monsoonmartin

I think anyone who knows me at all understands implicitly that none of the Republican candidates is in danger of receiving my endorsement, so at this point it’s rather obviously a matter of choosing between Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY).

(Speaking of the Republicans, though, it is amusing to watch them implode after enjoying roughly 14 years of power in national government, foisting their closed-minded, pro-corporate, and jingoistic policies on the country. Soulless right-wing pundit Ann Coulter has said of the insufficiently conservative senator John McCain (R-AZ) that if he wins the Republican nomination for President—which seems more and more likely with every passing primary—she will actually campaign for Hillary Clinton!)

To date in the Democratic Presidential primary, Obama has racked up endorsements from The Chicago Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Los Angeles Times, as well as Caroline Kennedy, The Oprah, MoveOn.org, author Toni Morrison, George Clooney and Matt Damon; Hillary Clinton has been endorsed by The New York Times, Kansas City Star, Denver Post, along with the National Organization for Women (NOW), Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson, Ed Rendell, Maya Angelou, and Billie Jean King. When it comes to endorsements, though, none is more coveted, more ballyhooed, than the Monsoon Martin weblog endorsement.

Before I get to the endorsement, I’ll dispense with the historical platitudes: the election for the 44^th President will mark the first time either an African American or female candidate has secured the nomination of a major party in this country. It is certainly noteworthy that for the first time in history, there is a really good chance that the United States will have a President that is not white and male.

But to take a step back from all this barrier-breaking delirium: it will be a hollow victory indeed for feminists and/or people of color if the person elected to the White House does not faithfully represent the views and needs of all of his or her constituents. A perfect case in point is Condoleezza Rice, who is the first African American woman to hold the post of United States Secretary of State. This would seem to be cause for celebration, if not for the fact that she is a truth-muddying Bush sycophant whose stints as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State have advanced some of the most wrongheaded, brutal, and hawkish foreign policies this country has even seen. William Fletcher of the TransAfrica Forum once famously called Rice “very cold and distant and only black by accident,” and she has been accused by Rep. Nancy Pelosi and many others of being a master of obfuscation and misdirection in her servile allegiance to the Bush administration’s policies. In short, despite having secured her status an a “first,” will not be mentioned with the likes of Harriet Tubman, Mary McLeod Bethune, Shirley Chisolm, and Marian Wright Edelman in the pantheon of great African American female leaders.

The point of such a long digression is simply to assert that, as much as the sexism and racism of those on the right who oppose these candidates is repugnant and makes us feel like leaping to their defense, we have just a deep a responsibility to evaluate them on their merits, their opinions, and their records.

It is with this in mind that I hereby endorse Barack Obama to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

I believe he has the vision, the experience, and the conviction to breathe new life into the executive branch of our government. I will try to be as succinct as possible in laying out my reasons for supporting him, but those of you who have been reading my work for some time now realize what an empty promise that could turn out to be. And finally, all of the information about candidates Obama and Clinton I have included here is correct to the best of my knowledge. I have included citations where possible, but much of the information comes from television reports, newspaper articles, and other sources that are now lost to me. I very much welcome corrections and rebuttals to my ideas; use the “post a comment” feature below this post to record your thoughts.

First, the positive aspects of Obama and his candidacy:

• Having worked as a community organizer, he has shown an ability to build a coalition that would include progressives, moderates, and even conservatives in the national conversation about how to progress beyond the tired, old political games.

• He worked a civil rights attorney, so he is attuned to the problems of discrimination, inequitable opportunities, and workers’ rights.
• He is strongly against the failed, ridiculous, and dangerous policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell” regarding homosexuals in the military.
• He was against the Iraq invasion from before the United States waged unprovoked war on that sovereign nation; he spoke at a massive anti-war rally in Chicago in March 2003 well before he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004.
• Obama states that upon entering office he’ll establish a timetable for the withdrawal of combat troops within 16 months.
• He has stated unequivocally that a new era of corporate responsibility is desperately needed, focusing on the issues of exorbitant CEO pay, living wages, union busting, curtailing of outsourcing, and environmental stewardship.
• Obama’s stance on the oft-criticized and underfunded educational initiative known as “No Child Left Behind” is generally amenable to the problems teachers have long had with the legislation. He says it needs to be completely reevaluated (though it would be more comforting to hear that he wants to scrap it altogether and start over), and that any initiatives need to be fully funded. Also on education, he wants to raise teacher salaries—which would seem like a difficult task, since they are set by individual school districts—and help defray some of the costs of student loans, since many college students graduate having incurred mountains of debt.
• I like the fact that he’s lived many places and gathered many experiences, increasing the likelihood that he can be genuinely empathetic about global crises and foreign policy. I also can’t deny that the prospect of someone who has had the experienced of being a Black man in American occupying the Oval Office is thrilling. (Of course, he’s no Angela Davis, who would be my all-time first choice for President, but it’s exciting nonetheless.)
• Obama has an encouragingly progressive record in the Illinois legislature—which includes introducing bills monitoring racial profiling, ensuring a living wage for workers, and child care.

There are a few negatives in evaluating Obama that I’d be remiss if I glossed over:

• Though he stood firmly against the war in 2003 and his initial Senate votes reflected this, by 2005 and 2006 he supported unconditional funding for the ongoing military action.
• Though he took a balanced approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict earlier in his career, in recent years he has been moving toward nearly unreserved support of the hard-line Israeli government’s often brutal policies.
• Obama supports same-sex unions with all the rights of traditional marriage, but does not believe that individuals of the same gender should be allowed to marry (he thinks it should be left up to the individual houses of worship whether to sanction such unions).
• An optimistic view of Obama’s drift toward the center since 2005 would posit that he was playing down his progressivism a bit to appeal to a broader cross-section of voters, but will return to his core values when he becomes President.

My decision to endorse Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination has mostly to do with my belief that he will be a good President, but also has a bit to do with what I see as serious weaknesses in his opponent’s record.

There are positives in Hillary’s campaign, to be sure, and I wholly agree with some of her statements and stances; for example, Hillary has been stronger in saying NCLB relies too heavily on testing, and wants a “student borrowers’ bill of rights” to keep interest rates under control and eliminate predatory lending, and favors universal preschool. And some of her policies have similarities to Obama’s. But there are lots of negatives that make me ultimately unable to offer her my support:

• She is divisive, having long been hated by lots of conservatives—though for mostly sexist and invalid reasons.
• Hillary Clinton introduced a bill in 2005 that would have banned flag burning; this move was an obvious pander to the right-wing patriotic types she knew she’d need to court in her Presidential bid. As a member of the ACLU, I value my First Amendment rights rather highly.
• She is extremely hawkish on foreign policy, having voted for the initial Iraq war authorization and all subsequent funding packages; she still refuses to acknowledge her initial vote as a mistake, saying that flawed intelligence and poor planning led to the Iraq quagmire. But plenty of people—including Obama, though perhaps not in these terms—saw Iraq for what it was from the beginning: a dishonest, cruel and criminal undertaking perpetrated against the world which has taken hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and killed nearly 4,000 US servicemembers.
• Clinton has said she will “immediately” convene the Joint Chiefs to begin withdrawing the troops, but has set no timetable for actual withdrawal.
• Clinton served on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart (pictured below) for six years prior to her husband’s run for the presidency. Despite reports that she tried to get the retail behemoth to hire more women in management positions, all evidence points to the fact that she had no effect on this corporation and its anti-union, immigrant labor-exploiting, sexist and bullying tactics. In addition, she worked for the Rose Law Firm, a prestigious gang of corporate lawyers that specialized in union-busting. There was also a scandal in which she allegedly overbilled clients and continued working for the firm (of which the state of Arkansas was a client) while her husband was the state’s governor, raising questions of impropriety.

• Clinton has shown an eagerness to engage in sleazy tactics. Of the many extant examples already is a New Hampshire mailing prior to the primary implying that Obama would not be a friend to pro-choice activists because he’d voted “present” on some legislative issues relating to reproductive rights. But the fact that this had been part of a Planned Parenthood legislative strategy—an organization he strongly supports—was never mentioned.
• She supports Israel’s military assaults in the region and the nation’s primacy in the Middle East unquestioningly.
• Hillary Clinton, in sum, is the establishment candidate. Her centrist tendencies are well-documented, while Obama’s progressive history at least leaves room for hope.

Much has been made of Obama’s purported lack of experience, or “electability,” but as one of the articles below illustrates, it all depends on how one quantifies “experience” and what kind of experience is important. Hillary Clinton is the candidate of the past, reflecting the supremacy of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and of government through equivocation. After eight years of disastrous consequences courtesy of the Bush administration, do we really want to return to the previous eight years of the Clinton administration’s betrayals, unfulfilled promises, and duplicity?

Barack Obama is the candidate of the future, and even if some of his rhetoric turns out to be overblown, I think we’ll be in far better shape as a country under his leadership.

Monsoon

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/11/6312/

More here on Hillary Clinton’s pandering flag burning bill: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/14/AR2005121401887.html

More here on Hillary Clinton’s propensity for dirty campaign tactics: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/18/6468/

More here on Hillary Clinton and Wal-Mart: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0207-34.htm

More here on the supposed gulf between Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s experience: http://doubledemon.newsvine.com/_news/2008/02/06/1282777-obamas-experience-vs-clintons-experience