Heidi Li's Potpourri

Political integrity, professionalism, and plain manners in a time where it feels unsafe to speak one's mind

Note: this is a revised version of an earlier post.

The comment, which was directed to this earlier post on this blog:

....

I don't really know or care what your formalistic obsession with DNC Convention rules are, and I doubt other GULC professors will care either. If you want to have a serious conversation about the role of sexism in the campaign, I suspect you might find some Obama supporters who are willing to have that conversation. But if you start by telling your other profs that they supported Obama because he's black, or because he's a man, or because he is hip, they won't respect you and they won't listen to anything else you have to say.

My reply, with identification of the alum redacted:

Dear Mr. G.

Because you did not comment anonymously and shared your views frankly, I am taking the time to to let you know that I have read and considered them. Of course I disagree with your perspective on my position on President Obama: I believe I have criticized him when it is merited, not demonized him. But as you note, beginning  by telling somebody something they are not likely to agree with is not a very engaging way to begin a dialogue.

So, let me just say that the most interesting point you raise, in my opinion - lawyer to lawyer - is whether or not my expectation that the DNC abide by its own rules (which would have included not awarding any of Florida's or Michigan's delegates to then-Senator Obama, which meant he would not have entered  the roll call ahead in the pledged delegate count or the popular vote count) is "formalistic". Legal formalism has a number of meanings; it is a contested term. One of the things it means is applying rules as if the substantive results are politically irrelevant. Since legal rules often have political impact, to do this with legal rules is sometimes criticized as missing that point, the point about the overlap between law and politics (how tight that linkage is or should be is another contested point.That point is not relevant to the DNC's conduct. The DNC is a political institution, and nobody I know would deny the link between the Democratic Party and politics. The problem is that the Democratic Party acted, for whatever reason, without political integrity, comparably to FDR when he attempted his Supreme Court packing scheme. Let us assume that both FDR and the DNC acted from good intentions: each believing that if they changed established rules in order to get particular results this would be justified because the results would be good. The problem with what FDR did was that it showed an unwillingness to win his case for the New Deal through politics and suggested a profound disrespect for those who disagreed with him politically. The problem with what the DNC did is that it showed an unwillingness to allow the delegates to the convention choose the Democratic nominee and a profound disrespect for the millions of primary voters who did not share the DNC establshment's preference for a candidate.

These elitist, authoritarian measures violate the spirit of liberal politics, which actually depends upon self-commitment to norms interpreted non-instrumentally so as to make politics more than a game of might makes right. In the long run, I believe right makes an political institution mightier and might makes right weakens political institutions. FDR's courtpacking move brought in the original vogue for laws institutionalizing term limits. I believe these laws to be undemocratic, preferring, for political reasons, a self-enforced political-cultural norm about the number of terms that is appropriate. Likewise, I believe that ultimately the current Democratic Party has marred itself by showing that it is as unwilling to respect the franchise as it was during Jim Crow days or the Republican Party was in 2000.

Note to readers: Many have sent comments or private emails to lend moral support and advice about taking care about running against the majority view in the workplace, especially around this election. I believe I was misleading in my original post. I will only comment on the election and its meaning for the law school if I can do so courteously and if it seems at all worthwhile. But I appreciate, greatly every message of support and solidarity. Camaraderie among dissidents is alive and well.

As for the morning session of the faculty retreat ... I made the choice to, in the words of the Beatles, let it be. The panel includes two of three colleagues who will work in the new administration in high positions. One will be working specifically on climate change, two others in the department of justice. These colleagues are liberals and not among those who chilled the atmosphere of the law center during the election season. They would have worked in a Clinton administration and will do good and important work no matter what. Today is not the day to distract from their aspirations. There will be better occasions to raise the issues that distress me.

Hey, Mr. Plouffe - Do you realize how fascistic you sound?

From my friend who gets email from the David Plouffe, Campaign Manager Obama For America/DNC PAC (that's the Democratic National Committee, which is, indeed a mega-PAC): (emphases mine)

S-----

I just recorded a special video message -- from a place you might recognize -- about this weekend's Change is Coming house meetings, and why you should join tens of thousands of your fellow supporters.
Watch the video and find a Change is Coming house meeting near you. Or host one yourself and invite your friends, family, and neighbors.

At the house meetings, you'll reflect on our campaign, discuss the future of this movement, and identify some ways to get involved in your community.

Meeting hosts will report back, and your feedback will be instrumental in guiding this movement through some important and unprecedented territory.

This grassroots organization has always been about more than an election. It's about transforming our country -- and we've only just begun.

With the enormous challenges we're facing at home and abroad, we have no choice but to continue working together. There's so much more we can do to help Barack bring change to America.

How we do that is up to you.

Watch the video and sign up to host or attend a house meeting this weekend:

http://my.barackobama.com/changeiscoming

I hope you'll continue to make history with us.

Thanks and happy holidays,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Please donate.
Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee, www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Democratic National Committee, 430 S. Capitol St. SE, Washington, DC 20003 Contributions or gifts to the Democratic National Committee are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

*********************

My reactions:

1.  Since when does the DNC PAC = Obama for America? Suppose you supported another Democrat for President and objected to President-Elect Obama's selection as the candidate, but you donated to the DNC before you knew they would take extreme measures to make sure that your primary vote meant nothing? Will the DNC-PAC-Obama-for-America refund your money? (After they get out of debt, naturally.)

2.  The technique outlined - hold meetings with some predefined agenda with hosts reporting back to HQ is repugnant to the ideals of liberal democracy, which call for a division between the private and the public. But this is the favored technique of the DNC-PAC-Obama-for-America organization. They used it to rig the Democratic Party's convention. (Discussion of that episode appears here and here.)

3. Why is the DNC giving its website to raise money for President-Elect Obama? The DNC is in the red. Nobody from the Obama campaign has pledged that the merged entity, DNC-PAC-Obama-for-America, will be paying off that debt. The presumption is that the money is for Mr. Obama's next campaign, presumably for reelection in 2012. So once again the DNC is predetermining who it intends to run in an election. Don't bother with house-parties. The DNC-PAC-Obama-for-America Party is already in full swing.

Pay attention when you vote

After the article from Politico, reprinted in its entirety, below, I have added links to posts about the concerns this liberal aired both before and aftershe decided not to vote for Mr. Obama in the Democratic Primary Mr. Obama has not changed. Many of his liberal supporters were either kidding themselves (and others) or simply were not paying attention to material available not only in the MSM and on blogs, but contained in Mr. Obama's books about himself. He is a conservative person, Nixonian in his tendencies toward deception. If you are surprised by that now, it is only because you were not paying attention before. How does it feel to have been bamboozled and okie-doked?

Of course if you voted for Mr. Obama for reasons other than thinking he would be liberal and progressive, you may have been right on the money.

If like me, you are a Democrat's Democrat, you should be rather worried about who Mr. Obama intends to select at the new DNC chair. The MyBarackObama Democratic Party is not recognizable as the Democratic Party.

Liberals voice concerns about Obama
By: Carol E. Lee and Nia-Malika Henderson
December 8, 2008 09:00 AM EST
[emphases added]

Liberals are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices.

Obama has reversed pledges to immediately repeal tax cuts for the wealthy and take on Big Oil. He’s hedged his call for a quick drawdown in Iraq. And he’s stocking his White House with anything but stalwarts of the left.

Now some are shedding a reluctance to puncture the liberal euphoria at being rid of President George W. Bush to say, in effect, that the new boss looks like the old boss.

“He has confirmed what our suspicions were by surrounding himself with a centrist to right cabinet. But we do hope that before it's all over we can get at least one authentic progressive appointment,” said Tim Carpenter, national director of the Progressive Democrats of America.

OpenLeft blogger Chris Bowers went so far as to issue this plaintive plea: “Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?”

Even supporters make clear they’re on the lookout for backsliding. “There’s a concern that he keep his basic promises and people are going to watch him,” said Roger Hickey, a co-founder of Campaign for America’s Future.

Obama insists he hasn’t abandoned the goals that made him feel to some like a liberal savior. But the left’s bill of particulars against Obama is long, and growing.

Obama drew rousing applause at campaign events when he vowed to tax the windfall profits of oil companies. As president-elect, Obama says he won’t enact the tax.

Obama’s pledge to repeal the Bush tax cuts and redistribute that money to the middle class made him a hero among Democrats who said the cuts favored the wealthy. But now he’s struck a more cautious stance on rolling back tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year, signaling he’ll merely let them expire as scheduled at the end of 2010.

Obama’s post-election rhetoric on Iraq and choices for national security team have some liberal Democrats even more perplexed. As a candidate, Obama defined and separated himself from his challengers by highlighting his opposition to the war in Iraq from the start. He promised to begin to end the war on his first day in office.

Now Obama’s says that on his first day in office he will begin to “design a plan for a responsible drawdown,” as he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. Obama has also filled his national security positions with supporters of the Iraq war: Sen. Hillary Clinton, who voted to authorize force in Iraq, as his secretary of state; and President George W. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, continuing in the same role.

The central premise of the left’s criticism is direct – don’t bite the hand that feeds, Mr. President-elect. The Internet that helped him so much during the election is lighting up with irritation and critiques.

“There don't seem to be any liberals in Obama's cabinet,” writes John Aravosis, the editor of Americablog.com. “What does all of this mean for Obama's policies, and just as important, Obama Supreme Court announcements?”

“Actually, it reminds me a bit of the campaign, at least the beginning and the middle, when the Obama campaign didn't seem particularly interested in reaching out to progressives,” Aravosis continues. “Once they realized that in order to win they needed to marshal everyone on their side, the reaching out began. I hope we're not seeing a similar ‘we can do it alone’ approach in the transition team.”

This isn’t the first liberal letdown over Obama, who promptly angered the left after winning the Democratic primary by announcing he backed a compromise that would allow warrantless wiretapping on U.S. soil to continue.

Now it’s Obama’s Cabinet moves that are drawing the most fire. It’s not just that he’s picked Clinton and Gates. It’s that liberal Democrats say they’re hard-pressed to find one of their own on Obama’s team so far – particularly on the economic side, where people like Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers are hardly viewed as pro-labor.

“At his announcement of an economic team there was no secretary of labor. If you don’t think the labor secretary is on the same level as treasury secretary, that gives me pause,” said Jonathan Tasini, who runs the website workinglife.org. “The president-elect wouldn't be president-elect without labor."

During the campaign Obama gained labor support by saying he favored legislation that would make it easier for unions to form inside companies. The “card check” bill would get rid of a secret-ballot method of voting to form a union and replace it with a system that would require companies to recognize unions simply if a majority of workers signed cards saying they want one. Obama still supports that legislation, aides say – but union leaders are worried that he no longer talks it up much as president-elect.

“It's complicated,” said Tasini, who challenged Clinton for Senate in 2006. “On the one hand, the guy hasn't even taken office yet so it's a little hasty to be criticizing him. On the other hand, there is legitimate cause for concern. I think people are still waiting but there is some edginess about this.”

That’s a view that seems to have kept some progressive leaders holding their fire. There are signs of a struggle within the left wing of the Democratic Party about whether it’s just too soon to criticize Obama -- and if there’s really anything to complain about just yet.

Case in point: One of the Campaign for America’s Future blogs commented on Obama’s decision not to tax oil companies’ windfall profits saying, “Between this move and the move to wait to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, it seems like the Obama team is buying into the right-wing frame that raising any taxes - even those on the richest citizens and wealthiest corporations - is bad for the economy.”

Yet Campaign for America’s Future will be join about 150 progressive organizations, economists and labor groups to release a statement Tuesday in support of a large economic stimulus package like the one Obama has proposed, said Hickey, a co-founder of the group.

“I’ve heard the most grousing about the windfall profits tax, but on the other hand, Obama has committed himself to a stimulus package that makes a down payment on energy efficiency and green jobs,” Hickey said. “The old argument was, here’s how we afford to make these investments – we tax the oil companies’ windfall profits. … The new argument is, in a bad economy that could get worse, we don’t.”

Obama is asking for patience – saying he’s only shifting his stance on some issues because circumstances are shifting.

Aides say he backed off the windfall profits tax because oil prices have
dropped below $80 a barrel. Obama also defended hedging on the Bush tax cuts.

“My economic team right now is examining, do we repeal that through legislation? Do we let it lapse so that, when the Bush tax cuts expire, they're not renewed when it comes to wealthiest Americans?” Obama said on “Meet the Press.” “We don't yet know what the best approach is going to be.”

On Iraq, he says he’s just trying to make sure any U.S. pullout doesn’t ignite “any resurgence of terrorism in Iraq that could threaten our interests.”

Obama has told his supporters to look beyond his appointments, that the change he promised will come from him and that when his administration comes together they will be happy.

“I think that when you ultimately look at what this advisory board looks like, you'll say this is a cross-section of opinion that in some ways reinforces conventional wisdom, in some ways breaks with orthodoxy in all sorts of way,” Obama recently said in response to questions about his appointments during a news conference on the economy.

The leaders of some liberal groups are willing to wait and see.

“He hasn’t had a first day in office,” said John Isaacs, the executive director for Council for Livable World. “To me it’s not as important as who’s there, than what kind of policies they carry out.”

“These aren’t out-and-out liberals on the national security team, but they may be successful implementers of what the Obama national security policy is,” Isaacs added. “We want to see what policies are carried forward, as opposed to appointments.”

Juan Cole, who runs a prominent anti-war blog called Informed Comment, said he worries Obama will get bad advice from Clinton on the Middle East, calling her too pro-Israel and “belligerent” toward Iran. “But overall, my estimation is that he has chosen competence over ideology, and I'm willing to cut him some slack,” Cole said.

Other voices of the left don’t like what they’re seeing so far and aren’t waiting for more before they speak up.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich warned that Obama’s economic team of Summers and Geithner reminded him of John F. Kennedy’s “best and the brightest” team, who blundered in Vietnam despite their blue-chip pedigrees.

David Corn, Washington bureau chief of the liberal magazine Mother Jones, wrote in Sunday’s Washington Post that he is “not yet reaching for a pitchfork.”

But the headline of his op-ed sums up his point about Obama’s Cabinet appointments so far: “This Wasn’t Quite the Change We Envisioned.”

For those think they were and are being hoodwinked, please see the following sampling of writing detailing the concerns that are, for some, only blossoming now.

These days Barack Obama seems increasingly like Lyndon Johnson 

Now, will you please stop telling me that Sen. Obama's election is critical to women's reproductive rights

Camp Obama?! Senator Obama seems to be turning into Rev. Sun Myung Moon

Of "Truth Squads" and fear of free speech: "Heed Their Rising Voices"

Do progressives REALLY want to support a campaign starting an "official faith tour"?

The quality of intent: What is really at stake in the 2008 Presidential Election

No comparison!

Senator Obama: you are getting CREEPy

I kid you not: Senator Obama's campaign adviser is now saying he is not "like a high school-girl waiting for date."

Another Sun Myung Moon moment from My Barack Obama aka the DNC

Just in from a friend who is on the President-elect's mailing list:

What IS this? It reads like some sort of tent-revival/teeny-bopper/new-age infotainment ad. Why is mybarackobama now the the new name for the Democratic Party? Is Obama for America officially operating  with 2012 in mind, as I have suggested previously, hence we are receiving messages from David Plouffe in his capacity as "Campaign Manager, Obama for America"?

In the United States of America, political parties do not have Constitutional status. They are not to be conflated with the government, which, in contast to parliamentary systems, is not in the possession of the prevailing party. And neither the head of any political party nor the President of the United States is to be conflated with government either - that would be a totalitarian regime.

President-elect Obama must come to realize that these messages coming from his campaign manager, using the resources of the debt-ridden DNC, are unbecoming to say the least. As a Democrat, they make me cringe. I have no problem with patriotism, I have no problem with politicians building their base. But as a Democrat and a democrat, I shy away from messages that sound cultish or invoke the style of Sunday morning TV preachers to "encourage" everybody to "plan the next steps for this movement". What movement? Mr. Obama: you are the President now. Your job is not to lead a movement, if it ever was. Your job is to lead the country, the entire country, not just those who supported you or voted you. You are the chief executive officer of the United States of America. Form your cabinet, staff the executive branch, and lead the country. In the meantime, please note, it is, again to say the least, unseemly to have your Campaign Manager sending messages with a graphic that makes no mention of the United States but just continues to refer to "CHANGE" and displays your personal symbol. We need a president, not a guru.

Compare the above with Reverend Moon's organizational materials to catch the similarities in style, if not content. Examples here.

Who will be the next DNC Chair?

The DNC is in the red and is now shilling commemorative coffee mugs to try to pay down its debt. The new DNC chair, who will be selected by President-elect Obama. Since President-elect seems disinclined to bail out the DNC with his own campaign funds (he is permitted to give as much as he wants to the Party from those funds), it will be interesting to see who he selects.

Meanwhile here's a blast from the past, in a year when the Party had to elect a chair. Guess who wrote it?

This Saturday in Orlando, at a meeting of state party chairs, a parade of potential candidates are going to be making the case for why they should be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee.

I don’t have a candidate. But I do have a litmus test: Anyone raising the idea that the party needs to “move to the middle” should immediately be escorted out of the building. Better yet, a trap door should open beneath them, sending them plummeting down an endless chute into electoral purgatory — which is exactly where the party will be permanently headquartered if it continues to adopt such a strategy.

Among those eyeing the position are Howard Dean, former White House aide Harold Ickes, Texas Rep. Marty Frost, former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb, former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, New Democrat Network founder Simon Rosenberg, political strategist Donnie Fowler, and telecom exec Leo Hindery.

Although less than 450 people will ultimately decide who becomes the next party chair, when the DNC votes on Feb. 12, the outcome will have a profound effect on shaping the party’s future. Will Democrats continue to toe the strategy line of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council that has brought them to the brink of permanent minority-party status? Or will they finally return to the party’s roots and recapture its lost political soul — and the White House and Congress with it?

Welcome to the Great Democratic Party Identity Crisis of 2005.

Ever since the election, Democratic leaders have been crawling over each other in a mad scramble to the middle. Indeed, this is the worst case of midriff bulge since Kirstie Alley stopped by Sizzler’s all-you-can-eat buffet.

“Things are accomplished in the middle. We have to work toward the middle. And I think that that’s clear.” That was new Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on “Meet the Press” this weekend. He didn’t elaborate on what good was “clearly accomplished” in the middle over the past four years, but perhaps he was referring to the invasion of Iraq. Almost makes you long for the spineless bleating of Tom Daschle, doesn’t it?

Last week’s meeting of the 21-strong Democratic Governors Association was similarly an orgy of centrist groping, best summed up by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who said, “This, for us, is our moment to push an agenda . . . that is centrist and that speaks to where most people are.”

If Gov. Granholm, a rising star in the party, really thinks the center is where the majority of people were located this past election, the Democrats are in even worse trouble than we think. Have these people learned nothing from 2000, 2002 and 2004? How many more concession speeches do they have to give — from “the center” — before they realize it’s not a very fruitful place?

Putting aside for a moment the question of the party’s soul and focusing entirely on hardball politics, running to the middle has been proven to be the single stupidest strategy the Democrats can pursue.

As cognitive psychologist George Lakoff told me: “Democrats moving to the middle is a double disaster that alienates the party’s progressive base while simultaneously sending a message to swing voters that the other side is where the good ideas are.” It unconsciously locks in the notion that the other side’s positions are worth moving toward, while your side’s positions are the ones to move away from. Plus every time you move to the center, the right just moves further to the right.

And if middle-of-the-roadism is such a great vote-getter, why don’t we see Republicans moving there? In fact, framing the political debate in right-left terms is so old, so tired, and so wrong that we need to resist all temptation to do so. There is nothing left-wing about wanting corporations to pay their fair share rather than hide their profits in PO boxes in Bermuda, or in ensuring access to health care now rather than paying the bill at the emergency room later.

That’s why the DNC race is so important. The party needs a chairman able to drive a stake through the heart of its bankrupt GOP-lite strategy and champion the populist economic agenda that has already proven potent at the ballot box in many conservative parts of the country. Just how potent is revealed in “The Democrats’ Da Vinci Code,” a brilliant upcoming American Prospect cover story by David Sirota that shows how a growing number of Democrats in some of the reddest regions in America have racked up impressive, against-the-grain wins by framing a progressive economic platform in terms of values and right vs. wrong. These are not “left” ideas; they are good ideas.

“This,” writes Sirota, “is not the traditional (and often condescending) Democratic pandering about the need for a nanny government to provide for the masses. It is us-versus-them red meat, straight talk about how the system is working against ordinary Americans.” These red-state progressives have brought the Democratic Party back to its true calling and delivered, according to Sirota, “as powerful a statement about morality and authenticity as any of the GOP’s demagoguery on ‘guns, God, and gays.’”

This strategy of economic populism coincides perfectly with what is the most significant shift in Democratic politics in a generation: the astounding growth of a grassroots donor base. Thanks in no small part to the Internet, the Kerry campaign and the DNC raised between them over $300 million from grassroots donors. Kerry alone raised over $71 million from donors who contributed $200 or less. What’s more, the DNC experienced a sevenfold increase in donors — skyrocketing from 400,000 in 2000 to the 2.7 million who contributed in 2004.

This reallocation of power away from lobbyists and big corporate donors will finally allow Democrats to stop taking policy dictation from their corporate financiers and start offering up an alternative vision to compete with George Bush’s. But only if the will is there — which means only if the next DNC chair understands and embraces this tectonic shift.

And only if he promises, at all costs, to stop playing in the middle of the road.

The emphases are mine. Do check out the author of the piece.

We have to keep it simple so that the DNC gets it

Politics, and politicians, are all about power. This is true of politicians I prefer and politicians I do not prefer. So the only way to make politicians accountable is to make them fear that they will lose power. Right now, the DNC, the national Democratic Party PAC, is riding high - their preferred candidate wangled the Party's nomination and won the election. (You can learn more about Dr. Dean's latest public pronouncements at this post on The Confluence). This confidence will spill over into the new year as we build up to the inauguration.

There is one immediate way we can prove to the DNC that as Democrats (or former Democrats) we will not be taken for granted by the Party's leadership. We can make a clear, simple statement in terms that the DNC understands: money. The DNC ran up 15 million dollars in debt. Senator Clinton has about eight million dollars in debt. If we get rid of Senator Clinton's debt immediately while the DNC works to eliminate its, the DNC will most definitely take note.

I know that many people are conflicted about donating to Senator Clinton because she campaigned vigorously for Senator Obama or because she may take a position in his administration. But the reason to donate NOW to retire the remaining debt from Senator Clinton's primary is NOT to help Senator Clinton: it is because if that 8 million is retired in a flash, the DNC will immediately realize that they cannot be complacent about what you can be sure they are already thinking about: how to retain power in the next midterm elections and how to get Senator Obama reelected to a second term.

Senator Clinton will make her own decisions, as she always has, about what political steps to take next. And she will take those steps that she thinks will increase her power. She's a politician, and unlike some politicians, has not claimed to be a saint. I for one do not look for sainthood in politicians - that would be a category mistake.

Senator Clinton has to, and will, take responsibility for enhancing her political power. WE have to take responsibility for letting the DNC know that not only are they are not getting our money because times are lean; they are not getting our money because we want to use it to demonstrate, in terms of hard cold cash, that if our choice is to help the DNC or to help the candidate whose supporters the DNC treated with disrespect and disdain, we are helping that candidate. And when we pull it off - when our contributions leave Senator Clinton's primary campaign debt free, we will be able to celebrate not Senator Clinton's power, but our own.

All money donated here at HillaryClinton.com goes to pay down Senator Clinton's primary debt and not for any other purpose. You will not get a T-shirt for your money but you will get a sense of self-respect, and the knowledge that you are working in tandem with others who will be moving ahead toward the goals of keeping political parties more accountable to ALL those whose votes they seek.

A contribution to retire Senator Clinton's debt is a statement to yourself, to others, and to the DNC.