2012 and Beyond

If, heaven forbid, the Democrats lose in '08, or face a quasi-open primary in '16, we might do well to remember crap like this--

You guys have seen the latest Clinton craziness, right? The freaking out over the "four delegates" that were supposedly wrenched from their hands by the DNC's RBC committee this past Saturday. To hear them say it, Obama is evvvviiiilllll because he denied Clinton four delegates she "won" in Michigan's potemkin one-candidate "primary". Why couldn't have Obama been magnanimous and just given Clinton those extra four delegates? He's going to win anyway, right? Would the four delegates have made a difference?

Of course, the issue isn't the four delegates. The Clinton campaign made clear a long time ago that they don't view this as a delegate fight. Not since she lost the lead in delegates. Now, they view it as a popular vote fight.

Had the DNC handed out delegates based on January's sham vote, it would've ratified the election as a legitimate one (as ended up happening with Florida, by the way). Hillary and her acolytes would've then had a greater claim to her Michigan "victory" of 328,309 votes to zero for Obama. As is, at the Michigan Democratic Party's insistence, the DNC threw out the election and invented a new split out of thin air. Obama had the vote for a 50-50 split, but threw Clinton a few extra delegates to try and ease bruised feelings.

But again, Clinton doesn't give a damn about those extra delegates. She wanted to ratify the Michigan election and claim that 328,309-vote advantage for her tally.

So when you see Clinton surrogates in a rage about those "four delegates", understand that their rage has nothing to do with four delegates. It has to do with the blow it dealt to their propaganda efforts.

And crap like this.

If the Clintons think they can bleed Obama to death between now and November and expect to show up in '12 or '16 and cash in their presidency-entitlement ticket (like they tried to do this year), they shouldn't act surprised if their reception is a little less than gracious. (h/t Andrew Sullivan).

Jesse Taylor Back At Pandagon

And boy is he laying the smacketh down:

All I want is a nominee who’ll pick smart fights. Clinton hasn’t shown herself to be that candidate...

Experience is only worth something if you learn from it. From what I’ve been able to tell, the main lesson Clinton’s learned thus far is that you always hold the line, no matter how ridiculously out of touch with reality it may be...

Of all the bad decisions the Clinton campaign made, deciding that Obama was more The Enemy than John McCain was likely the worst...

For all the snide talk of “Obamabots” and the alleged cult-like behavior of Obama supporters (which was almost entirely overplayed), the increasing legitimacy of the Bible of Clinton (with the Gospels of Michigan and Florida and the Acts of the Superdelegates I and II) is far more disturbing than any reports of fainting at rallies or the overexuberance of young supporters...

Hillary Clinton is going to lose. She will likely lose Wednesday. Everything that I’ve talked about, everything that has happened during this race, makes me very wary about her ability to bring her supporters back into the fold - a responsibility, incidentally, that does fall largely on her. And if they do wander away, if they do vote for John McCain over Barack Obama, it will be her greatest failure as a candidate and as a leader...

Damn, that's some good shit.

Fair and Balanced

While I won't do the dis-service of linking to them, I will point out that the Washington Post graced us with TWO snarling, anti-Scott McClellan op-eds this morning, plus a Howie Kurtz column in Style that basically adopts Karl Rove's talking points on McClellan's book.

Your liberal media at work.

What Will Krugman Say?

I wonder what Paul Krugman, who's been dishing it out to Obama supporters this primary season, will say about this? And this? And this? And this?

More on Kornblut

Returning to a previous subject, this exchange between a Wash Post reporter and the public deserves further attention:

------

Potomac, MD: McClellan needs to get over himself. The nerve of blaming the media for their failures in the run-up to the War. Elisabeth Bumiller so eloquently explained how things work the night before the Iraq War started, 4,000 dead American soldiers ago: "it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.".

Anne E. Kornblut: That's a good point. (I'm a huge Bumiller fan). To that I would add that most reporters, or at least this reporter, looked continuously for cracks in the facade internally, and the assistance of an aide such as McClellan in helping us understand the flaws is essential. I would urge all future White House aides to remember that sometimes the press can be a friend when things inside start going wrong.

(snip)

Re. Potomac, MD: Wait a minute, Bumiller was advocating stenography. Methinks if her relative (or yours) was about to head over to Iraq, she might have done more than wait for "cracks in the facade". That's just whistling by the graveyard. Obviously, none of YOUR children, nephews or nieces will ever enlist in our Armed Forces, but you might want to develop some empathy for the countless people in flyover country who actually lose loved ones when we go to war. Not because you're a journalist, but because you're a, you know, human being.

Anne E. Kornblut: As one with a parent and two grandparents buried at Arlington Cemetery, I can tell you that this has nothing to do with taking war lightly. If anything, I think we all felt a great sense of deference toward the presidency, as an institution, and wanted to be respectful on the eve of war, trusting that any president would only take such an important step in good faith. That isn't to say we shouldn't have been more skeptical and pressed harder in print -- and I have no doubt we all will next time, if there is a next time -- but it wasn't out of cluelessness that we did not do more.
_______________________

Vienna, Va.: I don't understand this comment: "The assistance of an aide such as McClellan in helping us understand the flaws is essential." Did you expect him to publicly say "I don't agree with this but here's our rationale for the invasion?" Do you even expect him to say that off-the-record? Why would he openly share disapproval or disagreement with policy decisions with you?

Anne E. Kornblut: Some of the greatest scandals of all time (Watergate?) have been exposed by administration insiders who felt a patriotic duty to get the real story out. We as reporters use them all the time to help get to the bottom of things. Almost always in private. And in my experience (in my smaller incidents than Watergate) aides do so because they want the public to know what is going on, and they can be an essential part of making that happen. As reporters, we can only deal in information that we are given -- and we can't actually force a White House to give us information if it doesn't want to.
_______________________

You must be kidding!: Just a comment: You think it's the job of people employed by the White House to be straightforward? Uh, no--it's the job of the media to hold the government responsible. If the people in the White House were straightforward, Americans would not need the media to intercede as our surrogates in ensuring that truth is separated from B.S.

Anne E. Kornblut: I know, I know, a dream land -- but I do actually know some rare public officials who are straightforward, and I would happily pursue another line of work if everyone else followed their examples. But I'm not really worried about unemployment (not for that reason, anyway).

-------

There you have it. Unless the administration spills the beans on itself, unless every public issue has its own private Deep Throat, unless it reveals the "cracks" in its "facade", to properly "respectful" stenographers, the public are destined to be flim-flammed because our "liberal" media will be without any means at all to seek out and assess what the hell is really going on.

Nomination Process Broken?

This brief post by David Kurtz at TPM, which links to a larger post by Greg Sargent, which in turn links to an article in the New Yorker by Hendrik Hertzberg, is a disappointment.

If the system is malfunctioning or broken, why?

Until this year, I'd always been disappointed at how short the nomination processes of the two parties were. To this disappointment was added an academic as well as political junky-ish perplexity stemming from a recognition that nothing in the nomination process required that it be over after Iowa.

In the past, money, the front-loading of the primary/caucus calendar, as well as the media's intent on assigning the all important "momentum", or Big Mo, to one of the party's leading candidates, served to quickly winnow the fields.

In particular, the front-loading of the calendar, although driven partly by the initiatives of individual states, helped serve the national party's seeming desire to produce unamity and harmony as early and as painlessly as possible.

Obviously, to the extent quickness and unity are important goals, the process has failed terribly this year.

But competitive, elongated campaigns that increase political participation, by voting, contributing money, or other activities, particularly in states that aren't normally a focus of either party, and that ensure substantial vetting of the candidates aren't necessarily bad.

So what would you do? What changes do you think should be made, if any, for the next election cycle?

Over Her Head

I'm guessing Anne Kornblutt missed the sarcasm here: (h/t Atrios)

Potomac, MD: McClellan needs to get over himself. The nerve of blaming the media for their failures in the run-up to the War. Elisabeth Bumiller so eloquently explained how things work the night before the Iraq War started, 4,000 dead American soldiers ago: "it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.".

Anne E. Kornblut: That's a good point. (I'm a huge Bumiller fan).....

----

While McClellan's book and revelations are sure to come in for their share of "Now he tells us", along with a share of "disgruntled staffer" taunts from the dead-enders, I actually find it rather surprising that McClellan would be this upfront about what he and the administration engaged in. And it's pretty hard to be surprised by anything at this point.

A Ludicrous Failure, Part XXVII

From Robert Borosage at the Huff Post:

The embargo has helped, no doubt, to impoverish the Cuban people. It has also helped to make Castro a nationalist hero throughout Latin America and much of the world. It has done nothing for nearly five decades to advance democracy, civil liberties or capitalism in Cuba. Even its economic effects have diminished over time. It once cribbed tourism, and, once the Soviet Union went belly up, put a squeeze on oil. Now the Europeans and Canadians populate the Cuban beaches. And Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is happy to provide Cuba with the oil it needs.

Cuba is a small island, 90 miles off our shores. Its people are proud and nationalistic. They also get island fever. Their relatives across the straits let them know what they've been missing economically. There is little doubt that had the US normalized relations with Cuba, opened up trade, encouraged travel and exchanges, Cuba would have been transformed long ago. The détente that worked its magic on the Warsaw Pact countries in Eastern Europe would have been much more powerful in Cuba.

So why does McCain extol this tribute to folly? It's a good pander to the older generation of Cubans, still pining to see Castro's overthrow and to have a shot at taking back their old properties. But straight talking John McCain wouldn't adopt a goofy failed foreign policy just for political purposes, would he?

McCain's spokesperson, Nancy Pfotenhauer, tried to explain on Fox News:We can't talk with Castro or lift the embargo until democracy descends on the island, she stated, because "the worst thing we can do is prematurely capitulate (emphasis added) and give them what they want the most without anything in return, and what they want the most is legitimacy, which, by the way, all that does is completely erode the confidence and the hopes of the people in Cuba who want freedom."

Can't "prematurely capitulate" after nearly five decades of a failed policy. We can't dash the "confidence and hopes" of the "people in Cuba who want freedom" who, no doubt, are biting their finger nails, hoping against hope that, after five decades, more of the same will somehow convince Castro to install a democracy.

The Last Refuge of Scoundrels

I know this has been distilled and rehashed in other places, but I thought Harold Meyerson's summation in this morning's Post was particularly on target:

On Saturday, when the Rules Committee of the Democratic National Committee meets to determine the fate of Florida and Michigan's delegations to this summer's convention, it will have some company. A group of Hillary Clinton supporters has announced it will demonstrate outside.

That Clinton has impassioned supporters, many of whom link her candidacy to the feminist cause, hardly qualifies as news. And it's certainly true that along the campaign trail Clinton has encountered some outrageously sexist treatment, just as Barack Obama has been on the receiving end of bigoted treatment. (Obama has even been subjected to anti-Muslim bigotry despite the fact that he's not Muslim.) But somehow, a number of Clinton supporters have come to identify the seating of Michigan and Florida not merely with Clinton's prospects but with the causes of democracy and feminism -- an equation that makes a mockery of democracy and feminism.

Clinton herself is largely responsible for this absurdity. Over the past couple of weeks, she has equated the seating of the two delegations with African Americans' struggle for suffrage in the Jim Crow South, and with the efforts of the democratic forces in Zimbabwe to get a fair count of the votes in their presidential election.

(snip)

Not a single Clinton campaign official or DNC Rules Committee member, much less the candidate herself, said at the time that the sanctions imposed on Florida or Michigan were in any way a patriarchal plot or an affront to democratic values. The threat that these rules posed to our fundamental beliefs was discovered only ex post facto -- the facto in question being Clinton's current need to seat the delegations whose seatings she had opposed when she thought she'd cruise to the nomination.

Clinton's supporters have every right to demonstrate on Saturday, of course. But their larger cause is neither democracy nor feminism; it's situational ethics. To insist otherwise is to degrade democracy and turn feminism into the last refuge of scoundrels.

"A Ludicrous Failure"

Yglesias gets shrill:

Washington Post correctly says that John McCain is "distorting history" as he criticized Barack Obama's pro-negotiations position. The United States really only has two experiences with a sustained effort at the Bush/McCain approach to diplomacy. One would be our effort to deny recognition to Communist China during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. This, it's generally acknowledged, was a strategic fiasco that denied us the opportunity to gain leverage vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Indeed, it was a fiasco of such enormous proportions that Richard Nixon's role in undoing it actually manages to stack up in a non-trivial way against his otherwise terrible record in office.

The other is our fifty year effort to starve the people of Cuba into rebelling against Fidel Castro. McCain actually defends continuing this policy, but everyone with a functioning brain understands that it's been a ludicrous failure.

Indeed. It's baffling how head-in-the-sand American establishment thinking has been on this subject.

It ought to be enough to point out, as Yglesias does, that American policy towards Cuba has been a study in ludicrous failure. But that probably won't be enough to generate rationale debate on the subject.

Instead, I'd like to see Obama frame the debate in terms of how it has restricted the freedom of regular old Americans. For example, most Americans, if not all, cannot travel directly to Cuba. And that's our policy, not Havana's. And it's obviously ridiculous and an affront to Liberty. Why should the American government limit where Americans can travel?

Fresh thinking is desperately needed in the area of foreign policy generally, and in our Cuba policy particularly. If Obama can help provide that, he will have accomplished much.

$31.9 Mill

Obama raised $31.9 million in April. Good news, right? Yeah, but here's the thing: $31.3 mill was for the primaries, $600k for the general. Meanwhile, the primaries are about over, and Obama essentially passed on two of the May primaries--WV and Kentucky--that the $31.3 mill would presumably have been spent on. So, the $31.3 mill is virtually useless.

Am I reading this right?

Update: After musing over this a while, I suspect it's actually the case that funds raised during the primaries are available for the general election. I'm not sure how that squares with the intent of the campaign finance law. But in this case, money Obama has collected from individuals who have not yet reached their $2,300 contribution maximum is assumed to be primary funds. Donations from those who have reached the $2,300 maximum are kept aside for the general. By law, individuals can donate $2,300 per election cycle; $2,300 for the primary election and $2,300 for the general. So individuals can give $4,600 in all.

Nixonland

One of the advantageous of working among the elite in Wash DC is getting the opportunity to participate in the very elite culture the area has to offer, including being able to attend very elitist type book-readings where very elite authors, most of them liberal elitists, hold forth on their latest publications and afterward, agree to affix their elitist signature to the books.

Last night was such an occasion, as I went to hear the great Rick Perlstein read and discuss his latest, Nixonland. Seven years in the making, the book is a follow up to the much acclaimed Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus.

I imagine I'll have more to say on the book as I get through it, although I confess to being in the middle of reading a lot of other material as well, so my remarks on Nixonland will probably come along later.

But I enjoyed Perstein's reading of a passage taken from 1967 and the discussion afterwards. And yes, I got him to sign a copy I had just purchased.

I was a little worried that Nixonland might be a type of "stream of consciousness" book, full of rambling anecdotes and loosely drawn inferences, but the book appears to be well organized, by election cycle. As Perlstein took great pains to point out, Nixon himself was a rather complex character. One questioner in the audience asked Perlstein if he thought Nixon was a demagogue. "No", the author responded. While conceding Nixon's brutal style of politics (not particular to Nixon), Perlstein said Nixon was more subtle than that. George Wallace was a demagogue, but not Nixon. I considered asking Perlstein what he thought of Nixon's campaign charges of Helen Douglass being pink down to her..., but I thought better of it.

For anyone interested in reading historic epics and fascinated by the changes wrought by and during the 1960's will I'm sure greatly appreciate Rick Perlstein's Nixonland.

One point that occurs to me of the period that came to be associated with what is sometimes thought of as the Conservative Ascendacy is that, while the conservative movement that rose from the ashes of the 1964 Goldwater landslide loss was effective in mobilizing a broad coalition of disaffected reactionaries and high-brow financiers in the decades beginning with and after Nixon, the conservative movement's actual achievements seem rather meager to me. That is to say, while the country's political rhetoric, campaign styles and partisan balances have gotten more conservative, the underlying structure of government and the wider culture remain to a large degree, liberal, and increasingly so.

Nevertheless, we appear to be entering upon another period of partisan and cultural upheaval, and Perlstein's Nixonland should remind us that things may not necessarily be what they seem. That is, if we think we are witnessing a conservative meltdown over Iraq and other calamities and changes, we could be in for a comeuppance. On the other hand, one of the points Perlstein stresses is that, the establishment media, Johnson administration, and Democratic Congress failed to perceive the resentments, changes and dynamics forming in response to the war, racial upheaval and other developments, and found themselves disgraced or swept away by the changing tide. The Establishment didn't get it, in other words. A similar thing could be said today of the Bush II administration, the war in Iraq and the seemingly dramatic changes taking place in the economy, high gas prices, mortgage problems, household debt, etc, which the government and media seem only partially responsive to. Whether liberals or conservatives end up addressing or successfully responding to these changes and upheavals may prove to be the subject of a future book and a much debated historical epic when America as we knew it dramatically changed forever.

Fly-Paper Theory on Steroids

Many, many years ago, among the many, many alternative and conflicting rationales offered for why America must-had to absolutely bomb, invade and occupy Iraq NOW, right this very minute yesterday, was so that America and Americans could fight the terrorists on their own soil over there, rather than having to face them on our soil over here.

Well. If you listen very carefully, now, to the "debate" as to why the mullahs in that other Islamic country Iran--who we were so sure would be suitably intimidated by our shock and awe and democracy and love for the world over Iraq that they would faint in fear before our might weapons and goodness and rightness--have reached the lofty status our former Iraqi enemies once occupied in posing the most absolutely deadliest threat ever to the United States, is that, having now invaded and occupied Iraq, a country that hadn't attacked us and didn't pose a threat to us, are attacking us in Iraq. Consequently, it is common conservative nonsense that we must therefore bomb, invade and occupy Iran NOW yesterday.

Following this logic, one can imagine it will be advisable to some day bomb, invade and occupy the old Soviet Union because Russian separatists, Islamic minorities in the break-a-way countries, and other sponsors of "terrorism" in the region are sending "terrorists" and bomb materials into Iran, killing our soldiers and military contractors, and otherwise aiding and abetting our enemies among the mullahs who we're endeavoring to liberate.

Make sense?

No Military Industrial Complex in Oregon

I hadn't realized this:

Oregon, with no major defense industries or a major military facility, has expressed strong opposition to the war in Iraq. Multnomah County, which includes Portland, is particularly antiwar.

Return to the Freak Show

The announcement late yesterday afternoon of the Edwards endorsement inspired me to flick on the cable teevee "news" stations when I got home last night for coverage.

Well. The first question I have is for the suits at CNN. How much longer can the Lou Dobbs hate-on-Hispanic-and-Mexican-immigrants continue in prime time or any time? I realize his rantings were useful for driving up ratings at some point, but, have you no shame? Whatever genuine economic or other views this man has or had, it has been obvious for some time now that he eats, breathes and sleeps a fear and hatred of brown people. CNN, the once proud network of Bernard Shaw, at last, Have You No Shame?

As for MSNBC, I'd complain about the equally insane and offensive rantings of Pat Buchanan if I could actually make sense of all the competing voices shouting over one-another.

As bad as Crossfire came to be, it was hardly any worse than what's been showing regularly the past decade or so on the major cable stations. I know Fox is hopeless, but here's hoping that saner minds will someday prevail at CNN or MSNBC. They're hurting America. Seriously.

What Else Hurt Clinton

While this Karen Tumulty column about Hillary's 5 mistakes has made the rounds, there are a couple additional factors, largely beyond the former First Lady's control, that ended up being highly significant as well.

1. John Edwards -- Many, many years ago, when Edwards was still a 2008 candidate, I recall the puzzlement expressed by those political pundits who noted the seeming contrast between Edwards' rather liberal populist campaign and the largely white, more conservative slice of the demographic pie he was pulling in the early contests. Edwards' vote base didn't really seem connected to the candidate's message. Demographics seemed more important than policy.

And while Edwards didn't stay in the race long, he placed a narrow second place in Iowa, ahead of Clinton. The story of the night ended up being Obama's rather comfortably sized--but still only a plurality--margin of victory. Had Edwards not opted for the race--and from the night of the 2004 election it was obvious he would run again--it is fairly easy to see Hillary winning a large portion of Edwards' vote, given how the last several contests have turned out. The presence of another, viable White candidate in the race hurt Hillary at this early stage, possibly dividing the White demographic and giving another strong candidate, Obama, an opening he desperately needed.

2. Michigan/Florida -- While the focus on these states has tended to be that of how to seat their delegates given the fact that they broke the national Democratic party rules and held their contests too early, and the fact that as a result Obama was not even on the Michigan ballot, it is still and ironically the case that had these states stuck to the regular schedule they would have ended up playing a much more significant role while giving Clinton two large and relatively early, momentum-generating victories. Had this occured, Obama's victories on Super Tuesday would have no doubt been viewed differently, and the nature of the contest reshaped.

But Having George W. Bush as President Changed Everything

This Glenn Greenwald column posted at antiwar.com is a gem.

Throughout the 1990s, conservatism was defined by its fear of expansive powers seized by the federal government – particularly domestic law-enforcement and surveillance powers. Conservatives vigorously opposed every proposal to expand the government’s investigative and surveillance authority on the grounds that such powers posed intolerable threats to our liberties. More than specific policies, the right-wing ideology was grounded in warnings against the dangers of unchecked government power.

Illustrating this ideology was the speech delivered by Ronald Reagan in accepting his party’s nomination at the 1980 GOP Convention:

"Trust me" government asks that we concentrate our hopes and dreams on one man; that we trust him to do what’s best for us. My view of government places trust not in one person or one party, but in those values that transcend persons and parties. The trust is where it belongs – in the people.

Following this path, conservatives have endlessly claimed that they stand for limitations on government intrusion into the lives of Americans. One article in 2000 on the right-wing web-site Free Republic actually decried the dangerous loss of liberty and privacy as a result of what it alarmingly described as the Clinton administration’s use of a "secret court" (something called the "FISA court") that actually enables the federal government to eavesdrop on American citizens! Worse, warned the article, the judicial approval that the government obtains for this eavesdropping is in secret, so we don’t even know who is being eavesdropped on!

The conservative commenters at Free Republic – having been fed a steady diet of anti-government rhetoric for decades – predictably reacted to news of expanded eavesdropping powers under FISA with such liberty-minded sentiments as "This is beyond frightening"; "This does not bode well for continued freedom"; "Franz Kafka would have judged this too wild to fictionalize. But for us – it’s real." One worried right-wing commentator wondered: "Any chance of Bush rolling some of this back? It sounds amazing on its face." Another pointed out – quite rationally – the severe dangers of allowing the government to exercise power in secret and with little oversight:

This is one of those ideas that has a valid purpose behind it, but is wide open to terrible abuse. And there’s no way to check to see if it is abused.

Like all things that don’t have the light of day shining on them, you can be sure that it is being twisted to suit the purposes of those who hold the power.

Just makes you feel on warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it?

Read it all.

Maybe If She Asks Really, Really Nicely

"Will Obama Supporters Help Pay Down Clinton's $20 Billion Debt?"

Or, maybe, these White, Regular, Really Hard Working People will pony up?

In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.

(snip)

Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"

In Our Country

The Post has a rather disturbing--if not entirely surprising--story today about how Obama volunteers and the Obama campaign at the grassroots have had to endure the violence of racial animosity.

Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.

The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."

Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.

On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.

I can kind of understand why the Obama campaign is choosing to downplay these episodes. But these stories nevertheless reveal the darkness and ugliness that continue to bloom in certain corners of American life among Regular, Hard Working, White Americans.

They also suggest that many White Americans haven't bothered to become acquainted with much of their country's history. And while these stories are certainly disturbing and discouraging, there's another trend, albeit in the Elitist Literary World Where People Read Books, in which the country's terrible racial past is being unearthed and revealed in the light. Specifically, at least four books just in the past several months have come out documenting the domestic White terrorism spawned after the Civil War in the South. One of these episodes, the Colfax Massacre, is the main subject of two new books, and provides the opening for another. A fourth text details the violence in South Carolina and Mississippi, in addition to Louisiana. Today, the Colfax Massacre, in which scores of African Americans were killed, continues to be celebrated and highlighted by the State of Louisiana in the form of a marker that laments the few Whites killed during the attack, fought as it is now claimed, to redeem the state from "unjust, corrupt, carpetbagger rule." The bodies of the African Americans killed were hastily buried. Their bones have been routinely and inadvertantly dug up and uncovered as various construction projects have occured in the area. But the public and state-sanctioned misinformation about the attack continue to this day.

Fortunately, these books are helping to shine the light on these past episodes, if not to right the wrongs themselves. Maybe some of the people in Kokomo will give one or more of these books a read.

A Biblical Plague

According to Robert Novak:

Some U.S. Christians are not reconciled to McCain's candidacy but instead regard the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as "God's candidate" for president in 2012. Whether they can be written off as merely a troublesome fringe group depends on Huckabee's course...

(snip)

According to this activist, at the heart of the let-Obama-win movement is longtime Virginia conservative leader Michael Farris -- the nation's leading home-school advocate, who is now chancellor of Patrick Henry College (in Purcellville, Va.) for home-schooled students. Best known politically as the losing Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1993, Farris is regarded as one of the hardest-edged Christian politicians. He is reported in evangelical circles to promote the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency.

What sort of world do you have to inhabit to think like this? I don't know. Maybe one like this:

By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that Christians of this type should learn to "be rational" or "set aside your religion" about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you've made a journey like this — once you've gone this far — you are beyond suggestible. It's not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc., that's the issue. It's that once you've gotten to this place, you've left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a roomful of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you're thinking with muscles, not neurons.

By the end of that weekend, Phil Fortenberry could have told us that John Kerry was a demon with clawed feet, and not one person would have so much as blinked. Because none of that politics stuff matters anyway, once you've gotten this far. All that matters is being full of the Lord and empty of demons. And since everything that is not of God is demonic, asking these people to be objective about anything else is just absurd. There is no "anything else." All alternative points of view are nonstarters. There is this "our thing," a sort of Cosa Nostra of the soul, and then there are the fires of Hell. And that's all.