2008

Nothing focuses the mind like sweeping an election and then contemplating how all those gains could be largely (or even partly) taken away from us in the very next election cycle, all because the Democrats might run A Disaster in the all-important presidential year looming ahead of us.

So much of what Democrats achieved in red-state counties like Watauga could be taken back in 2008 if the Democrats nominate the wrong person.

After mulling this conundrum obsessively for nine hours on the road to & from grandmother's house this weekend, we arrive at an inescapably logical conclusion, which is therefore full of holes and subject to derision ... that Al Gore is the best possible presidential candidate (of the available possibilities).

Hillary Clinton? She would offer the shortest route between a defeated and dispirited Republican Party and a reenergized opposition with a holy crusade to save America from the lesbo-pinko-fatal-fetal Libruls. We shudder at the thought.

John Edwards? No way.

Barack Obama? No way in hell.

Joe Biden, Evan Bayh, John Kerry, or any of the other four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in the Senate pie ... no, no, no, a dozen times NO. In fact, no U.S. senator, on EITHER side, brings anything more than way too much baggage to the race. Hear that, Mr. Straight Talk Express? (And see Allen, Sen. George and Frist, Sen. Bill for early examples of how senators don't fly.)

Governors? Remains to be seen. But certainly not Bill Richardson, not Mike Easley, obviously not Mark Warner, not Tom Vilsack ...

Incidentally, here's a simple Electability Touchstone (other than NO SENATORS NOT EVER!). To wit, how will the prospective president's name look on a yard sign, and how will that yard sign play in the South and in rural America generally? "Vilsack for President"? Ain't gonna happen.

By a process of elimination, we're left with Al Gore (and that's a little how we feel in reaching this conclusion ... slightly bereft). He's one ex-presidential candidate who's actually grown in stature since he ran. He's "clean" on the war; he's never had to tack, make excuses, or change his position. He's a leader on "green" issues, and those are only going to grow like a phosphate plume in the next couple of years. He's credible on foreign affairs, with tons of experience. He's smart, and maybe the country will think it's time in 2008 to make the long trek back from dumbsville. He could win the South. He could carry North Carolina. He would not be a drag in Watauga County.

Who else can we say all of that about, and with confidence?

Happy Turkey Day

Don't look for us back in these precincts before next Monday.

In the meantime, find something to be publicly, extravagantly thankful for. Go eat some yams. Or cranberry sauce. Go now. You owe it to yourself.

As we owe it to each other to think collectively about the end of this regime and the dawning of Something Better. Go on: offer thanks. You know you can. You know you must.

Attend the Prayer Vigil at Wal-Mart This Friday

What's this? Wal-Mart is going queer on us!

Smite them, O Lord, smite their toilet-paper clearances and cheap cat food! Smite them hip and thigh! (Well, maybe not so much the thigh.)

To defile the temple of Christian shoppers! They shall pay a price, and it will not be slashed.

We had JUST gotten them to end their war on Christmas! Now this.

So many of our moral foundations are crumbling! Now Wal-Mart too. Where will we get cheap sodas and discounted electronics?

YOU THINK WE'RE KIDDING? Read this. As it says, "It's time for Christians to come out of the closet!"

Senator Webb and Economic Populism

Billmon was the first commentator I saw who marveled at what the newly elected senator from Virginia, Jim Webb, has transformed himself into ... summed up in an op-ed Webb published in the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 15th. Because that paper isn't accessible on-line, I had to wait until the Webb essay became more widely available ... which it has, here.

We can only hope that Senator Webb quickly establishes himself as a leader among the Democrats in Washington, because he's talking the language that we've been waiting a long time for a Democrat to learn.

"A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation's most fortunate," he writes, and gosh, ain't it amazing how apt that line is for our current highest elected official in the 5th Dist.? And this:

The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life. Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of "God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag" while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet. But this election cycle showed an electorate that intends to hold government leaders accountable for allowing every American a fair opportunity to succeed.

The issues Webb highlights throughout his essay are getting dubbed "economic populism." There's not an entrenched Republican office-holder in the South who can't be un-entrenched by economic populism, and that goes doubly for Madam Foxx. The right candidate with that message could whittle down the 4 percent of her support that gets her to 50 ... just by opening his/her mouth.

Webb's going to be fun to watch. As will the Foxx, who's got to decide how to behave differently to a home county that roundly rejected her.

Watauga Recount Wednesday

A machine recount of Watauga ballots will take place tomorrow (Wednesday, Thanksgiving eve) in three races only: the sheriff's race between incumbent Mark Shook and Democratic challenger Len Hagaman, the N.C. Senate race between David Blust and Steve Goss, and the N.C. Court of Appeals race between Donna Stroud and Linda Stephens. Four counties are involved in the Blust/Goss recount, the entire state in the Stroud/Stephens recount.

Hagaman, Goss, and Stroud have all won with narrow margins. No one familiar with recounts expects any of these results to be overturned. But everyone also knows we have to go through these extra steps because they are mandated by law. If we were Shook, Blust, or Stephens, we'd request a recount too. You never know: maybe a major glitch will reveal itself. But we doubt it. Everyone doubts it, including the losers asking for the recounts.

If the machine recount deviates even a single digit from numbers reported to the State Board of Elections following Nov. 7th, then a hand recount is mandated. This could drag on a while ... but it likely isn't going to change anything.

"The Relentless March of Privilege"

UNC-CH Gets 'D' in Helping the Poor

That's the headline in this a.m.'s N&O, breaking the news about a 50-state study of "flagship" public universities and how they are/aren't serving the poor and the minorities in their respective states. Chapel Hill doesn't look so good in that study. The university got Fs on enrolling both minority and poor students.

The university's one decent grade -- a B -- was for the successful graduation rate of minority students, once the lucky ones actually do get admitted. UNC-CH has concentrated its financial aid dollars in the "Carolina Covenant," which started in 2004 and now covers about 950 students (mostly minorities).

Meanwhile, the state's poor whites are not getting anywhere near the doors.

"These institutions, as you all know, are powerful gatekeepers, but they are closing the gates on students who most need financial support to attend college," said Kati Haycock, director of the Education Trust, which conducted the study.

Public universities are too caught up in rankings, prestige, and reputation, Haycock said. They raise their standards and compete for top students in the race to become more selective. Quality then becomes defined by who is kept out of the university.

"I have to believe it's about the relentless march of privilege in this society," she said.

Foxx: Counted Among the Worst Members of Congress

Marsha Blackburn in Tennessee and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina are two truly nasty pieces of work politically. When the public started demanding government action over oil industry price-gouging, Blackburn and Foxx rallied with other oil money soaked Republican Right Wing members of Congress to block any legislative action. They crusaded against wind-fall profit taxes on the excessive profits of Big Oil.

So writes Stephen Crockett. And more, here.

Crockett is co-host of Democratic Talk Radio, out of Lawrenceville, Tenn.

The Politics of Responsibility

We've mainly known Rahm Emanuel in the past year or so as one big Democratic thorn in Howard Dean's side. Emanuel and Dean had a public spat over how best to distribute Democratic Party funds. Emanuel wanted all the money in targeted swing districts, places like western North Carolina be damned! We applauded Dean's 50-state strategy and criticized Emanuel for taking his disagreement public ... sorta like James Carville in the more recent past.

Which is why William Saletan's essay in Slate is a head-turner. Saletan summarizes critical points in Emanuel's new book (co-authored with Bruce Reed), "The Plan." Emanuel and Reed (according to Saletan) propose "a new social contract" based on the concept of "responsibility." We like this line of reasoning, particularly the discussion of birth control as an antidote to abortion.

In this Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, there's no excuse for ignorance about birth control nor justification for making birth control difficult to achieve. And that's the ground on which the old abortion wars need to be fought. If birth control really were universally available, and birth control information universally available, unwanted pregnancies could be shamed as a failure of responsibility. But the leading dependent clause of that previous sentence has to become a reality before the main clause can be realized. And that will happen only over the sanctified scream of the Religious Right and self-righteous druggists who do not want young women to know the first thing about sex and pregnancy prevention.

Theocracy News...

...bringing divinely inspired self-righteousness to a culture war near you!

1. Granted, the American mainstream media is a poor reporter on religion, but missing the growing neo-con theocratic outlook of Mr. Stephen Harper, the relatively new Prime Minister of Canada, to our immediate north, seems particularly incompetent. Last January the NYTimes ran a lengthy profile on the man without even mentioning his religious beliefs (about which religion writer Kathryn Joyce marveled here). Chris Hedges in the current "Nation" magazine begins to redress the inadequate coverage here. But by far the most in depth coverage of Canada's own Christian Right is here, in the Canadian magazine "The Walrus."

2. The Baptist minister who pushed through the new rule in the N.C. Baptist Convention that will allow for the excommunication of gay-friendly congregations is profiled in the N&O today. His very large congregation finds him a sweet grandfatherly pastor, and he's obviously got quite a little Jesus camp going in Wendell, having walled himself into an air-tight logical fallacy: Anything bad that happens is evidence that God is punishing America for the sins of immorality.