Obama and the coalition for change
This is billed as Barack Obama's "victory" speech after . It's a great speech from a candidate who has sometimes seemed, presentationally, too careful and rather bland. In this speech, he is presidential. The term "victory" is a little premature, of course.
Hillary Clinton surprised many by coming third, and Mike Huckabee seems to have worried some leading Republicans by coming first. But Clinton is certainly not out of the race yet. Bill Clinton came third in 1992; Jimmy Carter came second in 1976; and both went on to win the presidency. It's also worth remembering that the state of Iowa doesn't have an impressive record in electing women -- it has yet to elect a woman to Congress. This is clearly still a three-way race for the Democratic nomination.
John Edwards, who came second, has been criticised as graceless for not congratulating Barack Obama, but there are good political reasons for his silence. He is in a very good place, and could still emerge as the Democratic candidate for president. He could win in the south, and he could win in middle-America; he could also win the votes of those who are nervous about Obama's lack of experience and Clinton's personal associations.
The Republican race just got extremely interesting. Mike Huckabee, the six-day-creationist Southern Baptist pastor and former governor of Arkansas, has surprised many by looking like a serious candidate. He is against gun control, for the death penalty, supported the war in Iraq and the troop surge, once advocated quaranteening Aids patients, still argues (though he whispers it now) that gay people present a public health risk, has a blanket opposition to abortion, and perceives no serious legal or ethical problems with the Guantanemo Bay detention camp. In other words, he is the ideological heir apparent to George W. Bush. If he was to become the Republican candidate, those positions, under scrutiny, may worry many "undecideds" and quite a few secular Republicans who are looking for more than Bush-Lite in their next candidate. In any case, the Huckaboom revolution is not an inevitability. Mitt Romney did badly (finishing six points behind the Huckster's 31 per cent), but he will regroup and New Hampshire will be more telling. His Morman faith discourages some voters in the US, but he also has leading Protestant and Catholic supporters. I don't rate Thompson's chances very highly, though some commentators have compared this former actor to Ronald Reagan. He may emerge as a secular alternative to a creationist Baptist and a once-pro-choice-but-now-pro-life Mormon. The real loser is Rudi Giuliani, who scored only 6 per cent. If he survives, Bill Clinton will have lost his claim to the title "come back king".
Comments
I've watched with both amusement and disbelief at the way the foreign press covers American politics. Anyone remember the first debate last fall or was it last summer? They made such a big deal out of it. Then there was one after another after another until they become remembered in my mind (and I think a lot of other Americans as well) as one long blur adding up to nothing. I didn't watch even one of them for very long.
Iowa is a tiny little state population wise. If it were not first or among the first to vote for a nominee, nobody would even pay attention to it. How many Americans could even find it on a map of the US if its name weren't printed on it? The caucus process is strange even by American standards and the demographics of Iowa is hardly typical of the rest of the US. Yet, you'd think Obama and Huckleberry were one step from the nomination of their parties from the way the press covered it. Even New Hampshire won't tell us a whole lot. Watch for Super Tuesday in February, that will be the first real indication of how things are going.
Obama is a very attractive candidate. He's smart, energetic, but he's inexperienced and from what I can tell very liberal, too liberal for my taste. Anyway, I said before I don't think he'll be the nominee and so far I'm sticking with that. Maybe in 4 or 8 years but not yet. Edwards campaigned in Iowa for many years and still came in second well behind Obama, not good news for him. Hillary Clinton hardly campaigned at all there and came in right behind Edwards. I think eventually, Edwards will drop out of the race and throw his support to Hillary. She may select him as her running mate. As for Huckleberry, he hasn't got a prayer. A Southern Baptist minister as President of the United States? C'mon, even America isn't that stupid. Likewise, I don't think Romney has much of a shot at it. It's not just that he's a Mormon, it's that he's governor of just about the most liberal state in the US. Some of us even call it The People's Republic of Massachusetts. Guiliani didn't run in Iowa. He said politely that it was not important enough to waste his time and money on. Hillary should have done the same. McCain who didn't waste much effort in Iowa either still looks very strong to me and I think he will pick up momentum as Romney fades. Thompson is a joke, he has practically nothing to say if someone doesn't hand him a script to read. He's been an actor longer than a Senator. It's time for him to hang it up. So will Guiliani give McCain a run for his money or even become McCain's running mate? Well that's how it looks to me here and now, Hillary and Edwards against McCain and Giuliani. And so far, nobody has started throwing any real dirt around. That will come soon enough, maybe even by this weekend in New Hampshire when the Clinton machine starts taking Obama down a peg or two. Her husband is among the shrewdest politicians in the United States...even if he can't follow his own advice.
The American Constitution has some fine things in it, not least its erection of what Jefferson called a 'wall of separation' between church and state. But one of its major weaknesses is to vest executive power in one man. It is not so much that this one man has enormous power - on the contrary, the Founding Fathers then proceeded to institute numerous checks and balances (separation of powers, federal structure, written constitution and bill of rights etc) to ensure that his (her - Hilary?) power was limited.
No, it is more the fact that politics is reduced to personalities, with the result that for the next 10 months the main contenders will have their personalities analysed and dissected ad nauseam to see if they are fit for the office. Politics becomes showmanship, and much of it is reduced to who performs best in a TV studio, as if this had any relevance to anything of any substance. We all know that media presentation is all image (Jess Yates fooled viewers for years on Stars on Sunday). The end result is that issues are relegated in importance.
The media are at least partly to blame. They join in the razzamatazz. Isn't it great fun - all these hanging chads or gilded butterflies in Florida. "Poor rogues talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too - who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out" (Lear 5:3). They want people to answer important questions in soundbites because they assume (rightly?) that the public have a short attention span. So what you get is slogans, labels, name-calling, backbiting, arguments ad hominen as substitutes for real thought. Let's dumb it all down for a dumb audience.
It's not as if this was a a rigorous sifting out process: after all, it produced a Nixon and two Bushes and rejected more substantial candidates such as Stevenson, McGovern and Gore. Meanwhile, the country and the society heads for hell in a handcart.
Blair personified the Americanisation of British politics:
all show and no substance. The individual who is idolised by millions in 1997 as the 'saviour of the nation' after 18 years of Tory rule turns out, alas, to be all too human. No doubt the same will happen whoever wins in the US in November. You can be sure that he (or she) will not leave office surrounded by the euphoria with which they entered it. But still, isn't all great fun!
The American Constitution has some fine things in it, not least its erection of what Jefferson called a 'wall of separation' between church and state. But one of its major weaknesses is to vest executive power in one man. It is not so much that this one man has enormous power - on the contrary, the Founding Fathers instituted numerous checks and balances (separation of powers, federal structure, written constitution and bill of rights etc) to ensure that his (her - Hilary?) power was limited.
No, it is more the fact that politics is reduced to personalities, with the result that for the next 10 months the main contenders will have their personalities analysed and dissected ad nauseam to see if they are fit for the office. Politics becomes showmanship, and much of it is reduced to who performs best in a TV studio, as if this had any relevance to anything of any substance. We all know that media presentation is all image (Jess Yates and his organ fooled viewers for years on Stars on Sunday). The end result is that issues are relegated in importance.
The media are at least partly to blame. They join in the razzamatazz. Isn't it great fun - all these hanging chads or gilded butterflies in Florida. "Poor rogues talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too - who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out" (King Lear, 5:3). They want people to answer important questions in soundbites because they assume (rightly?) that the public have a short attention span. So what you get is slogans, labels, name-calling, backbiting, arguments ad hominen as substitutes for real thought. Let's dumb it all down for a dumb audience.
It's not as if this was a a rigorous sifting out process: after all, it produced a Nixon and two Bushes and rejected more substantial candidates such as Stevenson, McGovern and Gore. Meanwhile, the country and the society heads for hell in a handcart.
Blair personified the Americanisation of British politics:
all show and no substance. The individual who is idolised by millions in 1997 as the 'saviour of the nation' after 18 years of Tory rule turns out, alas, to be all too human. No doubt the same will happen whoever wins in the US in November. You can be sure that he (or she) will not leave office surrounded by the euphoria with which they entered it (an Obama sex scandal, or a female Clinton one, perhaps: "I did not have sex with that man!"). But, still, isn't all great fun!
And, of course, it is all conducted at enormous expense. This not what democracy should be about. A candidate who lacks the ability to raise tens of millions of dollars hasn't a cat in hell's chance of getting elected, black or white, male or female. Still, I suppose we have to say that if the successful candidate is black or female, then that's some progress after 220 years.
The American Constitution has some fine things in it, not least its erection of what Jefferson called a 'wall of separation' between church and state. But one of its major weaknesses is to vest executive power in one man. It is not so much that this one man has enormous power - on the contrary, the Founding Fathers instituted numerous checks and balances (separation of powers, federal structure, written constitution and bill of rights etc) to ensure that his (her - Hilary?) power was limited.
No, it is more the fact that politics is reduced to personalities, with the result that for the next 10 months the main contenders will have their personalities analysed and dissected ad nauseam to see if they are fit for the office. Politics becomes showmanship, and much of it is reduced to who performs best in a TV studio, as if this had any relevance to anything of any substance. We all know that media presentation is all image (Jess Yates and his organ fooled viewers for years on Stars on Sunday). The end result is that issues are relegated in importance.
The media are at least partly to blame. They join in the razzamatazz. Isn't it great fun - all these hanging chads or gilded butterflies in Florida. "Poor rogues talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too - who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out" (King Lear, 5:3). They want people to answer important questions in soundbites because they assume (rightly?) that the public have a short attention span. So what you get is slogans, labels, name-calling, backbiting, arguments ad hominen as substitutes for real thought. Let's dumb it all down for a dumb audience.
It's not as if this was a a rigorous sifting out process: after all, it produced a Nixon and two Bushes and rejected more substantial candidates such as Stevenson, McGovern and Gore. Meanwhile, the country and the society heads for hell in a handcart.
Blair personified the Americanisation of British politics:
all show and no substance. The individual who is idolised by millions in 1997 as the 'saviour of the nation' after 18 years of Tory rule turns out, alas, to be all too human. No doubt the same will happen whoever wins in the US in November. You can be sure that he (or she) will not leave office surrounded by the euphoria with which they entered it (an Obama sex scandal, or a female Clinton one, perhaps: "I did not have sex with that man!"). But, still, isn't all great fun!
And, of course, it is all conducted at enormous expense. This not what democracy should be about. A candidate who lacks the ability to raise tens of millions of dollars hasn't a cat in hell's chance of getting elected, black or white, male or female. Still, I suppose we have to say that if the successful candidate is black or female, then that's some progress after 220 years.
I would like to think that the Iowa result and New Hampshire polls would carry across the US - but I truely expect that the Democrats will be brought to the centre (or center ...) by Super duper Tuesday. The emerging story is still McCain, I think.
This big thing for me is that only two months ago, Clinton was a cert for the nomination. The fact that Obama came from literally nowhere to win Iowa was telling. But amazingly the media, after just one win, started proclaiming him a cert for the nomination. But best of all Clinton then wins in New Hampshire. Two things came ot my mind the next day.
1)It was obvious that if Obama was going to win in what was effectivley Clintons banker state, it would be via a small margin. Yet they insisted it would be a crushing defeat. That made no sense on purely common sense grounds.
2)Following on from this you have the fallacy that this was actually a 'comeback from Clinton. This was a state only two months earlier she had been expected and was expecting to romp home in. In the end she won by a margin of 2%.
The illusions are that Obama had crsuhed Clintons candidacy and now that Clinton has made a comeback.
I am now more convinced than ever that the media are going to swing this. Power is percieved, statements dont have to be true to be powerful.
The large media corporations want Clinton on the Democratic side. I would hedge my bets on her, though I hope i'm wrong!
John Pilger has a good take on the US Presidential elections in today鈥檚 New Statesman. He quotes the late Julius Nyerere of Tanzania who asked why haven鈥檛 we all got a vote in the election? 鈥淪urely everyone with a TV set has earned that right just for enduring the merciless bombardment every four years鈥.
Pilger continues that presidential campaigns are a parody, entertaining and often grotesque, a ritual danse macabre of flags, balloons and bullshit, designed to camouflage a venal system based on money, power, human division and a culture of permanent war.
Barack Obama, he writes, is a glossy Uncle Tom who would bomb Pakistan. Hillary Clinton, another bomber, is anti-feminist. John McCain's one distinction is that he bombed a country. They all believe the US is not subject to the rules of human behaviour, because it is a city 'upon a hill', regardless that most of humanity sees it as a monumental bully which, since 1945, has overthrown 50 governments, many of them democracies, and bombed 30 nations, destroying millions of lives.
Mark on the Guantanamo thread would largely agree with Pilger but, whereas Pilger condemns the system, Mark is pretty happy with it. Let us hope that it is an exaggeration.