Prometheus 6

I have posted a few long responses at TPMemo over the past few days in response to pieces I have read by Loury, Sleeper and Coles. Loury has put up an especially long one today in answer to several critics who took issue with points he made in his initial posting. I respect Loury but there is something about Obama that drives him a little whacky and I suspect that it is this: Loury really does not understand electoral politics.

He understands policy and he understands the role that policy can play but he really does not understand electoral politics. Most academics do not although they find politicians and the political process quite seductive. Loury has hitched his wagon to Billary because he is a policy wonk and he thinks her "wonkishness" is a political virtue. It is not. It is a liability and she and he simply can't see that simple political fact.  

PT

In your opinion, how does an interest in policy fail to make up for a misunderstanding of the electoral process?  You say Hillary's "wonkishness" is a liability.  What do you mean? 

I'm feeling the same way. I can't or won't listen to any more of it. Every week day morning I download into my iPod the previous day's broadcast of NPR's News and Notes and Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now. I listen to the programs while I'm taking my daily walk, grocery shopping or riding the bus. 

I found News and Notes' coverage of this anniversary date so silly and devoid of content that I felt like throwing my iPod away or gagging or both. I immediately switched over to Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales and was rewarded with an extremely moving story about the Orangeburg Massacre that occurred in February of 1968 in South Carolina. Three black college students were shot and killed and dozens more were wounded by police and state troopers who fired on them without warning while they were peacefully protesting at a bowling alley that barred blacks.

This incident received little coverage at the time but to hear the voices and stories of the survivors meant more to me than listening to any speculative nonsense about what would Dr. King think if he was alive today or why black folks shouldn't name their babies D'Quan or Shanika. What claptrap. If an employer does not want to hire a young black man to work at a minimum wage job then it sure as hell doesn't have anything to do with him being named D'Quan.  They didn't hire black kids when their names were Ronald, James, Michael, Linda, Mary and Eilzabeth. 

show up in Memphis today.

To be blunt, Obama denied them the ready-made narrative that they had already prepared for when Obama came to Memphis.

They were going to go up to every Black person they saw and say:

' You see that Barack Obama is here in Memphis. Do you worry that he's going to be assassinated like Dr. King?'

They were going to get THE picture of him with Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al.

Run it in a continuous loop.

'See see, he's the BLACK Candidate'.

By not showing up, Obama denied them that...and they're pissed.

JMO

Ubstu34 - It is not the interest in policy that is misguided. It is the belief that policy is a substitute for politics. This is one of the fundamental errors of the Clinton campaign. What she and her advisors want to give people are policy prescriptions. What they do not want to give them is a participatory role in setting policy. The participatory role is derived from the political process. The give and take and shake and bake and, yes, the shuck and jive and duck and dodge of it all.

What Sr. Hillary and her minions want to do, in fact, they enjoy doing it, is to cut the people out of the process entirely. Part of the reason they want to do things this particular way is because they see politics always as a transactional process. There are times, however, when the unwashed and unlettered don't want to trade or give up anything. This is especially disturbing for folks like the Clintons because it inhibits their ability to make money and it is potentially chaotic, at least for a while.

Folks like Glenn Loury, and we should never forget this fact, are first and foremost mathematical economists. He may dabble in political economy but what drives him are the numbers and the formulas and calculations used to derive the numbers. Subscribers to policy prescriptions derived from this process believe that we should simply bow down to the numbers. Rent control, for example, is always and for all time bad because it violates microeconomic theory. Casinos in Atlantic City are good because the numbers say they are. How people's lives are adversely affected by this kind of development is another question.

Folks like Loury and the Clinton manage to do a variation of the old Vulcan mind meld because each desires the sort of order that democracy tends to evade and disrupt. I am not arguing that Loury is anti-democratic but his way of wanting to address public policy issues requires inhibiting democratic impulses. The Clintons and their folks are anti-democratic because democracy prevents them from easily doing the transactions they want to do to benefit themselves and their friends.

Their problem is that they have to figure out how to use our political capital in order to gain the access and authority they need to do business. One way is to enlist the assistance of intellectuals like Loury and Krugman who, for example, continually push a line about the need to provide details, i.e., policy prescriptions. Journalists, many of whom don't really know a damn thing about policy, take up this mantra and start repeating it over and over again.

The result is that many in the electorate begin demanding that candidates provide policy papers etc. as if this is what the political process is about. It is not. One of the things that I truly enjoy about Obama are his speeches because they lay out in as clear and concise way as any politician in this country as ever done in the 20th Century what is the political task facing us.

Forget about the race speech in Philadelphia. Go back and listen to the speeches he gave after each primary election whether he won or lost. Each time he articulated the challenges his campaign was facing, what it had accomplished and what needed to be done. Contrast Obama's speeches with the ones Bill Clinton made during his own candidacy and presidency.

Clinton's speeches represented the triumph of the small and the focus on details. Policy wonks and those who became enchanted by Clinton loved it. Can anyone, however, tell me anything Clinton said without first performing a Google search? The time of the policy wonks needs to be brought to end if were going to restore American democracy. We do need policy wonks but we cannot put them in charge of our electoral process. We need for a while to watch the sausage getting made. It will do us a world of good in the end.  

Yea for Obama! He should do everything in his power to juke them and screw up their daily memes while keeping a smile on his face. These folks are dangerous and they are trying to dumb everybody in America down. 

I should know better....

But....

Who is Richard Thompson Ford?

Um....why do I want to give him a lantern and put him on the lawn?

I have been accused of being paranoid about CNN, but by the way every single commentator on CNN found a way to bring it up more than once....(Obama NOT being in Memphis)...add into it, Lou Dobbs' program -WITHOUT HIM EVEN BEING THERE - found yet ANOTHER way of bringing up Trinity UCC...

I concluded that there wasn't no positive storyline gonna come out of Memphis for Obama.

You know when I just gave up on them being objective? The night Obama gave his speech on race in Philly, and they had the nerve to have Clinton operatives on Larry King...I was like WTF are they doing there?

I know I watch too much political tv, but sometimes it's instructional.

There you have Anderson Cooper taking the latest CBS Poll and what was HIS focus?

Obama's losing ground.

And he wants to make THAT the focus of it, and it takes David Gergen to say, well, maybe has lost a little support, but he's going like gangbusters in Pennsylvania, gaining ground on her by the day.

If there were NO angle to this, then the journalist would have honed in on the second page of that poll, which I read, and brought out what had to be THE story of the poll -

Even AFTER Jeremiah Wright..

They asked the poll question:

Which candidate best represents COMMON AMERICAN VALUES.

Not only did Obama WIN, but he won by 70%

70%.

Now, don't you think, since this was taken AFTER the Wright 'controversy', that THIS would be the better story to come out of the poll - if you were looking at it objectively.

It was the story on MSNBC, even with that hack Joe Scarborough.

Call me a tinfoil hat wearer if you wish, and I accept the accusation...but doesn't mean that my paranoia doesn't have basis.

Rik - You are not being paranoid although these folk are not always working from a script. But then folks who are in general agreement about how the world should be run don't really have to conspire or conclude. The wealthy elite in this county, for example, travel in the same social circles, summer at the same resorts, belong to the same clubs and their children attend the same schools. They don't really have to conspire because their world view is fairly consistent.

Paranoia is a good thing.   

OT:
I found this over at the blog- The Field.

Convince the Superdelegate

The Field announces the opportunity of the 2008 campaign…

Convince a Superdelegate!

Yes, that’s right, folks. Here at Dr. Al’s School for Gifted Commenters, we’ve got a live one: Debra Kozikowski - a.k.a. The Boss - is a living, breathing and uncommitted Superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention in August.

She’s been uncommitted ever since her candidate, John Edwards, left the contest.

Some minutes ago, on another thread, she posted this invitation right here on The Field:

“Here’s your challenge. Think about me wearing my super duper hat reading your posts. Convince me why I should deliver my superdelegate vote to Senator Obama or for the minority here who support Senator Clinton — you too can rise to the ocassion with civility and grace.”

Yee-ha! You, and only you, Field Hands, have the chance to succeed at what the candidates and their surrogates have so far not achieved: Putting forth your best cases for why Superdelegate Deb Kozikowski should cast her vote in August for your candidate.

******************************

All you have to do is register and a ' clean' response will be published by the Head Blogger - Al Giordano.

I look forward to reading some convincing arguments over there. I've already given my two responses...LOL

Just spreading the word.

Rikyrah

What do you expect the dominant theme to be in the upcoming CNN documentaries exploring the black experience--more of what we got with NBC's look at black women?

The Clinton Team's Ties With the Colombian Trade Deal Don't Stop With Mark Penn

I think this article from Politico.com supports my thesis that the Clinton Team's mantra about policy is little more than a ruse or strategy they use to hide their transactional approach to political questions.

Mark Penn isn’t the only Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter on the wrong side of the Colombia trade agreement.

Top campaign aides often spend their off-election years inside large firms with a complex array of clients. The benefit of such arrangements is that a party or candidate’s political brain-trust remains largely intact and ready to assemble quickly for the next political battle.

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