco Chronicle is using a sneaky trick in their commenting software; if you post a comment at the SFGate.com web site, and the administrators delete it, you will not know it’s been deleted—because it still shows up when you look at the page, as long as you’re signed in to your SFGate account.

In other words, your comment is not read by anyone else. To you, it appears as if your comment is posted and visible. But everyone else sees a message like, “This comment has been deleted”....

It’s a diabolically clever bit of social software engineering.

I'm not in the big leagues with the like of FDL or LGF, but I can see the need to bleed these trollers dry! The posse from Lawyers, Guns and Money certainly proved the point!

Holiday Spending May Bode Well for Economy

As I've noted earlier, the economy's emerging as a top issue for election '08. While some news reports have noted significant concerns among workers, I'm not to gloomy about our prospects for 2008 (although the shakeout in the housing market is indeed troubling).

In any case, I always look to December retail sales as a fairly reliable (or at least interesting) bellwether for the coming year. As it turns out, this season's holiday sales are looking pretty good, as this Wall Street Journal article notes:

Early indications that Christmas sales have been decent - though not spectacular - suggest that Americans may be opening their wallets wider than consumer-confidence barometers have been signaling they would.

With the economy sending mixed signals, the issue of how well those barometers predict consumer behavior has taken on greater-than-usual significance this holiday season. Amid widespread concerns that a credit crunch will tip the nation into recession, economists have been poring over sentiment indicators and retail-sales data, looking for clues about consumer spending - by far the biggest contributor to the U.S. economy. (See related article.)

Their recent interest underscores a long-running debate about whether confidence numbers are useful in predicting how freely consumers will spend -- or anything at all. Indeed, while the surveys show confidence has plunged in recent months, a resurgence in spending during the final weekend of the holiday shopping season appears likely to bring a sigh of relief to many of the nation's retailers.

Data released Friday show why many economists have reservations about the surveys. At 8:30 a.m. in Washington, the Commerce Department reported that consumer spending rose in November at the fastest clip in 3½ years. Ninety minutes later, the Reuters/University of Michigan survey reported that consumer sentiment in December had fallen to a two-year low - and, excluding the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, had hit its lowest level in more than 15 years.

The monthly survey by the Conference Board, a New York business-research group, has also suggested an upswing in pessimism. The group's index of consumer confidence sank in November by 7.9 points - its largest point change in two years - to a two-year low of 87.3. But it isn't clear what the low readings mean, other than that consumers are worried.

Although holiday sales estimates won't be available until today at the earliest, retail-industry observers who track seasonal sales were upbeat yesterday. "We had projected a 3.6% increase [in dollars spent] this holiday season, and we expect that number will be hit and, potentially, could go a little bit higher," said Bill Martin, co-founder of ShopperTrak RCT Corp.

The apparent resilience of consumer spending only adds to the growing skepticism about the usefulness of consumer surveys. Part of the problem is the age-old debate between causation and correlation.

Jeremy Piger, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Oregon who studied consumer sentiment while working at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, explained that early academic studies of consumer surveys found that there was a correlation between the level of consumer confidence and future economic activity.

But, he said, later studies "got more sophisticated." They took a close look at other economic data released each month to see whether the confidence surveys, in and of themselves, had any predictive power. "The answer has pretty uniformly been, 'No,'" he said. The consumer numbers reflected other developments, on jobs and prices, for example.

Note the conclusion:

A drop in consumer confidence was one of the first signs that the U.S. was headed for recession in 1990, but sentiment also sank after the stock market crashed in 1987, and there was no follow-on recession. More recently, confidence dropped in 2003, and again in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast. There weren't recessions following those declines.

Whether recent nose dives in confidence will translate into a recession remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: Apprehension alone doesn't mean consumers will stop spending.

Sounds good to me - to the mall!

Political Books: The Ultimate Christmas Gift

Books are always my favorite Christmas gifts. But they say it's better to give than to receive, so I thought I'd post this article from the Los Angeles Times on the season's hot political books!

It was an almost perfect media firestorm, with a literary twist: Political daggers began flying recently when rumors spread that Scott McClellan, former White House press secretary, was going to confess in a new book that he had unknowingly made false public statements about the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. And he claimed he wasn't acting alone -- he had done so with the involvement of top officials, including the president himself.

Pundits wondered darkly who leaked the juicy tidbit, but there was no conspiracy. The brouhaha was sparked by a blurb that the publisher had posted online. Although some were amazed by the furor over a title still months from publication, they were hardly surprised that a political book could have such a dramatic impact.

As publishers get ready to unleash a flood of titles geared to the 2008 presidential election, they are mindful of the extraordinary influence a handful of books have had in recent years. Bestselling titles about the war in Iraq, political celebrities and the Bush White House have shaped the national debate. Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream" helped launch his candidacy; "The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright illuminated the origins of the terrorist attacks; "Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran offered a scathing portrait of the U.S. presence in Iraq.

"These books have become part of a larger national conversation, especially with regard to the Iraq war," said Peter Osnos, founder and editor at large of PublicAffairs, which is publishing McClellan's memoir, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What's Wrong With Washington." Osnos, who wrote about the uproar over the book in Editor & Publisher, added that these titles have an impact "because they can be produced more quickly now -- and they draw on the expertise of journalists and others in the field more than ever."

The Times notes some new books coming out in time for the election:

9/11 and Terrorism:

New York Times reporter Philip Shenon's "The Commission" will suggest that the White House was inappropriately involved in manipulating and controlling information given to the 9/11 commission. Other books include "After 9/11: America's War on Terror" by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon, a journalistic work written in the form of a graphic novel, and "War and Decision" by Douglas Feith, an analysis of the war on terrorism by a former high-ranking Pentagon insider. Journalist Robert Scheer has penned "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America."

The War in Iraq:

Two new titles with similar themes but different cost estimates include "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict" by Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes and "What We Could Have Done With the Money: 50 Ways to Spend the Trillion Dollars We've Spent on Iraq" by Robert Simpson. "The Culture of Torture" by Josh Phillips will probe allegations of post-Abu Ghraib torture in Afghanistan and Iraq, including interviews with U.S. soldiers. "No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent Into Chaos" by filmmaker Charles Ferguson (PublicAffairs) will include dozens of interviews and notes culled from over 200 hours of footage that did not make it into his award-winning documentary about the origins and conduct of the Iraq war. Among the books offering a very different point of view include TV commentator Oliver North's "American Heroes in the Fight Against Radical Islam" and "God Willing: My Wild Ride With the New Iraqi Army" by Marine Corps Reserve Capt. Eric Navarro.

The Bush White House:

Bob Woodward has written the fourth in his series of behind-the-scenes glimpses of the Bush administration; Woodward's publisher, Simon & Schuster, describes it as an exhaustive look at the president's waning years in office. Other books include political analyst Jacob Weisberg's "The Bush Tragedy" and TV commentator Keith Olbermann's "Truth and Consequences: Special Comments on the Bush Administration's War on American Values." Reporters Lou Cannon and Carl M. Cannon have written "Reagan's Disciple: Has George W. Bush Advanced the Reagan Revolution -- or Derailed It?"

Political Celebrities:

Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich penned "Real Change," which Regnery's Ross described as a critique of Republicans and Democrats for losing touch with Americans. Meanwhile, Democrats are putting out a flurry of books: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has written "Open House," Virginia Sen. Jim Webb "A Time to Fight," and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "The Good Fight." Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright is releasing "Memo to the President-Elect," and former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers has written "Why Women Should Rule the World: A Memoir." Nobel Prize winner Al Gore will publish another environmental title, "The Path to Survival," on Earth Day.

Books on the Clintons have become a publishing niche unto themselves, and new titles include "Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary," a collection of essays edited by Susan Morrison; "Clinton in Exile," a look at Bill Clinton's post-presidential years by Carol Felsenthal; and "Clintonisms: The Amusing, Confusing and Even Suspect Musing of Billary" edited by Julia Gorin.

Grass-Roots Activism:

On the left: Pacifica radio hosts Amy Goodman and David Goodman have written "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times." On the right, David Frum, an American Enterprise Institute fellow, has penned "Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again."

Other books include "Grand Illusion: The Fantasy of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny" by Theresa Amato, Ralph Nader's campaign manager; "Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It) by William Poundstone; and "How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative" by Allen Raymond and Ian Spiegelman. Also coming are "Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States" by Deal W. Hudson and "The Vast Rightwing Conspiracy 2008 Election Handbook," which tracks the top 10 issues recorded at the conservative Human Events website.

Most of these books are by liberals, so I'm not making any strong recommendations (although Douglas Feith's War and Decision looks like it might be interesting).

I don't see mentioned Jacob Heilbrunn, however, and his new book, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons. I know what I'll be reading come January!

Merry Christmas to everyone. Get out those reading glasses!

The Politics of Political Polarization

Evan Thomas has a fascinating new essay over at Newsweek, "The Closing of the American Mind."

He's looking at the question of political polarization: Is politics nastier today than was true for earlier eras? It's a common perception, and Thomas provides an interesting analysis:

There are, as they say, two Americas. There is the America of the rich and the America of the poor, as Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards likes to point out. There is the America of Red States and Blue States, populated, as columnist Dave Barry likes to joke, by "ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying road-kill-eating tobacco-juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks" and "godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving leftwing Communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts."

These divisions seem to grow, and to grow more antagonistic, by the year. But the real divide, the separation that may matter more to the future of American democracy, is between the political junkies and everyone else. The junkies watch endless cable-TV news shows and listen to angry talk radio and feel passionate about their political views. They number roughly 20 percent of the population, according to Princeton professor Markus Prior, who tracks political preferences and the media. Then there's all the rest: the people who prefer ESPN or old movies or videogames or Facebook or almost anything on the air or online to politics. Once upon a time, these people tended to be political moderates; now they are turned off or tuned out. Aside from an uptick in the 2004 presidential election, voter turnout has drifted downward since its modern peak in 1960 (from 63 percent to the low 50s), despite much easier rules on voter registration and expensive efforts to get out voters, writes Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and the author of "The Vanishing Voter." For all the press hoopla over the coming presidential primaries, turnout rates are likely to dip way below 30 percent, he predicts.

It's axiomatic that democracies need an informed and engaged citizenry. But America's is indifferent or angry. Washington has entered an age of what Ken Mehlman, President Bush's campaign manager in 2004, calls "hyperpartisanship." Partisanship is nothing new, or necessarily bad—after all, it can offer voters clear choices. But it has become poisonous. In "How Divided Are We?," a 2006 essay in the journal Commentary, conservative thinker James Q. Wilson writes about candidates who regard their competitors "not simply as wrong but as corrupt and wicked." There is in modern political polarization a strong whiff of the old paranoid style of American politics: the left imagines big corporations plotting with neocons to protect Big Oil, while the right imagines a conspiracy of big media, Hollywood and academe to subvert traditional values.

What happened to the "vital center," the necessary glue to getting anything done in a system that is premised on checks and balances? It's hard to imagine the leaders of the two parties sitting down at the end of the day to share a drink and a joke, as President Reagan was able to do with Democratic House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill in the 1980s or President Johnson was able to do with Republican Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen in the 1960s. Recently, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has referred to President Bush as a "liar" and a "loser." The popular debate is no more civilized: just read the comments posted by ordinary citizens on the Web sites of the mainstream media (much less partisan blogs). They often run along the lines of "Hillary is the Devil" and "Bush is a baby killer."

The causes of this divide—between the angry and the indifferent, the news junkies and the politically disaffected—are varied, deep-seated and, unfortunately, hard to cure. The evolution of the two parties has hardened ideological divisions and driven away moderates.

The historically minded tend to dismiss, or at least downplay, such observations about the present, arguing that it has been ever thus. Jefferson and Adams fought over religion; Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton; on the floor of Congress members occasionally struck each other with fists and canes. All true, but just because the past had its dismal chapters does not mean the division of the moment is any less important, and it is the case that we are in a particularly bleak phase of partisanship.

But how do know we're in "a particularly bleak phase of partisanship"?

As seen in the passage above, Thomas cites the research of political scientist Markus Prior, who has a new book out, Post-Broadcast Democracy.

Prior's thesis holds that the dramatic diversification of the mass media marketplace has created a small but extremely polarized class of political junkies who feed on the endless stream of political news, and subsequently participate in the political system with a substantially more combative style of partisan competition.

It's an interesting notion. I haven't read Prior's book, although his work both challenges and supplements some established research in public opinion which questions the idea of a newer, more profound degree of political polarization in the electorate.

For example, Morris Fiorina's book, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, argues that we're not in the midst of a broad-scale culture war in American politics. We do have more intensity in the political system, Fiorina argues, but such intense polarization is found among small minorities - indeed, extremists - and thus such views are not characteristic of the larger mass American electorate.

I might add, however, that (1) Fiorina concedes his analysis is of the traditional, narrow academic variety (and thus might not fully capture the contemporary "political" nature of partisan conflict; and (2) the degree to which the new media - and especially the political blogosphere - influences politics and public policy remains an empirical question.

I'm of the belief that Prior's research points to some deeper conclusions about political dialog and participation in the 21st century. The internet, for example, is new, but as a political medium it has the effect of distributing and amplifying a wide variety of intense views, be they ideological, racist, religious-fundmentalist, sexist, you name it.

In this sense I think we are in a new era, although the scope and significance for the broader American electorate still remains to be seen.

Daily Kos and Moral Equivalence

Via Little Green Footballs, check out this post from Daily Kos, "A Picture You Really Need To See":

Bibles and guns. Copies of the Koran and guns...

Could it be any plainer ?

You might call the image, to the right, the ghost of Christmas future. Let me suggest a productive frame for the picture which depicts a parallel that is both real but which has not yet fully emerged as a dominant dynamic.

The dynamic is that of religious war, a phenomenon that has an old and evil history especially in the Middle East.

But, that future - religious war - does not have to prevail. It is a danger as long as there are US troops in Iraq, because US troops in basic training, as detailed in a new Military Religious Freedom Foundation report, are being indoctrinated in the ideology of religious war and the cultivation of the mentality of religious war, between Christianity and Islam, is exactly what many leaders on the American Christian right and Islamic religious extremists including those of Al Qaeda want more than anything - to provoke a full blown religious war between Islam and Christianity.

Readers can see the pictures above, or go directly to the Kos entry.

I don't think we need to "provoke a full-blown war between Islam and Christianity." Radical Islam's already declared war on the West, September 11 was the opening engagement, and the notion that America and its Western allies provoked the struggle is a bunch of baloney.

As LGF put it, the Kos entry is one more case of "crackpot moral equivalence."

(Oh, and don't forget, Markos Moulitsas, the Daily Kos founder, calls his netroots movement the true center of Democratic Party politics today.)

The GOP and American Foreign Policy

Today's Los Angeles Times has an interesting article on the GOP's foreign policy debate.

A common theme among the candidates is the need to distance themselves from the Bush administration's agenda of preventive war and democracy promotion. The debate's taken an interesting turn in the last couple of weeks, however:

Last week, after Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee criticized the Bush administration for an "arrogant bunker mentality" toward the world, rival Mitt Romney rose to George W. Bush's defense. "Mike Huckabee owes the president an apology," Romney said.

But Romney too has criticized the Bush administration, saying the occupation of Iraq was "underplanned, understaffed [and] under-managed," resulting in "a mess."

Other GOP candidates have also found things to dislike in Bush's foreign policy: Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has dismissed the president's campaign for democracy in the Muslim world as naive and opposed his drive to establish a Palestinian state. Sen. John McCain of Arizona thinks Bush hasn't sent enough troops to Iraq and has been too easy on Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.

One by one, the Republican candidates have been sketching out the lines of a post-Bush foreign policy. Their prescriptions are not identical, and they have been careful to avoid antagonizing Bush loyalists in the GOP base. But all four have edged away from the most ambitious part of Bush's worldview - the idea that the main goal of U.S. foreign policy should be spreading democracy overseas.

"Republicans are drifting back to a less-exuberant position on global intervention -- for obvious reasons," said Peter Rodman, a former Bush administration official who supports McCain.

"They're saying: 'I'm for all the things in the Bush policy that you liked and that worked -- and as for the other things, I'll do those differently,' " said Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy scholar at Johns Hopkins University. "It's a very tricky task. . . . On the one hand, they want to put some distance between themselves and the president because he isn't very popular. But he is popular among the Republican electorate that they are appealing to now, in the primary campaign. It's like walking between raindrops."

All of the leading GOP candidates support the most visible planks of Bush's foreign policy: continuing the war in Iraq, tightening sanctions on Iran and pursuing terrorists in every corner of the globe. But all have said - at least in tone and style - they would approach the world differently than Bush.

Read the whole thing.

The candidates are not so much edging away from democracy promotion - an element of American foreign policy dating back to the Woodrow Wilson administration, if not the days of George Washington - but from democracy promotion through military force.

But the current focus among the Republican candidates has been generated by Mike Huckabee:

Huckabee supported Bush's decision to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and to step up the military offensive in Baghdad. But he has criticized the administration on other grounds.

"American foreign policy needs to change its tone and its attitude," he wrote in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine. "The Bush administration's arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad."

Huckabee called for more diplomatic conversations with hostile countries such as Iran. "When one stops talking to a parent or a friend, differences cannot be resolved and relationships cannot move forward. The same is true for countries," he wrote.

And he appeared to put some blame on the White House for the increasing tension between Washington and Tehran: "After President Bush included Iran in the 'axis of evil,' everything went downhill fast," he said, referring to a Bush's 2002 State of the Union address.

Bush, asked at a news conference last week about Huckabee's remarks, declined to comment. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has helped nudge the Bush administration into a greater reliance on diplomacy, said: "The idea that somehow this is a go-it-alone policy is just simply ludicrous."

Huckabee has not backed down. "His principal statement was: 'Let's work on engagement,' and he thinks there's more we can do there," said Huckabee's main foreign policy advisor, former Treasury Department official J. French Hill, who helped draft the magazine article. "His comment about the administration was not directed at President Bush."

Until Huckabee spoke out, Romney had been the Republican candidate who seemed most intent on gingerly establishing a little distance from the administration. U.S. diplomacy in the Muslim world, Romney said, had been inadequate, with "nowhere near the degree of attention, resources and commitment necessary." He initially took a wait-and-see position on the success of the "surge" of U.S. military forces in Iraq, only to draw criticism from McCain and others for his hesitance.

At a debate this month, Romney joined most of the other GOP candidates in declaring the buildup a success. And he responded sharply to Huckabee's apostasy, issuing a statement that compared Huckabee to White House hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.). Then Romney said: "We can be thankful that President Bush has kept us safe."

He said his own critique was not as bad as Huckabee having called Bush policy arrogant.

I've been paying close attention to the series of essays in Foreign Affairs' "Campaign 2008" feature.

In fact, I'm planning a post on Huckabee's essay, "America's Priorities in the War on Terror," although I can say right now that Huckabee's homespun charm doesn't translate well into foreign policy dialogue.

Until later, check out Daniel Drezner's Huckabee post, as well as this James Joyner entry at Outside the Beltway.

See also my earlier posts on the "Campaign 2008" series, in order of publication: Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, John Edwards, Rudy Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain.

Outside Organizations Give Hillary Clinton a Boost

This post follows up my earlier entry, "Interest Groups to Dominate Big Money Campaign Finance."

In the wake of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign reform legislation, we're seeing the increasing importance of interest groups in the political process - not just in the realm of money and politics, but in traditional grassroots organizing and mobilization.

This Los Angeles Times story on outside interest group influence in Hillary Clinton's campaign really captures the trend:

They are the basic chores that can make or break a political candidate: identifying likely supporters, getting them excited and making sure they turn out when it's time to vote.

And as the Democratic presidential campaigns focus on the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Hillary Rodham Clinton has a major advantage: Three organizations outside her campaign are lending a big helping hand with those difficult and expensive tasks, pouring more than $2 million and an army of fresh troops into the last-minute push. The outside effort, much larger than any being mounted on behalf of a rival campaign, is led in large part by EMILY's List, the nation's largest political action committee and a significant force in Democratic politics. Allied with it are the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the American Federation of Teachers.

The unions are supporting pro-Clinton radio and television advertising and direct mail contacts with targeted voting groups. Separately, AFSCME has dispatched more than 200 paid workers to Iowa. The fly-in gives Clinton about twice as many such workers in the state as rival Barack Obama, officials of his campaign say.

EMILY's List also is trying a new technique developed with the help of Google to reach female voters there, especially those who are unsure how to navigate the state's complex caucus system. Whenever someone in Iowa searches online for "recipe," "stocking stuffer" or "yoga," for instance, a banner will pop up inviting the searcher to visit a website supporting Clinton.

How much effect the last-minute infusion of money and other resources will have is unclear, but the effort has stirred concern in the Obama campaign. "When you are in a tight race like this, any- and everything matters," said Obama's field director, Steve Hildebrand.

The effort by EMILY's List and the two unions reflects the increasing importance of so-called independent expenditures, in which groups officially independent of a particular campaign pay for advertising, consulting fees and other expenses that might otherwise be covered by the candidate. Such spending is on the rise in both Republican and Democratic campaigns.

And such groups can accept more in donations than a candidate can. Individuals may give no more than $2,300 to a candidate per election, but they can give $5,000 to independent political action committees like EMILY's List. So long as the outside groups avoid "coordinating" their efforts with the favored campaign, federal rules permit the groups to advocate for the candidate by name.

Here's more from the article on EMILY's List:

Its name is an acronym for the slogan "Early Money Is Like Yeast" ("it helps the dough rise"). It raised $46 million for candidates in the 2006 election. It trained campaign personnel. And it has been a source of early cash for female Democratic candidates across the country who support abortion rights.

In addition to its own spending on Clinton's behalf in Iowa, the group has bundled hundreds of contributions directly to her campaign. It also has begun a separate effort encouraging New Hampshire women to support Clinton when their state votes Jan. 8.

Female voters are crucial to Clinton's success, but her relationship with them is complicated. She draws her strongest support from younger, blue-collar women who view her as a champion. Wealthier, college-educated women, surveys show, are drawn more to Obama.

The Web-based effort by EMILY's List got its start earlier this year, after research showed that more than half of those who caucused in Iowa in 2004 were women and that their numbers could soar in 2008.

All the campaigns have been targeting women -- it's one reason Obama campaigned with Oprah Winfrey. But Clinton strategists found that their candidate did particularly well among women who were unsure whether they would participate in a caucus.

The most common reason women said they were hesitant to attend caucuses was that they didn't know what would happen. EMILY's List launched a website called You Go Girl -- the one linked in banner ads on the Iowa Google searches -- to educate voters.

Another reason some women said they might not attend caucus sessions was family obligations such as providing dinner. So the website offers "caucus-night recipes," including chicken-noodle and taco casseroles.

Other campaigns are buying Google ads, but typically they are linked to political search terms, not consumer preferences.

"We wanted to find women where they live online," said the technology guru at EMILY's List, Maren Hesla. "If we can increase caucus attendance by just 5,000 statewide, that could make the difference in a race like this."

We'll see alright, come January, how effective all of this outside support is.

Clinton's been having a lot of problems with the women's vote (as I've noted before). Perhaps if EMILY's List mobilizes the down-market chicken noodle mom turnout, she'll have a shot at beating Barack Obama to salvage whatever hopes the campaign might have had for some early momentum (early Iowa and New Hampshire momentum is the yeast in this case).

Economic Success and Campaign '08

What does the personal economic success of John Edwards and Mitt Romney tell us about American politics at the end of 2007? The New York Times offers some ideas:

By the final weeks of 1984, well before either turned 40, John Edwards and Mitt Romney had already built successful careers. But the two men were each on the verge of an entirely new level of financial success.

Mr. Edwards, then making a nice salary as a lawyer at a small North Carolina firm, spent early December staying at the Inn on the Plaza in downtown Asheville. Scattered around his room were legal documents relating to his first big malpractice case, a lawsuit filed by a man named E. G. Sawyer, confined to a wheelchair after his doctor had overprescribed a drug. On Dec. 18, at the courthouse opposite the hotel, a jury awarded Mr. Sawyer $3.7 million.

In Boston, Mr. Romney had risen to become a vice president at Bain & Company, an upstart management consulting firm, and had recently been chosen to run a spinoff investment firm known as Bain Capital. He spent the end of 1984 flying around the country — in coach class, to save money and to show his investors how serious he was about turning a profit — visiting companies and deciding whether to invest in them.

In the decade that followed, Mr. Edwards would win one big verdict after another, and Mr. Romney would oversee a series of hugely profitable investments.

Like thousands of other Americans in a global, high-technology economy in which government was pulling back and wealth was being celebrated, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney used talent, hard work and — as both have suggested — luck to amass multimillion-dollar fortunes. They became a part of a rising class of the new rich.

Whether this class is a cause for concern — whether it deserves some blame for the economic anxiety felt by many middle-class families — has become a central issue in the 2008 presidential race. And Mr. Edwards and Mr. Romney are basing their candidacies in large measure on the very different lessons each has taken from his own success.

“Some people come from nothing to being wildly successful and their response is, ‘I did this on my own,’” Mr. Edwards said in an interview. “I came to a different conclusion. I believe that I did work hard, and I think people should work hard, but I think my country was there for me every step of the way.”

Today, he added, “the problem is all the economic growth is going to a very small group of people.”

Mr. Romney, by contrast, talks about the ways that his experiences at Bain showed him how innovative and productive the American economy can be and, particularly, how free markets can make life better for everyone.

“There is a model of thought among the Democrats — that the amount of money, the amount of wealth in a nation, is a fixed amount,” he said in an interview. “And that if Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are making a lot of money, that just means somebody else is not able to make as much. That happens to be entirely false.”

The two men represent a clear divide between the Democratic and Republican parties over whether the government should redistribute more wealth, from the rich downward, now that economic inequality is greater than it has been since the 1920s.

Mr. Romney and Mr. Edwards also represent a divide among the affluent themselves. Many of the new wealthy — the great majority, in all likelihood — see their success as a sign of this country’s economic strength. Yet there is also a minority — including Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates’s father, who have both opposed eliminating the estate tax — worried about inequality.

Read the whole thing.

Romney supports open economies, with the free movement and capital and trade. He sees government providing an institutional-legal framework for the individual in society to achieve upward mobility:

“Sometimes I get frustrated when I hear politicians say there are two Americas,” Mr. Romney said this month during a campaign stop at a general store in Windham, N.H., referring to the theme of Mr. Edwards’s 2004 campaign. “I don’t believe there are two Americas.”

John Edwards, on the other hand, is today's most prominent Democratic populist. He sees government as regulator of "economic fairness." Edwards thus supports raising taxes on income beginning at $200,000 annually.

The problem for Edwards and tax-and-spend liberals generally is that economic data do not support their claims of fundamental economic unfairness, and their subsequent calls for tax redistribution. As the Wall Street Journal noted this week:

Last week the Congressional Budget Office joined the IRS in releasing tax numbers for 2005, and part of the news is that the richest 1% paid about 39% of all income taxes that year. The richest 5% paid a tad less than 60%, and the richest 10% paid 70%. These tax shares are all up substantially since 1990, and even somewhat since 2000. Meanwhile, Americans with an income below the median -- half of all households -- paid a mere 3% of all income taxes in 2005. The richest 1.3 million tax-filers -- those Americans with AGIs of more than $365,000 in 2005 -- paid more income tax than all of the 66 million American tax filers below the median in income. Ten times more.

For the political left and most of the media, this means only that the rich are getting richer, so of course they're paying more taxes. And it is true that the top earners have increased their share of total income. Yet, as the nearby table shows, the rich showed more rapid gains in reported income shares in the 1990s than in the first half of this decade. The share of the richest 1% jumped to 20.8% of total income in 2000, from 14% in 1990, but increased only slightly to 21.2% in 2005. This makes it hard to pin their claim of "rising inequality" on the Bush tax cuts, though the income redistributionists are trying. By this measure, the Clinton years were far worse for "inequality"....

The IRS statistics also tell a story a more complicated economic story than the media claim. First, American continues to be a society of upward income mobility. Over the past decade, millions of Americans have joined the once highly exclusive club of six- and seven-figure earners. Some 304,000 Americans earned more than $1 million or more in annual income in 2005, compared to 110,00 in 1996 and 176,000 in 2000. Because there is no cap on the top income share, this increase in millionaires pushes the top income (and taxes paid) share higher. The number of millionaire households in net worth also increased to nine million in 2006, up from six million in 2001, according to TNS, a global market research firm.

Liberals decry this as proof of a new "gilded age." But we'd say these gains are a sign that more Americans are joining the ranks of the truly affluent.

Obviously there are significant problems today, with market instability from the sub-prime fallout a concern on the minds of many citizens and policymakers.

Actually, I think Edwards is right to focus attention on economic dislocation among large numbers of people in the country, and especially the issue of persistent povery among certain demographic groups. Yet I don't don't see a high-tax, protectionist economic agenda - one likely to be adopted not by a Democratic administration in 2009 - as the way to move forward in opening opportunity to an even larger number of Americans.

One thing we might do is focus on policies supporting positive individual-level attributes as they contribute to upward mobility. Here's what Brink Lindsay said about the wealth gap earlier this year:

Much of the increase in measured inequality has nothing to do with the economic system at all. Rather, it is a product of demographic changes. Rising numbers of both single-parent households and affluent dual-earner couples have stretched the income distribution; so, too, has the big influx of low-skilled Hispanic immigrants. Meanwhile, in a 2006 paper published in the American Economic Review, economist Thomas Lemieux calculated that roughly three-quarters of the rise in wage inequality among workers with similar skills is due simply to the fact that the population is both older and better educated today than it was in the 1970s.

It is true that superstars in sports, entertainment and business now earn stratospheric incomes. But what is that to you and me? If the egalitarian left has been reduced to complaining that people in the 99th income percentile in a given year (and they're not the same people from year to year) are leaving behind those in the 90th percentile, it has truly arrived at the most farcical of intellectual dead ends.

Which brings us back to the real issue: the human capital gap, and the culture gap that impedes its closure. The most obvious and heartrending cultural deficits are those that produce and perpetuate the inner-city underclass. Consider this arresting fact: While the poverty rate nationwide is 13%, only 3% of adults with full-time, year-round jobs fall below the poverty line. Poverty in America today is thus largely about failing to get and hold a job, any job.

The problem is not lack of opportunity. If it were, the country wouldn't be a magnet for illegal immigrants. The problem is a lack of elementary self-discipline: failing to stay in school, failing to live within the law, failing to get and stay married to the mother or father of your children. The prevalence of all these pathologies reflects a dysfunctional culture that fails to invest in human capital.

Other, less acute deficits distinguish working-class culture from that of the middle and upper classes. According to sociologist Annette Lareau, working-class parents continue to follow the traditional, laissez-faire child-rearing philosophy that she calls "the accomplishment of natural growth." But at the upper end of the socioeconomic scale, parents now engage in what she refers to as "concerted cultivation" -- intensively overseeing kids' schoolwork and stuffing their after-school hours and weekends with organized enrichment activities.

This new kind of family life is often hectic and stressful, but it inculcates in children the intellectual, organizational and networking skills needed to thrive in today's knowledge-based economy. In other words, it makes unprecedented, heavy investments in developing children's human capital.

For Lindsay, the policy recommendations that follow from this center on educational institutions, specifically creating more competition in the delivery of educational services.

I doubt, however, that educational choice alone will be enough to help families feel they aren't falling further behind. Tax policies should promote a full employment economy, and we can help those at the lower rungs of the income ladder with a generous earned-income tax credit. Open markets through trade integration will also keep the U.S. economy connected to global economic developments, with new sources of human and economic capital continuing to provide the dynamism for robust growth.

David Petraeus is Man of the Year

I wrote at length earlier on Time's selection of Vladimir Putin as "Person of the Year" (here and here).

I'm especially bothered by Time's celebration of Putin's revival of premodern Russian authoritarianism, a disastrous trend to recognize while the United States fights two wars of democratic consolidation on the periphery. I noted, instead, that General David Petraeus ought to naturally have been selected as person of the year.

William Kristol at the Weekly Standard has now made the case for Petraeus as well, for his leadership in Iraq throughout 2007 :

We are now winning the war. To say this was not inevitable is an understatement. Even those of us who were early advocates and strong supporters of the surge, and who thought it could succeed, knew the situation had so deteriorated that success was by no means guaranteed. Two military experts told me early in 2007 that they thought the odds of success were, respectively, 1-in-3 and 1-in-4. They nonetheless supported the surge because, even at those odds, it was a gamble worth taking, so devastating would be the consequences of withdrawal and defeat. We at THE WEEKLY STANDARD thought the chances of success were better than 50-50--but that it remained a difficult proposition.

Petraeus pulled it off. The war is not over, of course. Too quick and deep a drawdown--which some in the Pentagon and elsewhere in the Bush administration are, appallingly, pushing for--could throw away the amazing success that has been achieved. Still: It is as clear as anything can be in this world, where we judge through a glass darkly, that General David H. Petraeus is, in fact, America's man of the year.

Time ludicrously chose to make Russia's ex-KGB agent-turned president Vladimir Putin its cover boy. They just couldn't make Petraeus man--oops--person of the year. Our liberal elites are so invested in a narrative of defeat and disaster in Iraq that to acknowledge the prospect of victory would be too head-wrenching and heart-rending. It would mean giving credit to George W. Bush, for one. And it would mean acknowledging American success in a war Time, and the Democratic party, and the liberal elites, had proclaimed lost.

The editors couldn't acknowledge their mugging by reality. That's fine. Nonetheless, reality exists. And the reality is that in Iraq, after mistakes and failures, thanks to the leadership of Bush, Petraeus, and General Ray Odierno--the day-to-day commander whose contributions shouldn't be overlooked--we are winning.

The reality is also this: The counterinsurgency campaign that Petraeus and Odierno conceived and executed in 2007 was as comprehensive a counterinsurgency strategy as has ever been executed. The heart of the strategy was a brilliant series of coordinated military operations throughout the entire theater. Petraeus and Odierno used conventional U.S. forces, Iraqi military and police, and Iraqi and U.S. Special Operations forces to strike enemy strongholds throughout Iraq simultaneously, while also working to protect the local populations from enemy responses. Successive operations across the theater knocked the enemy--both al Qaeda and Sunni militias, and Shia extremists--off balance and then prevented them from recovering. U.S. and Iraqi forces, supported by local citizens, chased the enemy from area to area, never allowing them the breathing space to reestablish safe havens, much less new bases. It wasn't "whack-a-mole" or "squeezing the water balloon" as some feared (and initially claimed)--it was the relentless pursuit of an increasingly defeated enemy.

That defeat has implications far beyond Iraq. In 2007, Iraq's Sunni Arabs fought with us against al Qaeda, and Iraq's Shia Arabs joined with us to fight Iranian-backed Shia militias. So much for the notion that Americans were doomed to fail in their efforts to mobilize moderate Muslims against jihadists. The progress in Iraq in 2007 represents a strategic breakthrough for the broader Middle East whose importance would be hard to overstate.

One additional point: Petraeus's counterinsurgency stands out not just for its conceptual ambition and the skill of its execution but for its humanity. There were those who argued that the U.S. military could not succeed in counterinsurgency because Americans were not tough and bloodthirsty enough. They said that brutality was essential in subduing insurgents and our humanity would be our downfall.

They were wrong. The counterinsurgency campaign of 2007 was probably the most precise, discriminate, and humane military operation ever undertaken on such a scale. Our soldiers and Marines worked hard--and took risks and even casualties--to ensure, as much as possible, that they hurt only enemies. Compared with any previous military operations of this size, they were astonishingly successful. The measure of their success lies in the fact that so many Iraqis now see American troops as friends and protectors. Petraeus and his generals have shown that Americans can fight insurgencies and win--and still be Americans. For that and so much else, he is the man of the year.

See also Power Line for more analysis and links on Petraeus as Man of the Year.

South Carolina's "Black Primary"

I've written a few times about Barack Obama's presidential campaign and the politics of race (see here, here, and here). I've been particularly interested in Obama's transracial appeal - that is, his ability to transcend the acrimony and ugliness of America's most intractable political issue.

Polls continue to show Obama captures broad support across the electorate. Yet, underneath the media glare of celebrity endorsements and polling surges, the nastiness of racial policies threatens to rear its gnarly head.

Exihit A is a new piece at The Nation, "South Carolina: Inside the 'Black Primary." The article focuses on the unusual blackness of South Carolina's presidential primary. Here's a quick snippet:

With African-Americans likely to make up a majority of primary voters on the Democratic side, South Carolina's contest is as close to a "black primary" as we're going to get in 2008 - the only time in the entire campaign, almost certainly, when Democrats will be fighting all-out for African-American votes. Clinton's support among African-Americans, largely thanks to her husband's popularity, proved surprisingly strong at first, as did her smooth, state-of-the-art machine politics; as late as September, a CNN poll gave her a stunning 57 percent of the black vote here, to Obama's paltry 33. That would deal a death blow to Obama's chances, not only here but in the February 5 primaries, especially in Alabama and Georgia, where large numbers of black voters are weighing their choices--and watching South Carolina.

But while the contest here has been widely portrayed as a Clinton-Obama battle for black votes--especially those of black women reportedly torn between their enthusiasm for electing a sister versus a brother - the real focus, from the get-go, has been relentlessly on Obama. In a state where the Rev. Jesse Jackson's wildly successful 1988 uprising still stands as a high-water mark for black political aspirations, Obama's cool style and post-civil-rights rhetoric went over like a lead balloon in the early months of the campaign. The trouble was epitomized by a speech he gave to the legislative black caucus in April, where he offered his joking opinion that "a good economic development plan for our community would be if we make sure folks weren't throwing garbage out of their cars." To folks like Kevin Alexander Gray, who ran Jackson's campaign here, this smacked not of fresh thinking but of "the oldest racial stereotypes. Translation: black people are dirty and lazy." Obama's middle-of-the-aisle message and delivery kept reinforcing black South Carolinians' doubts about whether he was sufficiently one of them. "I've heard people say, and I've probably said it myself, 'He's a white boy,'" says Gray. "Or he's what some working-class black people perceive as a middle-class Negro. Anyway, let's face it: you don't get a revolution from Harvard."

Obama's not black enough? Heard that one before? This is more of the "insidious ritual" of high profile blacks having to prove their credibility by being "down with the brothers and the sisters."

The debate on Obama's bona fides in the black community died down a bit with Hillary's continued dominance in national polls. But as The Nation article points out, South Carolina's essentially an African-American primary on the Democratic side - a "black thing," an election that provides a powerful case study on Southern racial politics in the post-civil-rights era.

Note though: If there are impediments to the emergence of transcendental black politics in the South, it's not because of lingering Jim Crow sentiment, at least by indications from this article.

The South Carolina campaign has opened a unique window into the fractured state of black politics in twenty-first-century America--a gumbo of bleak cynicism, wary pragmatism, frustrated progressive aspirations and messianic longings. It has been, for black voters and candidates alike, one long, extended soul search. And it ain't over yet.

And it's not likely to be over any time soon, given some of the notions about black sentiment here:

From the beginning, Clinton has been the fall-back candidate for African-Americans here. She has done all the expected things to woo black voters: held forth in black churches and colleges, called for removing the Confederate flag from the Statehouse, lined up endorsements from preachers and politicians, and deployed her wildly popular husband to the state with increasing urgency. She's talked about the Bible (favorite book: James), and she's winced over the "Corridor of Shame," a particularly desperate and heavily black stretch of I-95 that was the subject of a recent documentary by the same name. It hasn't hurt that Clinton's campaign started early with a "phenomenal, highly professional organization" that Obama's more free-flowing, grassrootsy campaign was hard-pressed to match, said Scott Huffmon, a political scientist at Rock Hill's Winthrop University. But mostly, Huffmon said, "She's attracted voters worried about Obama's viability, or his politics, or his 'blackness.' They love Bill, and that's enough. It's not about her."

That became crystal clear in the spring, when prominent State Senator Robert Ford explained why he'd opted for Clinton over Obama. "Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose because he's black and he's on top of the ticket," Ford told the AP. "We'd lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything."

Most folks prefer to put it a little less bluntly. At the Spartanburg rally I ask Phyllis Carter, who teaches English at a local two-year college, why she's standing in line to shake Clinton's hand. "I think she's the brightest person, doing what she's doing, and she's done it a long time," Carter said. "She's the best. I think about Obama all the time. But he may not have the experience to do what she can do. The fact that she's a woman--she's special." What about the argument that a woman can't win? "Ah, we're over all that stupid stuff," Carter said.

But what about the other "stupid stuff," I asked. Is it easier for a woman to win than an African-American? Carter paused, pursing her lips. "Maybe." She paused again. "Look at how long we've been here: 1554. Now, we didn't come on boats because we decided we wanted to come and be a part of you. We came on a boat tied left leg to right leg. The accomplishments that we've done since then are pretty amazing when you think about it. We're not going away. We're going to be voted for at some point in the game. One of these days we'll have a President."

Here's a really telling excerpt:

Across town in Obama's cramped and bustling Spartanburg office--a converted attic upstairs from the local Democratic Party headquarters--it was a whole 'nother story. "Pull up a chair, honey," said Carolyn Reed-Smith, an elementary teacher working the phones at a folding table. "I had been really drawn to Hillary at first," she explained. "Because I voted for her husband. I thought, 'Wow! Now we'll have him and her.'" But then in June Obama came to Reed-Smith's church, Mount Moriah Baptist, and made a convert. "He had such a calming presence. It's sort of biblical, but I believe in men having dominion and having some sort of mystical power that God gave them," she said. "I believe Barack has acquired that."

To Reed-Smith, the questions about Obama's "blackness" actually point up one of his most important assets. "I believe that he has the best of two cultures within him. He has had such loving nurturing from our African culture, and then I think from the Caucasian culture he has the wit and intellect that's so sharp. I just think that both of those things together, it's the best of both worlds that he has within him. I just felt like I would rather work to see that he gets the presidency."

That says a lot. Here's a woman whose discussion of Obama's most important assets illustrates a key variable in explanations of persistent black poverty and social disorganization: Low expectations, that is, the idea that possessing a powerful intellect is a "white" trait, characteristic of the "Caucasian culture."

No mindset could be more deleterious to the promise of black Americans than the self-segregation of blacks to the ghetto of inferior expectations. Blacks must break from premises of reduced ability based in feelings of low self-esteem, fearfulness, sadness, and ideologies of victimhood.

Obama's problem is that he's moved beyond the 1960s-era freedom struggle frame of reference on the future direction of the race. Because he transcends victimhood, Obama can't be the African-American community's "black messiah": He's not "the one," despite Oprah Winfrey stump speeches to the contrary:

At the big rally in Columbia, Oprah notched up her Obama-as-savior rhetoric by referencing a scene in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. "I remember Miss Pittman, her body all worn and withered and bent over. As she would approach the children, she would say to each one, 'Are you the one? Are you the one?'" Oprah didn't mention that Miss Pittman was looking for a black messiah. She didn't have to. "I watched that movie many years ago, but I do believe today I have the answer to Miss Pittman's question. It's a question that the entire nation is asking. Is he the one?" Tentative cheers. "Is he the one?" Big cheers. "South Carolina," Oprah proclaimed, "I do believe he's the one."

When Efia Nwangaza heard that, she could only wonder: "He's the one for who, and what?" Nwangaza, a longtime activist and onetime Green Party US Senate candidate, is among the many black (and white) progressives left cold by the symbolic standoff between Clinton and Obama. But it didn't stop her from driving from Greenville to witness the Sunday spectacle. "I had mixed feelings," she told me afterward. "I was really moved by it. By the yearning of the people who were there to have someone representing them and their interests. I understand the yearning, in that I am also tired. Having been a civil rights-cum-human rights activist all my life, having had movement parents, I would be so relieved to know that there is a fruitful end to those efforts, and that some candidate embodied it. But I don't think that's what's happening with Barack Obama."

Or Hillary Clinton. "When I look at what both Obama and Clinton say, and what they do, they are not it. They are both chameleons. They are both opportunistic. They both come from the overcompensatory 'being first' frame of reference. Which means that they will be more white male than any white male, including George W. Bush, would ever be. My feeling is that people across the board are being sold a bill of goods."

Kevin Alexander Gray, who's working on a book called The Decline of American Politics, From Malcolm X to Barack Obama, seconded the point. "People say they're voting for Obama because they want a change. A change to what? This is people thinking that the cosmetic is more important than the structural. Obama is a candidate who happens to be black. That's his prerogative, and it's fine. But it's not what we need. Obama's campaign is not a movement. It is someone running for office."

I'm not voting Democratic precisely because of sentiments such as this.

Black politics today is more about revolutionary transformation than about building political coalitions for pragmatic change. As long as the yearning for a black messiah remains key to large segments of the black voting constiuency, a true black politics of transcendentalism will remain out of reach.

John McCain Reviving Frontrunner Status

New polling data has Senator John McCain pulling into the top tier among candidates in the GOP presidential field. Here are the findings from the new USA Today poll of New Hampshire voters:

Among Republicans, Mitt Romney's lead has narrowed to single digits over John McCain, who hopes to repeat the victory here that ignited his presidential campaign in 2000....

Romney leads McCain, 34%-27%. Including only those whose votes are set, Romney's lead narrows to 19%-15%, within the survey's margin of error of +/— 5 points.

Effectively tied for third place are former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, at 11%, and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, each at 9%.

Also, a new FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll (Dec. 18-19, 2007) puts McCain in a statistical tie for first place among nationwide primary voters, with Giuliani, Romney, and McCain taking 20, 19, and 19 percent respectively.

Peter Brown over at The Politico argues that McCain's making a miracle comeback:

For those who believe in miracles, there is the legitimate possibility that John McCain could win the Republican presidential nomination. If so, he'll make Bill Clinton's comeback kid of 1992 look like a piker.

Of course, the Republican senator from Arizona needs a series of events to break his way, but things are moving in that direction.

Even the possibility that he could still win the nomination after being given up for dead by some of his own supporters potentially creates a movie-script scenario.

Remember, McCain entered the 2008 presidential race at the head of the pack.

The smart money said even though his maverick ways had alienated lots of conservative activists, in a party that normally nominated the early leader, McCain was the guy in the right spot at the right time.

But there was significant resistance to him in the grass roots, his early campaign was poorly managed and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani zoomed past in the polls while political insiders were knowingly declaring McCain's candidacy as good as dead.

In addition, he was tarred with being the presidential field's perhaps biggest supporter of an unpopular war in Iraq, and then he signed onto immigration-reform legislation that GOP conservatives considered amnesty - a four-letter word in Republican precincts.

By last summer, McCain's campaign was broke, amid predictions of his withdrawal from the race. Reporters were writing canned campaign obituaries to be ready when he actually pulled the plug.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the funeral. He was able to raise enough money to keep going, and the tide began to turn his way.

Now, that's not to say he has regained his front-runner status - far from it. But his nomination is no longer a pipe dream.

Most of all, the Iraq war has been going better. As one of the best-known supporters of President Bush's surge strategy, McCain's constantly blunt rhetoric that he would rather lose a campaign than lose a war is paying dividends, especially among Republicans.

And, as the campaign has worn on, none of the other candidates has closed the sale. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson and Giuliani have all had their opportunities, but failed to break away from the pack. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is now the hot candidate, but remains an unknown to most voters.

Simply put, none of the other contenders has yet to meet the basic standard that Americans require of a president - that they can feel comfortable with a person in the Oval Office deciding whether to send U.S. troops into harm's way.

Brown might be underestimating McCain's surge. As Romney and Giuliani struggle, and as Huckabee comes under closer scrutiny, voters might decide on McCain - a known quantity, firm in his positions, with demonstrable leadership abilities.

See also the National Review, "Is McCain Back?"

The Pregnancy of 16-Year-Old Jamie Lynn Spears

The news of Jamie Lynn Spears' pregnancy came with something of a shock around my house.

Good Morning America was on the tube Wednesday morning while I was getting ready to take my oldest son to school. The Disney Channel and Nickleodeon are on almost 24-7 at our place, so when my boy casually remarked, "Jamie Spears is pregnant," I did a double-take! "What are you talking about? She's the wholesome side of that family."

But it turned out to be true. I thought about writing on Spears after seeing this Philadelphia Inquirer editorial, but I thought, "nah...well, maybe if it makes the front-page at the big national papers..."

So, since Spears' pregnancy is covered in a lead story at today's New York Times, here goes:

Talk about teachable moments.

In schools and shopping malls and around the dining room table, the subject of teenage pregnancy and sex was suddenly and uncomfortably in the air as mothers and daughters and fathers, too, talked about — or tried not to talk about — the pregnancy of 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears, who plays the perfect, well-liked and, it is understood, virginal teenage girl on “Zoey 101” on Nickelodeon.

High school girls here wondered aloud on Thursday why no one was talking about contraception. Parents across the country, on the other hand, commiserated over the Internet about how, thanks to Ms. Spears, they were facing a conversation with their 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds about sex.

“Nowadays, nothing’s safe, not even cartoons,” Diana Madruga, who has an 11-year-old daughter, said as she wrapped up her shift as the manager of a Dunkin’ Donuts here in the Boston suburbs.

Shopping at American Girl Place, the doll store, in Manhattan, Sharon Carruthers said she had used the news as an opportunity to talk about the dangers of teenage pregnancy with her 10-year-old daughter, Yasmine. “I want my daughter’s mind in the real world,” said Ms. Carruthers, who is from Deptford, N.J. “But this is not what my daughter is going to do in her life. She knows better. She knows right and wrong.”

Yasmine shook her head. “I never expected her, of all people, to do this,” she said, referring to the girl who in her mind is both Zoey and Jamie, the actress who plays her. “She’s supposed to be the good one in the family.”

High school girls who had already had their hearts broken by the all-too-public life of Ms. Spears’s older sister, Britney, known as a hard-partying mother of two, worried that their younger sisters would be devastated by the news — or, worse, that their sisters might think it was “cool” to be 16 and pregnant.

“She’s the idealistic little girl,” Alicia Akusis, 17, said of the television character Zoey between classes at Concord-Carlisle High School here. “She does perfect in school. Boys like her because she’s pretty, but she doesn’t deal with boys. She’s really smart, she’s really cool, she’s an empowering girl character.”

Ms. Akusis said she hoped that her younger sister and stepsister, who are both 11 and love the show, would not find out about Ms. Spears. “I don’t even want to bring it up with them,” she said. “I don’t want them to be disappointed.” It would be like their discovering that Santa Claus was not real, she said.

Ms. Akusis’s friend Mikala Viscariello, 16, was less concerned with shielding the young than with facing the realities of modern life. “There is no excuse for not using contraception,” Ms. Viscariello said.

Ms. Akusis shot back, “I don’t think she should have gotten pregnant in the first place.”

Perhaps the news of Ms. Spears’s pregnancy should not have been so surprising in what has seemed to be the year of the unwed mother in popular culture. First there was the movie “Knocked Up,” in which a 24-year-old entertainment journalist accidentally gets pregnant in a drunken evening. Now there’s “Juno,” about a 16-year-old who confronts an unplanned pregnancy and decides to have the baby.

But Nickelodeon has won wide acclaim as a sanctuary from the hypersexualized youth culture. That is what burned up Matt Younginer of Columbia, S.C., who was shopping with his 9-year-old daughter, Ansley, in Manhattan.

“She loves ‘Zoey 101,’ ” Mr. Younginer said. “It’s usually Britney Spears who would do that stuff, not Jamie Lynn. She was supposed to be one of the good, clean actresses for girls to follow after. I think it just sends an awful message for the young girls.”

Dan Martinsen, a spokesman for Nickelodeon, said Thursday that “Zoey 101” was one of its most popular shows among viewers 9 to 14.

“Nothing about the content, characters or the storytelling on our air has changed at all,” Mr. Martinsen said. He said that Nickelodeon was discussing a special on the issue with Linda Ellerbee, the television journalist who is the host of “Nick News.” “Whenever an issue becomes so prevalent that it’s inescapable,” Mr. Martinsen said, “her show is where we turn to help kids navigate and interpret and understand it.”

A teachable moment? My first thought exactly, and frankly it's good to learn that parents of children younger than my son are talking to their kids about pregnancy and childrearing.

I think the comments above by Sharon Carruthers about her daughter knowing "right and wrong" pretty much sums up a key issue for me. I simply had my son think about how a 16 year-old teenager might care for a baby. How would she (or he) be able to continue with her education? What about college?

I asked my wife if she'd heard the news. She mentioned that Lynne Spears, the mother of Britney and Jamie Lynn, was putting on hold the publication of a parenting book. Well, that might be a good idea, come to think of it!

Photo: New York Times