The organizations passing as "news" and their employees passing as "journalists" are just about declaring The Winner in an election that won’t come until November 2008. This metaphorical horse race has been a marathon for a couple of years now as a variety of elected officials do that hat toss thing declaring them in the run for what has become CEO of the United States. And while candidates have been galloping around the election track and journalists have been making bets on their favorites; We the People have been trying to get the attention of not only the media, but those candidates running that race, without much success.
All the candidates positions, both Republican and Democratic, differ from what We say we want. MSNBC (no direct link found; go to msnbc. com and then click politics and rate the candidates+issues matrix) has a chart of every candidate and what they are saying about every "important" issue. The most interesting thing about this little poll is that it shows that none of the candidates meet our criteria.
One of the reasons this poll is important is that it is on MSNBC and the two political parties can urge their members to take it, but they can’t control the access and they can’t label it as either "left wing" or "right wing". The poll shows voting results every week from October 8, 2007 to December 31, 2007, with a total of 259,080 participants. They allow you to rate the candidates by a color code ranging from green (strongly agree) to red (strongly disagree) with a sort of greenish gray/reddish black middle. The poll asks your opinion of the major issues candidates have been responding to: Economy, energy, health care, immigration and the Iraq war (there is no question about the Afghanistan war). The interesting thing about this data matrix is that absolutely no candidate, I repeat, NO Republican or Democratic candidate shows solid green in any of these issues and only Ron Paul is shaded more green than red. In fact, there are few muted green squares (moderate approval) at all and the majority of those fall in the area of the candidates energy plans.
This poll indicates that the voters are unhappy with every candidate’s position on Iraq except for Ron Paul (Dodd, who seemed the most compatible with the voters, was not being rated); nor were they happy with one of the most important issue of health care as every candidate showed shades of gray. So a poll with more than a quarter of a million participants should be considered as valid as any other poll being cited by news sources and candidates and we can assume that they represent a whole lot of voters dissatisfied with the current crop of candidates.
And yet from media reports after the Iowa caucus it sounds like the nomination is a done deal. After having watched the 2000 (Bush?) and 2004 (Bush again?) caucus process, I’m fairly positive that it may just be so. We remember that Howard Dean was at the top of the people’s list and Senator Kerry was at the bottom and yet we ended up with Kerry as the nominee. And then we watched the election process go down hill from there.
Wednesday we watched the same process begin again. With a public unenthusiastic over both parties candidates and their positions, how can a 38% for Obama be considered a decisive "win"? And how can a 34% caucus vote for Huckabee be considered decisive when Ron Paul was the favorite of more than a quarter million un-caucused voters in the MSNBC poll?
So, let’s jump off this Iowa bandwagon and consider just exactly what did happen during the early bird caucus. To do that, we have to understand the nominating system that gives us the only candidates we are allowed to vote for even before the National Conventions are held.
What is the caucus system?
First, the manner of electing Senators, the House of Representatives and the President are outlined in the Constitution. There is no mention of a caucus system, probably because there were no political parties when our nation was formed; therefore not regulated by the Constitution and something happening outside of Amendment 12. Caucus is "most generally defined as a meeting of supporters or members of a political party or movement" and therefore to caucus denies anyone not a member of the party the right to choose a presidential candidate. All we independents must choose to vote from someone selected by a group of people who do not represent us or our political ideology; ergo, we are choosing among a preselected group of people who best fit a party’s ideology.
Case in point, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. During the past two presidential election cycles we have been frozen out of the process and as a consequence no candidate represents the People but only the Party. The two administrations of George W. Bush are proof positive that party selection is sort of like incest on the party DNA chain which has produced the inbreeding we’ve seen in the last 7 years; and which, unfortunately, also eliminates the need to discuss the Republican candidates’ positions on these issues because we all know that they are more extreme than the most extreme position held by any of the Democratic candidates. And if any Republican wins in 2008 we are assured of another four years of a Bush agenda.
I doubt anyone wants another seven years like the last seven years but it seems we are being herded in that direction when you hear the hoopla over 30 delegates the Iowa Republican party caucus threw to Huckabee and the three-way split between Obama (16), Edwards (14) and Clinton(15) especially since New Hampshire is not a closed primary which doesn’t exactly indicate the mandate the media has been reporting.
And although New Hampshire is not an open primary (registered party members can cast votes for the opposition party) it does allow those voters not affiliated with either party an opportunity to vote for a presidential candidate, thus making it the first true test of a candidate’s viability with all the voters even if the Iowa vote did come first. New Hampshire is still the first toss up where those low in media and party polls can emerge victorious while party favorites can bottom out.
The reality is that party delegates controlled Iowa; voters will control New Hampshire. And since the voting public has shown a distinct disenchantment with their "stand on the issues", this is still a wide open race. The candidate that can promise to work to achieve the voters’ goals, not the party’s goals will be the big winner. There are a lot more primaries and a lot more caucuses to be held and we need to put even more pressure on the remaining candidates after Iowa to follow our lead. The MSNBC taped comments from the candidates speeches are not the only information out there but it indicates succinctly that there will not be much reform when the new president takes office in 2008.
What the candidates are saying
Among those now considered "front runners" after Iowa, the message on the issues is pretty much the same. Of the three candidates still considered viable after Iowa, only Edwards has an economic policy that focuses on middle America, and the systemic problems of low paying service industry jobs that has led to the necessity of needing two full time jobs to provide basic necessities and the ever pressing reality of needing a third income in the very near future. Neither Clinton or Obama has had the courage to risk their $165,000+ perks income as senators with promises to fix an economy that cares more for the profits of off shore companies than the economic reality of taxpaying voters who see their economy consisting mostly of those volatile food a fuel prices that aren't included in the economic figures released by government.
All three of the candidates make the appropriate responses when quizzed about energy; but Clinton and Edwards have been the most forthcoming about real change. Clinton wants a ban on all Arctic drilling and Edwards plans investigations into the oil industry. Obama’s plan is to see 20% of energy use being met by unnamed "renewable energy sources" by 2020, which translates to a 1.67% reduction per year for the next twelve years.
One of the most urgent and compelling problems is health care and we know that is Clinton’s thing. During President Clinton’s first years in office, First Lady Clinton was soundly trounced by the majority Republicans for her approach to health care and yet the health care problem is even worse today. Anyone who has ever had a loved one, a parent, a child diagnosed with a chronic or catastrophic illness feels the urgency of getting our insurance-financed health care crisis under control.
Edwards is blunt in stating that he wants universal health care financed by the "welfare for the wealthy" Bush called tax cuts. Obama’s health care plan includes maintaining dependence upon insurance companies for health care and treatment which is reminiscent of previous energy policies which were built around the continued dependence upon oil companies and we know where that has gotten us. But a major difference in Obama’s plan versus the other two is that he plans to make insurance mandatory; thus continuing to feed the insurance company while adding another payment to the already strained budget of the People while the government will "make up" any insurance payment shortfall which I’m sure Republicans will promptly label "welfare" and seek to destroy.
And we all know where all three candidates stand on the Iraq war. Clinton and Obama see no urgency in changing the status quo and Edwards, like other candidates (Dodd, Paul), wants an immediate withdrawal and out by the end of the year. And right now, he has bluntly stated that Bush should go to Congress for new authorization to wage war - hopefully based on truth this time - and not a bad idea for Bush or the new president.
All three candidates advocate closed borders with Mexico (but not Canada) and punitive measures against illegal immigrants without any measures to balance the rights of millions of American citizens whose Mexican ancestors were annexed by the U. S. when we added the Southwest to our country by less than peaceful means. These citizens who have been here longer than most Ellis Island immigrants are not, and should not be, second class citizens and should not be forced to produce citizenship documents unless all citizens and all immigrants are forced to prove they are legal. Biracial Obama, born in Hawaii only two years after it became a state, should be most familiar with the problems of "racial profiling" based on race rather than citizenship but he is barreling down that road as quickly as any other of the candidates without seeming to realize that if the extremists had their way he would probably not be able to claim American citizenship (let alone run for president) based on his father’s student status in Hawaii and his subsequent return to his native Kenya.
So, whatever spin is put on the Iowa caucus, you are still looking at the same old politics by the same old party. The leading party candidates have proven that in spite of their quest for "change" there really isn’t much change happening. In spite of Obama’s reputation for being a fresh face with new ideas, they are only retreads of the same ideas put forth for the last decade. These candidates can not bypass we voters again. We must make sure that we don’t allow the media to give us opinions about any of the candidates and to do this we must ask harsh questions and demand substantive answers.
President John Kennedy was known for his brilliant oratory and his most often quoted phrase is "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." But what is not as well known is that after that speech, after that call to arms, he promptly got to work doing all he could to fix the problems of the nation.
And now is the time, while the primaries and the caucuses are in progress, to force your chosen candidate to choose what he/she will do for their country because after the conventions it will be too late. Perhaps that was why it was so important to put the Iowa caucus ahead of the primary in New Hampshire, to set the stage so to speak. Harken back to 2004. Dean was the leading presidential candidate, Kerry was not. Yet in spite of the overwhelming public support of the People, Dean lost and Kerry got the nomination and was promptly swiftboated into oblivion. Is Obama being set up as the fall guy for 2008? And if any one of these candidates does win the presidency, their ideology seems to fit in with ideology of the Democratic Congress. No bold stands just soaring rhetoric. So far Edwards seems to be a lone Don Quixote tilting at the windmills erected by the Bush administration. I’m almost convinced that the best choice of the candidates receiving media coverage is Edwards which astonishes me since he was never my choice.
But it does tell me what I'm not hearing the candidates declare loud and clear and that they are "promoting the general welfare" of We the People ahead of party loyalty. And what I fear the most is the lack of faith the candidates are expressing in the People by parsing their positions on these issues and carefully wording their plans to change our future. And on the political stage they occupy who are they playing to? If they boldly get out of Iraq when the majority of the voters are backing them who will they displease? If they boldly carry "all men are created equal" into the health care fiasco when voters are backing universal health care, who will they displease? And if they boldly propose that the economy and jobs and energy costs are all tied together and must be fixed, who will they displease? Certainly not us. So who do they fear even more than the voting public as they try to win our applause?
(run al run)