What Would the Sage of Fair Lane Think?

November 20, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, History, Obama administration, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

As the big boys from the big three pressed their case this week for a taxpayer funded bridge or bailout (pick your metaphor), the role of big labor in Mr. Obama’s coming administration is being seriously tested even before the guy gets to say “so help me God.”

Of course, at issue is the fact that he promised the proverbial moon to an interest group not really known in recent years for its capacity to pack too much of an electoral punch. Whether or not he will be able – or inclined – to actually keep his pledges is quite another thing.

It is likely that many months ago, when Barack Obama was assuring various union dense audiences of his support for them, he never anticipated having to really do anything about it so soon. But it will be on his plate on day one and the issue may just keep him up some nights until 3:00 a.m. – in case the phone rings in the wee hours.

The problems with the American automobile industry are legion, but likely the most glaring is the cost of labor and management. Bloated salaries in the boardroom and borderline outrageous wages on the assembly lines have pretty much brought the entire U.S. auto industry, once the envy of the world, to its knees - if not the brink of disaster.

Workers at a Toyota plant in Kentucky, a non-union shop, receive about $47.00 per hour in wages and benefits. That translates to about $98,000.00 per year (not counting overtime). Those doing essentially the same job at GM, Ford, or Chrysler – whose assembly line workers are members of the United Auto Workers union – receive roughly $71.00 per hour – or about $150,000.00 annually (again, minus any overtime).

Public school teachers across the country make, on the average, no more than a third of that.

Detroit has been losing money on every car sold for quite some time. The easy criticism is that they have been building “gas guzzlers.” But that dog won’t hunt because one of the reasons they have had difficulty shifting gears (so to speak) to smaller, cheaper, and more fuel efficient models is that they would lose more money per unit on them. They have not been competitive for a long time and there isn’t a bailout number big enough to fix the problem without changing management (getting rid of the guys who ran the place into the ground) and renegotiating labor contracts downward.

And there’s the rub. The United Auto Workers is a formidable foe with a new best friend moving into the White House.

The irony is that this union looks and acts these days more like the guys they fought against back in the 1930s and 1940s. It began as an advocate for hard working people who had been getting the shaft. Who’s holding said shaft now?

I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit hearing the legendary stories about “sit down” strikes and an epic encounter called “the battle of the overpass” - where Ford Motor Company “muscle” beat up Walter Reuther, his brother, and other union organizers who were passing out leaflets.

My father was a long time member of the Teamsters (same local as Mr. James Riddle Hoffa) and all the kids on the block had dads who loved and depended on the unions. I know that back in the day the UAW did some good stuff for those who had no real influence or voice. The union effectively helped its members “to free them from the tyranny of arbitrary decision or discriminatory action in the work place,” as Neil Chamberlain wrote nearly half century ago. I get that.

But we have come along way since those days. This is an age of change – remember?

Ford Motor Company was the last of the big three to agree to let its employees organize after a lengthy and brutal battle. Led by Harry Bennett, a close confidante of old Mr. Ford (who later wrote a book about his boss entitled, We Never Called Him Henry), a “goon squad” spied on and intimidated workers for years, keeping them in line and out of the UAW.

In the spring of 1941, as the nation was reluctantly preparing for inevitable involvement in the growing global war, Bennett fired several employees unwittingly creating the catalyst for the first real strike (exclusive of episodic “wild cat” actions) the company ever experienced. For ten days, work at the massive River Rouge Plant was at a standstill and tension was in the air.

Through surrogates like Bennett, Henry Ford insisted that the strike was the work of communist agitators. He had been working closely on the sly with a key, though out of favor, labor leader - Homer Martin. The first president of the UAW, Martin was, in fact, on Ford’s payroll, retained ostensibly as an in-house liaison to the increasingly restless workers.

Homer Martin is now little more than a footnote in the story of the rise of the UAW, having been outmaneuvered by the Reuther brothers and largely written out of the “official” history of the movement. A former Baptist minister, he had been fired by his rural Missouri congregation for outspoken support of workers who were pro-union. He then went to work in a Kansas City automobile plant and soon rose to the top of the fledgling labor movement. Known as “an orator of the evangelical, stem-winding school,” he could “draw fire from an audience.”

Under Homer Martin’s leadership, union membership experienced exponential growth in its early years. A strong anti-communist in a movement rife with socialists, Martin is largely characterized today as an incompetent leader and erratic personality. The truth may actually be that he was bitterly opposed by the Reuther brothers because of his religious faith and the strong support he had from southern workers who connected with his “preacher” persona. Whatever the case, though out of power he continued to spend significant time and energy on the labor cause in the auto industry. And he played an ironic role in the Rouge Plant strike.

As the walkout continued during the first week of April in 1941, Martin – at the urging of Harry Bennett - used his rhetorical skills to try to persuade strikers to quit and get back to work. Meanwhile, the Reverend J. Frank Norris, a fiery fundamentalist Texas preacher who was also pastor of a mammoth Detroit congregation, preached a sermon that was broadcast on WJR radio and printed word for word in the Detroit Times. Norris called the Rouge Plant strike the work of “revolutionaries” and “Bolsheviks,” and suggested that anyone participating in it was not being patriotic in light of the war clouds looming on the international horizon.

But on April 10th, Michigan Governor Murray Van Wagoner intervened and the strike was suspended. Mr. Ford was beat. For a brief time he pouted and moped around his 1,300-acre Fair Lane Estate in Dearborn - even threatening to shut his whole company down. But his wife Clara disabused him of the notion. And in a secret ballot – emphasis on that word secret – Ford workers elected to go into the UAW by a 97 percent vote.

Now, fast-forward sixty-seven years to current day. There is a curious and ominous piece of legislation floating around Washington, D.C. called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which has been nicknamed the “card check” bill. In effect, it would eliminate the idea of using the sanctity of the secret ballot for elections when employees of a company vote on the issue of whether or not to join a union.

So imagine you are working one day – and a guy comes along and says, “sign this.” Would you feel the pressure and the potential for intimidation?

Sadly, the UAW has in some ways become what they used to fight against – autocratic, coercive, intimidating, and manipulative. If such a bill passes and is signed by our 44th president, Harry Bennett wannabes will be back on the job, only this time they will twist arms for the unions. Even someone whose liberal bona fides are as unimpeachable as George McGovern thinks this is a terrible idea.

President –Elect Obama supports the EFCA. I would hate to think that democracy in America might one day find itself on a slippery slope toward becoming a “thugocracy.”

We are now at a crossroads. Labor unions grew during the Great Depression and peaked just after the Second World War. They have been in decline for years, but now as the economy tanks they seem to be getting another lease on life. The current scenario with the auto companies asking for money in Washington with one hand, while in the grip of the UAW with other, is going to yield powerful and revealing clues as to what the future will look like for American businesses.

The corporatism that came out of the New Deal, and took decades to even begin to undo, is knocking at the American door once again. And the man who, after January 20th, will be in a position to let labor back into the economic living room has already given every indication that he has a pro-union welcome mat in the moving van.

Be prepared to hear much more talk about “fair” competition than “free” competition. They are both four-letter words, but that’s where the similarity ends.

Long after the 1941 strike was settled (by the way, the company offered more generous terms than those the union was seeking), Henry Ford met with UAW leader Walter Reuther to congratulate the man now representing his workers. During an odd exchange, he told Reuther, “It was one of the most sensible things Harry Bennett ever did when he got UAW into this plant.” Caught by surprise by the comment, he asked, “How do you figure it?”

Henry Ford then told the man who became for a generation - Mr. UAW: “Well, you’ve been fighting General Motors and the Wall Street crowd. Now you are here, and we have given you a union shop and more than you got out of them. That puts you on our side, doesn’t it? We fight General Motors and Wall Street together, eh?”

His analysis may have been flawed – but then again, maybe the old man was on to something. I wonder what Henry Ford would think about company executives jetting privately to Washington to beg for money to “save” an industry he invented in his little backyard shop?

58 And Counting

November 18, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Obama administration, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

From Alaska tonight comes word that with all but a handful of ballots counted Mark Begich appears to have defeated Sen. Ted Stevens by less than a percentage point.  Thus ends Stevens’ 40 years in the Senate, the longest period served by a Republican, which saw him usually re-elected by large majorities but concluded with his felony conviction and the threat of expulsion from the chamber (now a moot point, it would seem).

And so the Democrats, counting independent Sens. Bernie Sanders and Joe Lieberman (who was today reprimanded, after a fashion, for campaigning with Sen. John McCain, but kept his committee chairmanship), have 58 votes.  Two remain to achieve a filibuster-proof majority and bring about the rebirth of the Great Society, the New Deal redux, or at least a second wind for the New Frontier.  (And if the Dems come up one short, is anyone up for the return of the New Foundation? For an explanation Google “Jimmy Carter,” “1979,” and “State Of The Union.”)

In Minnesota, the minions of Al Franken, somewhere between St. Cloud and Hibbing, perhaps carefully cradle the box numbered 13, which contains several hundred ballots cast by Mia L. Frankin,  M. E. Alfranken,  etc, as well as the dreaded deleted scenes from Stuart Saves His Family. In Georgia, during the next few weeks until Saxbe Chambliss faces a runoff vote, we’ll see an avalanche of ads and a lot of crossed fingers as Democratic bigwigs from Macon to Athens, and up in Washington, hope that GOP voters are just too exhausted and dispirited to show up at the polls.

And, meanwhile, the question lingers: will Sen. Hillary Clinton go to Foggy Bottom or stay put? Today came some vague reports that the junior senator from New York might decline the chance.  I’m inclined to think she’ll remain where she is.  William Jennings Bryan comes to mind.  It was unlikely that the “Boy Orator of the Platte” would be renominated after he lost his third presidential run in 1908, but when Woodrow Wilson made him Secretary of State in 1913, it was a signal that at the age of 53 he had risen to the status of Statesman and left the cares and travails of electoral politics behind.  I doubt Hillary wants to run a similar risk.

Obama: Keep Joe In The Tent

November 11, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Middle East, Republican Party | 3 Comments 

During the presidential campaign this fall no appearance at a rally or fundraiser by Sen. John McCain was complete without Sen. Joe Lieberman (reportedly the Arizonan’s first choice for running-mate before he was persuaded to keep the selection within GOP ranks) introducing him.  As a result, a number of people in the print media and the blogosphere began to wonder if Lieberman, who won his most recent election as an independent in 2006, would be allowed to keep caucusing with the Democrats after the election.

But in recent days it has become evident that even if Al Franken prevails in the recount of the Minnesota Senate race, the Democrats are going to need the votes of both Senate independents (the other being Bernie Sanders of Vermont) if they are going to stand a chance of wooing some Republican in the fashion that James Jeffords was in 2001 so that a filibuster-proof majority can be put together.  Yesterday Senate majority leader Harry Reid explained that he and his colleagues saw no problem with Lieberman staying in the caucus and today, President-elect Obama also made some comments indicating that the status quo should be maintained. But at what point, as the Obama administration’s Mideast policy develops, could the Connecticut senator start to have second thoughts?

What Cost The GOP The Election?

November 7, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, Republican Party, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

As the Obama era gets underway, fingers are being pointed in all directions as Republicans ponder what happened.  Allow me to direct my digit at Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson.

In the last weeks, as it became clear that some kind of miracle was needed to save Sen. John McCain’s run for the White House, I started to wonder why it was that one was required.  The cause was clearly the economic crisis, and the event that triggered it, as Charles Krauthammer noted this morning, was the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers after Paulson refused to bail out the banking firm in mid-September.  Former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein, who has observed and commented on decades of economic ups and downs, has repeatedly stated that Paulson’s move was a bizarre and ill-thought move - “a roll of the dice that came out snake eyes.”  Like me, he doesn’t understand how the Treasury Department could bail out Bear Stearns last spring, a move that averted recession for a few months, and then let Lehman (and, it turned out, many other financial institutions) go over the abyss. 

What’s especially in my mind now is what might have been. At the end of October it turned out that new housing sales, following a 13% slump in August, had actually risen 2.7% in September.  If this indeed is an indication the housing market had hit bottom and was undergoing a resurgence at the time Paulson pulled the plug on Lehman, then it stands to reason that had he kept the company out of bankruptcy, then AIG, Merrill and the rest would have remained intact for at least the remainder of the year.  The Christmas increase in retail sales would have kept confidence going this fall, as it did last year when there was talk of a major downturn. 

And what all this would have meant is that McCain might have stayed at the level in the polls where he was in early September and could have built on that.  It’s true that by Inauguration Day, an institution as shaky as Washington Mutual might have been causing jitters, but by then it could have been the concern of a McCain administration and not an Obama one.   But instead the stock market tanked this week in a way not seen since 1987 and President-elect Obama is the one holding the press conference today.  Whatever we see in the next two years, Paulsen bears a gigantic share of the responsibility in bringing it about.

(I should mention that Andrew Sullivan, as might be expected, does not share this view and is positive that the tide began to turn against McCain when Katie Couric interviewed Gov. Sarah Palin almost 10 days before Lehman went under. And he presents some poll charts to buttress the argument. But I would say the county-by-county maps of election results that appeared in Thursday’s Washington Post disproves that.  Those maps show that this year Obama improved over Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 performance in hundreds of counties in the Midwest and Rust Belt gravely affected by the economic crisis, and that McCain improved over President Bush’s 2004 results in nearly the entire states of Arkansas and Oklahoma and across the Appalachians.  What appealed to voters in these Republican-leaning areas?  A lot of it surely had to do with Gov. Palin and her bedrock conservative views.)

Yes on Obama, No To Liberalism

November 5, 2008 by Jonathan C. Movroydis | Filed Under Democratic Party, Election 2008, Orange County, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Sen. Obama ran the table in Southern California Republican strongholds (which Pres. Bush won overwhelmingly in 2004) San Diego (53-44), Riverside (50-47), and San Bernadino Counties (51-46), while Sen. McCain barely held on to Orange County (50 -47).

As Rush Limbaugh noted this morning, this doesn’t mean conservativism is dead in America, pols were just invariably lacking a consistent and clear message. In California, where language was unambiguous and immutable, conservatives scored a victory in Proposition 8 (even in Los Angeles County), and maintained an effective status quo in state and congressional seats.

California Assemblyman Chuck Devore (R-Irvine) lists what Republicans can look forward to:

1) At the Congressional level, we maintained the status quo – the power of the 2002 gerrymander remains intact – State Sen. Tom McClintock remains ahead in the 4th district by 50.1 to 49.9 with a 451 vote margin saying he’ll go to Washington.

2) The State Senate, at this writing, may get a little bluer by one, with former GOP Assemblyman Tony Strickland down by 108 votes to former Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, 50.1 to 49.9. Based on the late returns, it is better than 50-50 that Strickland can win this, but I’m sure a brigade of lawyers will be deployed to ensure all the rules are followed. This district is McClintock’s district out by Santa Barbara and it has trended strongly Democrat in the past few years.

3) The State Assembly this morning appears to favor a net Democrat gain of two seats, with the Democrats apparently picking up all three of the seats that they gerrymandered for their party in 2002, but the Republicans picked off that year, however, Republicans added a seat in the Bakersfield area. Two other seats were in play too due to the massive amounts of money the Democrats and the unions had at their disposal – the seat vacated by the term-limited Alan Nakanishi and the seat held by Audra Strickland. Republicans held both seats.

4) In a race having national implications, Prop. 8, which provides constitutional protections to traditional marriage, passed by a little more than four percent with a 415,839 vote margin. Generally speaking, Prop. 8 passed in all but coastal counties with even Los Angeles County supporting it. There is 4.2 percent of the vote outstanding, but it is largely from counties that heavily supported Prop. 8. With Hollywood, the media, Gov. Schwarzenegger and every Democrat politician in the state opposing this measure, with Obama beating McCain by 24.3 percent in the state and opposing Prop. 8, as well as the “No on 8” side outspending the “Yes on 8” side, it is a remarkable victory that should give pundits pause when they seek to write off California as indelibly “blue.” Especially interesting is the huge disconnect between traditional liberal areas that massively opposed 8 and regions where working Californians lived who gave heavy support to Pres.-elect Obama AND big margins to Prop. 8. There is a powerful internal inconsistency there that can harm the Democrats if they do not adjust to it with politicians such as Sen. Barbara Boxer calling Prop. 8, “unfair, unnecessary, and wrong” with the “Yes on 8” campaign being “mean-spirited” while practicing “the politics of fear and division.” The only other big proposition that had major implications which apparently passed is Prop. 11, the redistricting initiative which I supported and most Democrats opposed. It was ahead by 50.6 to 49.4 as of Wednesday morning. Should it pass, California may finally see competitive legislative districts by 2012.

This Is Funny, Too

November 5, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party | Leave a Comment 

Barack Obama won by 10% in Minnesota, but Al Franken’s dead even with Sen. Coleman, who at 11:45 p.m. PST is 1200 votes ahead with 94% of precincts reporting.

***

Dept. of Him Who Laughs Last: Franken’s 1,000 up at midnight.

***

Dept. of Too Tired To Chuckle: Coleman’s 800 up at 6:15 a.m. PST.

Liveblogging The Election V

November 4, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Liveblogging, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Obama’s victory speech covered all the right bases, especially the candidate’s thanks to McCain for the latter’s phone call conceding the race, which, undoubtedly, was as well-spoken and gracious as the speech in Arizona. The single problematic feature in Obama’s remarks was the paraphrase from Dr. King’s “mountaintop” speech delivered in Memphis the night before his death, which served to remind a lot of us that for the last ten months the senator has had more Secret Service protection than anyone except President Bush. Another notable aspect of the address is that it did not conclude with the strains of “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” by Stevie Wonder. (”Overjoyed” by that artist might have been a suitable substitution but instead there was a lofty-sounding instrumental.)

But, as some commentator or other noted tonight, the nation is now on “the other side of history.” Forty years ago when Grant Park in Chicago was riven by violence rather than united in triumph, a minister from Washington, DC, Channing Phillips, received 67.5 votes at the Democratic convention, the first black American to be nominated for President at a major-party gathering. Twenty years ago, for a week after winning the Michigan primary, Jesse Jackson (much seen on TV tonight, with tears running down his cheeks) was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination - another first. (Tonight Brit Hume referred to this on Fox News; here’s a clip which also includes Juan Williams’s comments on Obama’s win to which John Taylor refers below.)

And tonight, the BBC coverage cut to one of their reporters, standing in a Kenyan village (where it’s Wednesday morning), while several relatives of the president-elect were dancing in celebration. Tomorrow has been declared a national holiday in Kenya.

NBC’s also reporting a gain of 26 seats for the Democrats so far in the House. Not quite a repeat of 1964, but it sure looks like Obama will have a Congress presenting him with few of the roadblocks encountered by Carter or (when he had a non-GOP legislative branch) Clinton.

And thus the evening finishes. A new era is indeed upon us.

Liveblogging The Election IV

November 4, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Liveblogging, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

It’s now a quarter before midnight Eastern. A few minutes before 11, NBC called Virginia for Obama, and at the top of the hour, as the polls closed in the West, he was simultaneously pronounced the victor across the airwaves. By 11:15, McCain was delivering a magnificently graceful and thoughtful concession speech, hitting all the right notes.

The most emotional coverage has been on the African-American-oriented channels, TV One and BET, as commentators reminisce about their own experiences, discuss the struggle of black America through the centuries, and marvel at the moment of fulfillment and triumph tonight.

After Obama delivers his address, a few minutes from now, it will be time for a post about how the composition of the next Congress is shaping up. In Maryland, where I live, the other election news of note is that a majority of the electorate, probably none too wisely, gave in to pressure from various bigwigs and approved a constitutional amendment which will result in the installation of thousands of slot machines at area racetracks.

Liveblogging The Election III

November 4, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Liveblogging, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

It’s now just after 10:30 Eastern, and for the last half-hour, after Iowa was projected for Obama and McCain locked up Mississippi, the Electoral College estimate has held at 207-135 in Obama’s favor at NBC and several other networks. Brian Williams just called South Dakota for McCain, but NBC’s political analyst Chuck Todd, poring over a map of Florida a few minutes ago, made it clear that he thought all the variables were moving Obama’s way.

By way of a sidelight, here are my nominations for:

Most Effervescent Coverage: Easily TV One, the African-American-themed channel, where the commentators (based in Grant Park) talk as if they’re perched on cases of Dom Perignon just waiting to be popped as soon as the West Coast tallies come in.

Most Somnolent Coverage: Probably the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s, which CSPAN2 is running for some reason.

Most Somnolent Network Coverage: So far, probably Katie Couric’s at CBS.

Most Fair And Balanced Coverage: Fox News is a contender - if a state has gone blue, Brit Hume and Chris Wallace haven’t hesitated to say so - but NBC holds up best overall.

Most Entertaining Coverage: It could be the BBC’s. Erica Jong of Fear Of Flying fame showed up a half-hour ago to bubble on about Obama, and former UN ambassador John Bolton has been crossing swords with historian Simon Schama and the Beeb’s own commentators; he just said that one of the network’s correspondents should be fired for raging bias.

Speculation now, across the airwaves, is that McCain may concede within an hour.

Liveblogging The Election II

November 4, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Liveblogging, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

It’s now 9:45 Eastern. At about 9:20 MSNBC, with NBC itself rapidly following suit, called Ohio for Obama and most of the other networks have fallen in line. The Illinois senator is now at about 200 electoral votes with McCain at numbers between 69 and 95, depending on the network. Virginia and North Carolina are still up in the air, but the counties yet to report fully in Virginia include some strongly Obama-leaning ones.

Sen. Mitch McConnell held on in Kentucky, and in Georgia a strong finish by Sen. Saxbe Chambliss helped keep that state in the McCain column, despite some blue-leaning poll numbers in the preceding weeks. New Mexico has just been declared for Obama. Grant Park in Chicago is getting packed and the atmosphere is thoroughly joyful; the feed from McCain’s Arizona HQ showed a more subdued scene.

At this point, as Fox News has pointed out, the best news for the GOP so far has been that it looks certain that the Dems won’t get a filibuster-proof majority of 60 in Congress. Which isn’t that much of a consolation; Reagan, in the days when the Republicans had a Senate majority but less than 60, always had a knack for bringing around some Democrats when it came time for major legislation, so if the Dems get something like 55 or 56 the same would probably apply for Obama.

In about 10 minutes it’ll be 10 pm, and the polls will start closing in the west. Can Obama secure Colorado? Or Nevada? Will he address the assembled in Grant Park before midnight, either Eastern or Central?

Liveblogging The Election I

November 4, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Liveblogging, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Ambiguous sign if not an ambiguous outcome

It’s now a little past 8 pm Eastern and apart from watching ABC’s World News Tonight I’ve been watching NBC with Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, guest Tavis Smiley, and various experts - Williams just finished interviewing Harold Ford Jr of the Democratic Leadership Council.

First to be called was Kentucky for Red, followed by Vermont for Blue. So, for an hour, Sen. John McCain led Sen. Barack Obama in the electoral college tally. But at the stroke of 8 NBC called Pennsylvania, the state where McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin campaigned so often and so passionately, for Obama. After I post this it’ll be time to check the other networks to see if they’re following suit.

In Virginia, well-financed former Gov. Mark Warner is beating former Gov. Jim Gilmore 60-40, so it looks like one Democratic gain is guaranteed in the Senate. And that margin may prove decisive in swinging the state into Obama’s column. In North Carolina, Sen. Elizabeth Dole is trailing badly in early returns. Again, this could compensate Obama if Florida doesn’t go his way.

NBC shows crowds starting to gather in Grant Park in Chicago, the site of the most furious confrontation between radical protestors and the police in 1968. (Illinois, along with predictable states like Maryland and Delaware, and the District of Columbia, has been called for Obama.) The mood at the park this time appears hopeful and expectant.

Just now, from the TV in the other room, I hear a minister - I don’t know if it’s in Chicago in somewhere else - saying something about the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King being fulfilled. There may be jubilation already as the electoral college tally (at least as called by NBC) finds Obama going over 100 votes, but what’s happening in the House and Senate, and in the gubernatorial contests? Time to do some channel-surfing and check.

Obama Is The New Reagan. Really!

November 4, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

My contention a week ago, though I lack the bona fides. Reaganite and “National Review” veteran Jeffrey Hart doesn’t.

Then We Came To The End

November 3, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Election 2008, International Affairs, Iran, National Security, Public Opinion, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

The title (itself borrowed from the opening words of Don DeLillo’s Americana) of Joshua Ferris’s much-acclaimed debut novel, set in a Chicago ad agency staggering through the end of the 1990s boom, seems to fit the national mood today.  After eight furious weeks of nonstop TV ads (especially those funded from the seemingly bottomless coffers of Sen. Barack Obama’s organization) and innumerable words and images and charges and countercharges, the 2008 presidential race reaches its conclusion tomorrow when all those who are registered and have not taken advantage of early voting (ie, most of the country) cast their ballots. 

(That is to say, the election will hopefully reach its conclusion tomorrow. A situation in which Sen. Barack Obama receives a majority of the popular vote, by however thin a margin, and Sen. John McCain prevails in the electoral college by a few votes would be a nerve-wracking one indeed.  And if only nerves were shattered, that would be the best-case scenario.)

As Americans get ready to vote, McCain’s campaign is focusing increasingly on Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and stressing one final point: that Obama, in an interview some time ago, spoke in terms that seem to indicate that his planned campaign against global warming would entail a scaling-down of coal production, the backbone of the economy in much of western and northeastern Pennsylvania, southwestern Virginia, and parts of eastern Ohio.  If McCain can get these three states, he just might prevail even without Florida and Missouri.  If Obama can hold them and make inroads into the South (as in North Carolina), the White House is his.

McCain’s campaign has also emphasized Obama’s remarks in a 2001 interview on a Chicago public-radio station in which he spoke of the courts as being a less than ideal forum to pursue “redistribution.”  Did he mean that word in a strictly legal sense of Federal court decisions which “redistributed” civil liberties and social equality to minorities and women, or in an economic sense? The overall context of the interview suggests the former, and to judge from the poll data, the argument hasn’t produced much traction in the electorate.  McCain’s introduction of Joe the Plumber into the political discourse helped tighten the margin between him and Obama, but in recent days the GOP candidate has been unable to narrow the margin beyond the five or six points shown in most surveys.

It may be that the most powerful argument the McCain campaign has now concerns Sen. Joe Biden’s closed-door prediction some weeks ago that Obama, like John F. Kennedy, would be tested in the foreign-policy field, in a big way, very early in his presidency.  Kennedy’s response to events such as the Bay of Pigs and the construction of the Berlin Wall was far from decisive, and this led into the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Biden’s implication, seemingly, was that with the assistance of a foreign-policy expert like himself Obama could display strong leadership and make the right decisions.  But there’s a big difference between talking foreign policy in the Senate and actually making it on the executive level.  Would an Obama-appointed team, headed by Biden and (as sometimes mentioned) Bill Richardson as Secretary of State, adequately handle the challenges posed by Iran or North Korea or even Venezuela?

There’s also the question of what might happen with a Democratic President and the sort of Democratic majority that appears possible in both the House and the Senate after Tuesday.  The chances seem good that, with such a combination, this country would see an expansion of government intervention in everyday life - and, before too long, an increase in taxes - of a kind perhaps unprecedented in American history.  And it can hardly be overemphasized that an Obama presidency would result in the most liberal appointments to the Supreme Court in forty years, perhaps starting with Sen. Hillary Clinton. Are the voters ready to accept all these things as the price of change?  Stay tuned. 

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

November 3, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Media, Republican Party, TV News Personalities | Leave a Comment 

….as PFC (LCpl as of 2001, but that’s another story) Gomer Pyle would say.  In today’s Washington Post Howard Kurtz acknowledges that network and cable TV coverage of the presidential race on talk programs, most notably (but certainly not exclusively) The View, has been enormously biased toward Sen. Barack Obama and against Sen. John McCain.

The Big Kissimmee Kiss And Make Up Session

November 3, 2008 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Democratic Party, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

In today’s Daily Beast founder-proprietor Tina Brown describes the consensual if not congenial kiss and make up scene that took place last week in Kissimmee.  For the first time in a long time Bill Clinton and Barack Obama shared a stage — and Ms. Brown sure knows how to set a dramatic scene:

This campaign has been full of electric moments, but the voltage has never been higher than it was just before midnight on Wednesday in Kissimmee, Florida, when Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at last shared a stage before a crowd of 35,000 that stretched endlessly into the expectant darkness. It’s taken this long for both men to overcome their mutual resentment and antipathy.

Ever since Hillary lost, the ex-president has been volcanic in his fury about the many ways he feels tarnished and disrespected by the Obama campaign.

He considered the new Democratic messiah to be a fraud, short on ideas and allowed to maintain an above-the-fray myth by a gullible, in-the-tank media. He still smarts at the way Obama played—or trumped—the race card on him in South Carolina. And he was enraged that throughout the campaign The One so seldom acknowledged the political and economic achievements of the Clinton years.

Next to Clinton’s fleshly vitality, Obama seemed suddenly insubstantial, secondary. He watched warily from his stool like a young lounge singer at Caesars Palace who lingers in the wings to watch Elvis bring the house down.

Obama, meanwhile, harbored Freudian anxieties about Clinton that went beyond anger at the extended battering Hillary gave him in the race. Belonging everywhere and nowhere, Obama is uncomfortable with Clinton’s rooted Southern authenticity. If Obama’s extraordinary life story has been defined by dreams and longings for a missing father, Bill Clinton became the all-too-present father who refused to go missing. Wasn’t it time to give the overbearing old roué the hook?

To see how it all turned out, click here.

Obama Is The New Nixon Again

November 1, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

At the conservative “American Thinker,” Ralph Alter drops the big one:

Obama’s campaign and persona bear a striking resemblance to a recent Republican President: Richard Milhouse (sic) “Tricky Dick” Nixon.

Names Obama Doesn’t Want You To Know?

October 31, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, Election 2008 | Leave a Comment 

Sen. Obama refuses to release the names of over two million small donors, and even John Dickerson and Chris Wilson (two of the 50+ journalists at “Slate” who’ve already revealed they’re voting for Obama) say it’s bogus:

According to campaign officials, it would be too difficult and time-consuming to extract this information from its database.

So how come we were able to do it in a couple hours? Not literally—we don’t have access to the campaign’s list of donors—but we created a database of similar size and format in a Web-ready file and posted it online. (You can view a sample text version of it here. The full version is 824 MB.)

Charisma and Promises to Keep

October 31, 2008 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Bush Administration, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, History, National Security, Presidents, Republican Party, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

I voted early this week - but just the once. We are being told that one of the unique things about the election this year is the fact that about one third of all ballots cast are via various forms of early voting. This is certainly unprecedented. The Commonwealth of Virginia, where I live in Fairfax County, requires someone desiring to vote early to affirm a reason for not being able to do so on Tuesday, November 4th. They range from being responsible for the care of another, to travel. It is a travel issue with us. My wife and I head to Ohio to watch all the fun there this Tuesday.

The trend toward such significant early voting is also uncharted territory for the integrity of elections themselves. It remains to be seen if this development will lead to greater voter confidence in the process, or further confusion, conflict, and potential destabilization. All indications are that early Democratic voters far outnumber Republicans. Part of this is due to a determined effort on the part of the Obama-Biden campaign to get out the early vote.

By definition, early voters are not undecided. We have not only decided, we have expressed that decision through the sanctity of the secret ballot. It follows, therefore, that those still undecided have not yet voted. Therefore, with more than 30 percent of decided voters already finished with the only poll that really matters, the portion of undecided voters may actually be statistically significant.

It also means that both campaigns still have an opportunity to win converts.

I suggest that one important question every voter – especially those yet undecided – should ask is: “Will John McCain or Barack Obama be better at keeping promises made during the campaign?” It has been a year of promises. “Ask not what your country can do for you – demand it!”

We have been promised tax cuts, spending cuts, new programs, war plans, and much more. Every American needs to remember that it is a very rare thing for a politician to keep every promise. Sometime next year, no matter who wins on Tuesday, our new president will have to face the American people with the news that it can’t all be done.

Sorry folks. Forget how we will be doing four years from now. How will the new occupant of the White House be doing in four months? Will Obama stay closer to campaign message or will McCain?

History tells us that voters do not always take unfulfilled promises in stride. George Herbert Walker Bush never recovered from the outcry after he broke his “read my lips” pledge and, in fact, raised taxes. Lyndon Johnson promised not to send American boys to do the fighting for Asian boys. The Vietnam War broke him. They even came up with a name for the breaking of a presidential promise back then – “credibility gap.”

Mr. Johnson might have preferred the more benign: “I uttered a terminological inexactitude.”

The granddaddy of all promise breakers to become president was Franklyn Delano Roosevelt. When he ran against Herbert Hoover in 1932, much of his rhetoric and emphasis had to do with things that never actually happened in his administration. Just a few weeks before his election, he was calling government spending “reckless and extravagant.” He told Americans: “I regard reduction in federal spending as one of the most important issues of this campaign.” He also promised to “reduce the cost of current federal government operations by 25 percent.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

When FDR took office in March of 1933, he raced to the left and stayed there. He sold the people on it because circumstances had gotten worse. He was prepared to ask for broad “executive” powers to lead the nation out of the crisis. And he sacrificed his promises of fiscal responsibility on the altar of populism.

By doing so, he ensured that times would not get better. But he got away with it. The man who became president during our nation’s greatest economic crisis did not at all resemble the man who asked for votes in the prior election. Will the same thing happen if a man who talks about current problems as being the worst since The Great Depression is elected this time around?

Once elected, leaders tend to default to their real selves and comfort zones. There is a certain hubris, a “we won” or “it’s our turn” kind of spirit. It happens to Democrats and Republicans. Remember when George W. Bush spoke out against “nation building” in the 2000 campaign? How about his promise for “compassionate conservatism” and the disappearance of “partisanship” in Washington?

What does this all mean for us right now? Well, again – we must choose a person who can be trusted to keep as many of his promises as possible. We also need someone who, when having to make the tough choices about what promises to keep and the ones to discard during difficult times, will have the courage to resist the clamor from core constituencies.

Does anyone really believe that Barack Obama, when faced with a push-to-shove kind of choice, will opt to do anything that would risk his image as a populist hero of the downtrodden? He will move, with lightening-speed, to the left if given the chance.

He will be the kind of president Huey Long would have been, but instead of the Kingfish’s “Share the Wealth” mantra, it will be “Spread the Wealth.” And he will have another thing going for him that both FDR and Long had.

Barack’s got charisma. It is that magic something that gets people to want to believe on the way to believing. It is fascinating to watch, but whenever it has emerged in chaotic times, it has been ultimately ugly.

A discussion of charisma, as part of the study of sociology, was first introduced by Max Weber early in the 20th century. He identified it as “an extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of whether this quality is actual, alleged or presumed.” He indicated that it implied “a relationship between the great man and the followers.” In a charismatic environment, “whatever the leader says, whatever he asks, is right, even if it is self-contradictory. It is right, because the leader has said it.” The follower develops “a devotion born of distress and enthusiasm.”

He also suggested that charismatic leadership tends to rise up against the backdrop of a chaotic “social milieu.” In other words, bad times, confusing times, chaotic times are fertile moments for this kind of leadership.

During the Great Depression the nation was ripe for demagogues. They always turn up when leading cultural and economic indicators trail down. Huey Long was one such man. In his excellent book, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and The Great Depression, historian Alan Brinkley describes the man from Louisiana as someone “evoking an almost religious adulation from many of the poor and struggling.” He quotes one reporter at the time as saying: “They do not merely vote for him, they worship the ground he walks on. He is part of their religion.”

Of course, it remains to be seen what will happen, but if Barack Obama is elected and the economy has not improved by the time he takes the oath of office, watch for him to move left and stay there. He will keep the promises that tend to enhance his charismatic stature as a champion of the frustrated. He will sacrifice promises he made about tax cuts as irrelevant to the new reality he will inherit.

Mr. Obama’s meteoric rise to the threshold of political power should give Americans pause. A man who would likely not be able to get a security clearance if he tried to get a job with the CIA or FBI, may very well be elected president on Tuesday.

We live in “interesting times,” as Robert Kennedy used to say. But, of course, he was quoting an old Chinese curse.

JNE Maxes Out To BO

October 30, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Nixon family | Leave a Comment 

M. J. Rosenberg:

I love “Open Secrets” where you can discover if you have any friends who are secret Republicans. (I don’t).

I was looking up one guy I know in the “E’s” and discovered that Julie Nixon Eisenhower, daughter of Richard Nixon and grand-daughter-in-law of Dwight David Eisenhower has maxed out to Barack Obama. Cool.

I guess that isn’t that surprising. President Eisenhower was the guy who warned us against the “military industrial complex” that John McCain has spent a lifetime serving. And Richard Nixon, for all his faults, pretty much invented detente and changed the world by opening relations with China. Julie’s mother, Pat Nixon, was pro-choice and pro-ERA.

Bottom line, Julie Nixon Eisenhower is one of those old-fashioned pre-Lee Atwater/Karl Rove Republicans. It makes sense that she’s out there for Barack. If there are enough like her, we may even carry some states that we don’t expect to carry.

Howard’s Ends — And Means

October 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Democratic Party, Election 2008, News media | Leave a Comment 

Howard Fineman of “Newsweek” advises Sen. Obama’s supporters not to say what they believe but what undecided voters want to hear:

Here’s my advice to Sen. Barack Obama’s supporters: Stop predicting that the Democrats will sweep into the White House and Congress come January with a mandate to expand Big Government.

That prospect, coupled with some of your candidate’s own tax and health-care plans, could scare swing voters you need next Tuesday.

The Obamamercial

October 29, 2008 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

When I was young, in the days before federal campaign-financing laws, presidential candidates more often than not bought substantial chunks of national TV airtime just before Election Day.  Ronald Reagan made his first huge national impact politically when he delivered an address supporting Sen. Barry Goldwater in 1964.  In 1968, Hubert Humphrey, George Wallace, and Richard Nixon all purchased half-hour and hour chunks of airtime to promote their candidacies.   But after 1976, the ceiling on campaign fundraising prevented this kind of expenditure.  When H. Ross Perot, who was self-financing his run, purchased a segment of network time to display his charts in 1992, it was the first time in ages that any candidate had tried the approach, and until this year it was the last.

However, the organization of Sen. Barack Obama, having chosen to opt out of the usual system, has a lot to spend and mere days in which to spend it.  And tonight, at a cost estimated at from $3 million to $5 million, his campaign aired a 30-minute commercial in prime time on CBS, NBC, Fox, MSNBC, TVOne, BET, and Univision.

The commercial alternated footage of some “typical” folks - a football mom in North Kansas City (as opposed to Kansas City North), an aging African-American couple (with the husband playing some reasonably mean blues guitar) in Ohio, a teacher in New Mexico, and a worker at the Ford truck plant in Louisville - with shots of Obama in an office that looked intriguingly oval, reciting his program.  It finished with two minutes of the candidate, live, dazzling an arena in Florida.

The presentation was considerably more skillful than any of the films featured in the Democratic convention this year, and was very expertly calibrated to hit all the right emotional notes, right down to the candidate describing how he read every one of the Harry Potter books to his daughters.  (This may lose him the votes of some fundamentalists, but it probably will help him with a lot of grandparents in Florida.)  The interspersed comments from various Democratic governors and senators (with several of the swing states represented) also flowed in and out quite well.

Sen. John McCain, speaking on Larry King’s show tonight (in segments taped before the Obama program’s broadcast), again emphasized the points that have been working best for his campaign in recent weeks: Obama’s ultraliberal remarks during his days in the Illinois Senate; his inexperience and what that might mean in the foreign-policy field; and the possible effect of his tax policies on small businessmen seeking to improve their status.  At this point, given the Obama camp’s enormous financial advantage, it’s hard to say whether McCain can do anything more than get the message through at rallies and 30-second TV spots and hope that Youtube and volunteers can do the rest.  After McCain’s interview, King asked Dan Rather tonight whether the Obama campaign wasn’t risking overkill with this all-out press.  Rather compared the Democratic approach to Dean Smith’s traditional endgame as basketball coach at the University of North Carolina and concluded that it made the most sense for the campaign to use its best stuff at the end.

But, as Rather also observed, “It’s often said that overnight in politics is a long time and a week is forever.”  Things have continued to take unusual twists and turns.  Last month,  Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher a pretty anonymous fellow in suburban Toledo; last week he was talking of running for Congress in his northwestern Ohio district against Marcy Kaptur (who won re-election in 2006 with 75% of the vote); today he let it be known that he’s pursuing a country-music career, at least for the time being.  Who knows what tomorrow or the weekend will bring?

Cisneros: Fastest Political Rehabilitation In History

October 29, 2008 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Economic issues, Election 2008, Presidents | Leave a Comment 

Less than two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that former Clinton housing secretary Henry Cisneros, who copped a plea to avoid prosecution on 19 felony counts in connection with a sex scandal, is probably more responsible than any other single human being for the global financial crisis. He helped put in place looser requirements for lower-income mortgage borrowers and then, as a housing developer, made millions off his own policies. As the Times reported,

Despite his qualms, he encouraged the unprepared to buy homes — part of a broad national trend with dire economic consequences…. “I’ve been waiting for someone to put all the blame at my doorstep,” he says lightly, but with a bit of worry, too.

But that was Oct. 18. This is Oct. 29, and the AP has just reported that Cisneros will help a think tank write the blueprint for an Obama Administration — and perhaps even return to power:

The Center for American Progress already has produced a 26-page document, widely distributed among Obama aides, describing what the last five presidents did on each day of his transition. And if Obama wins the presidency Tuesday, the group stands ready to fill top federal positions with some of its staffers, many of whom worked for Clinton.

The Center for American Progress, formed five years ago to counteract conservative think tanks, could become one of Washington’s most influential policy advocacy groups. A