Was E.J. right or wrong?

I was at storytime at the library with my daughter last week when I saw E.J. Dionne's book from earlier this year, Stand Up Fight Back on the shelf, so I checked it out. I'm a huge E.J. Dionne fan, and have been enjoying the book.

I hesitate to state someone else's hypothesis, so I'll just say that a key message I'm taking from the book so far is the innate strenght of moderates and moderation in our country. As I'm reading, I'm trying to decide whether this election really disproves that idea or not. I'm not convinced that it does.

Just yesterday, I sat in a session with Cokie Roberts where she pointed out that politics in America are much more polarized than people in America. So, as I continue to read the Dionne book, I'm going to continue to try to understand the extent to which perhaps moderates are the mainstream, but are masked both by politics, and by the public interpretations of the election and exit polls as they've been put forward so far.

Colleges banning military recruiters are no wiser than Solomon

A federal appeals court yesterday ruled against the Solomon Amendment, which punishes universities that refuse to allow military recruiters on campus. From today's Washington Post

The court ruled that the Solomon Amendment violated the free-speech rights of schools that restricted on-campus recruiting in response to the military's ban on gays. By threatening to withdraw federal funds from schools that refused to cooperate with military recruiters, the court wrote, the government was compelling them "to express a message that is incompatible with their educational objectives."

As matters of law and public policy, the Solomon Amendment is wrong for precisely the reasons indicated by the court, and the schools in question were right to oppose it. However, if these schools really are interested in ending the military's antigay discrimination, they should, on their own volition, give military recruiters places of honor at their job fairs and they should encourage their students to choose military service.

"Don't ask don't tell" is immoral, un-American, and harmful to our national security. As an officer with gay and lesbian friends and family members, I took great offense whenever fellow service members would use antigay epithets. I'd take an offending colleague aside and ask him if he would use similar language about African Americans, Jews, Latinos, or other groups. Of course not! I knew I wasn't instantly changing opinions about gay people. But at least people knew they had comrades who would not tolerate antigay bigotry.

These kinds of confrontations could be quite uncomfortable, especially when they involved somebody senior in rank. But military officers are not expected to be mere functionaries, they are expected to be leaders, and leadership isn’t always comfortable. Nobody wants to think of himself as a bigot, and that’s even more true in an organization that rightly prides itself on the virtual elimination racial bigotry in its ranks. I have seen changed behavior gradually become changed attitudes, especially when service members also have the opportunity to work with openly gay civilian employees. But for change to take hold, it takes time and it takes men and women in uniform willing to perform small acts of leadership each day.

Those men and women will come from all parts of the country and from all walks of life. But if America’s top colleges and universities refuse entrée to military recruiters, they will not come from some of the institutions most likely to produce leaders who are aware of and willing to confront antigay bigotry. Moreover, many of the particular institutions in question are law schools. That means their graduates would not only become military officers, but they would become the attorneys who advise military commanders and who make daily judgments about the interpretation and enforcement of military policy. What better chance for a school to make its mark on the military than by encouraging its new attorneys to practice law in uniform? Experience tells me that officers recruited from these very schools would be especially likely to stand up and make a difference, to put themselves in those uncomfortable situations that test their mettle as leaders. Should we really deny our country -- and our gay and lesbian solders, sailors, Airmen and Marines -- the kinds of officers these schools could produce?

Pell Grants

One tidbit hidden in the giant omnibus bill was the Pell Grant program, our biggest and most well-known program to help make college affordable for low-income students. While most of the debate has focused on a proposed change in the way student financial aid eligibility is calculated (which is pretty difficult to understand), discussion about this particular calculation masks the real issue: we aren't providing enough Pell Grants, or enough money in each grant, to significantly impact the problem of college access for low-income students.

For the third year in a row, Congress has frozen the maximum amount any student can receive through the Pell program at just over $4,000 a year. While those of you as old as I am (or older) may think this sounds pretty sweet, undergraduate tuition itself is running about $7,000 a year at many state institutions around the country--tack on books and lab fees, room and board, the cost of a computer that no college student can do without, and you're easily over $10,000 annually, even at the most affordable of colleges. 25 years ago, Pell Grants covered 84 percent of the cost of attending a public four-year school; now, it's closer to 30 percent. And if you're a poor kid wanting to attend a private school, well, you're relying on the mercy of that school to help you make it. For every school like Harvard that helps give low-income students a shot, there are a dozen more that jealously guard their endowment for better purposes, like building really awesome gyms.

It's also true that not enough students are receiving Pell Grants. This writeup from the Los Angeles Times points out that students from "higher-income families"--those families making between $30,000 and $40,000--may end up losing their Pell Grants altogether because of the proposed change. Since when is a family living on 30 grand high-income?? Republicans are trying to argue that all students who are eligible for Pell Grants receive them, which is simply false.

All of this doesn't even take into account the millions of high school seniors with academic records good enough to get them in to college, but who never even apply because they assume they couldn't afford it. Or the millions more who drop out of high school before they even finish, assuming they can do better by just getting a job now. Or kids whose parents came here illegally, but who have been working hard to be successful in school, only to discover that they are not eligible for any financial assistance whatsoever. But that's legislation (the DREAM Act) for another post.

The last hurrah?

Recently, The Des Moines Register's David Yepsen wrote a piece cautioning Democrats to not overanalyze Bush's reelection and the further erosion of Democrats in the House and Senate. Yepsen ties it in with Iowa Democrats making substantial gains in the Iowa House and Senate. You can read the full article here.

The single most important factor in determining which party wins a legislative seat is the quality of the contenders. Some 80 percent of Iowa's legislative districts can be won by either party, provided they field the better of the two candidates.

Today, Iowa is become more urban and suburban. That means Republicans can no longer go out and recruit mossbacks or gentleman farmers and hope to win the Legislature.

Republicans have to offer more appealing candidates. Democrats did that this year and won. For example, Democratic recruiters actually looked for some pro-life Democrats to run in heavily Catholic or evangelical districts. While this prompted great angst among the purists on the left, it was pragmatic...

Future GOP prospects are tough. Bush only carried Iowa by five votes per precinct, a fact that will again make Iowa a battleground in 2008. When Jim Nussle gives up his eastern Iowa congressional seat in 2006 to run for governor, Democrats will be favored to win it back. The same thing will happen whenever Jim Leach decides to retire.

At the national level, religious conservatives risk overplaying their hand. They are now savaging Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter for not being conservative enough on judicial appointments. Imagine that. The guy who grills Anita Hill to a medium rare in order to get Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court is now not conservative enough?

Great. Run the Arlen Specters out of the GOP. Jim Jeffords already left. That 55-seat majority in the U.S. Senate will evaporate quickly if GOP seats in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania or Maine are ever handed to Democrats. (If the Deep South is trending Republican and Southern Democrats are an endangered species, then the reverse of that could happen in the Northeast. Blue-state Republicans could become a thing of the past.)

Bush won by a slim majority, and Democrats could easily come storming back in four years with a candidate who understands average Americans and the role of religious faith in their lives...

Republicans must also remember that a party that can win three presidential elections in a row is a rare thing in recent American history. Bush's win was narrow. Democrats won't always offer feckless opponents...

Instead of looking at Bush's re-election as ushering in a new Republican era, we could look back at the 2004 election as another 1928 - the last GOP hurrah before a Great Crash.

Not Just Issues - principles; This Means Foreign Policy, Too

Terry rightly pointed out that the left is more or less silent on the question of Iraq, a problem that must be remedied. I'd argue, though, that more than an Iraq policy, we need a coherent foreign policy/national security policy that encompasses but doesn't end at Iraq. The silence about "how to get out of this crisis" is driven by the sad fact that there really are very few, if any, alternatives to the course we're on: put enough troops in place to enforce stability until enough Iraqis are trained and capable of taking over the job in service to a legitimately elected Iraqi government. The moment for presenting credible alternatives was during the build-up to the war, a moment we were similarly, incomprehensibly, and inexusably silent. Anything we'll add at this point is on the margins - get rid of no bid contracts and demand accountability from all of the civilian contractors (or mercenaries, depending upon your point of view) we've got doing the job over there, ensure troop strength is accomplished fairly and honestly rather than through a back-door draft system of stop-loss and extensions, don't rush elections, etc. etc. etc.

The worst we can do is continue to treat the Iraq war as an issue, rather than as an extension of a rational, coherent, principled, and articulated foreign and national security policy. Such a policy will address not only what we see as the errors in judgment, intelligence, and planning in Iraq and how to move forward there, but how to avoid the same quagmire as we address the threats embodied in Iran, North Korea, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the more generalized terrorist networks.

And one more (smallish) area of disagreement with Terry: I think we'd better be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Of course we need to address Iraq, but we also need to address misadventures in governance like the Istook amendment. Not only is it legitimately bad policy, but it demonstrates very clearly that the Republicans, while fully in charge, aren't responsibly managing their legislative process and that the Republicans are not the supporters of individual rights over big government that they claim they are -- Democrats are.

For aid workers, a deadly blurring of lines

by Tiziana Dearing
The Boston Globe, Nov. 27, 2004

Sometimes, television tells the real story by accident. We found out last week that Margaret Hassan was murdered in Iraq. The insurgents who took her hostage on Oct. 19 killed her. Hassan was an Iraqi citizen, and had been doing humanitarian work in the country for 30 years. She was a vocal opponent of the Iraq war.

Seconds before I saw the breaking news of the execution on CNN, I stumbled across an Air Force commercial. It features a high school student asking his friends for food in the cafeteria, and then taking it to a homeless man on the street. Up flashes the new Air Force tagline, "We've been waiting for you," and we see our high schooler, now in the Air Force, parachuting food aid from the back of a military aircraft, presumably during a war. Together, the commercial and the story demonstrate an increasing conflation of humanitarian aid, military action and foreign policy in the war on terror.

There has always been an uneasy relationship between humanitarian aid organizations, governments, and their militaries in conflict situations. Each side has occasionally crossed over the blurry line between them.

(click here to read the complete article at Boston.com)

Dems in Control of CO Committees

Looks like Ken Gordon has decided to do the right thing and appoint members of the Democratic majority to the committee chairmanships.

If you sent an email and/or made a phone call: it worked! If you didn't: lookee here, it works!

Toward a responsible Iraq policy

Michael Kinsley has a short and interesting commentary (LAT, reg. req'd) on the Iraq war that raises some important points. This war is the most important issue facing American policy makers right now. And yet so little dialogue on the left side of the blogosphere is devoted to figuring out how to get us out of this crisis. We choose, instead, to focus on the Istook Amendment. We can hammer this guy forever for his intelligence failures, ineptitude, and general lack of credibility, but until we propose a coherent alternative to his approach, the folks aren't going to listen.

A Nation Divided Against Itself?

Check out this thoughtful article from Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle...As someone in California who was really proud of the stand that SF Mayor Gavin Newsom took in supporting gay marriage, I was outraged by the commentary that followed, including by many in the Democratic Party, that said that Gavin was to blame if we lost the November election. To that I offer the following - if we really want to change hearts and minds, we're in this for the long-term, not for the political expediency of winning or losing one election.

Maybe it is good that the dialogue is happening and perhaps even ultimately good that we are galvanizing ourselves on one side or the other of these social and moral issues. While our society continues to devolve while chasing the lowest common denominator (have you seen Fear Factor or the Swan?), the "moral majority" continues to blame same sex marriage or open discussions of sexuality for the fall of the empire. I'm sure those who fought the battles of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's can draw a similar parallel. In fact, I think one could argue that the desegregation of some schools caused other schools to retreat even further into their old, racist policies.

Do we really have to move backward before we can move forward?

Blinded By the Cause of Same-Sex Marriage
Susan P. KennedySunday, November 21, 2004

I can still hear the fevered invectives we all threw at Ralph Nader earlier this year when he decided to run for president again.

He cost Democrats the election in 2000 and none of us could believe he would be so incredibly arrogant as to muscle his way into a razor-thin 2004 race knowing full well that he could cost us four more years of George W. Bush. What a selfish megalomaniac, Democrats said. He sees his own cause as more important than the needs of the country as a whole -- even with so much at stake. We reviled him. We blamed him. And many of us will never support his cause again, no matter how right or valiant.

With the wreckage of the 2004 election still piled at our feet, all of us in the Democratic Party need to do a little soul-searching.

The gay community's criticism of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein for her post-election observation that the push for same-sex marriage was too much, too fast, too soon for most Americans revealed the gay movement's greatest challenge going forward: Blind self-righteousness.

As an openly gay public official and a staunch Democrat active in every election for the last 25 years, I have to hand it to the Bush campaign, which used the same-sex marriage issue perfectly as a cultural weapon to divide Americans. They didn't care that a constitutional amendment failed -- they wanted it to fail. Its failure opened the door to their true objective -- state ballot initiatives that kept the same-sex marriage issue in the news and on talk shows every day for the last six months of the election.

My gay colleagues are wrong to suggest that our community is being made a scapegoat based on evidence that shows there was no greater turnout among religious conservatives in states with ballot initiatives than in those without. Turnout wasn't the point; values was. Gay marriage became the poster child for Republican attacks on the values of Democratic candidates. The gay community has its head in the sand if it thinks that same-sex marriage was not a decisive issue in the 2004 presidential election. We have our head someplace even less hospitable if we think that Democrats could have weathered the assault had they simply stood up and supported same-sex marriage on principle.

We're no better than Ralph Nader if we attack Democrats who so much as question the strategic wisdom of pushing forward an issue that draws vehement opposition from nearly two-thirds of voters. As with any civil rights movement, we can't always control events as they unfold. No one timed the arrival of a legal challenge in Massachusetts with the presidential election -- that just happened. None of us can steer or deter the dozens of cases winding their way through courtrooms all over the country.

Should Mayor Gavin Newsom have opened the floodgates in San Francisco when he did? History knocked on his door shortly after he was elected. He chose to answer. Many of us were both elated and terrified at the same time. But we do have some ability to choose our confrontations. And the success of our struggle depends on choosing wisely.

First, we have to get our heads out of the sand and recognize that we are both right in our cause and dangerous to our friends. Our progress is what makes us a potent weapon to be used by our enemies. If we don't understand that, we are nothing but a liability to those who support us. Don't attack friends like Feinstein for speaking the truth. Accept it and move forward.
Second, a frontal assault on the marriage issue at this point in time is political suicide. Abortion opponents realized in the mid-1980s that an overt campaign to overturn Roe vs. Wade was a losing strategy. So they changed their tactics, have made enormous progress chipping away at abortion rights over the last 20 years and are now just one Supreme Court appointment away from achieving their ultimate goal. We in the gay community need likewise to fortify our achievements and work from a position of strength.

Gays and lesbians have made enormous progress in recent years: U.S. Supreme Court decisions striking down the last vestiges of our political caste system; recognition of domestic partnerships in cities, states and private companies throughout the nation; public acceptance of what has been nothing short of a cultural invasion in the most important communication medium on the planet -- television.

Polls show that we have developed a tremendous beachhead of public support and acceptance in the last decade. Here in California, Democratic leaders used that to pass one of the strongest domestic-partner laws in the nation -- second only to Vermont's. Gays and lesbians in California are now entitled to nearly identical rights and responsibilities as those afforded heterosexual couples through marriage. This milestone was achieved in a state where just a few years earlier, 62 percent of voters approved the Knight Initiative (Proposition 22) reserving the formal title of "marriage" for heterosexual couples.

The ink is barely dry on California's landmark domestic-partners legislation. We are just now seeing the first of many challenges that will test and ultimately strengthen this legal framework -- dissolution issues, child-custody cases, estate settlements -- every challenge validates and strengthens the body of law that supports recognition of gay and lesbian relationships.
It is from this foundation that the next phase of our struggle must be waged. Gays and lesbians need to stop being defensive and think strategically. We didn't just lose same-sex marriage in 11 states -- eight of those states also banned civil unions. While we fight amongst ourselves, the religious right is trying to recall the judge who upheld California's domestic partner law. That is where our fight is.

A belief in the bedrock principle of equality and civil rights is what binds the gay community to the Democratic Party. If we dismiss the progress that we've made, lash out at our friends and push forward with ill-timed legislation on marriage regardless of the consequences, we become our own Ralph Nader.

Susan P. Kennedy is former Cabinet secretary for Gov. Gray Davis and former executive director of the California Democratic Party. She was a Kerry delegate to the Democratic National Convention.

Thinking more about sex

After reading the Oliphant piece this weekend, my husband pointed out how stunning it was that folks on the right had come to hate him so very, very much. As I mulled that over, it connected with something else I've been mulling over (why the term "values voters" drives me so particularly nuts) and I realized something -- it's about sex.

If you look at the key issues listed, then values voters didn't vote on values. They voted on sexual values. What galvanized the anti-Clinton movement so completely? Sex. What is gay marriage about? Sex. What do the Christian values supported by values voters have in common that other Christian values, such as social justice, charity, and yes, even the death penalty, have in common? Sex. And, by the way, if one looks very carefully, what is a common thread among many fundamentalist movements around the world, both Christian and non-Christian alike? Sex.

Months and months ago (7 May, Washington Post), Charles Krauthammer did a piece on the role of sex in Abu Ghraib. I'd forgotten it, and I shouldn't have. As even I have been pushing that liberals have to learn to talk about how our faiths drive us and our agenda just as much as faith drives the conservative agenda, I forgot to consider where sex fits into that argument. Something I want to think a whole lot more about.

Back to the first Clinton for a moment

Check out this piece by Thomas Oliphant in the Sunday Boston Globe. He gets back to that Vision Thing, and praises Bill Clinton for talking about visionary leadership while standing in the rain at his library dedication.

I supported Kerry, and didn't think he was nearly as bad a candidate as lots of people did. One thing that did frustrate me about him was his lack of a compelling vision. And I do recognize that President Bush has one, even if I fundamentally disagree with it.

It's undoubtedly preaching to the choir to talk about how much vision matters, but I'm struck by how much that's true. And it puzzles me, because as much as I believe the Democratic party has to rejuvenate its base, return to focusing on down-ticket races, grapple with how we understand the middle of the country, etc., I think to some extent visionary leaders just plain arise. It makes me wonder if there isn't something inherent to the political process that Dems have to address, too, in order to make room for those visionary leaders to come up.

Make the budget a sexy issue again (or, for once)

Last week the Congress voted to raise the debt limit for the third time in the Bush years, and to raise it by $800 billion, a sizeable chunk of change. Then, having failed to pass individual budget bills during the eleven months prior when they controlled the congressional agenda, they lumped it all together in a giant omnibus (read: hidey-hole of pork-barrel spending and other noxious provisions) bill and gave Congress less than a day to review the 3,000 page document. Friday's business section was dominated by stories about the declining dollar, our increasing trade deficit, and the warning signals Alan Greenspan shot off about the potential impact of those issues on our economic future. We know we have an "emergency spending" bill coming early next year for somewhere around $80 billion.

The greatest tragedy of the election of 2004 isn't that George Bush was re-elected (although that's really, really bad). The worst part is that Republicans, having had control of both houses of Congress and the White House for three of the last four years, should be held entirely accountable for the horrific status of our federal budget situation. Yet the Democrats managed to muster nary a peep about this travesty, and in fact lost ground both in the Congress and the presidential vote.

It's much easier to talk about fiscal restraint as the minority than the majority party, and, well, folks, we're the minority. If we don't scream to the mountaintops about this issue every time we get a chance for the next two years, it will be a political and a moral failure.

Some of you knew this was coming: The 72 Hour Plan, and We Should Have Seen It Coming

The New York Times > Magazine > Who Lost Ohio? (free registration required)

Read this for an amazing - and frankly, horrifying - look into how the "historic" 527 organizations couldn't bridge the gap between Kerry's nonexistent field strategy and the Bush campaign's perfectly executed field strategy. Many reading this blog have mocked me endlessly for mentioning the RNC's "72 Hour Plan" as THE formidable factor in this campaign that would not be overcome (full disclosure: I may have deserved some mocking, since I did in fact talk about it incessantly since last spring), and to you I say: read 'em and weep. Literally. I did.

Thinking about this has raised a chicken and egg question in my mind: did we abandon our grassroots lo' those many years ago because we lost our vision and thus had no idea what to say to people, or did we run out of things to say because we lost our connection to our grassroots?

(Also, I updated this post about Ken Gordon with a sample letter to the good Senator.)

Radical Localism

Here's an idea (NYT/reg. req'd) that some readers of this blog know I've been espousing for some time. The left has been far too skeptical of -- if not downright hostile to -- local institutions for some time. Recently, there have been some meaningful victories in blue states. The Goodridge decision and California's stem cell referendum are just two examples and I'm sure there are others. I'm with Shayna on giving the old dogs their walking papers. We should reconsider some of their old dog dogma, too.

On trusting the instincts of captains and majors

When President Bush began making senior appointments at the Pentagon after his inauguration in 2001, I distinctly recall several conversations with officers on the Secretary of the Air Force's personal staff where they expressed concern that Bush putting so many people from corporate America -- especially defense corporations -- into key positions would create conflicts of interest. Bush appointed the Secretary of the Air Force from Northrop Grumman, the Secretary of the Army from Enron, and the Secretary of the Navy from General Dynamics. It's clear from this Washington Post article that the instincts of these captains and majors were correct. The article details email messages between Air Force Secretary James G. Roche and his staff about the controversial Air Force effort to lease Boeing 767 aerial refueling tankers. The messages were released by Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has been a staunch opponent of the Boeing tanker lease. Read the article for the details of the issue itself, but here are some key excerpts that certainly suggest that the Roche put Boeing's needs ahead of the needs of the Air Force:

Air Force Secretary James G. Roche asked a lobbyist for Boeing Co. to use the company's Washington contacts to "quash" a deputy undersecretary of defense and make him "pay an appropriate price" for objecting to the Air Force's decision to lease Boeing 767 tanker aircraft....

Roche also pressured independent military cost analysts who questioned the high price of the lease, described other internal Pentagon critics as "animals," and ridiculed executives at European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (EADS) and its Airbus division, the consortium that offered a competing plan, the e-mails show. He told his top public relations aide to "blow . . . away" the EADS chairman for raising questions about the Air Force decision to work with Boeing.

At one point in the three-year Air Force campaign for the lease, Roche e-mailed a friend at Raytheon Co., "Privately between us: Go Boeing!"

It's no wonder that Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), senior committee Democrat Carl M. Levin (Mich.), and McCain called the tanker lease "the most significant" case of corruption since the "Ill Wind" bribery and fraud cases of the 1990s. The "top public relations aide" referred to in the article is almost certainly Bill Bodie the sycophantic and only vaguely competent aide Roche brought with him from Northrop Grumman whom Roche put over the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Public Affairs, where I worked at the time. This entire situation is yet another manifestation of the Bush administration's overly cozy relationship with big business, which, in everything from environmental policy to health care policy to the war in Iraq, has done nothing but sacrifice the interests of the American people in favor of corporate profits.

Stop Loss

The New Republic Online: Stop Loss

According to Michelle Cottle Democrats have a tendency to nominate bad candidates for President. While Kerry might have turned in a good debate performance against Bush, he was still Kerry and the expectations were so low. She worries short sighted Democrats might actually look at Kerry and say "He came so close" and nominate him again. Not only does she warn against re-nominating Kerry in 2008 she strenuously warns against nominating Senator Hillary Clinton.

But the American public is not rational about anyone with the last name Clinton. If you thought the Republican base was energized this year, just give them the chance to vote against that uppity Clinton girl. The GOP possibilities for fund-raising, not to mention creative attack ads, are mind-boggling.

At minimum, Hillary starts with some 40 percent of the country dead-set against her. Granted, an equal number would start out in her corner. But it's hard to see how she unloads all of her baggage in order to reach enough mushy-middle voters to win. The political class may now think of Hillary as a moderate legislator. But the bulk of the electorate, all those folks who won't tune into the race until after Labor Day '08, will be voting on Hillary the icon. Think headbands and cookie-baking. Think Vince Foster and the Rose law firm billing records and the health care debacle. Washington understands that Hillary has grown, but it will be much tougher to convince Middle America. (And let's face it: Her status as a senator from the ultra-uppity, Yankee state of New York is unlikely to help.)

Democrats have a track record of nominating people who want to be President just for the sake of being President. What was Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, or Kerry's ultimate calling? Kerry had "plans," Mondale promised to raise taxes, and Gore prattled on about lock boxes and couldn't decide on the color of his clothing. While its true Carter and Clinton were both Southern Governors, there is also sometihng true about the only two Democratic Presidents in the last 30 years. Carter and Clinton believed in government and believed in the power of the Presidency. Carter and Clinton offered policies couched in a comprehensive vision for where they wanted to take America. Carter chartered a foreign policy based on basic, Christian teachings about justice. Clinton promised a cohesive domestic agenda aimed at lifting up average Americans and expanding prosperity for every American.

Looking at Bush, 9/11 transformed the President from the accidental President to a man driven by a Godly calling only the most devout can understand. Despite his foolishness, reckless foreign policy, and idiotic administration Bush was driven in his reelection by a calling to the Presidency. Bush believed in himself and offered a vision for the future (albeit the wrong vision). Fundamentally he believed in the power and possibility of the Presidency.

If you need proof that it takes more than plans, policies, and capactity to be President look at George HW Bush. By all accounts, Bush I was a capable President. He charted a responsible foreign policy and lead America in a time when the world was undergoing immense change. Yet, by the time 1992 came around Bush just didn't believe anymore.

Cottle's piece tells me: we need candidates who have a vision, self confidence, and believe in the power of the United States.

Democratic Doormats

This is ridiculous.

After a 44 year drought of Democratic control of the Colorado State Legislature, Senate Majority Leader-elect Ken Gordon is flirting with handing key committee chairmanships back to the Republicans. There's a no profanity rule on this blog, so I'll refrain, but I've got some choice words in mind for Senator Gordon. He owes it to his party, not to mention the thousands of Coloradans who donated time and money to Democratic campaigns in the state, to give the Democrats their hard-earned chance to lead.

Drop him a line, ken.gordon.senate@state.co.us, and give him a call, 303-866-4875, to let him know that it's bad enough that Republicans stepped all over Democrats, not to mention good governance, for the past half century in Colorado - it's a tradition the Democratic Senate Majority leader should break.

(With a hat tip to Colorado Luis.)

UPDATE:
This is the message I sent to Senator Gordon:

Dear Senator Gordon,

Congratulations on your recent election to Colorado Senate Majority Leader.

As a Colorado native who spent nearly a decade working in Democratic politics in the state I was thrilled when we took back the Colorado legislature for the first time in nearly half a century. I read with some alarm that you plan to use your position as Majority Leader to hand committee chairmanships to Republicans during this first hard-earned session in the majority.

I wonder: when have the Republicans shown the same deference? You can't possibly believe the Republicans would return the favor in the event they win back the majority. Do you have no confidence in our party's state legislators' leadership abilities? I've read the argument that it would be risk free, since the Republicans would know they were outnumbered and would therefore refrain from blocking legislation. The argument seems to go something like: it's okay to pass up Democrats for leadership positions because the Republicans wouldn't be so bad. In that case, why not give the Democrats their hard-earned shot at leading?

I know I, along with my more than twenty family members who live, work, and vote in Colorado, and donate time and money to Colorado Democrats, would very much like to see you do just that. Please, pursue bipartisanship without giving away our chance to lead. Keep the committee chairmanships in the majority party.

Sincerely,
Shayna Englin

Old Dogs Move Over

One of the featured speakers at the day-long staff retreat I attended today was a very highly placed manager from the Gore campaign. He was ostensibly speaking to us about maintaining creativity and innovative thinking, but his talk was focused on how companies should orient themselves to encourage it.

He was unbelievably irritating in that he embodied so much that I hate about my party.

First, it took him forty minutes to convey fifteen minutes of information because he was utterly unable to make a declarative sentence without three layers of caveats. "At my company...I've seen...it's hard work...you just have to...and I hate this, but...uncomfortable environments encourage creative thinking." He's a partner in a firm that's a major player in the world of Democratic politics, and he's long been a major player in Democratic politics, so I've no doubt that he's quite sure he's right. But you'd never guess that from the way he conveyed his ideas.

Second, his principles for organization could be boiled down to, "no one should really be in charge." He openly advocated chaos as a means for encouraging innovation, and argued that the only appropriate place for accountability is in the end result. At one point he actually argued that the leadership of an organization shouldn't make all of the key decisions, since people other than leaders can have good ideas you wouldn't want leaders to quash. "Have lines of authority without hierarchy," he said.

If any two things could explain the lion's share of Kerry's loss, and Gore's before him, these two would go a long way. If my party is ever going to earn a governing majority, we've got to learn how to state our beliefs directly, without apology. Then we've got to learn that campaigns, like most other major endeavors, cannot be effective without effective leadership - and that means someone's got to be in charge.

If this guy was any indication, the Democratic Party "leaders" need to step aside and let a new breed of Democrat, one that's neither embarrassed by expressing our ideals, nor confused about the difference between hierarchy and oppression, take over.

Status quoism is bad for Democrats and bad for America

A friend noted today that Democrats increasingly find themselves defending the status quo on issues like Medicare, Social Security, overtime pay, etc., but we shouldn't let ourselves be stuck in that position. After all, if the status quo was so great, we wouldn't have 45 million people without health insurance, seniors forced to choose between food and medicine, parents unable to read to their own children, either because they're illiterate or working double time just to put food on the table, etc. Republicans won Congress in 1994 with a radical reform agenda, the Contract With America. Whether or not you agree with the agenda, they were able to cast themselves as the insurgent party of fresh ideas standing up to entrenched, bureaucratic, power mongering Democrats. Today we find Republicans increasingly acting out their own pre-1994 critique of Democrats. E.J. Dionne's column today notes the ironic flip flop on House ethics standards; they just voted again to increase the debt limit -- a far cry from the enforced fiscal discipline called for in the Contract With America; and they're hinting at changing the rules in the Senate to give themselves even more power when it comes to federal judges (the so-called "nuclear option.") If they have become the entrenched, bureaucratic, power mongering party of fiscal irresponsibility, then we should recast ourselves as the party of fresh ideas and radical reform. Several notable Dems are already arguing in that direction, and I think they're right, not only because it will help us win, but because the nation actually needs radical reform. That doesn't mean scrapping or privatizing Social Security (which amounts to scrapping it). But there are interesting ideas out there, some quite radical, that we ought to take a hard look at. After all, Social Security was a radical idea in its day.

Democrats: Evolve!

Like me, perhaps you have been wondering what to do now that the election is over, and how to make it come out differently next time. Here's a place to start: Get involved in stopping the disaster under way as three more states are moving to remove or qualify the teaching of evolution in high schools.

Not sure where to begin, because, after all, evolutionary theory is just a theory, like they say? Here's a primer to help you out.

First, the theory of evolution by natural selection is widely regarded as the most well-confirmed theory we have. Second, the opposing "theory" of intelligent design is not a scientific theory at all. How can you tell? Well, this is difficult and controversial terrain, but here is a start: scientific theories must be falsifiable, they must make predictions that could turn out to be false and thereby disconfirm the theory. Evolutionary theory does this. Intelligent Design and Creationism do not, they are compatible with all possible data so they are unfalsifiable. Proponents of those "theories" emphasize the fact that evolutionary theory is not verifiable, that we cannot know for certain that it is true, and this that it is (in their words) "just" a theory. But no scientific theory is verifiable in that sense--they are all open to disconfirmation by newly discovered evidence. This is what distinguished scientific theories from science fiction stories.

OK, but isn't there genuine disagreement among scientists about evolutionary theory? No, not over the basic validity of the theory of evolution by natural selection. The critics make it look this way because they confuse several different notions. Roughly:

Evolution: the theory of biological change over time.

Evolution by natural selection: the idea that the primary mechanism for evolution is natural selection.

Darwinism: in popular culture, belief in evolution by natural selection; in technical terms, the belief that natural selection acts gradually over time.

Adaptationism: in its most extreme form, the belief that natural selection is the only mechanism of evolution.

So... for example, when the late Stephen J. Gould is cited as critiquing adaptationism, he is not saying that there is no evolution by natural selection; he is critiquing the idea that natural selection is the only mechanism of evolution. (Darwin did not believe that it is, and neither did Gould.) And when Gould is cited as critiquing Darwinism, he is critiquing the idea that evolutionary change occurs gradually and continually—for Gould's own theory is that evolution occurs in spurts, what he called the punctuated equilibrium theory. The punctuated equilibrium theory is a theory about how evolution occurs, not an alternative to evolutionary theory. The debates among biologists concern the mechanisms and characteristics of evolutionary change, and the relative contributions of forces other than natural selection (for example, random drift and mutation) in accounting for evolution. There is no mainstream debate over whether natural selection is an important mechanism for evolutionary change.

Now you have the basic tools. Go forth and make sure our schools keep teaching science. Evolve!

The next American Revolution?

TomPaine.com's Patrick Doherty has this great piece today arguing that liberals and Democrats should quit tinkering at the edges in their effort to retool themselves for future victory and instead should focus on "the next American Revolution" -- a complete restructuring of our market economy:

For argument's sake, let's just assume that, in fact, the problems America faces are indeed rooted in the social dysfunction and energy dependence of our economic engine. If that were the case, the challenge facing the United States would be how to convert our economic engine to one that produces widespread prosperity at home while reducing strategic conflict abroad. Given our hard resource and ecosystem realities, that means an economic engine characterized by resource efficiency and renewable energy.

Patrick argues that this revolutionary economic restructuring can be accomplished through fundamental changes to our tax structure:

What we tax shapes the nature of our market decisively. Since the income tax was made universal to fund World War II in 1942 and '43, our government has relied on the taxation of wages to generate the revenue it required to operate. Income tax was appropriate as long as America was growing in population and expanding suburbia. But with expansion slowed and the global economy hitting the sustainability wall, taxing wages creates perverse incentives. The most obvious examples are increased unemployment and a severely distorted market.

While I admit that I have a soft spot for any civilian who invokes the OODA loop ("As my friends in the military taught me, success depends on having a superior decision cycle: observe, orient, decide and then act. Democrats so far are choosing not to observe, condemning themselves to the same misconceptions that lost the last two elections."), to my mind, this is exactly the kind of "big idea" thinking our country needs.

Democrats need frames not facts

On a recent trip to Missouri I read George Lakoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant. Alternet dissects the principle behind Lakoff's practical and common-sense strategy for progressives to take back the power of language from conservatives.

Lakoff's essential thesis is this: progressives should frame their policy and politics according to the progressive worldview and progressive values. Above all, Lakoff seems to advocate a simplification of progressive language and abandonment of the misplaced belief that facts will ultimately save the day.

The most important resource that politicians have, they both argue, is the ways in which people understand the world. Their values. Their world views. (Lakoff adds to this: their brains.) If you tap into those values, inform them, tweak them, focus and reflect those values back at an electorate ? that's the way to win power.

In this struggle to control political reality through language, you don't dispute specific words or rebut the facts; you don't even attack your opponents' frames. What you do is assert your side's frame, making it so big, so omnipresent, so unavoidable that it's as natural as talking about the roundness of the Earth. Disputing such a fact seems counterintuitive. Even heretical.

Consider Lakoff's example of taxes and tax cuts. Lakoff says conservatives have successfully recast the tax debate. Over the last thirty years, conservatives have colored taxes as bad, burdensome, and unwanted. Even people who will not benefit from tax cuts and who actually stand to lose out with massive tax cuts has internalized the idea that taxes are bad. Thus, "tax relief" is the antidote to the omnipresent tax burden. What is unmentioned is taxes are necessary investments. Taxes have funded highways, scientific advancement, and education. Lakoff argues progressives should create their own frame for the tax debate. Progressives should cast taxes as small investments in our future and taxes are the only way for everyone to contribute their fair share to society.

Lakoff views progressive and conservative values and frames in terms of family models. Conservatives cast frames in line with the "strict father" model while progressives seize the "nurturing parent" model.

Lakoff applied his theory of language and mind to political beliefs; the result is a useful pocket guide to conservative and liberal worldviews. Conservatives, he argues, believe in a family led by a strict father who protects moral dependents, punishes moral inferiors, and aims to raise independent children to fend for themselves in a dangerous world. Liberals believe in the family led by nurturing parents (or parent) who encourage children's inherent goodness so they will treat others with fairness and equality. All policies and positions shake out from these models and help predict what each side will do, according to Lakoff.

At only $10 Lakoff's smallish book is a worthy and necessary investment. If progressives and the Democratic party are going to survive and ultimately thrive, we need to use language that helps win us rather than sealing our defeat. 2004 showed facts and plans aren't enough. Kerry's plans were better, they were more responsible and more sustainable. Kerry failed to communicate his catalog of plans in ways that incorporated the larger progressive worldview and connected with voters on a values level. Deliberately employing language and frames offers progressives and left leaning candidates a chance to speak with values as a backdrop while rebuffing the neo-conservative, rightward slant in politics and government today.

George Will's questions for Condi

Excellent column yesterday by George Will posing questions for Condoleeza Rice. I found this one particularly interesting:

"Is the Constitution's war power clause (Article I, Section 8: 'The Congress shall have power to . . . declare war') an anachronism? If so, why? If not, to what sort of situation might it pertain? In January 1991 the Senate voted 52 to 47 to authorize President George H.W. Bush to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. Would a formal declaration of war have been appropriate? If the Senate had defeated the authorizing resolution, and Bush had gone to war anyway, would that have been a legitimate exercise of an inherent power of the presidency? If so, return to the first question (re: anachronism)."

I'll share with you these excerpts from a recent research proposal I wrote as part of a fellowship application:

The continuing post-World War II migration of war powers from Congress to the President means the elected representatives closest to the will of the people face fewer political consequences when American troops go to war. All of this makes it easier to commit troops for questionable reasons, like political expediency or economic benefit. Combined with the strain being placed on our military men and women and their families, this is a potential recipe for resentment that could further alienate the military from civilian culture....

I would revisit the 1973 War Powers Act, which I believe grants too much power to the President and insulates Members of Congress from the political consequences of decisions about war and peace. I am interested in the idea of a 21st Century War Powers Act that would revive the constitutional requirement for Congress formally to declare war before American forces are committed to combat. Such a law should also create other kinds of formal declarations – a "declaration of intervention" for example – that would put non-emergency decisions about when and where to employ the U.S. military squarely on the shoulders of the elected leaders closest to the will of the people.

The Black Helicopters Must Be In The Shop

This falls squarely in the category of things that raise eyebrows. There's been plenty of talk since the election about how the administration is lurching to the right. But letting the U.N. Security Council use Dick Cheney's plane to fly to Nairobi? Was it a moment of weakness? An olive branch? My preferred hypothesis: as a parting gift, Secretary Powell loaned it out and didn't ask the veep's permission. That would be fantastic.

RIPPLE OF HOPE evolves

Beginning with this post, you will notice some changes to the site. "RIPPLE OF HOPE by David Englin" is evolving to "RIPPLE OF HOPE" with a group of contributors who will share their keen insight, incisive commentary, and strong progressive voices. This post represents the "soft launch" of the new site to give the contributors a chance to stretch their wings before the official launch, which will come in the next few days.

David Englin, Child Soldier

The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers today released its Child Soldiers Global Report 2004. The report is worth a look, and it's clear from today's press reports that the international community is primarily concerned with the use of child soldiers by several African countries. However, it's also worth noting that the United States has taken some heat on this issue. I first swore into the U.S. military when I was 17 years old, and my mother had to sign a permission slip allowing me to join, making me a "child soldier" at the time. Here's a nice summary from the Christian Science Monitor:

Where child soldiers fight

Since 2001, some 40,000 children have been demobilized as wars ended in Afghanistan, Angola, and Sierra Leone.

Governments that use child soldiers include Burma, Burundi, Congo, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Rwanda, Sudan, and Uganda.

Since 2001, 25,000 children have been drawn into new conflicts in Ivory Coast and Sudan alone.

The US has used 17-year-olds in Iraq, but later withdrew them.

Colombia and Zimbabwe back militias that use child soldiers, while Israel, Indonesia, and Nepal use children as informants, spies, or messengers.

Source: Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, www.child-soldiers.org

Interesting cultural comparison

Anne Applebaum compares electronic voting with ATMs and online financial transactions in this treatment of American conspiracy theories. I'm reminded of an Australian friend of mine who once marveled that Americans are perfectly willing to share their most personal information with unaccountable private entities from small businesses to multinational corporations, but we're suspicious of sharing too much with our government, which is at least nominally accountable for its conduct. Apparently, the reverse is true in Australia -- they're more suspicious of private entities than their government. (Maybe some Australian readers could comment?) I think it's an interesting cultural comparison.

A Darfur dog and pony show in Kenya?

With Security Council ambassadors arriving in Kenya for a historic session designed to draw attention to the situation in Sudan, the Washington Post has this editorial summarizing the situation in Darfur:

In sum, the considered judgment of Sudan's rulers is that they can flout international commitments with impunity. Unless that judgment can be changed, the Security Council session in Kenya will not achieve anything. Sudan's dictatorship must be credibly threatened with sanctions that target officials responsible for war crimes, and these officials must also be made to face the possibility of prosecution. Beyond that, outsiders need to recognize that there is little prospect of security for Darfur's people -- and therefore little prospect of a return to destroyed villages, a resumption of agricultural production and an escape from starvation -- without a serious peacekeeping force. Gen. Romeo Dallaire, the U.N. commander in Rwanda during the genocide a decade ago, has suggested that a force of 44,000 is needed. Charles R. Snyder, the senior State Department official on Sudan, has estimated that securing Darfur would take 60 to 70 battalions.

More than a year and a half into Darfur's genocide, the United States and its allies have proved unwilling to consider that kind of commitment.

The two-day session that begins tomorrow is the Security Council's chance -- maybe its last real chance -- to back rhetoric with real pressure, which means oil sanctions. However, since China isn't likely to support any real punitive measures against their trading partners in Khartoum, I don't have high hopes.

Neo-cons more interested in power than security?

The Washington Post's Fred Hiatt has this interesting critique of Bush's foreign policy in which he makes the case that Bush has been far more pragmatic than his rhetoric might suggest:

But in Bush's first term, democracy promotion seemed to be the policy mostly when it was convenient: in Palestine, where it allowed him to avoid confrontation with Israel's leader; in Cuba, where it allowed him to win votes in Florida. If you see him in the next four years risking other U.S. interests to champion liberty where it is not so convenient, then you will know he meant what he said on the campaign trail.

This observation raises interesting questions given that moderate Colin Powell may well be replaced with neo-con Condi Rice as Secretary of State. In a couple of recent conversations with Michael Lind of the New America Foundation, Lind has made the case that the neo-cons driving the Bush administration's foriegn policy are more concerned with American power than American security and that the two do not necessarily coincide.

Did gay marriage push Bush over the edge?

In his usual misguided right-wing venomous manner, Charles Krauthammer argued in his column yesterday that the ubiquitous "moral values" election story line is a conscious effort by the "liberal elite" media "to delegitimize a conservative victory." Maybe Krauthammer hasn't noticed that right-wing radical cleric James Dobson and his ilk have seemed happy enough with this story line over the past week. (Although I suppose they could be colluding with this vast liberal media conspiracy.) However, Krauthammer's column also included this interesting and counterintuitive finding about the influence of gay marriage on the election:

George Bush increased his vote in 2004 over 2000 by an average of 3.1 percent nationwide. In Ohio the increase was 1 percent -- less than a third of the national average. In the 11 states in which the gay marriage referendums were held, Bush increased his vote by less than he did in the 39 states that did not have the referendum. The great anti-gay surge was pure fiction.

If Krauthammer's numbers are correct, then perhaps this election wasn't the setback for gay rights many of us have perceived it to be.

Liberal Jews and right-wing Christians both vote values over their pocketbooks

Democrats have long decried the fact that white rural Southern voters tend to vote against their own economic self interest. This critique infers both that Democrats vote rationally in their own economic self interest and that economic self interest ought to be the prevailing rationale for the way one votes. However, Richard Cohen observed in two columns recently (here and here) that Jewish voters, who vote overwhelmingly Democrat, have more in common with those white rural Southern voters than we might think:

It is paradoxical that the Democratic Party, which is so beholden to Jews for energy, funds and ideas, has not looked into a mirror and noticed something odd. No matter how rich the Jewish community got, no matter how powerful, too, it continued to vote overwhelmingly Democratic. In other words, it voted against its economic self-interest, which would be lower taxes or, in the fantasies of Republicans, almost no taxes at all. This is the power of culture. Two, three generations out of the impoverished Eastern European ghetto, powerful and privileged beyond compare, most Jews still vote as if the Cossacks might come at any moment and the sweatshop boss might throw them out into the streets.

Most Jews are not voting Democratic out of mere habit. They are making a conscious decision to forgo an economic benefit for something that matters more -- a cultural imperative for social justice. They believe in social welfare programs. They believe in redistributing wealth (some of it, anyway), and they believe firmly in civil rights and civil liberties. What are these rights worth? Anything you can name, because history teaches that without them even the pursuit of happiness is futile.

It behooves Democrats to understand that Christian conservatives can make the same, hard choices. Of course, real economic privation can change the equation -- would you rather have a job or stop gay marriage? -- but barring that sort of choice, culture wins out.

Cohen is exactly right on two counts. First, as a Jew, I can't image any amount of economic benefit that would cause me to vote for the party that seeks to make religious extremism, social Darwinism, and neo-monarchism the law of the land, since these are anathema to basic Jewish values. Second, this is exactly the tradeoff being made by right-wing Christian voters, who clearly would reap more economic benefits from voting Democrat. I would go even beyond Cohen's comparison and say that both liberal Jews and Christian conservatives vote as they do out of a sense of altruism informed by their spirituality, a sense that they are willing to sacrifice something of themselves (economic interests) for the betterment of humanity.

Values voters and data junkies

Two quick comments on the media's reporting of the election results that I've been meaning to post:

With the media suddenly fawning all over the Christian right, one might think that the 51 percent of voters who supported Bush all did so because of "moral values." However, Newsweek reports that, "Exit polls showed that 22 percent of voters named 'moral values' as the most important issue to them -- ranking it higher than the economy and the Iraq war. Of them, 79 percent voted for President Bush." That means that 21 percent of voters who named "moral values" their most important issue voted for Kerry. It also means that only 17.4 percent (79 percent of 22 percent) of Bush voters named "moral values" their most important issue.

Any reporting about who voted for whom and why that is based one exit polls is inherently flawed. Remember, these are the very same exit polls that showed Kerry winning by landslide. Political analysts are such data junkies that even data they know is bad will do when nothing else is available. (Thanks to Shayna for pointing this out.)

Sudanese government attacks refugee camps despite peace accord

Emily Wax reports the following from Darfur:

"Just hours after the government agreed to a peace deal Tuesday aimed at ending violence in Darfur, Sudanese police arrived at this battered camp in the middle of the night, beating residents with wooden poles, bulldozing and burning shelters and firing tear gas into a health clinic, residents and aid workers reported."

The U.N. Security Council is scheduled to meet in nine days to consider possible punitive measures against the government of Sudan, including possible sanctions on Sudan's oil industry. Since China and France are key beneficiaries of Sudanese oil, I suspect they will look for any signs of progress as an excuse to delay punitive measures. However, today's report demonstrates yet again that agreements with the Sudanese government are barely worth the paper they're printed on.

There's a new sheriff in town

Every once in a while I'm reminded why I'm still proud to be an American. While voters in 11 states approved amendments to their state constitutions denying rights to their fellow citizens who happen to be gay, the voters of Dallas, Texas, chose Lupe Valdez to be their new sheriff. Valdez is a woman, a Hispanic, a Democrat, and a lesbian. She's also a former migrant farm worker who picked green beans and beets as a child. Read the Washington Post's story on the election of "Sheriff Lupe" here. Only in America.

Gary Hart speaks out on faith and politics

Former Democratic senator from Colorado Gary Hart has this excellent op-ed in today's New York Times on faith and politics. The entire piece is well worth reading, but here are a few choice excerpts:

Having claimed moral authority to achieve political victory, religious conservatives should be very careful, in their administration of the public trust, to live up to the standards they have claimed for themselves. They should also be called upon to address the teachings of Jesus and the prophets concerning care for the poor, the barriers that wealth presents to entering heaven, the blessings on the peacemakers, and the belief that no person should be left behind.

Compassionate conservatives can believe social ills should be addressed by charity and the private sector; liberals can believe that the government has a role to play in correcting social injustice. But both can agree that human need, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy and sickness must be addressed.

Liberals are not against religion. They are against hypocrisy, exclusion and judgmentalism. They resist the notion that one side or the other possesses "the truth" to the exclusion of others.

There is also the disturbing tendency to insert theocratic principles into the vision of America's role in the world. There is evil in the world. Nowhere in our Constitution or founding documents is there support for the proposition that the United States was given a special dispensation to eliminate it.

Sudanese Rape Victims Find Justice Blind to Plight

As much of the world seems to have lost interest in Darfur, the Washington Post's Emily Wax continues her intrepid reporting, this time with an article on the social and legal plight of Darfur's rape victims. Despite hundreds of documented cases of women being raped as a weapon of war and ethnic cleansing, this is the official Sudanese government response:

"That is not our culture," said Hussein Ibrahim, a minister with the government's Humanitarian Affairs Commission. "It's just impossible and all half-truths. Okay, maybe there are one case or two cases, like anywhere, like in the United States or Britain. But they are not widespread."

It's not about Jesus, it's about strength

From the media coverage of the election results, one could be forgiven for thinking that right-wing evangelical Christians have taken over the country. Former Clinton pollster Mark Penn has this analysis of the election results showing that, while 10 million more people voted this year than in 2000, the percentage of voters who attend church every week remained exactly the same:

So if the election cannot be explained by a massive upsurge in evangelical voters, what really happened? In this election, Bush received 3.5 percent more of the vote than he did in 2000. The exit polls show this movement to be almost entirely the result of changes in two disparate groups: Hispanics (who went from 35 percent for Bush in 2000 to 44 percent this year -- enough to move the entire popular vote 1 percentage point) and white women (who went 49 percent for Bush in 2000 and 55 percent this year -- enough to move the popular vote 2.5 percentage points)....

Hispanics don't fit into the caricature of Bush voters as gun-toting, Bible Belt Republicans, nor do these moms. While the Hispanics who voted for Bush are religious and more pro-life than the average voter, their central concerns tend to be about aspirations: the success of their families and children. The modern moms also have family values and the success and safety of their kids as their chief concerns.

Penn argues that "the real battle at the end of the day is for the more moderate voters who this year slipped away to the Republicans, on the basis not of gun control and gay marriage but of security and secular values such as trust and standing up for your beliefs." In other words, the country isn't turning into Jesusland, but, as is almost always the case in American politics, strong and wrong beats weak and right. Bush, despite being wrong on the issues (even according to many people who voted for him) apparently did a better job than Kerry of creating the perception of strength.

E.J. Dionne hits the nail on the head

Like many, many Democrats, I've been thinking a lot these past few days about the implications of the election and where Democrats ought to go from here. E.J. Dionne hit on all the right points in his Friday column You ought to read the entire piece, but here are some key excerpts:

A decent respect for the outcome of an election never requires free citizens to cower before a temporarily dominant majority.

A 51-48 percent victory is not a mandate. Even Democrats have talked about their party's being confined to an "enclave." Enclave? Blue America includes the entire Northeast, all of the West Coast but for Alaska and much of the upper Midwest.

If John Kerry had switched a point and a half in the popular vote and roughly 70,000 votes in Ohio, we'd be talking about the Republican "enclave."

What's required is a sustained and intellectually serious effort by religious moderates and progressives to insist that social justice and inclusion are "moral values" and that war and peace are "life issues."

Also, be sure to check out Patrick Doherty's new blog, Quo Vadis, at TomPaine.com. Patrick is taking TomPaine.com in an exciting new direction that has the potential to make a substantial contribution to the future of progressive politics.

Will the war in Iraq expand opportunities for military women?

The U.S. Army reportedly wants to allow women to serve in certain combat support roles that currently are closed to them under the 1994 Clinton administration policy barring women from direct ground combat positions. The Clinton administration opened a wide range of combat specialties to women, but still excluded them "from assignments to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground.” With our Army stretched so thin, it's simply inefficient to bar 17 percent of the force from serving in critical jobs, especially when the reality of modern warfare is that many of the jobs currently open to women already expose them to ground combat. This is an example of the wartime confluence of progressivism and military necessity. Many liberals -- myself included -- feel strongly that military positions ought to be open to anyone, man or woman, who meets mission-based performance standards. Moreover, these kinds of combat-oriented jobs are key paths to senior leadership positions later in a soldier's career, so opening them to women whittles away at this de facto barrier to advancement.

African Union troops too little, too late in Darfur?

Reports coming out of Darfur the past couple of days show a new campaign by Sudanese government forces to attack refugees in camps, bulldoze those camps, and forcibly return people to their home villages (many of which have been destroyed) where they are vulnerable to Janjaweed attacks. From today's Washington Post:

"This was not supposed to have happened. This is forced relocation," complained Brig. Gen. Festus Okonkwo, a Nigerian officer from the African Union mission in Darfur. Okonkwo's team of 19 civilian monitors and 56 protective troops is based just eight miles from here, but he said news of the attack took him completely by surprise.

Sudanese troops also are blocking international aid workers from access to the camps.

Initial reaction to election results

As disappointed as I am with the election outcome, I admit to being relieved that we once again have a president who was duly elected by the people. Bush won, fair and square, and today's Republican Party is reaping the rewards of a 30-year effort to build a farm team and lay the groundwork for electoral success, which Democrats like Howard Dean are already starting to emulate.

Not all of the news was disappointing; I was happy to see both Salazar brothers win in Colorado, and I have high hopes for the potential of now-U.S. Senator Barak Obama (D-Ill.) to energize the party. We saw record turnout here in Virginia, and, thanks to this election, Virginia Democrats are better organized than ever going into next year's statewide elections for governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. As the coordinator of Alexandria Veterans for Kerry, I'm especially proud of what we did to push our city to 68% for John Kerry.

I'll have more to say about all of this later, but for now, I'll share these thoughts from Howard Dean:

Montana, one of the reddest states, has a new Democratic governor.

First-time candidates for state legislatures from Hawaii to Connecticut beat incumbent Republicans.

And a record number of us voted to change course -- more Americans voted against George Bush than any sitting president in history.

Today is not an ending.

Regardless of the outcome yesterday, we have begun to revive our democracy. While we did not get the result we wanted in the presidential race, we laid the groundwork for a new generation of Democratic leaders.

Florida Republicans commiting crimes against democracy

Elderly Florida voters in Broward, Palm Beach, and Ft. Lauderdale have been getting calls all evening from Republican activists helpfully notifying them that their polling places have changed at the 11th hour. Fortunately, Mordecai over at Daily Kos is all over this one. Shayna just spent 15 minutes calling all of the Florida news stations to let them know about the bogus calls, and they all said they plan to lead with the story. This makes me sick to my stomache, and if what these people are doing isn't already illegal, it ought to be. In any case, it's certainly a moral crime against democracy. Sadly, I fear these are the kinds of despicable Rovian gutter tactics we can expect for the next 24 hours. I guess only Iraqis deserve democracy.

The American Dream versus the European Dream

On Friday, the 25 member nations of the European Union signed the European Constitution, to be ratified over the next two years by each state. Jeremy Rifkin has this piece in Sunday's Washington Post comparing and contrasting the American Dream with the nascent concept of a "European Dream." The full article is well worth your time, but this excerpt will give you a sense of it:

Why these differences exist has to do, I believe, with the nature of the dream on each side of the Atlantic. Both are anchored in the ideal of personal freedom. But each defines that freedom differently. Americans have always associated freedom with autonomy, and autonomy with property. The wealthier you are, the more independent you are, and the more secure you are. Europeans find freedom not in autonomy, but in embeddedness. For most Europeans, the community's quality of life is more important than individual financial success. The more communities you join, the more options you have for living a full and meaningful life. Belonging -- not belongings -- is what brings security.

No doubt many Americans will find Rifkin's expression of the European Dream to be quite attractive. But Rifkin also notes the following:

Of course, Europe hasn't suddenly become Shangri-La. For all their talk of preserving cultural identity, Europeans have become increasingly hostile toward newly arrived immigrants and asylum seekers from other parts of the world -- even as their continent becomes more attractive to these very people. Anti-Semitism is on the rise again, as is discrimination against Muslims and other religious minorities.

In my view, this latter point gets to what is most powerful and exceptional about the American Dream. It is the American Dream expressed by Emma Lazarus and George Washington, and it is the American Dream perhaps most endangered by the xenophic, nativist tendancies of conservative Republicans.

African Union troops gradually building up in Darfur

With the help of 120 American Airmen and two U.S. Air Force C-130s, the African Union on Thursday started to deploy what will eventually total about 3,500 troops to the Darfur region of Sudan. The first group of 40 Nigerian troops flew in Thursday, followed by 160 Rwandan troops over the weekend, with another 100 Rwandan troops scheduled to fly today.

According to this report from Business Day, "It is by no means certain the AU will achieve its goal of having all its peacekeepers in place by the end of this month, as a full timetable has yet to be fleshed out." However, this appears to be purely a political problem. I have it on very good authority from a friend who is a U.S. Air Force airlift pilot that two C-130s could easily move 3,000 to 5,000 troops into Darfur in as a little as a few days.