Obama's Iraq Plan Pleases McCain; Offends Left

As we can see from this dispatch from THE NATION, the left is upset about President Obama's Iraq troop withdrawal plan while John McCain generally supports it. Considering the President's high standing in the polls, and his goal of creating a new Democratic majority, offending the left is the last thing he is worrying about. He retains the enthusiastic support of the party base, and he enhances his image as a sober, responsible leader with everyone else. He can't really lose with such an approach. http://www.thenation.com/blogs/dreyfuss/412497

The 2008 Election

In the 2008 presidential elections Americans hungered for change, and they were offered two major candidates who attempted to satisfy that appetite. Barack Obama benefited from his clear and early opposition to an unpopular war, as well as his compelling personal biography and stunning ability to connect with and engage voters. John McCain, the perennial Senate maverick and often enemy of the party establishment, attempted to portray himself as the one best suited to change the way Washington worked. In terms of structure, both campaigns were at times party-centric and at other times candidate centered. To some extent each candidate was party agent and independent of his party. The major difference, though, and this was perhaps crucial, was that Barack Obama and his campaign clearly understood and mastered Internet campaigning and fundraising as they built upon the pioneering work of the Howard Dean 2004 primary campaign.

One year before the 2008 convention, the clear favorites of the party insiders were Mitt Romney and Hilary Clinton. http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/04/nation/na-timespoll4
There was residual suspicion of McCain because of his unpredictable, maverick nature, and his past cooperation with Democratic senators such as Russ Feingold and Edward Kennedy on key pieces of legislation. Hilary Clinton had the endorsement of many key party leaders, including many African American leaders, due in large part to the continuing reservoir of goodwill for her husband and his presidency, Obama was regarded by many party leaders as too young, inexperienced and risky as a general election candidate. Had the smoke-filled rooms of old prevailed, or the “parties resurgent” model of Cohen, et.al, McCain and Obama would not have been the nominees

.Despite Hilary Clinton’s impressive resume, her abundant endorsements, and the vast resources of the Bill Clinton political machine, Barack Obama prevailed over the conventional wisdom of the party establishment and many pundits. For many Democrats, the Iraq war was a key issue, and former Senator Clinton’s vote to support the war severely handicapped her on that issue. Obama’s oratory of hope and uplift stirred the passions of many voters in a way that Senator Clinton’s did not. Obama and his campaign were relentlessly focused, organized and on message and quick to deal with the brushfires that did crop up, such as the Reverend Wright affair. Obama’s personal story resonated with many voters of diverse backgrounds, only adding to his appeal. Beyond all of that, though, Obama was able to use the Internet, and particularly social networking sites such as Facebook, to engage and involve voters in a way that no candidate had done before, with the exception of Howard Dean four years earlier.

In reaching the White House, Obama did not, of course, ignore the party establishment. The extraordinarily close primary contest involved some compromise with the Clinton forces. In choosing a running mate, Obama chose an old Senate warhorse rather than a young agent of change such as himself.

The McCain campaign achieved the nomination as a candidate-centered campaign and lost the general election as a campaign too beholden to the party establishment. With no one Republican primary candidate able to appeal to a broad cross-section of the party, the primary contests became personality-driven campaigns. McCain’s maverick image helped him to win a plurality of the vote in enough winner-take-all contests to seize the nomination. Once nominated, though, McCain tried to be the outsider while being inextricably linked to the failed policies of President Bush. The fact that his advisers ran a general election campaign in the “slash and burn” mode of Karl Rove, only added to the feeling that he was Bush Redux.

It is too early to pronounce the death of party-dominated presidential elections, but it is clear that all future candidates will need to heed the words of Teachout and the deeds of Obama in 2008.

(Note: The Obama campaign most definitely carries on the “netroots” campaign even after the election.)

Republicans Embracing Online Organizing

The Republicans, belatedly, seem to be embracing the notion of online organizing, which Barack Obama did so effectively in 2008. Why anyone involved in politics these days would NOT use facebook and other online social networking sites is the question. Here is a link to an article about Republican efforts to catch this wave.


http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003054985

Electoral Reform

The Progressive reformers of the early 1900s and their heirs sought to remake the U.S. political system. They supported electoral reforms such as the open and direct primaries that were designed to take power from the political bosses and machines and give it to the voters. In the last decades of the twentieth century reformers focused on reforming the U.S. campaign finance system, first with FECA and most recently with the McCain-Feingold Act. While both types of reforms sought to create a political system that would be more representative of the people, the results have been mixed.

Certainly electoral reform, especially the “nouveau Progressive” thrust of the Democratic Party since the 1970s, has enabled more people to participate in the political process. The embarrassing 1968 Chicago convention, which nominated Vice President Hubert Humphrey despite the fact that he had not competed in a single primary, could not be repeated. There are no longer king-makers such as former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley who could make or break candidacies with a single word. Today nominations must be fought for and slugged out state-by-state in the primaries and caucuses.

While citizens have gained power at the expense of the parties and party bosses, there are limitations on that power. The recent trend toward “front loading” primaries gives the voters of the early primary states a stronger voice than those of the middle or later primaries, unless there is a close race such as the 2008 Obama/Clinton fight. Although the days of the party bosses acting as kingmakers are over, the media often end up becoming modern “kingmakers,” as they proclaim candidates winners or losers after the early primaries. The extent of a citizen’s power to affect the nomination process also depends on whether he or she lives in a primary or caucus state; in the caucus states it is may be difficult for working people to find the time to leave work to attend party caucuses. Finally, while political parties and their state and local leaders have become less important in the presidential nomination process, the individual presidential candidates and their staffs have increased in power and prominence.

Recent campaign finance reform, particularly the Mc Cain Feingold Act, sought to curtail the influence of large donors and special interests on the electoral process, but this has been a mixed success as well. Despite the ban of “soft money” by the McCain Feingold Act, the “527” groups can still exert great influence in presidential campaigns. While banning soft money donations, the Act raised the limits for hard-money contributions. While both McCain and Feingold would prefer that presidential candidates accept only public financing, as a means of lowering the cost of elections, the McCain-Feingold Act does not prohibit candidates from opting out of public financing, as Obama did in 2008. Both McCain and Feingold sharply criticized Obama for doing so, and for raising a record amount of money in his successful presidential bid. In challenging some of the basic premises behind McCain-Feingold, and campaign finance reform generally, Obama and his supporters ended up running a very democratic campaign that engaged the interest and funds of many small donors.www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?id=N00009638

The Prohibition Party Soldiers On

The Prohibition Party marches on! Here is a link to their website with information about their platform. While they no longer favor the abolition of alcoholic beverages in the U.S., they want a drastic increase in the liquor tax, to reflect the true social cost of drinking.
http://www.prohibitionists.org/Background/Party_Platform/party_platform.html

How the Far Left Sees Obama

Here is a story on President Obama's handling of the financial crisis from The World Socialist Website, an online Trotskyite newspaper. In their view, of course, the root of the crisis is capitalism itself, and since Obama's plan does not introduce a socialist system, they feel it will ultimately fail. While I do not agree with this paper, I like to look at it from time to time to get their radically different perspective.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/obam-f10.shtml

No Organized Party

Will Rogers once quipped, famously: “I belong to no organized political party. I am a Democrat.” The humorous remark speaks to one of the problems of the Democratic Party today: While the Democrats control both houses of Congress and the Presidency, the party is decentralized, with the President and each house of Congress appealing to different constituencies and promoting different agendas. While President Obama is currently strong enough to lead the Congressional Democrats to support his agenda, his continued success in this regard is dependent on the success of his overall policies.

President Obama shattered various assumptions in his quest for the White House. Building upon the pioneering work of the Howard Dean campaign in 2004, he ran the first successful, interactive “Facebook” style presidential campaign, amassing both large numbers of volunteers and enormous sums of funds. He deliberately sought to win the votes of groups who had not voted Democratic in recent elections, and he was successful in doing so. According to one study, Obama outperformed John Kerry in most demographic groups with the exception of those over 65 and gays and lesbians..http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/obama-outperforms-kerry-among-virtually.html
He picked up states that had long been considered safely “red” and increased Democratic majorities in states previously considered “swing,” such as Wisconsin.

Given the nature of his victory, Obama has a strong need to maintain a presidency of outreach and accommodation as much as possible. As a result, he has nominated 3 Republicans to his cabinet, and he has made extraordinary efforts to reach out to the Republicans as he pursues his stimulus package. That the House and Senate Republicans have largely rebuffed him is immaterial; by making the EFFORT at bipartisanship, he has already enhanced his image with HIS constituency—http://www.usnews.com/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/2/9/-obama-beating-republicans-on-economic-stimulus-polls-show.html

The House Democrats’ actions must be understood in terms of their very different situation. Appealing to very narrowly-defined districts, largely gerrymandered to perpetuate their incumbency, House Democrats see little need for, or value in, compromise. They want a stimulus bill as laden as possible with benefits for their districts, and they are irritated with their President for his efforts at accommodation.

The Senate Democrats, with the support of their moderate Republican brethren (and sisters) have crafted a less ambitious, cheaper bill, and this largely reflects their different political realities. As representatives of entire states, with more diverse constituencies, they feel more of a need for compromise and less of a need to appeal to the most partisan groups within their states.

Clearly, despite some initial missteps, President Osama seems to be in charge of his party at this point, given his high approval ratings and his ability to “go over the heads of the Congress” and appeal directly to the American people via social networking and barnstorming tours such as the one he is currently conducting. As long as he remains popular, congressional Democrats will need to temper their criticisms and match their agendas with his as much as possible. This could change quickly, though, if the stimulus package proves to be unsuccessful or if economic or other conditions grow worse.

Some Thoughts on U.S. Political Parties

Political parties, in the context of U.S. politics, can be defined in several ways. Broadly, a political party is an organization of individuals dedicated to advancing and promoting a particular belief or set of beliefs. In this sense, a political party could be any one of the hundreds of groups that inhabit the U.S. political landscape, including the Libertarians, various kinds of Socialists, Greens, Communists, assorted fascist groups and even the modern Prohibition Party.

In reality, though, the United States has had a de facto two-party system throughout most of its history; while the names have changed, at any one time two particular parties tended to dominate. The Democratic-Republican/Federalist split eventually gave way to the Democratic/Whig division. When the Whigs split over slavery, the Republicans became the new opposition to the Democrats. Party policies and sources of support have changed over the years, but not the fundamental duality of the U.S. political party system. While third parties have often enjoyed successes of a kind, and may have even influenced the outcome of elections, only the two major parties have enjoyed and continue to enjoy effective power.

The political institutions established by the Founding Fathers created checks and balances that still help to insure this two-party dominance. The U.S. Senate is one example. The U.S. Senate was established to provide a mature, responsible “check” upon the expected wilder, popular passions of the House. Senators would represent the broad interests of entire states rather than the narrow, more partisan views of Congressional districts. The chance of having Senators too outside the political mainstream was expected to be slight, and this is still the case, Bernie Sanders excepted.

The most important institution, though, in insuring a two-party system is the Electoral College. Every few decades the occasional third party candidate such as George Wallace is strong enough to win entire states, but that is rare. To win electoral votes one must win entire states, and that is an impossibly difficult hurdle for most third party candidates. This is certainly less democratic, in that diverse voices are shut out of having effective power, but it does promote stability, and truly dangerous fringe candidates cannot win.

Our Founding Fathers would be pleased to see how their ideas have come to fruition. James Madison, who feared the divisive influences of faction, would surely be pleased with the stability of today’s U.S. political system. He would delight in the fact that our very large republic works against the divisive influence of small factions. Madison would also be glad to see that the checks and balances he advocated in Federalist 51 continue to keep the system stable. Washington would no doubt admire the efforts of President Obama to bring more bi-partisanship to the nation’s capital but would lament our many “entangling alliances.”