Kennedy for New York Senate

According to the New York Times, an aide to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is questioning the credentials of Caroline Kennedy to replace Hillary Clinton as Senator from New York if she is confirmed as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration. Cuomo believes he is qualified to be New York's Senator because he was once married to a Kennedy. But that is not enough. New York's next Senator must actually be named Kennedy. The Kennedy name has a "special magic capital," as Maureen Dowd so poetically calls it. But there are other Kennedys who are just as qualified, if not more so, than Caroline. If we really want the best Kennedy to fill Robert Kennedy's old seat, New York Gov. David Patterson should choose conservative former MTV VJ Kennedy.

Those who are lobbying for Caroline Kennedy, such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have their hearts in the right place. They want to find the candidate who will most annoy and embarrass Hillary to replace her. And appointing Caroline would certainly accomplish that. Although she hasn't voted much or been that involved in politics or even studied the issues, she did make Hillary angry when she and her uncle Sen. Ted Kennedy endorsed Obama over Hillary in the Democratic primary. As I explained at the time, "It is not just that Obama reminds them of Kennedy, it is also that the Clintons remind them of Lyndon Johnson. And if there is anything that the Kennedys don't like, it's a bunch of hillbillies in the White House, which is being kept in trust until a competent Kennedy can be groomed to take it back for its rightful owners. Until that time Obama will do." The Clintons, like Johnson, think of politics as mud wrestling or the roller derby, while the Kennedys see it as a friendly game of touch football. So it must have irked them to see Hillary, the Sandra Day O'Clobber of American politics, besmirching the Senate seat that by rights belongs to the Kennedys.

Appointing Caroline Kennedy to the Senate would make the Hillary-haters happy, but I'm afraid it won't annoy Hillary enough. The few abbreviated press conferences Caroline has had, before her aides cut them off, showed that she isn't the most articulate Kennedy in the world. In a Senate committee hearing, Hillary would make mincemeat of her. But former MTV VJ Kennedy has had quite a lot of experience in the spotlight and is quite articulate. The woman who once simulated fellatio with her microphone while interviewing former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani would have no problem taking Hillary on. Who knows what she might do with a Senate microphone. In comparison, Caroline Kennedy seems just too nice and polite and would wilt in Hillary's glare.

Kennedy does not currently live in New York and probably doesn't know much about the issues affecting the state, but as far as I know, actually living in New York has never been a requirement to represent the state in the Senate, and she probably knows as much about New York issues as Caroline does. She has also formulated strong stances on other political issues she would have to deal with as a Senator, something Caroline hasn't gotten around to doing yet. And while appointing Caroline has a certain nostalgic appeal for those who want to bring back Camelot and the 1960s, appointing former MTV VJ Kennedy would hearken back to a time more people remember with fondness, the 1990s, when the stock market was doing well and MTV actually played music videos instead of running endless reruns of badly written "reality" shows.

I'm sure appointing Caroline Kennedy would make Hillary grit her teeth, but appointing a Republican washed-up former MTV VJ with even fewer credentials than Caroline would be a more satisfying slap in the face at Hillary. I agree that insulting Hillary by appointing a Kennedy is important, but we need to make sure it's the right Kennedy.

Share This Post

Barack Obama Should Concede the Nomination to Hillary

Although one can't help but admire Barack Obama's tenaciousness, it's time that he face the facts and abandon his quixotic quest for the Democratic nomination. We all know that the Clintons will stop at nothing to get the nomination for Hillary and the best thing Obama could do for his country and his own political future is to concede defeat and preserve one last shred of dignity. After his trouncing in Kentucky and his lackluster win in Oregon, the writing is on the wall. It is obvious he will not have enough delegates to secure the nomination and all he is doing is prolonging the misery. Perhaps he can run again in 2032 when he will still be younger than John McCain is now and people will have forgiven him for the divisiveness he has caused by trying to get people to vote for him.

Unfortunately for Obama the mathematics is against him. Under no scenario will have enough pledged delegates when all the primaries are over to win the nomination no matter how he tries to spin it. Although, technically, he has more pledged delegates than Hillary does, there is no guarantee that this margin will hold until the convention. He can't very well trust the pledges of delegates who are supporting him when he won't even pledge allegiance to the flag, according to a number of emails I have gotten, which also claim that he is secretly a Muslim. And how can he be sure all of his pledged delegates will survive until the August convention, which is more than three months away? We all know what the Clintons are capable of, as the World Net Daily, the Internet's most reliable news source, amply documented in the case of Vince Foster. Obama has fewer than 200 more delegates than Hillary as it stands now. How many of them will mysteriously disappear before the convention?

Although Obama apparently believes that he will be able to win over enough superdelegates to secure the nomination, as far as we know his campaign has done nothing to win over the double secret superdelegates. In fact, I wonder if his campaign is even aware of the double secret superdelegates. Many of the members of his campaign are quite young and not all that familiar with the Byzantine Democratic nominating rules. They have made a number of rookie mistakes in this campaign, for example, not realizing that winning caucuses doesn't matter, campaigning in little states that no one cares about and red states that Democrats are supposed to ignore, and going along with Howard Dean's unique strategy to disenfranchise voters in Michigan and Florida, which must have seemed like a really good idea at the time. Obama's campaign will be in for a shock when Hillary reveals that she has sewn up the nomination.

The fact that Obama failed to deliver a knockout blow has played right into Hillary's hands. Hillary's strategy should be familiar to anyone who knows anything about boxing. Obama has fallen victim to the "rope-a-dope" strategy that Muhammad Ali used against George Foreman in their 1974 heavyweight title match in Zaire. In that bout Ali spent the early rounds lying on the ropes, conserving his energy and letting Foreman pummel him until Foreman tired himself out. Then Ali knocked him out in the eighth round. By losing so many primaries and caucuses early on, Hillary conserved her energy while luring Obama into a false sense of security and tiring him out. Any minute now she plans to land the knock-out blow and Obama won't know what hit him.

It's funny that so many bloggers, who are as young and naïve as many of Obama's idealistic young campaign workers, think that Obama has the nomination in the bag. They don't realize that we are at the point in the narrative where the Terminator has been left for dead only to rise one more time, that Carrie is just about to stick her hand up from the grave, that Glenn Close is just about to rise up from that bathtub and attack Michael Douglas again. If the Obama children have any pet rabbits they might want to request Secret Service protection for them.

Even more telling, many pundits seem to believe that Obama is already the nominee. Is there anything that pundits haven't been wrong about this year? Remember when they said that Rudy Giuliani was the frontrunner? And that John McCain was washed up? And that Fred Thompson was the new Reagan? If all the pundits agree on something you can almost be certain that they are wrong.

Someone close to Obama needs to tell him that the jig is up (and before someone emails me, "the jig is up" is not a racist phrase as far as I know, except possibly when applied to Irishmen). Or perhaps someone with stature in the party, someone like Bill Clinton, though probably not him, needs to say enough is enough.

By stubbornly refusing to concede defeat Obama has put this country at risk. If he steals the nomination from Hillary, women around the country will become completely unhinged, rioting in the streets and withholding sex from their husbands. We all know how hysterical women can get when they don't get their way. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Does Obama want to see our cities ravaged by looting and violence?

Unfortunately, I don't think Obama cares about the havoc that will be wrought if he denies Hillary the nomination. He has already divided the Democrats by insisting on prolonging his campaign until all the votes are counted. By forcing Democrats to choose between two candidates and stretching his campaign out to the end of the primary season, he has ripped the party apart, setting husbands against wives and brothers against sisters, so to speak.

And if he cares so little about the rifts he has caused in his own party, imagine how his campaign will rip apart our country when he tries to force people to take sides between him and John McCain and make people who don't vote for him, because there is something about him they just don't like, feel like they are being racist when that is not it at all. Hasn't this country been divided enough? I'm afraid that Obama will not be satisfied until he has stoked a Civil War between the red and blue states. If Obama really wants to heal the divisions in this country, as he often claims, he should start by dropping out of the race.

Like many white people, I was really looking forward to having a constructive dialogue about race (like this one) all the way until November and then never talking about race again. But the future of our country is too important and we'll just have to have that dialogue sometime in the future -- perhaps after we have solved pressing problems like poverty, disease, war and starvation. And it would have been nice for a change to have an election where we talked about important issues, such as who else in Obama's past has scary ideas that might give a clue to what he really thinks. But that will have to wait, too.

Unfortunately, Hillary doesn't care about whether she divides her party or her country or not. And it looks like we are going to have an election where Hillary unfairly attacks McCain and the press is forced to defend him and point out how much they dislike the Clintons. But at least she is honest about where she stands. Obama was supposed to be different. He was supposed to be the candidate that brought us together by blurring our differences. If healing the divisions in this country is really so important to him, he can start by healing his party and dropping out of the race. I say, let the healing begin.

Share This Post



Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, 2008 Election, Republicans, Democrats, John McCain, Politics

Hillary Clinton Supporters at Daily Kos Go On Strike!

Many Republicans have despaired about whether there is any chance of electing a Republican as President in November (if you count John McCain as a Republican). But increasingly many Republicans are saying, "Yes we can!"

The bitter rift in the Democrat party between supporters of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seems to be getting worse and worse and just split wide open on the Daily Kos. Alegre a diarist at the Daily Kos, is fed up with the nasty personal attacks against Clinton supporters on the site and made a stunning announcement: that supporters of Hillary Clinton were going on "strike," that is they would no longer post diaries there. "I've decided to go on 'strike' and will refrain from posting here as long as the administrators allow the more disruptive members of our community to trash Hillary Clinton and distort her record without any fear of consequence or retribution," she wrote.

Daily Kos founder and President for Life Markos Moulitsas responded with characteristic sensitivity to her concerns. "First, these people should read up on the definition of 'strike.' What they're doing is a 'boycott.'" He said. What Markos was saying, I think, is that not only are supporters of Clinton traitors to the liberal cause, they are incredibly stupid as well. They have been posting on his site for free for all of this time while Markos has been raking in money and not sharing one cent of it with them, which certainly cannot be characterized as an employer-employee relationship as anyone who has taken an Economics 101 class and is not a dunderheaded Clinton supporter would know. Although Markos suggested that the word "boycott" would be more appropriate than "strike," I think the word he was looking for was "slave revolt," since "slave" is a much more appropriate term for someone who works for no pay while the plantation owner enriches himself. The word "slave," however, has certain unfortunate racial connotations that he probably felt it would be best not to raise, so he went with the word "boycott" instead.

But of course this battle is about more than just semantics. What has especially irked Clinton supporters about Obama supporters at the Daily Kos is that Kossacks for Obama have learned what politics is really about. Politics is not about getting someone elected or changing the world, which anyone who has taken a look at the ability of the Daily Kos to actually get people elected should know. Politics is about feeling good about yourself. Who cares if Obama gets beaten in the general election; he will make everyone who voted for him feel really good inside. That's how Ralph Nader made people who voted for him feel in 2000. It didn't matter whether he had a chance to win or not, it only mattered that his supporters didn't feel icky by voting for Al Gore or George Bush.

For many Democrats, voting for Hillary Clinton would make them feel icky. Even if she somehow gets the nomination, many of them will probably stay home, or vote for Ralph Nader, who is running again so that he can feel good about himself by making people feel good about themselves. Then their souls will remain pure and not be sullied by voting for someone who gets elected and does something they don't like. That's much more important than who becomes president. I don't know what the average age of Kossacks is but judging by the level of their writing, it appears that most of them weren't even born when Bill Clinton was President. But they have studied enough history in school to know how terrible those years of peace and prosperity were since they directly led to the war and economic downturn we are experiencing now and understandably they don't want to go back to that.

Obama supporters also understand that voting should never be about picking the lesser of two evils or about making a strategic choice. If you don't agree with everything your candidate says, believe he or she can do no wrong and think that the other candidate is evil and that everyone who supports him or her is a traitor, then you really have no business voting at all. That's what those of us who supported George Bush believed and look how great that has been for the country.

I have not endorsed any candidate because so far all of the candidates would make me feel icky. I was hoping that Alan Keyes would do better because I agree with him on almost every issue and I believed that voting for him would help heal the racial divide in this country and would prove that I am not a racist. Unfortunately, he seems to have dropped out of the race (though he hasn't made a formal announcement as far as I know), but I am hoping he will run as a third party candidate so that I can vote for him even if he has no chance of winning. I may just write him in as a candidate so that the next time someone accuses me of being a racist, I can tell them that I voted for Alan Keyes, so there.

No conservative can support John McCain in good conscience since he has betrayed us on so many issues from torture to immigration to campaign finance reform to judicial appointments to gay marriage. And many are worried that he is a Manchurian Candidate who was brainwashed in Vietnam. But if he spends the rest of the campaign repudiating all of his principles and turning his back on everything he believes, many of us might change our minds. So far he has made a very good start.

Many conservatives were hoping that Obama would get the Democrat nomination because we are so tired of the dirty politics of the Clintons and we wanted to have a real debate about the issues, such as whether it would be a good thing or a bad thing to elect a Muslim who hates America and is probably a Communist as President. We wanted to have a civil discussion about whether we should surrender in Iraq, raise everyone's taxes and use it to give free health care to freeloaders and destroy the moral foundations of our society by permitting gay marriage, which would lead to people marrying their livestock or their grandparents. Conservatives believe that this kind of debate would be good for the country.

My friend Tom Watson recently wrote a piece about an endangered species in the liberal blogosphere: the Clinton blogger. In his piece he cited this modest blogger as "the rare righty who doesn't hate Hillary." Of course, I don't hate anyone, so that is technically accurate. And although I have said in the past that electing Hillary Clinton President would destroy Western civilization as we know it, I also believe that sometimes it takes destroying a village in order to save it. Some conservatives have said that the best way to make this country realize what a terrible mistake it has made by turning its back on conservatism would be to elect Clinton President, which would soon have the American people begging us to come back. I do have some sympathy for these conservatives who are considering becoming "suicide voters" in the fall and voting for Clinton if she gets the nomination.

But the more I see these idealistic Obama voters who are so committed to their candidate and personally attack anyone who opposes them as traitors and idiots, the more I recall those idealistic days when I unquestioningly supported President Bush and believed anyone who opposed him was a terrorist sympathizer. If you close your eyes and read what Andrew Sullivan says about Obama (I know you can't read if you close your eyes, but with Sullivan you don't actually have to read his blog to know what he is saying), you can't help but recall his onetime fanatical support of President Bush and the War in Iraq and the scorched Earth tactics he used to attack those who opposed him. It might be worth seeing Obama get elected just to see how long it would take Sullivan to realize that Obama is the worst President ever and for him to excoriate him and back one of his opponents with the same romantic fervor.

When I think of the devotion and starry-eyed idealism of Obama supporters I wonder if I could really pull the lever for Hillary Clinton, even if I do believe that it would be best thing for the country to destroy it. I wonder if I could look at myself in the mirror and still love myself. Because, after all, feeling good about myself is what elections should be about. In the end it all comes down to me.

Share This Post



Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Daily Kos, 2008 Election, Republicans, Democrats, John McCain, Politics