Raise your hand if this has ever happened to you.
You're talking to a friend and they casually mention that they saw your significant other talking to another man/woman at a restaurant the other day. Your friend didn't get a good luck and wasn't really sure if it was them or not but they thought they'd tell you anyway. You calmly tell your friend that they must be mistaken because you were both at home at the time and forget about the whole thing. But then on your way home, you start thinking. You go through your memory of the last week and start cataloguing all the hours of the day that the two of you weren't together. Then suddenly you get a call on your cell phone. It's your SO saying they'll be home work from late today. Hey it's nothing new, in fact it happens pretty often, but as you hang up the phone your mind is racing. Scenarios run through your head and you start thinking "Hey, he/she's late a lot, but they've never been late on a TUESDAY before. What gives."
Now, chances are there's nothing to the story. But you can't stop yourself from imagining the worst.
This, folks, is what's been happening to Barack Obama around here lately. Barack Obama is our significant other and we're all starting to get a little bit paranoid.
Now I realize that some of you are justifiably upset about FISA. I won't bother to rehash the argument again here and will simply say that I understand you concern. But what of the other accusations, the evidence that everyone is offering of a sudden shift to the center? Is it for real? Or could it be that we are letting a defeatist attitude warp our perceptions.
Let's find out. I'm going to detail some of the many controversies that have been brought up over the past week and hold them up to the lamplight. The meme is that now that the primary is over and Hillary is defeated, Obama has done an about face and moved to the center on a plethora of issues.
Let's start with:
- NAFTA.
We all read articles and diaries saying that Obama had called his rhetoric on NAFTA "overheated" and many saw this as a sign that he was backtracking. The original article was written by Nina Easton for Fortune and this is what she had to say:
In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine's upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn't want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.
"Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified," he conceded, after I reminded him that he had called NAFTA "devastating" and "a big mistake," despite nonpartisan studies concluding that the trade zone has had a mild, positive effect on the U.S. economy.
Now let's compare this to what Obama said about NAFTA at the Ohio debates:
I will make sure that we renegotiate, in the same way that Senator Clinton talked about. And I think actually Senator Clinton's answer on this one is right. I think we should use the hammer of a potential opt-out as leverage to ensure that we actually get labor and environmental standards that are enforced. And that is not what has been happening so far
Okay sounds a bit different. But what happens if we actually read the transcript of the Fortune interview? Emphasis mine
Fortune: Speaking of facts, I have to ask you a trade question. NAFTA you called "devastating," "a big mistake." But a 2005 Congressional Research Service study shows that it has a mild, positive effect on our economy and the Mexican economy.
Obama: In the aggregate.
Fortune: In the aggregate. And you and Hillary Clinton, neither of you would support any of these trade agreements that did have ILO standards, and that did have environmental standards.
Obama: No, no I supported Peru.
Fortune: Right, but not Panama or Colombia. But to follow that up - even [Obama adviser] Austan Goolsbee has said he believes that the wage gap in the U.S. is really largely the information economy. It's not about these free trade agreements. But now that the primary is over and you're not in Ohio or wherever -
Obama: I'm going to be back in Ohio.
Here's what I agree with. I think that sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.
Fortune: Did yours?
Obama: Politicians are always guilty of that, and I don't exempt myself from that. But my core position has never changed. It's been consistent if you look all the way through. I've always been a proponent of free trade. And I've always been a believer that we have to have strong environmental provisions and strong labor provisions in our trade agreements. And that we've got to be better bargainers.
The Chinese love free trade, but they are tough as nails when it comes to a bargain, right? I mean they will resist any calls to stop manipulating their currency. It's no secret they have consistently encroached on our intellectual property and our copyright laws. There are all sorts of nontariff barriers.
Now that doesn't make them anti-trade. It just means they're trying to work the system to their advantage. My only point has been that we should make sure in our trade negotiations that our interests and our values are adequately reflected.
Fortune: Should we unilaterally reopen NAFTA?
Obama: I actually had a nice call with the prime minister of Canada, Prime Minister Harper, this morning. He called myself and called Senator McCain as well to congratulate us. I'm looking forward to a conversation with him. I'm not a big believer in doing things just unilaterally. I'm a big believer in opening up a dialogue and figuring out how we can make this work for all people.
By the way, just going back to NAFTA for a second. I don't dispute that there may have been some modest aggregate benefit in terms of lowering prices on consumer goods, for example. But I would also argue that not only did it have an adverse impact on certain communities that saw jobs move down to Mexico, but, for example, our agricultural sector pretty much devastated a much less-efficient Mexican farming system.
Now from a pure economic perspective - if you're just an economist looking at this in an abstract way - you'd say, well, the more-efficient producer displaced a less-efficient producer in Mexico. There's nothing wrong with that. As a practical matter, those are millions of people in Mexico who were displaced, many of whom now are moving up to the United States, contributing to the immigration concern, and so those human factors should be taken into account. They may not override every single decision that we make with respect to trade, but to pretend that those costs aren't there, I think does not do a service to free trade. And it's part of what has been the protectionist sentiment and the anti-immigration sentiment that is out there in both parties. And I think that if we manage trade more effectively, if we're better bargainers, if we're thinking about the dislocations that occur as a consequence of it, if we're true to our belief that labor and environmental standards should be part of raising living standards around the world, instead of a race to the bottom, then we can have free trade and it will be sustainable and we'll have political support over the long term.
Okay. I'd say that back and forth's a fair bit different from the way Fortune characterized it. Has he maybe backed off in tone on how much pressure he will put on Canada and Mexico? Yes. But the policy remains intact. This is pretty similar to the NAFTA Gate thing where Goolsbee got in trouble not for misstating Obama's policy but for stating something that sounded different in tone.
Next:
- Now that the primary is over, Obama is trying to score points with Republicans by opposing gun control and coming out in favor of the death penalty for child rapists.
False. Sure, whether or not he's doing this to appease Republicans is debatable. But this is not a position that he suddenly took after the Primary. In fact he wrote about his death penalty position in his book
Now on gun control, I can't believe people here have such a short memory. Here he is in Pennsylvania courting gun owners during the primary. And who could forget the saga of the "did he sign it or not" questionnaire from 1996, where he may or may not have come out in favor of the Illinois hand gun ban. Not exactly a profile in courage, but not anything new either. Again when we look at actual policy statements, we get this from the debates:
Q: When you were in the state senate, you talked about licensing and registering gun owners. Would you do that as president?
A: I don't think that we can get that done. But what we can do is to provide just some common-sense enforcement. The efforts by law enforcement to obtain the information required to trace back guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers. As president, I intend to make it happen. We essentially have two realities, when it comes to guns, in this country. You've got the tradition of lawful gun ownership. It is very important for many Americans to be able to hunt, fish, take their kids out, teach them how to shoot. Then you've got the reality of 34 Chicago public school students who get shot down on the streets of Chicago. We can reconcile those two realities by making sure the Second Amendment is respected and that people are able to lawfully own guns, but that we also start cracking down on the kinds of abuses of firearms that we see on the streets.
- Obama is for allowing churches to discriminate in hiring practices.
This one had a whole lot of people upset the other night. It started with an early AP story announcing that Obama would announce.
Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.
In reality, though. The campaign had this to say the next day:
Now, make no mistake, as someone who used to teach constitutional law, I believe deeply in the separation of church and state, but I don't believe this partnership will endanger that idea -- so long as we follow a few basic principles. First, if you get a federal grant, you can't use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can't discriminate against them -- or against the people you hire -- on the basis of their religion. Second, federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs. And we'll also ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.
Can we say debunked?
- Finally I wanna take a look at this Naomi Klein article from The Nation in which she begins:
Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."
Now I know Naomi Klein has a lot of fans around here and I respect her. But she's either being extremely dishonest or extremely sloppy. Because to my memory, Obama has said the words "I'm a free market guy" in almost EVERY SPEECH he's given on the economy. It's his economics version of "John Mccain is a hero and we honor his service." It's the caveat he raises before pivoting to criticize the current economic climate, a technique to make himself sound reasonable. But don't take my word for it, here he is in March:
Throughout this saga, Americans have pursued their dreams within a free market that has been the engine of America's progress. It's a market that's created a prosperity that is the envy of the world, and opportunity for generations of Americans; a market that has provided great rewards to innovators and risk-takers who've made America a beacon for science and technology and discovery.
But the American experiment has worked in large part because we guided the market's invisible hand with a higher principle. A free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it. That's why we've put in place rules of the road: to make competition fair and open, and honest. We've done this not to stifle but rather to advance prosperity and liberty. As I said at Nasdaq last September, the core of our economic success is the fundamental truth that each American does better when all Americans do better; that the well-being of American business, its capital markets and its American people are aligned
And here he is again as early as 2007,
Globalization is here, and I don't think Americans are afraid to compete. And we have the goods and the services and the skills and the innovation to compete anywhere in the world.
But what we've got to make absolutely certain of is that, in that competition, we are hard bargainers.
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Now, I want to ask you. Does anyone notice a common thread to all of these things? Is it a right wing or even moderate policy he's taking on these issues?
Not really. His policies are the same ones that a few months ago Republicans were using to describe him as a left wing extremist. With the exception of FISA, there have been no substantial changes. What you are reacting to is the frame he is using to present his ideas.
See, Obama's no longer selling himself only to us. He's selling himself to the whole country. That doesn't mean he's going to abandon a progressive platform, but it does mean he's going to present that platform in terms that a great majority of the people can understand and relate to. Remember how George W Bush used liberal memes to make destructive right wing ideas sound nice? Well Obama's using right wing frames to sell liberal policy.
I know that some of you see that as an unnecessary validation of Republican myths but as Thereisnospoon said so eloquently the other day, that's where we come in. It's our job to challenge the language and assumptions that guide our politics. Obama has to play by the rules as they are set. And if he can use the Republicans' own rules to shove health care down their throat, then I say more power to him.
Often on Kos, I find the best way to argue with others is not to challenge their assumptions but to show that even if I accept their premise, even if I approach the issue on their terms, I'm still right. And often times I can win people over by doing just that.
I don't know about you but I don't want to wait for the progressive movement to gain steam to get health care, a new energy policy, urban renewal and the end of this long, long war. I want it now. And I've always felt that this was one of Obama's strong points, one of the reasons that he and not Hillary could get it done. Wasn't this part of his myth in the first place? Isn't this the guy who worked with police on a bill that they were opposing and not only got the bill passed but earned their endorsement? Or have we forgotten this?
Regardless, I think you'd better get used to it. Because he's going to continue to approach issues this way from here to November and if progressives cry every time he says the word patriotism or free market, even though he's trying to redefine what those terms mean and even though his policies haven't changed one iota.... well, we're gonna be in big trouble. And a lot of times you're going to misread things . And a lot of times, stories that in fact are later contradicted are going to appear. And unless we learn to be patient and wait to see what the campaign really has to say, we're going to end up weaker and more divided. And that's exactly what the Republicans want.
So let's try to see the big picture eh? Or not. I guess we could spend another week arguing about whether he threw Wes Clark under the bus.