There are two models of the acquisition of political power discussed here:

1. the Republican model, in which an "aestheticized" politics is promoted (in this case, it's the "aesthetics" of the War on Terror and of insecurity in general) in order to capture power for an elite (the Bush administration and its neoconservative cronies, and its financial backers in the oil and defense industries)

2. the model proposed by the Italian thinker Antonio Gramsci, in which a coalition comes to power in order to support the claims of working people.

Here I will try to suggest that the former is "bad pragmatism" and the latter is real pragmatism, and suggest that the Democratic Party stop imitating 1) and find a way to subscribe wholeheartedly to 2).

(crossposted at Docudharma)

I will do whatever I can, with the humble means at my disposal, to get Barack Obama elected president of the United States. I want to state that upfront so that, should a pissing contest break out, we can refer back to it. The problem with establishing it, of course, is it betrays my hand, right? In conventional political metrics, it means whatever I have to say hence forth, and however it might faithfully represent the equally humble opinions of civil libertarian progressives/FDR Democrats like myself, it can be dismissed, because as a conscientious person, one who measures the greater good and the general welfare into his decisions, I must do the right thing. Obama and I agree on a lot of other stuff, my choices have been winnowed down, he's got me.

It's the aforesaid dismissal thing, however, that seems to sum up some of the sniping discourse here of recent, particularly as pertains to Obama's vote on the FISA bill. Or here's a pithier summary: it doesn't matter, shut the fuck up and get in line.

Let's try a thought experiment:  You're John McCain.  You can't get any media coverage to save your life.  All the public attention is focused on some young upstart who has only been a national figure for about a year.  You can't open your mouth without committing a gaffe.  And the approval rating for incumbent president in your party, to use Robert Gibbs' phrase, is hovering around the drinking age.

What do you do?  Well, I'd seize upon a moment, such as the aftermath of the FISA vote, when my opponent's base is spewing dissatisfaction and discontent, and start attacking.  Force a two-front war.

Follow me after the jump...

Presumptive nominee Barack Obama followed up his historic nomination as the Democratic party's standard bearer for President in this election with a significant foreign policy address at the AIPAC conference.

He was uncompromising in his support for Israel and some would say even took a Likudnik and neocon position with respect to Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah. You can form your own opinion of his speech.

Knowing that Mr. 25% and DeadEye will stoop at anything - is it possible that they will launch an attack on Iran and try to hand McCain an election victory?

With news trickling out about Hillary Clinton's plans for Friday/Saturday, I think it's fair to say that a lot of people are looking forward to a Clintonian speak free zone.  Very briefly...

Crossposted at MyDD.  I've been a very strong critic of Hillary Clinton's campaign tactics, and I was very dismayed by what I heard from her last night.  

Yet, as I see the events unfold today, I want to provide a more generous, positive interpretation of what Hillary is doing and what she really wants.  

Here's my theory - she gave her "victory speech" last night, raised the issue of being VP, threatened to use her 18 million supporters as a bargaining chip, as a clever way to unify rather than divide the party.  She's basically taking one for the team.

George Bush's political life has been dominated by inveigling the public, obfuscating the truth and lying about his record.  However, he has been clear and honest with us about one thing: he wants us to be in Iraq forever.  Due to a idiocy and ignorace, hubris and blind faith, or a perverse internationalist form of sadism George Bush is determined to keep US troops under siege in Iraq at any cost. He ignores all the costs to our national reputation, his own reputation, our national treasury, human life, and the survival of his own party.

And that makes the Bush Administration very dangerous.

SarcasticIntellectual asked toward the end of a very interesting diary entry what was keeping the supers from speaking up and ending this thing.  I thought of Olberman's comment this week that if Obama had said something (I don't remember what it was) like what Clinton or her campaign had said,

In 1992, I graduated college and – largely due to the excitement of that year’s presidential campaign – embarked on a career in Illinois politics and government.  I entered the area as a "Clinton Democrat", as started down a path in party politics that included all of the cynicsm and triangulation that comes with the Clinton territory.

Today, I feel like I am nearing the end of a painful journey.  I thought I would share the arc of my progression from rabid Clinton democrat to a person who feels very strongly that the party MUST move in a new direction

Summer, 1992:  Attended the historic post-convention bus stop in Vandalia, Illinois.  Inspired by the hope offered by the Man from Hope, I engage in politics in a meaningful way for the first time ever.  Start working as a full-time volunteer for Illinois Clinton Campaign.

More after the jump:

I just sent in my change of registration - I am now an Independent/Unaffiliated voter, or as we put it in New York, "No Party."

I have to tell you all, it feels liberating, to send a message in my own small way that I'll no longer stand with a party that allows one of its major candidates to pit white working-class people against black people.  It feels good to no longer have a part in a party whose Superdelegates sit on the sideline and allow the probable nominee get battered.  I feel relieved that I no longer have to sit in a party that retains power-brokers who think blurring the lines with Republicans is a way to victory.

By the way, at this point I'll tell you that Rock the Vote is such a great tool, and makes changing registration incredibly easy.

As posted at DownWithTyranny:

Little more than a week after showing himself the most scurrilous, divisive prick in the Institutional Democratic Party, James Carville just sent me a letter asking for money. He wants my increasingly meager discretionary income on behalf of at least one of the party's runners-up on the scurrilous prick scale, Chuck Schumer.

Apparently blind to the welter of Democrats and even independents who consider Carville a raving crazy-uncle-ish fossil and tiresome vestige of a misguided experiment in party corporatization, Schumer's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) has trotted out the Clinton strategist in a mailer that has him het up on gittin us galvanized. Funny thing, I agree with almost every one of the party rallying points Carville, or Schumer's people with Carville's imprimatur, makes in the letter. And yet I find myself reading it with nose wrinkled, more eager to throw it in the shitter than actually appraise it, eager to symbolically, or in my mind, kick Carville square in the nuts as I do. I'm not sure this qualifies as effective marketing communications.

It's not that I think Hillary would be a bad president.  No, we've had a bad one for these past two terms, a really bad one at that, and Hillary is looking for a repeat Clinton performance, like that first guy from Hope.  Rumor has it that she was the brains behind the operation anyway.  Or at least she'd like us to believe it.  As presidents go, Bill wasn't bad.  Not impeachable bad.  Not great though.  Just good enough to let the economy get better.  And I'm sure it would improve under Hillary too.

But that's not why she has to lose.  No, this is political.  Hillary's politics are the problem.  Not her policies, but her style of politicking.  We've heard a lot of objections to her style already, Mark Penn's style, Jim Carville's style, Tonya Harding's style.  But there's an underlying theme to it that has to go.

The problem with Hillary is that she is so attuned to hunting down the middle of the road that she really should get a job painting yellow stripes.  And it happens in so many ways that it is sadly predictable.  And it leads to my specific objections to her campaign, and why she has to lose for the sake of the Party, the country, and our sanity.

I take her at her word. I mean,  I see no reason to doubt her on that.

Remember triangulation?  The Clinton strategy of 1994-1996 that won the Presidency while abandoning  Congress to the Republicans. It is the reason  Bill Clinton was not able to put much of his agenda through. It is the reason we don't have universal health care. Why we got NAFTA. It is why he got impeached.

Everything the Clintons do is out of political calculation. That is not all bad; that is how Bill Clinton beat back the Republican Congress. He  did give us budget surpluses, peace and prosperity. Those are not small accomplishments. If Obama were not offering the  prospect of something substantially better, we would gladly settle for yet  another Clinton to clean up the mess of another Bush.

When Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq war she was following a continuation of the strategy of triangulation.  The idea was to blur the distinction with the Republicans.  It was taken for granted that Sen. Clinton would be the 2008 Democratic nominee at that time. If the war had turned out good and Sen. Clinton had voted against it, that would have been a drag on her GE prospects. She was willing to sacrifice others to ensure her own political viability.

See the Action Update at the bottom:

Just as the prologue gives a sense of the story to be told, the campaign foretells the term in office. Superdelegates need to think hard about a Clinton administration:

Clinton Campaigning - on being Commander-in-Chief, March 2008:
"I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold.  I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy."

Clinton Presiding - on the Middle East, Feb. 2009:
"While many of us have skimmed the first page of a National Intelligence Estimate, few can skim with self-assurance like Senator Lugar and I can.  You have to ask yourself why Joe Biden feels the need to read the whole report on Iran.  Can we afford to wait on people who never feel they know enough to act?"

There were many good things about the Clintons in the Whitehouse. But helping other democrats get elected was not one of them. In fact, the  Clintons were  bad for other democrats: they were consumed by their own ambition.

This explains why so many democratic leaders of that time- Senator Daschle for example- are now for Obama. Actually,  being a friend of the Clintons was often a very precarious position. They got caught up in the myriad feuds, investigations and scandals and got no help in return. Ask Lani Guinere, who was nominated and then `dis-appointed' to be Attorney General. Or Howard Ickes,  who is back on the inside now.

But the worst insult to Democratic colleagues was the way Bil Clinton ran his re-election campaign in 1996. He hired the slimy Dick Morris, who came up with the triangulation strategy of sacrificing Congressional Democrats. So what is wrong with that? Isn't it just politics as usual?

It really does mystify me why this community, and most of the liberal blogosphere, has been so enthusiastic about Barack Obama as a candidate.  Yes, he is a compelling and inspiring speaker, and yes, he had the courage and foresight to oppose the Iraq war even at the height of the militaristic frenzy of 2002.

But there are negatives about him too; negatives that bother me as much as similar complaints about John Kerry in 2004.  Once again, I feel I am getting a candidate I have to hold my nose for; rather that someone I'd truly get excited about - such as, say, John Edwards.

This is not to say Hillary Clinton is any better; I have just as many doubts about her, for some of the same reasons.  However, her negatives hardly need elucidation on this site; she is already deeply unpopular here, and with her chances of winning looking increasingly slim, there is no point in criticizing a candidate who may soon be on the way out.  

My doubts about Obama go all the way back to late 2005, when he posted a diary here at Daily Kos.  In it, he was sharply critical of not just the netroots' policy positions, but the entire way we view the world.

So, Hillary and her surrogates keep floating this scorched earth policy, warning that if she doesn’t pull off the nearly impossible feat of utterly clobbering Obama at the polls on March 4th, she’ll fight this thing out until the convention, pilfering superdelegates and pledged delegates alike.  

She and her consigliores can only know what this will do, how it risks destroying the closest thing Democrats have had to a sure win in the White House since her husband couldn’t keep his hands of his intern.  But they’ve decided it’s worth the risk, that there is enough to gain by suggesting they’re willing to burn the party in order to save it.

Okay.  Fine.  Goodbye.

Not goodbye to DailyKos.  Not goodbye to the things I believe in.  Not “goodbye cruel world.”  Heavens no.

Just goodbye.

Josh Marshall has a stab at analyzing why he, presumably many other folks who like the Clintons, are feeling queasy about the role the Bill is playing in the campaign, which I think speaks to a general uneasiness with the whole idea of a dynastic 'Billary' candidacy in certain ways.