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jerome armstrong's User Page

Political blogger since 2001, I've worked for statewide and national campaigns.
http://claimid.com/jeromearmstrong

Crazy times in Malaysia

I can't help but follow the news out of Malaysia, having just gotten back from a trip there last month. Here's how Simon Tisdall describes it in today's Guardian:

An accelerating national drama involving leading government figures, conspiracy claims, personal smears, sodomy allegations and a grizzly murder appears to be driving Malaysia inexorably towards its biggest political upheaval since independence in 1957.
The latest scandal is all about the sodomy charges against the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, but there are all sorts of wrinkles, both historical and new, in the situation.

It's a bit different than arguing about whether Obama is moving to the 'center' or not...

I don't know what to make of the accusations against Anwar, as its a repeat of earlier thrown-out charges. Turmoil in Malaysia is about right, in that it throws it back upon the judicial system, and the expected reforms that have been happening, for as to how its sorted out.

Update [2008-7-3 13:48:24 by Jerome Armstrong]: Via his blog, Anil Netto, has a background/big picture article, Brinksmanship in polarized Malaysia, in the Asia Times:

Where is all this leading to? Taking a step back and looking at the larger picture, I believe this high-stakes “tennis match” (lob and counter-lob) symbolises the battle between the new political order and the old, the tsunami vs the hegemony. I don’t think it is a healthy development though, for politics to be so personalised. The tsunami movement for reforms and change is too broad-based to be focused on individuals at the apex slugging it out for their political survival - but there you go.

Obama's FISA update

Ari Melber has been doing the reporting:

Protesters are storming Barack Obama's website. But they all support Obama.

A grassroots group of activists has been organizing on MyBo, Obama's official social networking portal, to protest the Senator's recent decision to back controversial legislation granting the President more spying powers. The effort hit a big milestone on Tuesday afternoon: It is now the largest self-organized group on Obama's website, topping networks that were launched over a year ago. The spying protest, "Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right," launched last week. (See Obama Network Organizes and Revolts Over Spying, The Nation.)

Membership spiked to about 8,900 people on Tuesday, edging out a student group with roughly 8,600 members, and one organizer estimated that the growth rate reached a rapid four percent during the daytime.

It's over 10,000 now.

Jeff Jarvis had some good thoughts on the effort:

I've argued since Howard Dean's run in 2004 that campaigns aren't or can't really be bottom-up when it comes to policy. They are necessarily propagandistic: This is what the candidate says. Indeed, Dean's supporters acted like white blood cells in his blog discussions quite effectively surrounding and strangling dissent and opponents in the bloodstream. That's the way campaigns have to work if you're going to decide what this guy stands for and whether to vote for him, right? It's about the message, no?

... I find two things fascinating about this: First, we are beginning to see a campaign built openly on coalitions. Even though I disagree with them, I am happy to see the anti-immunity lobby crack the monolithic, glassy-eyed facade of the Obama fan club (the sort of people who yell at me in my comments and tell me I'm not allowed to disagree with him about anything). Thank goodness we see disagreement and discussion -- democracy -- inside a campaign. I believe the greatest impact the internet will have on politics will be that it enables like-minded groups to find each other and organize apart from old organizations and labels (red, blue, Republican, Democrat); we will organize around issues and priorities rather than parties. See the comments under  this post.

Second, I wonder what these self-organizing groups will look like when they get into power. The Deaniacs and Joe Trippi made valiant attempts to stay organized after their campaign melted but that didn't work. If Obama gets into the White House, though, will his supporters at MyBarackObama continue to use these tools to influence him and government? And will he have to listen because he is beholden to them?


What I find ironic is all of the naysaysers within the comments on the Nation after Ari's post. Belittling, of all things, the numbers. This is a moment that has been a long time in waiting, when the netroots would turn toward organizing effectively within the institutions around which have they have campaigned for heavily, first with Dean in '03 and all the races in-between then and now with Obama in '08. Fundraising and mobilization have happened around campaigns, but the FISA organizing is more powerful and portends the future. This is going to be a clash that continues to happen, between many first-timers, that have been brought into politics through Barack Obama, and those that have been pushing for progressive policies through the netroots over the decade.

Now, I do understand the argument that we need to get power first, getting a strong Democratic trifecta, before the push for progressive reform begins to happen, but the efforts around FISA over the past year point the way, this merely the latest example.

Joe Trippi makes a note in the comments:

Jeff I want to make two points: The Dean campaign did not extend itself for two reasons. 1. Many immediately turned to the 2006 elections and got involved and made a big difference including some major upsets and big wins. Yes people did not "stay" in a "Dean Community" but most helped build the vibrant progressive community we see today. 2. The many of the tools that exist today (including most of the social networking tools that exist today) were either non existent or barely off the ground in 2003. I think it wasn't possible til now - til 2008 for a candidate (or the supporters of a candidate) to build something that would last beyond the campaign. I believe that the next President will stand at the end of the Television Presidency and at the beginning of the Networked Presidency in which the President and the people will connect and work to pass their agenda together, where they can and do agree. Obama could be that President. I stopped being disappointed a long time ago -- if you wait for the perfect candidate its a long long long wait.
It demands a balance, between pressuring for the politicians to walk the talk, and realizing that we have to get them elected in the first place. The dogmatism on both sides of the argument is better off rejected. At the congressional level, what good is it to get rid of a Blue Dog Democrat in a primary that will get replaced by a Republican in the GE? I have no problem with supporting primary challenges against incumbent Democrats by more progressive candidates in CD's where we will win in the GE regardless, but lets be strategic about it. At the presidential level, there was no such push against John Kerry over any of the issues in '04. I'm a bit surprised that Obama is getting challenged from within, but as Trippi points out, it takes having the tools to organize effectively. As pointed out over on the next right, the dissent from within is a powerful asset for Obama:
Rather than react in accordance with the practices of most campaigns by shutting and muffling dissent Obama is providing dissidents (many of whom are supporters of his) the opportunity to organize on his campaign web-site. When last I looked over 140  opponents of Obama's decision to support FISA have banded together on his site to launch an anti-FISA campaign.

The Obama campaign has made the courageous decision to keep his dissidents under his tent and armed with the tools his campaign can provide to organize. Can you imagine a Bush campaign reacting like this? I can't. But if we are going to campaign effectively on the web we must understand that power resides in the grassroots and the days of autocratic control from above are over.

Now, the real test comes when Obama next speaks/votes on FISA.

Clark gets rebuked by Obama, MoveOn.org too

Ah, Wesley Clark, who is about to win the CQ contest for VP, having defeated McCaskill, Bayh, Edwards, Rendell (who defeated Clinton), and is beating Biden in the finals. Nope. Not gonna happen.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton: "As he's said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain's service, and of course he rejects yesterday's statement by General Clark."

Update [2008-6-30 13:50:55 by Jerome Armstrong]: Obama also made reference to MoveOn in his "patriotism" speech today. The Hill says he criticized them for the Sept '07 ad, saying:

The Illinois senator said politics too often seems “trapped in old, threadbare arguments” that he called “caricatures of left and right.” This, Obama added, was “most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by some as unpatriotic, and a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.” The Democrat argued that “given the enormous challenges that lie before us, we can no longer afford these sorts of divisions.”
You'll recall, that Obama skipped the “sense of the Senate” resolution (which passed 72-25 with a certain Senator from NY voting against) which condemned MoveOn.org last fall for its "personal attack" on Petraeus. As such, MoveOn.org was the primary 'cast-overboard' target for Obama today, but with the netroots fav Clark the issue-of-the-day, its a side.

This is the silly season of politics by Obama. In a sense, it's bi-polar. On the one hand, he's come out of the primary with an energized base and flush with funding from progressives that will mobilize in numbers and tonnage of money, but on the otherhand he's getting terrible advice to make symbolic gestures of defiance toward those same progressive issues and groups in order "to move to the center" for the GE.

This is the part where "untested" comes in for Obama. In a real sense, it's his first general election ever. It's all new territory for him to be up against a competitive Republican. He has no experience upon which to draw, and relies upon advice of "those who have been there" for his every move. Well, for Democrats, "those who have been there" have been doing this same one-trick pony move for quite a few presidential elections, with one slim majority in the last 40 years to show for it. This isn't a 'center' election, it's a realignment one of base politics-- that's the opportunity he's blowing coming out of '06 with the progressive wind to his back.

And yea, I don't think that Clinton would be making these rookie mistakes, so there. But also, I don't see how Obama can possibly lose this election, so there too.

Hussein - Are You?

I saw this phenom around the blog here a few months back, as it was spreading viral:
... a growing band of supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who are expressing solidarity with him by informally adopting his middle name. The result is a group of unlikely-sounding Husseins: Jewish and Catholic, Hispanic and Asian and Italian-American, from Jaime Hussein Alvarez of Washington, D.C., to Kelly Hussein Crowley of Norman, Okla., to Sarah Beth Hussein Frumkin of Chicago.

And I found this tidbit ironic-- if you know Harding (which I attended for a few memorable years in the 80's) you would too:
Some Obama supporters say they were moved to action because of what their own friends, neighbors and relatives were saying about their candidate. Mark Elrod, a political science professor at Harding University in Searcy, Ark., is organizing students and friends to declare their Husseinhood on Facebook on Aug. 4, Mr. Obama's birthday.
Originating at Harding, haha-- that's quite a camel nose under the tent.

Obama's FISA

Ari Melber, Obama Network Organizes and Revolts over Spying:

Since launching last week, the protest group, "Senator Obama Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right," swelled to one of the ten largest campaign groups on Sunday. (FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which the Democratic Congress is poised to amend under White House pressure.) It is the largest group of its kind on MyBo, which focuses on local networking, official campaign events, and constituency groups like "Women for Obama." It looks like the group grew through the Obama network, with a few web mentions on liberal sites such as OpenLeft and TPM, and it urges Obama to reject the "politics of fear" and lead Democrats to oppose the White House bill. Blogger Mike Stark says the effort demonstrates the kind of civic engagement and "open government" that Obama espouses, even if it delivers the "sting of social networking" pushback during a tight campaign.

One Democratic Internet consultant predicted that Obama's reaction could reveal his commitment to meaningful engagement with supporters. "How Obama responds will tell us a great deal about both his willingness to listen to input from his supporters and what influence the MyBarackObama community has on the campaign itself," said the operative, who wished to remain anonymous while working on another campaign. "In the meantime, this is a huge opportunity for Obama's supporters to organize around an issue, not just the candidate, and take action beyond using their credit card."

The Wanker-In-Waiting, Keith Olbermann, who has flipped his position to become the defender of Obama now supporting FISA, is expected "to deliver a "Special Comment" on Monday's show to elaborate on his "Obama/FISA" defense."

Now, which tactic works better? The use of BO's tools to organize and send a message from within that pushes for change, or the sycophant use of television by a tool? I guess it depends on what outcome you'd like to see.

What I'd like to see is some investigative reporting down that shows why in the world Obama actually flipped his position to take the lead on supporting the "compromise" FISA bill. Is it really just the "move to the center" that Glenn talks about, or is there something else to it?

Pres. Debates

The chances of there being any Summer debates between Obama and McCain are fleeting. Instead, we are likely only to get the standard offering:

The Commission on Presidential Debates proposed last week the less formal, more conversational talk-show format for two of three 90-minute debates it's seeking this fall. The third debate would be a town hall-style session in which the candidates would be free to walk around the stage.

The proposed debates are:

* Sept. 26 at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Miss.

* Oct. 7 at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., the town hall session.

* Oct. 15 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

The proposed vice presidential debate:

* Oct. 2 at Washington University in St. Louis.

My guess is that these will stick. Bush, in 2000, tried to re-negotiate the debates before they happened, and wound up giving Gore traction with the effort. With Obama, it might be different, as he's already been keeping McCain at length over town halls, but the media wouldn't give the leverage with the Commissioned debates that they have with the ad hoc ones.

I've been reading "A Glorious Disaster", which recounts the 1964 Goldwater vs Johnson election. There are some interesting symbolic parallels with '08 in the book. Another 'Barry' as candidate, a Senator from Arizona (McCain's is the top quote on the back cover), small donor records with massive crowds, for instance, but in substance, its not a similar election. As far as debates go though, LBJ wouldn't give an inch. They never happened.

The article suggests that the debate style would favor McCain, because they'd both be seated, but I don't know if that's the case. Obama, in the moments I recall from his nomination debates, had his toughest moments when he was taking questions from the podium. I don't recall McCain's moments in comparison, but it does at times look like the podium engulfs McCain. They probably both benefit from being seated.

And howabout the locations?  NY is not a surprise, neither is the St. Louis location, but Nashville TN and Oxford MS are new on the map for debates. TN is not going to be competitive, but Obama is probably pleased about the MS selection.

Also of note from the article:

Of the states Kerry won in 2004, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the closest this year may be Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
And it's probably a pretty wide gulf between those and the next tier of states.

Charlie Brown leads the fight against FISA

Charlie Brown steps up. In a R+11 CD, he opposes FISA. Here's a career military officer who flew surveillance missions all over the world for the Air Force and NSA for most of his Air Force Career, and is running as a Democrat in the most red district in CA, and he opposes FISA.

Read his blog post on FISA, What Warrantless Wiretapping Means to Me. Charlie Brown has real, actual first hand experience with this issue. On Calitics, a post from D-Day yesterday, asked Brown about FISA:

As soon as I brought up the FISA bill, Brown sighed. He said there was no way he could support the bill that was passed in the House, and he in particular cited the telecom immunity aspect for a variety of reasons. "When I was gathering intelligence, if I ever picked up information outside what was authorized, I would have to flag the tape and immediately deliver it to my commanding officer for destruction," he said. "If I didn't, I'd be sitting at Leavenworth." To treat the phone companies in a different way that he would have been personally treated seems unfathomable.
And yet, the Telecom corporations get just such a different treatment from many Democratic politicians. Why?

May numbers

Obama and McCain start off even, in fundraising. That's a bit of a surprise. And actually, Obama is behind when we factor in the committees and the GE, but we all expect that Obama will increase his advantage in the coming months.

Obama spent $27M in May, and raised $22M. He has $33M on hand for the nomination, and $10M on hand for the GE.

McCain spent $12M in May, and raised $22M. He has $32M on hand for the nomination, and will get $84M in public financing for the GE.

There is also a big disparity among the committees, the DNC and the RNC. From April, the DNC had $4M on hand, and the RNC had $40M on hand.

So, we start off behind, with five months to go. Obama and the DNC having $37M on hand and $10M for the GE, McCain and the RNC having $72M on hand and $84M for the GE. That totals $47M for the DNC/Obama and $156M for the RNC/McCain, over a 3:1 ratio in McCain's favor. But that will change.

The upside of McCain for the GE is limited by that $84M amount, and he'll have to rely upon the RNC to increase their cash on hand. Obama will not only be able to raise millions more himself, I also expect that they'll focus on significantly increasing the DNC's cash on hand.

Update [2008-6-22 12:32:21 by Jerome Armstrong]: I corrected some errors above, and got the May committee numbers. The RNC reports having raised $24M in May, and cash on hand of $54M. The DNC reports having raised $5M and has $4M cash on hand. That widens the cash on hand disparity: $37M for Obama/DNC with $10M for the GE; $86M for McCain/RNC with $84M for the GE. The Obama/DNC total of $47M against the McCain/RNC total $190M is much more of a disparity than I would have expected. But, there lots of upside for Obama, and we'll see how much he closes the gap in June for a good indication. No alarm bells yet.



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