Hillary Clinton

Deficits Are the New Iraq

Richard Eskow — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:57:29 -0400

Before President Obama announced Bin Laden's death the big topic in Washington was the deficit. Pundits and politicians alike eagerly anticipated a possible "bi-partisan" budget-cutting deal forged by "selfless" Republicans and Democrats. Deficits will be the hot topic again after the excitement dies down. But Bin Laden's death is a timely reminder of what happened the last time Washington's leaders and pundits reached a "bi-partisan consensus."

Then, as now, we were told that their consensus viewpoint was clearly and objectively correct. Then, as now, dissenting voices were marginalized, mocked, or ignored. Then, as now, the media credulously took the biased statements of interested parties for the objective voice of reason. Then, as now, many politicians were either too fearful or self-serving to speak the truth. And then, as now, we were told that the consensus idea was bigger than the petty distinctions of "left" and "right."

What did we get for all of that? The war in Iraq. And then, as now, the ones being celebrated for their "courage" and "sacrifice" won't be the ones to pay the price.

Politicians must be toughening their palms with rock salt to get ready for all the high-fiving they'll do if there's a deficit deal. But before we read any more gushing stories about the Gang of Six or watch any more fountains of self-congratulation erupt from the lips of self-serving "centrists," let's remember some lessons from recent history. The President and other Democratic leaders might want to take special note of one such lesson: At least two people who are not named Barack Obama might have become President if they hadn't gone along with the crowd.

A good starting point for reflection is this weekend's editorial from New York Times Managing Editor Bill Keller. It's so chock-full of naivete and misinformation that it's hard to know where to start, but the Gang of Six is as good a place as any: "The popular culture tends to treat 'politician' as a synonym for 'craven.'" Keller writes. "But I think the Gang of Six is the kind of undertaking that should give politics a good name."

I'd quote more, but I'm afraid I'll be accused of "aggregating."  Let's just say that by the time he compares the Gang of Six to Nelson Mandela (Really! he's self-aware enough to try backtracking afterwards, but really!) ,and then suggests they're engaged in "thankless, bet-your-career work," tiny shreds of credibility lie scattered at his feet like so much "Mission Accomplished" confetti. (Uh-oh. There goes my shot at replacing Bob Herbert.)

I don't know if you've been to the Senate Dining Room, but Robben Island it ain't.

This just in: These six senators represent Washington's conventional wisdom. And conventional wisdom is a kind of safe house, a place to hunker down when you're tired of fighting for what you believe in. The Self-Serving Six have clear and selfish goals: to become power brokers, snag huge chunks of air time (a politician's oxygen), open the spigot for a gushing flow of campaign money, and secure prosperous futures filled with board memberships, foundation directorships, and the leadership of many "bipartisan commissions" to come.

Think the pianist at Lounge 201 on Mass Ave knows how to play Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika?

It was the New York Times, of course, who brought us the false "news" of Iraq's WMD , thanks to Judith Miller and her anonymous source "Curveball." And the Times editorial page accepted the false premises behind the invasion of Iraq just as unequivocally as Keller accepts the false premises behind austerity economics.

What are those false premises? That we can cut the deficit without first addressing our jobs crisis. That Social Security contributes to the deficit. That it's "braver" to shift Medicare costs to the elderly than it is to face the dragon of for-profit healthcare. That tax increases should come in the form of 'expenditure' cuts that target the middle class and protect the wealthy.

These ideas are the "WMD" of austerity economics. Alice Rivlin and the other handful of Democratic economists pushing these ideas are its Curveballs. And on any given day, half a dozen prominent journalists are its Judith Millers.

Some more parallels:

We're attacking the wrong enemy: Saddam Hussein was a horrible human being and a terrible dictator, but he wasn't our most immediate threat. For national security in 2002, the most urgent threat was (and still is) a stateless network of fundamentalist terrorists.

For the economy in 2011, our urgent problems are unemployment, wasteful war spending, extravagant tax cuts for the wealthy, and a real economy that's locked in stagnation. Note to upscale Times readers: The real economy is the one you enter when your subway train passes Fulton Street on its way north from Wall Street, or through Bowling Green station on its way to Brooklyn.

(Who am I kidding? Subways? Just tell the driver to point out Fulton Street on your way back to the Upper East Side.)

We've forgotten that our economy was shattered by reckless, under-regulated banks. Our government just took a step toward protecting us from Al Qaeda. When will it protect us from Goldman Sachs? It doesn't take smart bombs, just smart laws. And we don't need terminators, just regulators.

We're making the real problem worse: When we attacked Iraq we gave Al Qaeda a rich vein of recruiting material, and made the world's terrorism problem much worse. Worldwide incidents of terrorism rose exponentially after we invaded Iraq, from 165 in 2003 to more than 11,000 in 2005.

Economically, premature budget cuts will costs us hundreds of thousands of jobs when we should be spending to create more jobs. And those tax "increases" will probably take the form of reductions in tax "expenditures" that help people to keep their homes and their health insurance. They'll devastate the middle class, and the ripple effect will be destructive to the whole economy.

The bi-partisanship fetish ignores the people we should really listen to: non-partisans.

Most reasonable economists agree that we should have more investment in jobs and growth, and address the deficits afterwards. Similarly, nonpartisan experts like Reagan's former chief Social Security actuary say benefit cuts aren't needed and would be counterproductive.

That's the non-partisan consensus. But "bi-partisans" like the Gang of Six rule the media and policy worlds right now. They're politicians, not experts, and they rely on campaign contributions in a post-Citizens United world. They're united more by self-interest than they are divided by party. Personally, I'd rather rely on people who don't have such a huge personal stake in the outcome.

Deficit cutting, like the war in Iraq, was "a solution in search of a problem" long before the crisis came.

The invasion of Iraq came straight from the shock-doctrine playbook: Exploit a crisis, and the resulting fear and confusion, to do what you already wanted to do. Neocons in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) had been planning the invasion of Iraq for years. 9/11 was their their chance.

The government-haters behind today's austerity economics push have also been planning their moves for a long time, too. Billionaire Pete Peterson proposed a government-downsizing scenario in the early 1990s that's virtually identical to those we'llbe seeing from the Gang of Six and other servants of the new Beltway consensus. The Peterson Foundation is the PNAC of deficit reduction.

The consensus will damage careers - including political ones.

Austerity economics won't work. When that becomes obvious there will be hell to pay. When the suffering really starts, people will look for someone to blame.

Going along with the status quo seemed like the smart career move in 2002. Just ask Phil Donohue, or General Shinseki, or Bill Maher, or anyone else who didn't and paid a price. But in the long run, many of those who followed the herd suffered a loss in credibility. The entire field of journalism took a severe hit to its credibility during those years.

The political blowback was even worse. Most people agree that John Kerry would probably have become President if he had voted against the war in Iraq. Same with Hillary Clinton. But a progressive-led House minority was able to take control of that chamber in 2006, largely based on public frustration with the war in Iraq. Will the White House and Senate Democrats remember these painful lessons?

Barack Obama probably wouldn't be President today if he had been in a position to vote for the war back then, and had done so. Who will play Obama's role in 2014, or 2016 - or 2012? Who will prosper politically because she or he didn't go along with the crowd? Political expediency may have some short-term gains, but in the end it isn't worth it. It isn't worth it for your career, it isn't worth it for your conscience, and it certainly isn't worth it for the country.

Let's hope that our leaders understand that the death of Bin Laden isn't just a historial moment. It's a teaching moment, too - if anybody's willing to learn.

This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project and the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

Austerity Chic: It's This Year's "Weapons of Mass Destruction"

Richard Eskow — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 17:38:31 -0400

Sometimes our political commentariat seems to go fashion-crazy. When a new trend gets popular it overwhelms everything in its path: logic, poltical divisions, even expert opinion. The latest vogue is deficit reduction, and our nation's Anna Wintours tell us we simply have to have it. In Washington, screaming about being in the red is the new black.

Call it "austerity chic," and it's catching on fast. We've already written about an odd quartet of recent austerity-chic pieces from pundits that included Tom Friedman and Anne Applebaum. These pieces tell us why we should find this new style appealing: Self-denial is what makes a nation great.

We've seen this herd mentality before, of course, most notably in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The experts warned us what would happen, but our keyboard-clacking dedicated followers of fashion thought they knew better. Ever eager to issue the clarion call for sacrifice - on somebody else's part - they issued their calls to arms. Their support played a pivotal role in building support for the invasion.

How'd that work out for you?

Once again, the experts tell us that the warning lights are flashing red and the fashionistas aren't listening. That was made clear again this morning, when a conference call was held to announce that 300 economist and civic leaders have signed a statement saying that "there is a grave danger that the still-fragile economic recovery will be undercut by austerity economics." The statement, released by the Institute For America's Future*, adds: "A turn by major governments away from the promotion of growth and jobs and to premature focus on deficit reduction could slow growth and increase unemployment - and could push us back into recession."

Contrast those sentences with the fetishized way Friedman approached reduced spending in his column. "The Greatest Generation's leaders were never afraid to ask Americans to sacrifice," he writes, whereas today's Americans "had a values breakdown." Here's what Friedman's missing: With 15 million people unemployed and 44 million in poverty, a lot of people are sacrificing right now. As for Applebaum, her orgiastic descriptions of "axe-wielding," "slashing" British budget cuts have to be read to be believed (although I did provide a summary here, if you're the type who shuts their eyes during slasher movies.)

Friedman and Applebaum aren't the only dedicated followers of fashion to join the austerity trend, of course. As we noted in the Friedman/Applebaum piece, Megan McArdle high-fived another business writer for dismissing retirement as a "vacation" while adding that "decades-long" vacations are an indulgence we can no longer afford. And Fareed Zakaria has flirted with the Austerians more than once, although he leans more toward letting all the tax cuts expire. Zakaria's followed at least two other trends recently - the notion that fear of Obama is hampering business investment and the idea that the Great Recession was really your fault - so this isn't a great surprise. (I'm not as down on Zakaria as it might sound. He's a smart guy and his TV show's usually quite interesting. Maybe his "fashion sense" just gets in the way of his common sense.)

In the world of political fashion, Republicans set the trend and others follow. Austerity chic's no exception. As with Iraq, it has just enough Democratic support to provide the "bipartisan" gloss needed to give it critical mass. The latest supporter is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who upped the rhetorical ante recently by declaring the deficit a "national security threat." Erskine Bowles and Rep. Steny Hoyer are among the other prominent Democrats who have jumped on the bandwagon.

But if some Democrats are including are wearing a splash of this year's color, right-wingers are painting their faces with it. John Boehner's call for a 15% cut in domestic spending would plunge the nation back into a deep recession. The Tea Partiers' calls for deep cuts in Social Security would immediately plunge 20 million seniors into poverty, followed shortly thereafter by a massive spike in unemployment as their purchasing power leaves the economy. And their cuts to Medicare and education would further crush our already-wounded economy. (For more information, see Adele Stan's Five Ways the Tea Party Agenda Screws Tea Party Supporters.)

As Dean Baker pointed out on this morning's call, government spending is not the cause of our current deficits. Two wars and a massive tax cut turned a surplus into a massive deficit. (I'd add a massive bank bailout with no reqruiements to limit profits or increase lending.) And, as Baker observed, greater unemployment always leads to greater deficits. Robert Reich, another participant in the call, observed that last quarter's slowdown in the growth of the economy is a warning sign in an already-grave situation. Theresa Ghilarducci suggested that an increase in Social Security could help stimulate growth. All agreed that greater spending is urgently needed to stimulate the economy, leaving deficits to be addressed once economic conditions are healthier.

If "austerity" is this year's "WMD," that doesn't mean that's deficits aren't a concern. They are, and so is the need to keep powerful weapons out of the wrong hands. It's a matter of proportion and priority. The economists who signed today's statement understand the need to reduce the deficit. But they also know that the economy needs to recover first, and that budget cuts - like military might - must be directed toward genuine threats.

Right now the 300 people who signed this statement are as outnumbered as the Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. Let's hope they do as well. As for Applebaum and Friedman, is it churlish to point out that they were both cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq? I don't think so. Then, as now, they embraced and promoted a Beltway trend without sufficient thought or foresight. And they've demonstrated a stubborn resistance to face reality in both cases. Applebaum greeted the bipartisan Baker report on Iraq with resentment. She continues to insist, against most experts' opinions, that we won't know whether the war went well for at least a decade. And now, unbowed by past errors, she's trying to drum up support for an attack on Iran.

As for Friedman, he said "we need to give the war six more months" so many times that observers began describing these intervals as "Friedman units." Friedman's enthusiasm for that war led him to the most notorious moment of his career, when he told Charlie Rose that it didn't matter which country we attacked. Any Muslim nation would do, he said, as long as Muslims everywhere saw "American boys and girls going door to door and saying ... you don't think we care? ... You think this bubble fantasy, we're just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this."

That was fifteen Friedman units ago, and people change. Friedman's done his mea culpa on the war, which is commendable, and his support for a government-backed "green revolution" is an excellent idea (one that contradicts his newfound austerity passion). Still, he's about to do another major disservice to the American people. He may think it's wise and even inspirational to frame spending cuts as a form of national sacrifice. But the wrong people will be sacrificed,especially in this political climate The economists who signed today's statement understand better than Friedman does what will happen if austerity wins the day.

When asked what piece of fashion advice she would give, Catherine Deneuve suggested that women look in the mirror before going out and remove one piece of jewelry. Austerity-for-its-own sake is a bauble that makes its wearer look overdressed and leaves other people unclothed. We need to have the courage to invest in the future, rather than slashing spending out of political trendiness and a failure of nerve.

A lot of people are hurting right now. To let them languish would be Washington's way of telling them to "suck on this." But helping them would also help the economy recover and grow, which would benefit everybody. It would also send a message to them, and to the world, the this country still believes in its own future. It would be a signal of renewed confidence in the American Dream.

Sure, it will be hard work to turn things around, but it's like the old folks used to say: Hard work never goes out of fashion.

_______________________

*I am a fellow at the Campaign For America's Future, the Institute's sister organization.

(UPDATE: Yet another fashionista dresses himself in austerity chic as a journalist applauds.)

(UPDATE II: Via Glenn Greenwald, we learn that Digby told us of an an austerity-chic pioneer who can afford all the newest fashions.)

For more information on the statement, see here, here, and here.

McCAIN WOULD DRIVE UP HEALTH CARE COSTS FOR FAMILIES, WHILE BENEFITING HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES

Toby Chaudhuri — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 13:00:00 -0400

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain’s health care plan would dismantle the employer-provided system that covers more than 60 percent of non-elderly Americans and drive up health care costs, according to experts responding to the announcement of his proposal today. An average family could see their health care costs as much as double under the McCain health care plan, according to an analysis by the Campaign for America’s Future.

Campaign for America’s Future co-director Roger Hickey, one of the leaders of a new coalition of groups working to fix the broken health care system, said that Sen. McCain’s plan would tax the health care premiums employers pay for their workers, encouraging most companies to stop providing any coverage. Hickey noted that instead of lowering costs, this would force millions of Americans to buy more expensive coverage with inadequate tax credits, greatly increasing the number of families who can’t afford quality care.

“John McCain’s plan must’ve been written by the insurance companies. It leaves them in more control of America’s health care system than ever before,” said Hickey. “John McCain wants us all to buy insurance not as part of a group – like an employee group or a co-op – that can negotiate for better coverage at lower premiums, but as individuals, at the mercy of the private insurance companies. It would leave millions of people with worse coverage, more chronic health problems and higher levels of health cost-driven bankruptcies.”

Most people, even those with good insurance, don’t get the health care they need, contributing to rising health costs. Sen. McCain, however, believes that the problem with health care is that Americans have too much insurance and that if consumers pay for it out of their own pockets, they will in turn force hospitals and insurance companies to become more efficient.

Dr. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale University and the author of the “Health Care for America” plan, which Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards used as the basis for their health care proposals, disagrees with McCain’s fundamental premise. Hacker said the real problem is rising health care costs and declining coverage.

“McCain’s proposal doesn’t address either of these problems in a serious way,” said Hacker. “The real problem for most Americans isn’t just less coverage. It’s that they risk losing coverage or they can’t get coverage when they’re unhealthy, particularly in the individual market. McCain’s proposal does nothing to provide that kind of broader health security.”

AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman joined Hickey and Hacker on a conference call with reporters today and announced details of a new campaign to explain the devastating effects of Sen. McCain’s health care plan to millions of voters nationwide. The AFL-CIO campaign will include a massive national canvass to 200,000 union households on Saturday, May 17.

“While those with pre-existing conditions simply will have an even harder time finding health care than they do now, insurance companies -- and John McCain’s friends who lobby for them -- stand to make a killing,” said Ackerman. “Working families need a fresh vision and new direction to turn around our country. So far, Sen. McCain has provided neither. We’re working hard to make sure Sen. McCain hears the voices of working families.”

In early March, the AFL-CIO launched a major effort to educate voters about Sen. McCain’s economic record and plans, pressuring him at every campaign event he holds, including this week’s health care events in Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Ohio and Colorado. In the coming weeks, the AFL-CIO will focus on 13 million union voters in 23 battleground states, educating them on exactly who stands to benefit from Sen. McCain’s health care proposals, communicating with voters at the worksite, the doorstep, on the phone, through the mail and online.

# # #

HEALTH CARE COSTS BACKGROUND

$11,765	Average premium cost of the most popular employer-based plan last year [Kaiser Family Foundation]
$5,000	Tax credit for a family under the McCain plan [johnmccain.com]
$6,765	Average additional yearly cost per family under the McCain plan [Campaign for America’s Future]
$3,226	Average amount per worker employers paid for premiums last year [Kaiser Family Foundation]

Why Clinton is going to become the Nader of 2008

Michael Kwiatkowski — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:59:29 -0400

Everyone's talking about Hillary Clinton's win in Pennsylvania yesterday over rival Barack Obama. Ten whole percentage points: may I make whoopee in my pants, now? It's still not enough to help the senator supposedly representing New York catch up to the one supposedly representing Illinois in terms of pledged delegates.

Clinton's broke, trailing her Democratic rival by a small but undeniable margin, and now reduced to threatening to nuke Iran in the event it uses its non-existent nuclear weapons to attack Israel (let me reiterate: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, a finding held by all sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies—so the fact that Clinton and Obama keep acting as though the opposite is true means neither of them has a fucking clue on anything, and why we're supposed to trust their judgment when they can't even call bullshit on the lies being shat out by the Bush-Cheney regime is beyond my comprehension). Meanwhile, John McCain gets to have the media give him another round of reportorial oral sex for his "decency" in choosing not to run a dirty ad against Obama.

As recently as last month Zogby and other polls were showing the senator pretending to represent Arizona narrowly ahead of either of his Democratic rivals for the dictatorship. The Republican is using the time between now and the general election to win back his party's crazed right-wing base, raise money, and plot out his general election strategy. Do I even need to continue explaining what this all means?

Hillary Clinton wants the presidency so bad she is willing to tear the Democratic Party asunder in order to get it, leaving it too battered and weak to win in November. She absolutely cannot let it go, cannot allow an upstart like Barack Obama to "steal" what she thinks is hers by inheritance. And it sure as hell doesn't help that Obama is too big a pandering, hard-headed phony to be able to seal the deal and win a clear mandate from Democratic voters by embracing the Edwards-Kucinich bloc. No, he'd rather use them and dump them to the curb, and his piss-poor performance at the last debate proved he, too, is running out of steam. Like Clinton, he never expected to have to compete this long for the Democratic nomination, and he is becoming dangerously low on ideas.

So no matter how the remaining primaries play out, this fight is going all the way to the convention in August. All because Hillary Clinton won't let go of the illusion that the presidency is somehow hers. If 2008 accomplishes anything, it may be to finally rid Ralph Nader of the blame (wholly undeserved) for destroying any chance Democrats might have had of winning back the White House this century.

Somebody pass me a brick, so I can throw it at my television set the next time I have news coverage of the campaign on. Oh, wait, I have my steel mace for that. Never mind. At any rate, I'd be really grateful for some ideas for how we might avoid this fiasco—because if we can't, the massive ego of Hillary Clinton is going to rain shit down on all of America.

Health Care Horror Stories

Michael Kwiatkowski — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:39:07 -0400

Not long ago, a young Ohio woman named Trina Bachtel, who was having health problems while pregnant, tried to get help at a local clinic. Unfortunately, she had previously sought care at the same clinic while uninsured and had a large unpaid balance. The clinic wouldn’t see her again unless she paid $100 per visit — which she didn’t have.

What exactly was behind Obama's purge of delegates in California?

Michael Kwiatkowski — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:18:10 -0400

Stop me if you've heard this one. Yesterday MyDD reported that the Obama campaign had wiped over nine hundred delegates in California from its list of chosen representatives for the national convention in August. Ostensibly, this was done to ensure only Obama loyalists would represent the senator from Illinois at the Democratic National Convention. No big deal, right? After all, Hillary Clinton's campaign did a similar purge.

The problem is this: while Clinton trimmed only fifty or so delegates, down from an initial 950, Obama wiped roughly half of 1,700. Furthermore, whereas Clinton appears to have carefully screened the delegates to be excluded, Obama's purge list appeared random -- activists with solid credentials and who worked tirelessly to campaign for their candidate were eliminated, while those who did little or nothing got to stay on the list to go to Denver.

But here's where things get more ominous. As MyDD points out, Obama campaigner Marcy Winograd -- a woman with more than a few political credentials to her own name -- seems to think the main targets were anti-war progressives.

By dusk on Wednesday, the California Obama campaign had purged almost all progressive anti-war activists from its delegate candidate lists. Names of candidates, people who had filed to run to represent Obama at the August Democratic Party National Convention, disappeared, not one by one, but hundreds at a time, from the Party web site listing the eligibles. The list of Obama delegate hopefuls in one northern California congressional district went from a robust 100 to an anemic 23, while in southern California, the list in Congressman Waxman's district almost slipped out of sight, plunging from a high of 91 candidates to 17. Gone were strong women with independent political bases.

And the Huffington Post's Nathaniel Bach wrote:

After completing the application process and finding my name on the official list of registered candidates, I received an email from the California Democratic Party today (Wednesday) at 4:48 p.m. informing me that the final approved lists of delegate candidates had been posted and that I should check the website. (I assume the same email went out to all the delegate candidates.) I clicked over to the website and found that, lo and behold, what had been a list of 90 candidates had been eviscerated down to only 17, and that my name was gone. I immediately checked the Obama candidate list for the 33rd District, where a friend and fellow Obama die-hard was also running for a delegate spot. His name was gone, too, and a list that formerly contained 83 names was down to a mere 20.

The ostensible rationale for the cutting of delegate candidates is to prevent "Trojan horse" delegates from making their way to the Convention floor and then switching allegiances. The vetting and removal of delegate candidates is expressly allowed by party rules. But could the 30th District really have had 73 such turncoats, and was I really one of them? I was a Precinct Captain for the Obama campaign for the California primary; I've donated several hundred dollars to Senator Obama's campaign (the first politician I've ever supported financially); and I've boosted the campaign in numerous posts on this website...

It's hard not to be cynical. Remaining on the list of approved candidates is the slate of candidates (longtime campaign volunteers) that the Obama campaign has officially endorsed, as well as several names recognizable from local politics. These delegate candidates aren't to be faulted for being longtime political activists, but the cynic in me wonders why those names remained while the "nobodies" on the list disappeared. The Obama campaign owes those of us who were cut a fuller explanation of the decision process.

MyDD's 'campskunk' clearly believes that this is not accidental, that the Obama campaign wants "people who will go to the convention and vote for Obama, no matter what. It's not about the issues, it's about the candidate. If these delegates have strong dedication to particular causes they might be persuadable, so none of those types are allowed."

But the purge of California delegates, and the fear that anti-war activists among those sent to represent Obama in Denver come August might defect, may run even deeper than anyone suspects. According to the New York Sun, Obama's phony anti-occupation position stands a good chance of being exposed for the sham it is.

A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security*. In “Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement,” Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000–80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground).”

Mr. Kahl is the day-to-day coordinator of the Obama campaign’s working group on Iraq. A shorter and less detailed version of this paper appeared on the center’s Web site as a policy brief.

If this is true, if Obama plans to back off from any and all public pledges to withdraw from the quagmire in Iraq by the end of his first term (assuming he gets a first term), then this cynical lack of faith in his own supporters exposes a far more serious crisis. The senator from Illinois, in spite of his alleged initial opposition to the invasion of Iraq, really does support the policy of American imperialism. And if he's worried enough about his true position becoming widely known that it has driven him to purge half his California delegates -- thus making the prospect of a brokered convention likelier, what does that say about the worth assigned to the anti-war movement by the Democratic Party? Not much, apparently.

Fortunately, this latest outrage by the Obama campaign has a somewhat happy ending; all of the delegates purged from California's bloc seem to have been reinstated. But if Obama thought these devoted supporters might have harbored plans to defect to Hillary Clinton's camp, he may have pushed his fear one step closer to realization.

*: Is it me, or does this organization's name sound ominously similar to Project for the New American Century?

The Polarizer and The Unifier: A Reasoned Look

Gus Wynn — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:03:56 -0400

As it drags on, the Hillary-Obama debate gets more vicious - we've now seen polarization across gender, race, age, class and ideology. But we've also seen many firsts: cleaner campaign fundraising, record turn-outs, record youth blocs, record first-time voter blocs, and a new "standard for candor". Can you guess which candidate is the divider and

Laura Walker

Laura Walker — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 22:33:48 -0400

Obama and Clinton Forces: Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

Curtis Walker — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:06:18 -0400

The Fighting Between The Two Major Democrats Has To Get Under Control Or We Are Handing The Republicans Another Four To Eight Years In The White House. The Very Dirty Politics Of Race Has No Place In The United States Political Arena. No More DEMOCRATIC Mud Slinging By Surrogates and Fellow Democrats, Please! As Progressives, lets set the example!

A mistake that never should have been made.

Michael Kwiatkowski — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:04:45 -0400

You've just got to feel sorry for Hillary Clinton. She just can't seem to do anything right in this campaign. It's not just her underestimation of the Clinton Rules, under which anything she says or does -- no matter how innocent or mundane -- is transformed into some conniving attack formed from evil intentions (just look at the false hype over the "dark" ad). It's that things like this happen.

One of the actors in the Hillary Clinton ad was shocked to see herself, especially because she's a fierce supporter of Barack Obama.

The so-called "red-phone ad" was played all over the country and helped turn the tide for Hillary Clinton leading up to her big win in Ohio. The ad shows a sleeping child and asks voters who they would want to see answering a 3 a.m. emergency phone call to the White House.

But the young girl starring in the ad will actually be voting age next month and says she's no fan of Hillary Clinton.

One of the unintended consequences of using recycled video footage, obviously, which is why it's probably better to use original material. This was something that could easily have been avoided. I wonder if Clinton's team shall learn from this mistake.

I originally saw this posted on the Rude Pundit's blog.