The Commentariat -- Sept. 7, 2012
Presidential Race
C-SPAN covers the Democratic convention without commentary. C-SPAN's convention coverage is also online. Day 3 (Thursday) begins at about 4:30 pm ET. The schedule of speakers & events is here. ...
... Here's the New York Times liveblog.
President Obama's full acceptance speech:
... Helene Cooper & Peter Baker of the New York Times: " on Thursday night accepted the Democratic nomination for a second term, making a forceful argument that he had rescued the economy from disaster and ushered in a recovery that would be imperiled by a return to Republican stewardship." ...
... The Voice from Tomorrow presents the (prepared) text of President Obama's speech to the Democratic convention -- even as he speaks. Hey, it's a gift! ...
... "Downsizing the Dream." Glenn Thrush of Politico writes quite a balanced analysis of Obama's speech. ...
... "The Age of Diminished Expectations." Matt Miller of the Washington Post: "Obama's affirmative vision was largely rhetorical.... But when it came to actual policy, the choice Obama repeatedly framed calls on voters to avoid some very bad things that would happen if Republicans win and keep their promises.... But another choice -- a bolder, progressive agenda for real American renewal -- is not on the ballot this year."
... Steve Stromberg of the Washington Post: "Obama can point out that he is more reasonable than the Tea Party, more consistent than Mitt Romney and more mainstream than Paul Ryan. And he has a good shot at winning on those terms. But achieving the many fine social goals he favors will require more than a mandate not to be the other guys, but some sophisticated policy." ...
... Michael Grunwald of Time: "I didn't get that speech. It felt subdued and clichéd. It felt like a few speeches stitched together. It felt like after overpromising in 2008 he was determined to underpromise in 2012.... The speech felt like a downer, hope and all. Joe Biden made a better case for his boss, and Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama made MUCH better cases." ...
... Jim Fallows of the Atlantic makes three (or four) cogent points about Obama's speech.
Jodi Kantor of the New York Times: Malia & Sasha Obama will appear at the Democratic convention this evening. Kantor writes about the girls' life in the White House.
Vice President Biden's full acceptance speech:
... The text of the Vice President's remarks is here. ...
... David Firestone of the New York Times: Joe Biden, son of a used-car salesman, takes on the son of an auto executive: "I don't think [Romney is] a bad guy. I'm sure he grew up loving cars as much as I did. But ... I don't think he understood that saving the automobile worker, saving the industry, what it meant to all of America, not just autoworkers. I think he saw it the Bain way. Now, I mean this sincerely. I think he saw it in terms of balance sheets and write-offs." Firestone writes, "Better than most speakers at the convention, [Biden] refuted the contemptuous Republican assertion that Democrats are constantly on the lookout for government handouts. People who need government help for a college loan or job training aren't trying to become dependent, he said, they are seeking their own path out of dependency." ...
... E. J. Dionne: "Biden was effective, and at times powerful, speaking as a witness who watched Obama up close. And because of his reputation for saying what's on his mind, which has often gotten him into trouble, he has a kind of credibility that doesn't come automatically to those who are always, always on message. Biden has a gut understanding of white working class and less affluent middle class voters whom Obama needs because, basically, that's where Biden comes from." ...
... Literally, Joe Biden.
John Kerry, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is not usually a great speaker, but he did an excellent job talking about Obama's foreign policy:
Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm "In Romney's world, the cars get the elevator; the workers get the shaft":
Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia) speaks of his first visit to Charlotte & about voting rights today -- rights that the GOP is challenging across the country:
... Charles Pierce: "If I were running the president's campaign, I'd shut the hell up about Simpson-fking-Bowles and put John Lewis on an airplane and let him tell his story in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and everywhere else this atavistic authoritarian nonsense is going down. There's more at risk here than anyone knows."
Former Rep. Gabby Giffords [D-Az.] leads the Pledge of Allegiance:
Paul Krugman's column today is a balanced assessment of President Obama's stewardship of the economy. He adds, almost in passing, "... there's not a shred of evidence for the G.O.P. theory of what ails our economy...."
Oh, no! Amy Gardner of the Washington Post: "Big Shot Donors Packed like Sardines." This is so wrong. But it should make John Fund feel better.
(The Man from a Place Called) Hope Springs Eternal. Eric Weisbrod of CNN: on Facebook, Bill Clinton got more mention than words associated with the NFL opener. ...
... CNN: Hillary Clinton watched her husband's speech, in a taped version, while traveling in East Timor. Secretary Clinton has been working in Asia this week, & did not attend the convention -- the first Democratic convention she has missed in 4 decades. It is political tradition for secretaries of state not to attend party conventions. With photo. ...
... Dashiell Bennett of the Atlantic has a terrific post in which he illuminates the differences between what Clinton said & what his prepared text said. (A nightmare for the teleprompter operator!)
... Lori Robertson, et al., of FactCheck.org: "Former President Bill Clinton’s stem-winding nomination speech was a fact-checker's nightmare: lots of effort required to run down his many statistics and factual claims, producing little for us to write about. Republicans will find plenty of Clinton's scorching opinions objectionable. But with few exceptions, we found his stats checked out." ...
... James Fallows: Clinton's speeches succeed because he "treats listeners as if they are smart." ...
... Worse than I Realized. Jonathan Chait of New York: The "Associated Press 'fact check' of Bill Clinton's speech last night has attracted a fair amount of Internet abuse, but not nearly enough. It's not only a prime specimen of journalistic idiocy -- it's one of those documents that reveals the incredibly blinkered quality of conventional wisdom, so contemptuous of facts that challenge its assumptions." Read the whole post. ...
... Brad DeLong: "No. Glenn Kessler Doesn't Have Any Business Working for a Journalistic Enterprise That Wants to Have a Reputation. Why Do You Ask?" A short post. ...
... Paul Krugman: "Clinton did get one thing wrong, which he has persistently gotten wrong for years. He's stuck on the notion that we have a big structural unemployment problem [that is, reflecting supply factors, or whether it's mainly simple lack of demand]." Thanks to Victoria D. for the link.
Fluke-Bashing, Ctd. Tara Culp-Ressler of Think Progress: "After [Sandra] Fluke [appeared at] ... the Democratic National Convention last night to articulate the issues at stake in the ongoing War on Women, conservative media took to Twitter to bash her for 'whining' about needing free birth control for the activities that go on in her 'bedroom.'"
If I heard … the president is going to report on the promises he made and how he has performed on those promises then I would love to watch it. But if it is another series of new promises that he is not going to keep I have no interest in seeing him, because I saw the promises last time. Those are promises he did not keep and the American people deserve to know why he did not keep his promises. -- Mitt Romney, on why he wouldn't be watching the President's acceptance speech. Thanks to reader Judy K. for the link.
James Rosen of Fox "News": "Senior Romney-Ryan campaign officials tell Fox News the campaign will launch an enormous media offensive on Friday.... The push will include ad buys in several states that will cost tens of millions of dollars."
Trip Gabriel of the New York Times writes a lovely little piece about how hard it's been on Paul Ryan -- unassuming backbencher from Janesville, Wisconsin -- to unexpectedly find himself in the national spotlight where all-of-a-sudden people are picking on him for being a serial liar. Blechhh!
The Republican National Committee admits it's responsible for this lame ad:
... CW: And if you think the woman playing the former Obama supporter is a lousy actress, maybe that's because she isn't an actress at all: she's RNC staffer Bettina Inclan. Pema Levy of TPM: "Inclan began her current RNC post in January 2012, and has worked in Republican politics since well before Obama's 2008 election. She did Hispanic outreach for Rick Scott's 2010 Florida gubernatorial race worked on Capitol Hill for Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) and as national executive director of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly." Somehow I don't think Inclan & Obama were going steady in 2008.
Related News & Opinion
Paul Krugman: "I've spent most of the day with a parent in the hospital; and my thoughts turned to the GOP platform, which boasts that "Our reform of healthcare will empower millions of seniors to control their personal healthcare decisions." ... It's really amazing how this notion of patients as consumers, just like people buying furniture or gardening supplies, has taken hold; anyone with the least experience of actual medical situations, which means almost everyone, has to know how totally unrealistic it is."
Nina Bernstein of the New York Times: "The presidential election may decide Medicaid's future. But many states faced with rising Medicaid costs and budget deficits are already trying to cut the cost of long-term care by profoundly changing Medicaid coverage, through the use of federal waivers."
Congressional Races
Talking Points Memo has a pretty good poll-tracker. The current polls -- not so good, particularly the Senate races.
News Ledes
Bloomberg News: "Payrolls rose less than projected in August and the unemployment rate declined as more Americans left the labor force, indicating the U.S. labor market is stagnating. The economy added 96,000 workers last month following a revised 141,000 rise in July that was smaller than initially estimated...."
New York Times: The Obama administration has decided to blacklist as a terrorist organization the Haqqani network, the militant organization responsible for some of the deadliest attacks against American troops in Afghanistan, several American officials said late Thursday."
Guardian: "US forces will continue to hold prisoners in Afghanistan even after they transfer their main detention centre to Afghan authorities this week..., a report from a rights group said, in a decision likely to anger Kabul officials who believed they had won control of all Afghan detainees.... Afghan lawyers have warned that this is unconstitutional and sets a dangerous precedent for the country's security forces."
AP: "A series of earthquakes collapsed houses and triggered landslides in a remote mountainous part of southwestern China on Friday, killing at least 50 people with the toll expected to rise. Damage was preventing rescuers from reaching some outlying areas, and communications were disrupted."
Reuters: "Yosemite National Park doubled the scope of its hantavirus warning on Thursday to some 22,000 visitors who may have been exposed to the deadly mouse-borne disease as the number of confirmed cases grew to eight and a third death was reported. U.S. officials recently sounded a worldwide alert, saying that up to 10,000 people were thought to be at risk of contracting hantavirus pulmonary syndrome after staying at the popular Curry Village lodging area between June and August."
AP: "Drew Peterson -- the crass former Illinois police officer who gained notoriety after his much-younger wife vanished in 2007 -- was convicted Thursday of murdering a previous wife in a potentially precedent-setting case centered on secondhand hearsay statements." Related Chicago Tribune story, videos here.
Space.com: "NASA's newest Mars rover Curiosity is taking its first tentative drives across the Martian surface and leaving tracks that have been spotted all the way from space in a spectacular photo snapped by an orbiting spacecraft." With photos. More from NASA.
BBC News: Britain's "Prince Harry has been deployed to Afghanistan for four months, the Ministry of Defence says. The prince, an Apache helicopter pilot, arrived on Thursday night at the main British base, Camp Bastion in Helmand."
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Reader Comments (34)
The Inclan ad isn't merely lame... it's puerile.
Sept. 7?! Are you from the future?
@Scott M. Yes, Marie is the future, and you obviously are the past.
@Scott M, we are living the future because the future is now.
"Move Forward, Not Back!"
Being forward thinking is what distinguishes us from the Republicans!
Re: Time travel; didn't I say that about tomorrow yesterday?
@Scott M
Are you actually JJG all bored again? Com'on. We're all smart in this room, and we don't do shots before writing comments.(-:
Seems as though the Republicans are into talking to empty chairs, cardboard cut outs and other imaginary beings these days.
Could it be that any human with a actual brain will not sit and listen to their fabrications and lies anymore?
Watching the coverage on CSPAN. No Analysis.
Nice spot about Biden between Jill and Joe's speech. Flipped to NBC. Brokaw droning on. Last night I flipped to PBS and caught Brook's bald head. (Note to self: drop a note to PBS that they'll get no more donations from me until Brook's is dismissed.)
My point is the CNN coverage should be duplicated on all the major networks as a public service. Wishful thinking I know but I think it would go a long way toward reaching the low info voters.
[I think Dave S. means CSPAN in that last graf. -- The Voice from Tomorrow]
CSPAN not CNN
[@Scott M. -- See bracketed response to previous comment. You can rely on the Voice from Tomorrow to tell you what will happen next.]
The AP "fact check" of Clinton's speech as described by Jonathan Chait is mind-blowing.
The Democratic convention has been a rousing success: not just because the speeches were way better than what was offered in Tampa. No, the real success was that Democrats finally found their voice and the their mojo. Even the Republican commentators noticed and commented on that. Of course, the only people who didn't get it were the mainstream media, who are so stuck in their idiotic "he said, she said" narrative that they don't even bother to report what's right in front of their eyes.
I listened to CSPAN live coverage on my homeward commute yesterday, multiple NC Democrats doing short spots. Just before 5 EDT, there was a film montage. Lots of good tempo music and evocative sound bites from the past. But the film creators missed a huge opportunity ... at the end, with the crescendo, they should have stuck in the Joe Biden sound bite ... "That IS a big f-ing deal!" Why they passed on that opportunity on Fight Night is a curiousness.
In the absense of Medicaid we will need refrigerated trucks with loud speakers advising citizens, " Bring out your dead."
Medieval, but necessary.
Re: if you are down on your luck and you feel like nobody loves you but your momma and she might be jiving you too; watch Gabby Giffords salute the flag. Life is good; or a damn sight better than the alternative.
The president certainly disappointed the MSM last night.
No lies for them to write about so instead they're going on and on about how disappointing the whole thing was: "Diminished Expectations", "Subdued" and such. All with a barely concealed smirk.
What I haven't read in any of these analyses (at least so far) is the reason for those "diminished expectations" and the reason the hope for change from the last election has been subdued. Simply put, over the last three and a half years, Republicans have outlawed hope. They've shackled change. They've dynamited the road to the future and hope that no one will blame them.
So far, very few in the media have done so. Instead, they lay the blame for reduced expectations squarely on the shoulders of the president.
Perfidious poltroons. All of them.
I turned off commentary midway through Andrea Mitchell's whine. And, oh boohoo...the MSM couldn't stop talking about
"...there're no balloons!"
Doing versus Being is a challenge, with some people focusing on 'doing' or 'being' all the while trying to bring balance ~ which few people reach. Our President, I think, has attained a striking balance between the two and it is not mentioned (let alone discussed) in any venue I have read or heard.
While we all want to be loved and please others, we must not compromise our peace of mind and sense of self worth in order to satisfy their expectations. The expectations that others have of our President are out of touch with the reality of being human. His message of Hope and Change reflects the 'being' part of his nature, while his over 200 (and counting) concrete accomplishments reflects the 'doing' part of his nature. Few people have recognized, let alone acknowledged, this journey.
The MSM assessment of his acceptance speech is a prime example of the denigration given to 'being' instead of 'doing' ~ sad, because it is President Obama's balance between the two that makes him a remarkable individual as well as an extraordinary President.
Now, I am going to go bay at the moon.
Now that the shouting is over, the balloons deflated, the halls given a good cleaning, we can sit back and access the results of both the conventions as Alan Minsky does in Truthdig. In "Want Hope and Change? Build a Real Left," Minksy gives us a sober assessment of what we need, want we could have,but don't, and what we have to do to make a change that is real.
"Attending both political conventions with a mind for investigating who really holds the reins of power betrays, in all its naked glory, that America has truly become—or maybe it always has been and remains—an oligarchy, papered over with a thin veneer of democracy. Someone in Obama’s position could only ever be there because he has figured out how to present himself as an attractive leader to the people who really rule this country or he’s been hand selected by a subset of the elite as the perfect frontman. In this regard, there’s an uncanny continuity from Reagan through Obama."
He doesn't mention the speech by John Lewis, but Minsky's premise that we, the people collectively, need to demand a change would offer up Lewis as exemplar of what he's talking about.
I notice, in a link Marie provides to some polls highlighted on TPM, that a fair number of Americans polled by Pew selected the word "idiot" to describe Joe Biden.
Interesting.
Not so much that people don't think much of Biden, but that the Pew pollsters would include "idiot" as an option.
So, would you describe Vice President Biden as:
a.) Exemplary
b.) Very good
c.) Just okay
d.) Not so good
e.) An Idiot
Who came up with that list? I'm guessing we probably won't be seeing a poll designed to elicit feelings about Paul Ryan with an option to choose "lying cocksucker".
Do you?
PD,
I think I see what Minsky--and you--are getting at. But here's the problem, and it's an interesting one.
Communication to a vast audience is a much different animal now than it was just 10 years ago. Today a kid can do a clever political riff on YouTube and become a sensation. Not overnight. In hours. But for all of its international, instantaneous reach, a lot of stuff on YouTube (or any social media site, for that matter) still has a somewhat recondite, underground feel to it. Why? Because although a particular clip may have millions of views they are nearly all singular, one at a time, me alone with my thoughts and my iPad types of views.
And should one of those become so viral as to merit the acknowledgement of the MSM, the message is then subject to the appropriate massaging, re-interpretation, deconstruction ("did you see that poster of Bob Marley behind the kid? Clearly a pot-head!"), and Breitbart-like revisionism. The message lost in translation.
I haven't thought long and hard enough about what this means but I think a couple of things are clear or becoming clear.
First, watching John Lewis tell his story on national television with an audience of millions is a visceral experience, a message received with the kind of lightheadedness and feeling of outrage, empowerment, and connection one rarely senses when watching a clip in the solitude of one's office or sitting alone on the train. There are many reasons for this. One is the same reason it's so much more fun to watch a film at the theater. It's a shared experience. At home you can stop the DVD player, get up, go to the bathroom, make a sandwich, tell the kids to stop fighting, etc. None of that at the movies. I think submerges the urgency of the experience, hence, the message.
So even though more people may eventually hear the message, I'm not sure the effect is the desired one. What to do about that? Not much, really. What CAN you do?
So what's the point here?
I think there are perhaps many John Lewises abroad with compelling stories to tell. It's certainly much easier to get your voice out there with the tens of millions of others making their cases online, the good with the bad and the just plain nuts. So there's a significant signal to noise ratio to be dealt with. And if you do break through, you risk the attention of corporate media types who will try their best to bend, fold, spindle, and mutilate you if your message doesn't jibe with theirs.
But then again, this may be either the wave of the future, which, after some fallout, will construct a new, much more open and more truly democratic(small d), form of communication, or it may be a bridge to something else entirely. Radio fans had no idea that TV was right around the corner. It was similar but dramatically different as an experience.
Like anything else, we lose something to gain something. I only hope what we gain is at least as good as what we lose.
Okay, one more and then I'm done.
All of this kerfuffle over fact checking! One would think it would be pretty much cut and dried. A fact is something that is demonstrably true (philosophers call them statements with a positive truth value). Facts are not theories or value judgments even though some would like that to be the...well, fact.
So we have the AP fact-checking debacle over Clinton's speech the other night which is about as far from factual fact-checking as one could imagine, outside of simply asserting a false thing as being true (something Republicans do all the time, but that's a different fact).
But disallowing a speaker (Clinton) from stating a demonstrably true thing because he once made a non-factual statement himself, means that nothing he says can be taken as true, which is not just stupid, it's an impossible thing to say (and it could be applied to almost everyone on the planet. If you tell one lie in your life, nothing you ever say after can be taken as true).
It sounds like the AP guys (talk about finger-wagging!) have gotten themselves into Hume's famous Is-Ought trap. Hume was tired of listening to arguments that tried to take a statement of fact "some people are poor" and turn it into a moral or value judgement "they ought to get out and find jobs for themselves, lazy slobs!". As far as Hume is concerned, you can't get there from here. You can never take a simple statement of fact and use it to pole vault into finger-wagging land.
In this case the Is-Ought comes out in a similar way. Clinton states that the Romney campaign has said that it will ignore facts (provable beyond any discussion) but he ought not have the ability to make that statement because he was a bad boy once, about 20 years ago.
This, of course, is just a single example of the ridiculousness of the state of fact-checking during this campaign--Glenn Kessler, are you listening?--because in fact (warning, a statement with a positive truth value approaching), so much of what passes as fact-checking is nothing more than pandering or journalistic incompetence, a complete bastardization of the role of fact-checking within the public discourse. This statement is provable by the many questionable is-ought outcomes to fact checking enterprises.
And the idea that we have competing fact-checkers tells you something right there. Too many of them confuse is for ought.
They ought to know better. And that IS a moral judgement.
Confused enough now?
I am shocked at the survey the Pew Poll mentions. Of course if you give that choice all the wingers will take it, even if they don't believe it...just to embarrass the Dems.
I have one word for the poll: idiotic.
@ Akhilleus: Thanks for your response, but Minsky's message was really not about how we communicate in this day and age, but a much more dark essay about the lack of real power in our political system by the majority. Here's the end of Minksky's essay*:
" But I’d never lose sight of the fact that the two main political parties are too far down a path to address the nation’s problems in the way they must be addressed. This is not to say we’ve lost hope, not if we recall that the major political parties have never really been the vehicles for progressive change. The New Deal, the Great Society, hell, even the right to vote in this Godforsaken political system were won not by politicians and their big-money backers, but by tremendous social movements that rocked the world. We need hope and change; it’s up to us to produce them."
* I'd give you the link, but in the past when I'd do that my post would go up to heaven and get lost among the discarded remnants of words past.
Re: Knowing too much to say much at all. Ak, do you think there is any truth in the idea that we are building a new tower of Babel? The MSM has to comment on comments. Text begins to lose meaning after constant reproduction. Which kitten is cutest after one thousand Youtube viewings? Have we reached the stage of constant communication with no connection? The waves of the ocean crashing the shore; wind in the trees, noise, what more?
Liars, truthseekers, poets, songwriters, priests, seers, and prophets I can't hear what their saying only the sound echos in my mind.
For JJG:
...music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, yet you
are the music
While the music lasts.
Four Quartets––Eliot
PD,
Sorry, I should have been more explicit about the direction of my post. I got Minsky's point. My comment was more of a corollary to the idea of how communication affects political power.
JJG,
I think the problem might end up being more of a labyrinth than a tower of babel. In a non-linear world you can descend very quickly in the abyss or find yourself down crazy sidestreets. You start out on Wikipedia looking up the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and end up reading about botulism in 19th century Indonesia. I suppose what we need is a page out of old Theseus' book. Take plenty of bread crumbs or string so we can get back to square one. After dueling with the Minotaur.
Today, Obama was in Portsmouth, NH just across the river from me ... but I watched the event on video. He praised and complimented his team and speakers at the convention. When he got to Clinton...he mentioned a message he had received from a convention viewer...to the effect, "...couldn't he please bring Clinton on board as (much-needed) Secretary of Explaining Stuff'? Indeed, a much needed Cabinet position.
JJG,
On further consideration, I think we may be creating a different kind of structure, maybe a Tunnel of Babel, or many tunnels.
With so many speakers there is less time to think carefully about what is ingested before the pressure of composing a snappy, snarky comeback overwhelms our capacity for critical thinking. Maybe we end up like the character from one of Ray Bradbury's stories (if I can remember the name of it, I'll go to bed happy tonight).
An astronaut has been marooned on Mars. For ten years or more he beams distress calls out into the solar system, finally just rambling on about whatever popped into his head. One day he hears a voice crackle over the radio. The voice calls his name. The astronaut tries to figure out why the voice responds so weirdly to his questions. He finally realizes that the voice is his own, scrambled and restructured as it boomerangs back to him from the outer depths of space.
Solipsism pantheosized.
MAG,
Oh man, what a great idea! Secretary for Explaining Stuff.
This could start a whole new trend!
How 'bout other new cabinet positions?
Secretary of Punching Out Sunday Morning Gasbags. Watch out Fluffy and Krauthammer.
Secretary for Keeping Other Secretaries on the Freakin' Reservation. Bush could have used two of these. Reagan too.
Secretary of Protecting Americans From Teabagger Conspriracies.
Any other ideas?
An big thank you to Mark Warren for his esquire.com exegesis of Joe Biden's career.
A funny senior moment (shit, and I'm not even a senior) while reading this piece. As I was thinking of the traditional role of VPs, I found myself scrambling for the name of Deserter Dubya's vice.
Really!
When Darth Cheney's villainous name revealed itself, I was reminded of his especially evil role as Regent to the Dauphin.
A role no other vice-president has ever had to fulfill.
The point is that Biden, unlike the criminal Cheney, has a history of which he, and we, can be proud,
Not embarassed.
@Akhilleus: naming the Secretary of ________?__________ could be Marie's next contest! Your suggestions are super!
If the Demo convention didn't do anything else, it certainly energized this comment section. Maybe there's still hope for the Confederation of States.
I'm with Joe Biden. I love Jennifer Granholm.