Spike Lee Brings It On

Quote of the Day - Andrew Sullivan

I'm just going to cut and paste the quote, because this shit is too good:
"The Clintons, man, they would lie on a stack of Bibles. Snipers? That’s not misspeaking; that’s some pure bullshit. I voted for Clinton twice, but that’s over with. These old black politicians say, “Ooh, Massuh Clinton was good to us, massuh hired a lot of us, massuh was good!” Hoo! Charlie Rangel, David Dinkins—they have to understand this is a new day. People ain’t feelin’ that stuff. It’s like a tide, and the people who get in the way are just gonna get swept out into the ocean," - Spike Lee

Winning on Hope

Advice to Clinton (and to Obama who already knows it): "Keep Your Sunny Side Up" - Paul Finkleman @ Balkinization

A very interesting post by guest blogger Paul Finkleman about the promise of hope in a presidential campaign leads me once again to the conclusion that Sen. Obama would whip Sen. McCain in a general election. It's not so much based on the organizational structure Sen. Obama has built that will work in his favor (although it certainly will), but the televised debates that will seal the deal for the American electorate I think. The image of the young, proming, animated and hopeful Sen. Obama debating the merits of the war, taxation and universal healthcare with the old, hardly mobile and quick to anger Sen. McCain will naturally favor Sen. Obama. For all of the times that either Sen. Clinton or the moderators of the Democratic debates tried to goad Sen. Obama into an angry response, you would witness a person who tempered his anger with smart, considered replies that, often times, allowed Sen. Obama to come out of the moment looking and acting presidential.
The sense of hope that Sen. Obama has based his campaign around isn't a false hope either. It's not uncommon to find Sen. Obama chiding parents for not taking a more active role in their children's lives, or pointing out how, while being the president affords him a great deal of power, the changes he wants to bring about in America rely just as much on the American people as they do on his leadership. Unlike Sen. Clinton who claims she is in the 'solutions' business, Sen. Obama's solution is to raise people up and offer them a promise of hope that is contigent on the American public taking a more active role in politics and governance. To me, it is the difference between a nanny-state of Sen. Clinton's doing and a self-governing state of Sen. Obama's making.
When it comes to a general election between Sens. Obama and McCain, you only have to look at how Sen. McCain has responded to criticism and how he has lead in the Senate to give you the sense that, while a great legislator he may be, a leader of a nation, of domestic and foreign policy, he is not. It's that promise of hope for a better future that Sen. Obama offers while Sens. Clinton and McCain offer only promises that they will try but if they fail then it's of no fault of their own. They will claim the American people were duped while Sen. Obama will personally admit momentary defeat and then go out to re-energize the American public. I get the sense that an Obama administration will see great victories and great failures while a Clinton or McCain administration will only see the same patterns of governance of the last twenty years.
I'm 27 years old now. The last twenty years of politics is not what I want. So, to put it simply, fuck McCain and Clinton.

Yes We Can

My sister has raved about this all day. I haven't figured out all the faces in it, but most of them I have. Watch and realize why electing Sen. Obama is more important that electing the first black man or the first woman as president.

Update: So according to Truemors this ad was commissioned by MoveOn.org after they endorsed Sen. Obama on the 1st of February. The vote to endorse was an overwhelming 7:3 ratio of Obama to Clinton. So I don't think MoveOn is doing anything beyond giving their chosen candidate the best support they can give.

Worth More than a Hundred Pundits

Politics - xkcd

I think this statement by web comic xkcd pretty much sums up the sentiments of a lot of Americans when it comes to their support of Barak Obama. Beyond the sentiment that voting for Sen. Obama makes one feel 'proud', xkcd offers two points that I either hadn't known or thought of. One is Sen. Obama's support for the Open Source community and the use of open standards to create greater transparency between the government and the people. Sen. Obama's tapping of Lawrence Lessing's experience in understanding how the open source movement could help the federal government shows a lot about Sen. Obama's approach to government computing and software standards, along with records and document transparency.
The other point sounds a bit silly at first, but for a generation of 20-somethings raised on the cynicism of the Simpsons, the Daily Show and South Park, the desire to see Jon Stewart smile again is a strangely compelling reason to vote for Sen. Obama. The comics of xkcd are funny, witty, intelligent and, on occasion, incredibly sweet. So for it's writer to express such a sentiment is keeping within his character. I too want to see Jon Stewart smile again. He was the rallying point for me after 9/11 and I think for my generation, he can be a rallying point for a new politics. I hope you all give xkcd his due time and listen to his words. Whether you vote for Sen. Obama or not is up to you.

Barak Obama - The Jack Ryan of 2008

This is just a bit of free-thought commentary on the primary race as I see it thus far. In my opinion, Barak Obama represents in many important ways, the Jack Ryan of Tom Clancy's books. He is a humble yet driven individual who believes that both words and action are necessary to bring about any real change. In my youth (which wasn't all that long ago) I was an avid reader of Tom Clancy's books. Jack Ryan represented a lot of what I expect from our political and bureaucratic leaders: intelligence, respect, the willingness to work without acknowledgment and, perhaps most importantly, the ability to take one's ideals and find pragmatic ways of applying them. Many commentators and pundits have argued that Sen. Obama's strength lies in his speech-making but his weakness is in his policy substance but that's not what I see at all. So much of what Sen. Obama speaks about comes from his policy positions, from that substance he has built up through his years, but he believes that the only way to enact those policies is to inspire the people to believe that, yes, he can do these things. Perhaps Sen. Obama doesn't have a wonkish answer to every policy question but I don't expect a wonkish answer for every question that is asked. There's a difference between giving wonkery and telling it like it is. Both Sen. Obama and Jack Ryan are the types of people who would rather tell it like it is than obscure things with massive details that, in the end, really don't matter so long as action is taken. We've had wonkish presidents before, in Gerald Ford, in Jimmy Carter, in George H W Bush, but those presidents, I think most can agree, were rather ineffectual in getting things done. It was the presidents who inspired the people who made the real changes. Having a mind for wonkery is all well and good and necessary, but to speak to the people like that, as if they had the years of experience to understand the details of a wonkish answer, is rather condescending and stupid. Giving people answers they can understand, much as doctors do, is a better quality to have than giving them answers that merely have the appearance of knowledge. Again, Sen. Obama tells it like it is without talking down to the people, much as Jack Ryan did. And a president who can tell us that we need to step up because one man can only do so much is what makes me want to vote for him.

Putting the Black Man in his Place, or the False Victim of Hillary Clinton

Black Dreams, White Liberals - Charles Krauthammer @ Washington Post

I don't normally link to a Charles Krauthammer op-ed piece since most of the time the man is off his wheelchair. He does occasionally come up with a decent piece of writing though and his op-ed today on the Clinton-Obama race issue is a good bit of writing for him, particularly since he gets to slam liberals while appearing to support Sen. Obama. There really isn't anything substantially new to what Krauthammer writes but he does make a point that I hadn't fully considered yet: that the Clintons are treating Sen. Obama like some uppity nigger usurping a white woman's place. It plays to all the key points of the race card in the wrong way for the Clinton campaign to argue that Sen. Obama should wait his turn, especially since he's some ghetto-hood, drug-slinging darkie who only holds his place because the white liberals were nice and let him play with the big boys. Problem is, Sen. Obama is none of those things; he is not an 'uppity nigger' and he certainly was not some ghetto-hood as the Clinton campaign insinuates.
Sen. Obama should not have to wait his turn and, to be sure, Sen. Clinton should stop using this false victimhood by acting like a weak-willed woman who is being denied her due all because of some black man. I do not want the first woman president to win based on her playing the victim, particularly since the potentially first black president has not played such a role at any point. If Sen. Clinton wishes to garner the respect Sen. Obama has then she needs to rise above identity politics and play at the same level as Sen. Obama. And that right there is where I think the Obama campaign has a winning strategy. He isn't playing at the same level as the rest of the Democratic field. He's playing at a much higher level, something all the candidates, both Republican and Democrat, should aspire to.

Update: And it seems that I'm not the only one who thinks Sen. Obama is telling the rest of the field to catch up.

The Greeks to the Rescue

The Sophrosyne of Obama - Andrew Sullivan

I like this term, but then again there are many Greek terms that seem to embody multiple meanings. Still, for a civilization that at various times emphasized moderation in all things, including moderation, sophrosyne is an apt term. Sen. Obama's speaking style follows this ideal quite well.

The Politics of Hope

Change is in the Air - Andrew Sullivan

I get the feeling, much like the Anchoress, that this year of electoral politics will throw the populous into a turmoil. but after years of bad economic indicators and a malaise among the people, I also get the feeling that this election cycle will raise people's spirits and might even keep the nation out of a recession. The fact that my entire family is excited now about politics since Iowa, that any mention of politics leads to a bare minimum 20 minute discussion, gives me serious hope for what will come.

Realism versus "Realism"

Quote of the Day - Andrew Sullivan

I thought that moment in the New Hampshire debate when Sen. Clinton stopped Sens. Edwards and Obama with her so-call 'reality-check' was tacky and shrill. Sullivan here, points to a comment by Sen. Obama in his new stump speech that tackles the 'reality-check' idea rather well by noting that JFK didn't place his policy decision to announce a goal of going to the moon on the alter of that cynical 'reality-check'. It's fairly obvious from the history of the U.S. that when Americans are called upon, and I mean seriously called upon, they rise to the occasion. The idea that realism as an ideology cannot contain some idealism and hope is wrong. What realism does call for is a plan to turn that idealism and hope into reality.