Quite frankly, there is not much of a choice here: if you don't vote, you will condemn us to changes in our country that will be hard to live with and harder to overcome in the future.
For instance, Republican Senate candidates Linda McMahon in Connecticut, Rand Paul in Kentucky, John Raese in West Virginia, and Dino Rossi in Washington have all pledged to roll back or eliminate the minimum wage.
Sharron Angle in Nevada, Ken Buck in Colorado, and Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania have all talked about privatizing Social Security - or eliminating it altogether.
Perhaps the most important lesson I learned in my years in the Clinton White House was that when problems arise, it is up to the White House to solve them. When you are the top dog, you have more levers and tools of power than anyone else, and more glory and reward when things go well. But when there is a problem, no matter whose fault it is, no matter how bad luck it is, the White House either solves the problem or the failure to do so is theirs. The buck stops there, if you can't stand the heat, etc, etc.
It has always been this way, and always will be. James Buchanan didn't cause the problems that led the nation to disintegrate on his watch, but by not solving them he goes down as one of the nation's most failed Presidents. Herbert Hoover didn't cause the Great Depression, but failing to make progress on it similarly casts him as one of history's biggest failures. LBJ's failure to end the Vietnam War destroyed him, in spite of his own amazing record of legislative achievement earlier in his presidency. Conversely, the Presidents like Lincoln and FDR that dealt successfully with major crises are considered our greatest Presidents, even though they made their share of mistakes along the way.
The combination of problems inherited from George W Bush is the biggest protracted crisis this country has faced since those days of FDR. This economy is damaged beyond what many of the conventional economists or commentators are aware, with a sustained situation that looks bleak for at least several years in the future. The war that Bush started and then ignored in Afghanistan is a quagmire that shows no sign of getting better anytime soon. The other long term problems the Bush administration (and other politicians for decades before, for that matter) ignored - our rapidly deteriorating infrastructure, the health care system's dysfunction, college affordability, our long term trade and budget deficits - certainly don't help the country's sense of well being, or our ability to compete in the world economy of the 21st century.
Even problems less monumental are also tests of Presidential leadership. Jimmy Carter's inability to solve the hostage crisis contributed greatly to his failure as President, and Harry Truman's failure to win or end the Korean War made it impossible for him to run for re-election in spite of all his other accomplishments. LBJ, Ford, Carter, and George HW Bush all failed to get along with their party's respective base, and that alone would have doomed their Presidency. (No President with a strong primary challenge from their base has ever won re-election.)
Again, it doesn't matter whether these problems are some one else's fault, or just bad luck: it is up to the President to deal successfully with whatever they are faced with. Period, end of story. [More in the extended entry]
Spurred a lot of discussion, so thought I'd share a piece cross-posted yesterday and today at The Bilerico Project and Pam's House Blend. Many responses after the flip apply to non-LGBT media, as well
In the last few years, there has been a lot of ink (some of it digital) spilled on the decline of print media as news and entertainment outlets, and the shifts to online. Last week's piece by Michael Lavers in the Village Voice, specifically on the topic of gay print media, was among the latest to lament this shift. It also sparked a lot of response and challenges to his assertion. Matt Comer went through many of the responses at Bilerico last week (including mine here at OL), and yesterday Kevin Naff at the Washington Blade responded with a detailed rebuttal, including an assertion that Lavers did not present a well-rounded view by eliminating quotes disagreeing with his premise.
As someone who enjoys my Sunday papers and picking up newsstand copies of other papers and newsmagazines, I'm as concerned as others. But for all the assessments of print media, and assumptions that everything is moving to online, one question has never been asked: how is online gay media faring?
So I thought it would be an interesting detour to ask a range of those who work in gay online media. Out of concerns resulting from the Lavers piece, I did not want anyone to be quoted out of context or misinterpreted, so I used the "Topic A" format from the Washington Post with a simple question "What is the state of gay online media?" Responses in about 300 words or less are printed below. While unfortunately not as in-depth as a full exploration of the topic, it does give a window into gay online media, and I hope inspires a longer piece. Some look at misconceptions of online media, while others explore the relationship between print and online. They are all interesting, and they are all on the flip.
(This is from a reply to a diary at docudharma called F*** The Meta
IMO, the mechanics of blogs could be improved. Quite easily, I should think.
Basically, you should give diarists the ability to ban people from further commenting in any particular diary, if they don't think the commentator is being serious. (But only after the offending commentator makes at least one post.) Since some diarists will do so dishonestly, or because they're fanatics or overly irrational,
people who are banned should have the ability to respond, with either the verbiage or the link to verbiage clearly shown in the diary
the banned person should have the opportunity to troll-rate the diarist who banned them
The big rap against blogs is that they're parasitic. They don't do any original reporting. Of course, the same exact thing can be said about most newspaper and magazine columnists, and they're just as much a part of traditional print media as reporters are. * [see footnote at end]
But the unfortunate reality is that, on the really big stories, the traditional media doesn't do much original reporting, either. They certainly didn't when it came to the long and tortuous connection between 9/11 and the Iraq War. The irony is that there actually was a good deal of very fine reporting, mostly from Knight-Ridder, but also from Gannet and elsewhere. The problem was, the whole was much less than the sum of the parts, and as the scattered excellent reporting was drowned in an avalanche of propaganda. Far too much "reporting" these days is simply massaging press releases, or taking stenography at press conferences, never bothering to cross-question what's presented by those in power, and the path from 9/11 to the Iraq War was a prime example of how this failed system routinely operates.
The value of the blogosphere does not come down to any one thing, but one major factor certainly is to expose what the traditional media choses to ignore. Most often this does not involve original reporting. But sometimes it does, and "sometimes" struck again this week with Bobby Jindal's nationally televised lying to the American people in his response to Obama's not-State of the Union speech.
However, not surprisingly, right now the top story is from the John McCain NewsLadder, one of our NewsLadders that was developed in conjunction with The Media Consortium.
The top story right now, as voted up by readers, their clicks and their comments is:
Shut up already. And stop reading this for that matter. Get a life. You think your input matters even a tiny little bit? Ha. You know NOTHING. Barack Obama went to Harvard. That's right Harvard. Where did you go, some crappy state school? He was editor of the Law Review. You? You can't even get your spelling right when you "blog" or whatever it is that you do. He's hired the best possible people to help him run his campaign, obviously. They've done this kind of thing before. And you think your stupid "idea" for his campaign is something they didn't already think of and reject 18 months ago? Really?
The above is the gist of this diary that spent most of the day yesterday on the rec list at Dailykos. Apparently a lot of readers agree with the sentiment. This is really dumb for quite a few reasons which I will expand on below the fold.
What value does a blog post have, really? Or, for that matter, an item in your newspaper?
A North Carolina man is suing The News and Observer newspaper because, he says, recent layoffs at the paper and a reduction in news pages put the paper in breach of contract. He expected more when he signed up. If you want more, too, read along.
A long time ago (in blog terms that's 2 months) I wrote about the bifurcation of the progressive blogosphere into Obama camps and Hillary Clinton camps. I thought it was quite unsurprising because the success of political blogs has always been tied to choosing sides. Many conservative blogs succeed and many liberal blogs succeed because people get a viewpoint there they aren't finding from most traditional media outlets.
A lot of people who read political blogs have several they like to visit. The ones that seem to have a majority of users (or a proprietor) who favors their own preferred candidate are more likely to get repeat visits than the ones that seem hostile to one's favorite candidate.
But there is a risk to becoming closely associated with one candidate. What happens when that candidate loses? I took at look at traffic trends on Alexa.com for 4 liberal blogs since June 1. Now, the data you get from Alexa.com is certainly open to skepticism. Some think it's good and others think it's crap. The consensus seems to be you can learn something about longitudinal trends but making one-to-one comparisons is open to doubt.
The trends here are pretty consistent with what I expected to find so that gives me some confidence (but likely not everyone). Here are the sites I looked at:
DailyKos: Strongly pro-Obama (or anti-HRC if you prefer)
MYDD: Strongly pro-HRC
OpenLeft: pro-Obama (not as rabidly as Dailykos I think)
Hillary Clinton won West Virginia by 67-26 margin, about what recent polls predicted. Certainly, every state counts. But context matters too. Here's how the big outlets are playing it this morning:
CNN: Clinton crushes Obama
After enduring a week of political obituaries, Hillary Clinton's campaign proved that it still has life. Clinton trounced fellow Democrat Barack Obama in the West Virginia primary. In the process, she underscored Obama's weakness with blue-collar, working-class white voters.
MSNBC: Clinton wins big victory in West Virginia
Defeat does not threaten Obama's lead for Dem nomination.
Fox News: Clinton 'More Determined'
W. Va. landslide staves off campaign obituary Clinton takes West Virginia by more than 44 points, trouncing in key demographics and underscoring Obama's apparent weakness among blue-collar voters |
NY Times: After Lopsided Loss, Obama Woos Blue-Collar Voters
Washington Post: Clinton's Rout in W.Va. Might Not Be Enough
New York senator's 2-1 margin of victory is among her largest, although it may have little effect on nomination fight with Barack Obama.
CNN, perhaps the top source of news online, gives the optimum pro-Clinton spin. MSNBC is fair, big win, changes little. Fox is in between those two. The newspapers are more measured with the Post giving Clinton's win little positive spin.
But the biggest point of all, which has gone largely unnoticed, may be this one, found in the exit poll data by Poblano at 538:
30% of West Virginia Democrats polled yesterday voted for George W. Bush in 2004. Now, holding those WV voters may be more of a challenge for Obama than Clinton. But it's another sign of change in 2008.
And the Mississippi story also deserves more attention. Huge turnout for the Childers-Davis race which the Democrat won comfortably, 54%-46%. That's a district that Bush won with 62% of the vote in 2004!
The Republican Party used the election as a key testing ground for a strategy that's expected to be deployed in several districts next fall. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the conservative group Freedom Watch and Davis himself reportedly spent close $1 million airing television commercials that linked Childers to Obama.
Now that's a great use of campaign dollars, tying the person you want to beat to someone who is very popular. Good job.
Seemingly everyday we get another piece of evidence that conservative ideology is on the wane. Last week it was Don Cazayoux's upset victory in Louisiana and before that it was Bill Foster's win in Illinois.
One trend that I'm sure we'll all shed a tear over is the declining market share of Fox Noise. While the campaign season brings with it increased ratings for politically oriented programming, Fox News has seen only a modest increase in viewers compared to both MSNBC and CNN which have experience sharp increases (4 to 5 times that of Fox).
This pattern is also apparent in the political blogosphere where malaise appears to have set in among the most well-known sites.
Over the weekend Glenn Greenwald wrote about the political topics the traditional media have been enamored with and those that one might consider a little more important.
Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:
"Yoo and torture" - 102 "Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73 "Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16 "Obama and bowling" -- 1,043 "Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted) "Obama and patriotism" - 1,607 "Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079
Now, you might think that bloggers would be a little more focused on important issues but that is not necessarily the case. Here are the results of the same searches in the blogosphere during the same period:
"Yoo and torture" -- 589
"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 250
"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 143
"Obama and bowling" -- 783
"Obama and Wright" -- 24,934
"Obama and patriotism" - 2,700
"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,964
At least attention to Obama's bowling is less out of proportion among bloggers than it was in the MSM. With the exception of the Wright story (which we can't compare because Nexis didn't give the number) there is a slightly better balance between important topics and, uh, distractions in the blogosphere than in TradMed. But it's clear nonetheless that big media still have power to set the agenda.
Not happy with the state of Florida right now? Neither are the Florida Netroots - a network of online activists and bloggers who are working on building up the Democratic Party all across the state. Think of it as our 67 county strategy. We believe Florida will shift Democratic, but in order to do so its going to need a little push. We're willing to give it a shove, but we need your help. Here's 8 reasons to support the Florida Netroots:
The Barry A. Welsh For Congress campaign today unveiled the new official blog on their website, located at http://blog.barrywel.... The new blog will feature posts from the candidate himself as well as blog team members, communications staff and the occasional guest post from friends and allies of the campaign. The blog will be used to make regular posts with items of interest relating to the campaign, recent podcasts, interviews online and more.
Over at HuffingtonPost Gareth Porter recently called on bloggers to do more than respond to news.
He uses the example of war on Iran....
The truth is that a ruthless administration has the tools necessary to manipulate public opinion and the opinions of the political elite. Progressive bloggers can barely keep with each new perverse twist in the administration's use of disinformation, before they have moved on to their next propaganda ploy. The political deck is stacked against those who hope to stop aggressive moves by revealing the truth about them one by one. That is why I have concluded that progressive bloggers should go beyond their present reactive role and work on the longer-term aim of creating a new way of understanding the problem of aggressive wars. Without a consensus on a new analysis of the problem, there will never be a political movement that can bring about change on the issue.
I think this raises an important issue. How can bloggers go beyond responding and complaining? I think Open Left is already trying to do so with their Bush Dog effort.
We've heard so much about 'smart crowds'. How can bloggers plan and coordinate actions? How can bloggers start thinking and acting long term? How can we work to be more proactive? How do we bring about blogging 2.0?
STATE BLOGS
