The déjà vu flavor of the love affair of Democratic Party lefties with Bernie Sanders

 (Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder/Dominick Reuter/Photo montage by Salon) (Credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder/Dominick Reuter/Photo montage by Salon)

The current infatuation with Bernie Sanders by the ultra left wing of the Democratic Party has a déjà vu flavor to it. Back in August 2008, I noted here at Katalusis:

Barack Obama gained the rabid support of the Democratic Party’s left wing by promising among other things to first unify the nation and then ride forth to bring peace and harmony to the entire world. He assured his followers that no experience was required to perform this miracle; he would accomplish the feat solely by virtue of his singular personality. As Oprah so eloquently introduced Obama at a rally in South Carolina during the Democratic primary, “He’s the one we’ve been waiting for.”
So far the presumptive nominee, also known as “the one,” has not been able to unify his own party ahead of its national convention this August in Denver – even though his coronation is slated to occur before 75,000 onlookers seated in the Mile High Stadium at Invesco Field.

There are, of course, obvious differences between 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama and 2016 candidate Bernie Sanders, a registered independent and self-described socialist, currently seeking the Democratic Party nomination. Age and political experience, for one thing – in those respects, Sanders far outweighs the One in his 2008 heyday. But it must be said that Sanders may even surpass Obama in the promises the Vermont senator makes to score big on major Democratic Party issues on foreign policy, environment, same sex marriage, health care, and the economy.

Adding to the déjà vu experience, Sanders, like his predecessor, is taking aim at frontrunner Hillary Clinton. In an attempt to bring giddy left wing Democrats back to earth, a reminder is in order: as soon as Obama secured the Democratic Party nomination, the candidate who presented himself as above politics, suddenly lunged to the center. Obama’s supporters explained their idol’s about face was necessary in order for him to defeat John McCain in the general election.

Does anyone reading this now care that soon after he took office, President Obama, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for his good intentions, ordered drone invasions of other nations. Keep in mind that our president has seemed unconcerned that innocents, who were not on his secret “kill list,” often died at his behest; they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

All of the above is to suggest that if he succeeds in winning the Democratic Party’s nomination, Socialist Bernie Sanders may have to do as Obama did in the summer of ’08. Can’t you just see it? Sanders planting his feet firmly on centrist ground and disavowing his long history as a Socialist. “Well,"  his supporters will justifiably ask, “How else can Bernie win the general election?”

Let me suggest here that the Democratic Party might well stick with Hillary Clinton this time around. With Hillary, what you see is what you get, and no about faces will be required in order for her to win the GE. See, folks? What Hillary has got in full measure is authenticity and unlike Obama and Sanders, she doesn’t claim to be above politics.

The Obama years: a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

Obama points to the Kansas delegation while giving his address at the
Democratic National Convention in 2004. Via Wikipedia.

 

 

In 2008, Barack Obama preached hope, not cynicism, but anyone who knows me is aware that I was cynical from day one about the young, inexperienced senator’s qualifications for the presidency – and besides I was a staunch Hillary Clinton supporter in the primary. Now I feel something akin to pity for our graying second-term president as he’s since learned the magic of his personality on display in Boston 10 years ago has not been sufficient to cure the world’s ills.

But here’s the thing, all things considered, I believe Obama has done a credible job so far in the Oval Office. Politico goes into depth, however, highlighting Obama’s “hits and blunders” on the tenth anniversary this Sunday, July 27, 2014 of his keynote speech at the Democratic Convention.

Dovere and Nather write:

Barack Obama’s Democratic National Convention keynote delivered 10 years ago Sunday evening started his journey to the White House.

Those 18 minutes in Boston reshaped American politics. Obama spent a long passage of his speech extolling Democratic nominee John Kerry, but he wasn’t the one whose presidential prospects most people left the Fleet Center buzzing about. Caught by surprise by a convention keynote that was actually worth watching, the crowd went wild. Even Hillary Clinton and Jesse Jackson were spotted clapping for him.

A decade later, the speech remains a road map to the Obama agenda — and the many places where he’s fallen short in his term and a half so far.

The parts that hold up well: transitioning from a manufacturing base, the pursuit of enemies (like Osama bin Laden), a cooperative economy, voting rights, solving the “health care crisis,” “a road to opportunity” for the middle class.

But parts come across as the oratorical equivalent of an embarrassing hairdo in a high school yearbook.
The line most associated with the speech — “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America, there’s the United States of America” — is the part that’s probably held up the least well over time.
 

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"Only politicians and defense contractors want this war"

Syrian President Bashar Assad

US President Barack Obama

We should all be engaged in some hard thinking this week as the Obama Administration goes all out to convince us that launching a war with Syria is the "last resort" available in responding to Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons on his own people.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass puts the matter into perspective:

Dogs aren't as beloved in Syria as they are here. In the Middle East, our four-footed friends are generally considered unclean. They don't live inside houses. They're not allowed near a kitchen.
And they don't legislate war policy or decide the fate of millions of people.
 
But watching President Barack Obama stumble through his news conference from the G-20 summit last week and trying to talk us into war with Syria, I couldn't help thinking about dogs.

It was a stupid thought, yes, but I didn't put it there. One of the president's men put it there. A guy named David Axelrod, who brought it up on Twitter.

Axelrod, the Democratic mouthpiece of Chicago mayors, is the guy who aligned himself with an inexperienced Illinois legislative back-bencher and ended up installing him in the White House.

And after the president announced he would seek congressional approval for military strikes against Syria, Axelrod signaled his journalists by spinning them a tweet.

"Big move by POTUS," read Axelrod's tweet. "Consistent with his principles. Congress is now the dog that caught the car. Should be a fascinating week!"

Consistent with his principles? Like the drone strikes? Like the NSA surveillance? Like the IRS investigations of conservative groups? Like no answers about the dead from Benghazi? All those principles?

If Axelrod thought last week was fascinating, this week should be even more entertaining. The president doesn't have the votes in Congress for his war in Syria, but he'll try to make his case in a national television address scheduled for Tuesday.

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Barack Obama as the Drone Ranger...

The editors of Mad Magazine think it's a shame that Obama is talking about scaling back his use of drones:

Courtesy of madmagazine.com.

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Is it any wonder Americans hate politics?

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO).

In her column titled, Self-preservation meet cynicism, Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus discusses the questionable responses of members of both parties to Missouri Republican Todd Akin’s now infamous comment on the topic of women and rape:

Missouri Republican Todd Akin’s remarks about women not becoming pregnant from “legitimate rape” are so self-evidently offensive and ignorant they scarcely require a response. What merits more attention is what the episode exposes about the most fundamental of political instincts: self-preservation.

Start with Akin. The six-term congressman now running for the Senate posted a Facebook statement Sunday, explaining that he “misspoke” in making an “off-the-cuff” remark.

Marcus concludes her column by asking, “Is it any wonder Americans hate politics?”

Read the entire column.

Barnard College colludes with Obama in his condescension toward women

CNN's Campbell Brown moderated an Obama-Clinton debate in 08.

Anita Finlay at the New Agenda offers a thoughtful response to Campbell Brown’s recent NY Times editorial on Barack Obama’s condescension toward women:

A surprising NY Times editorial from former CNN news anchor Campbell Brown entitled Obama: Stop Condescending to Women appeared on Sunday lamenting President Obama’s “paternalistic” demeanor while addressing Barnard’s all female graduating class. Ms. Brown is correct that in offering effusive and, she says, “fake praise,” it is no more than a cliché to state that ‘women are smarter than men’:

“[T]o suggest to women that they deserve dominance instead of equality is at best a cheap applause line.”

Later on, Finlay rightfully calls out Barnard College for its collusion with Obama in his attitude toward women:

It is both ironic and insulting that while the President tells women to “fight for a seat at the table,” he simultaneously nixed and replaced Barnard’s original female commencement speaker, Jill Abramson, the first female Executive Editor of the NY Times. He did so without so much as a backward glance. A woman who fought for and won a seat at the table, was at the last minute told to step aside so that the President could generate a photo op in front of a female audience in an attempt to firm up poll numbers that have somewhat sagged of late. We are not expected to dwell on this mixed message, but if we do not, we are merely abetting the problem.

Read Finlay’s entire piece here.

The hypocrisy of the Left

Peter Daou wants to know if Democrats and so-called liberals are hypocrites on civil liberties. Peter effectively answers that question, while leading off with another:

Glenn Greenwald has spent the duration of Obama’s presidency asking a fundamental question of the left: why are George W. Bush’s transgressions acceptable when President Obama embraces – and expands – them?

Glenn’s latest post on the topic goes directly at the intellectual dishonesty he sees reflected in a new Washington Post poll:

During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the “assault on American values and the shredding of our Constitution”: so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices — rather than a big, bad, scary Republican — all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates. …

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Will Obama take his cue from Elizabeth Warren in his reelection campaign?

Put aside the fact that President Obama caved to Republican resistance in his failure to nominate Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she created and consider this:  

Paul Starobin at the New Republic now suggests that President Obama take his cue from the scrappy defender of the middle class in his reelection campaign.

Pointing out that the women’s vote may be even more critical in 2012 than it was in 2008, Starobin writes:

Elizabeth Warren is poised to thrash Scott Brown in their marquee U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, and the reason is simple: Women voters love her. In the most recent poll, in December, Warren and Brown were virtually tied amongst men, but Warren led by 13 percentage points, 51 percent to 38 percent, amongst women.

Warren’s commanding lead is not about her gender (Masssachusetts has never before elected a woman to the Senate or governor’s office: Brown defeated Martha Coakley just two years ago) or even her party (the state has a history of voting for GOP moderates like Brown: Think ex-Governor Mitt Romney and, further back, Senator Ed Brooke.) Rather, she owes her ascendency to the fact that her communitarian message resonates so strongly with females.

President Obama ought to pay heed: Warren’s campaign can offer important lessons to his own. He too will need to secure women voters if he wants to earn re-election. And he, too, could do so by adopting Warren’s proud communitarian appeal.

Starobin continues:

THE PUREST DISTILLATION of the Warren message can be seen in the video, shot back in August during her appearance at the Massachusetts home of a supporter, which went viral on the Internet and alternately met with applause amongst liberals and apoplexy amongst conservatives.

It’s easy to see why. With evident passion, Warren weighs in against George Bush’s “tax cuts for the rich” and, hands knifing the air, rejects the notion that she is stirring up “class warfare.” Not at all, she says. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate…” It was a riveting performance that proved her skill as a retail politician, someone able to relate to regular folks—there was not a trace here of the Harvard Law professor with a specialty in bankruptcy statutes or the policy wonk whose 5,000 word treatise in Democracy led to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

According to the Civic Practices Network:

Communitarianism emerged in the 1980s as a response to the limits of liberal theory and practice. Its dominant themes are that individual rights need to be balanced with social responsibilities, and that autonomous selves do not exist in isolation, but are shaped by the values and culture of communities. Unless we begin to redress the balance toward the pole of community, communitarians believe, our society will continue to become normless, self-centered, and driven by special interests and power seeking.

Starobin concludes:

… Communitarianism is not only about ideals, but about practical action. Obama needs to talk more about his particular policy proposals and how they link up with America’s “underlying social contract,” in Warren’s phrase. That’s perhaps the most promising way to reconnect his campaign, so far lacking in any sense of grand aspiration, with its natural demographic base.

Congratulations to Elizabeth Warren for igniting a conversation in the public domain about a too long-neglected topic: the American social contract.

The behind the scenes ruthlessness of the “hope and change” candidate in 08

Obama and Clinton. (photo credit: public domain.)

In his piece in the New Yorker, Ryan Lizza clearly is not out to get Barack Obama. For the most part, Lizza offers balanced coverage of the soon to be president and his first term in office. Occasionally, the savvy reporter bends over backwards to praise Obama in his continued efforts to grasp the difference between campaigning and governing.

It’s a long article that gets tedious at times, but when Lizza exposes the Obama campaign’s deliberate strategy to attack Hillary Clinton by smearing her character rather than debating her policy positions, any civilized person has to recoil in shock.  Recall as you read the paragraphs below that Obama presented himself as the one who would rise above politics and unite the country; whereas, Hillary Clinton would be too polarizing:

(We’re still waiting for that united country, Mr. President.)

Another hard-edged decision helped make him {Obama} the Democratic Presidential nominee. In early October, 2007, David Axelrod and Obama’s other political consultants wrote the candidate a memo explaining how he could repair his floundering campaign against Hillary Clinton. They advised him to attack her personally, presenting a difficult choice for Obama. He had spent years building a reputation as a reformer who deplored the nasty side of politics, and now, he was told, he had to put that aside. Obama’s strategists wrote that all campaign communications, even the slogan—“Change We Can Believe In”—had to emphasize distinctions with Clinton on character rather than on policy. The slogan “was intended to frame the argument along the character fault line, and this is where we can and must win this fight,” the memo said. “Clinton can’t be trusted or believed when it comes to change,” because “she’s driven by political calculation not conviction, regularly backing away and shifting positions. . . . She embodies trench warfare vs. Republicans, and is consumed with beating them rather than unifying the country and building consensus to get things done. She prides herself on working the system, not changing it.” The “current goal,” the memo continued, was to define Obama as “the only authentic ‘remedy’ to what ails Washington and stands in the way of progress.”

Obama’s message promised voters, in what his aides called “the inspiration,” that “Barack Obama will end the divisive trench warfare that treats politics as a game and will lead Americans to come together to restore our common purpose.” Clinton was too polarizing to get anything done: “It may not be her fault, but Americans have deeply divided feelings about Hillary Clinton, threatening a Democratic victory in 2008 and insuring another four years of the bitter political battles that have plagued Washington for the last two decades and stymied progress.”

Neera Tanden was the policy director for Clinton’s campaign. When Clinton lost the Democratic race, Tanden became the director of domestic policy for Obama’s general-election campaign, and then a senior official working on health care in his Administration. She is now the president of the liberal Center for American Progress, perhaps the most important institution in Democratic politics. “It was a character attack,” Tanden said recently, speaking about the Obama campaign against Clinton. “I went over to Obama, I’m a big supporter of the President, but their campaign was entirely a character attack on Hillary as a liar and untrustworthy. It wasn’t an ‘issue contrast,’ it was entirely personal.” And, of course, it worked.

And it’s still working, Neera. Any mention in the blogosphere of Hillary’s current popularity compared to Obama’s humiliating poll numbers, brings out Obamaphiles regurgitating the same character attacks against her.

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Merry Christmas to middleclass tax payers and the unemployed

Photo courtesy of salon.com.

It’s two days before Christmas and baking and decorating cookies to have on hand when the kids come for dinner on Sunday is more on my mind than the latest skirmish of our dysfunctional congress. I’m also concerned with finding time to prepare to lead my meditation group on Tuesday.

Still, I’m glad that those affected will continue to receive the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance for the next two months – they can breathe a little easier this holiday weekend.

The NY Times editorial this Dec. 22 gives the win (with qualifications) to the Dems:

For a full year, House Republicans have replaced governing with confrontations that they allow to reach the brink of crisis, only then making extreme demands in exchange for a resolution. On Thursday, that strategy crumbled. Battered by public opinion and undermined by more reasonable Senate Republicans, the House’s leaders backed down and signed off on a deal to continue the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance for two months.

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Something to think about: "Obama as Roman emperor"

Shephard Fairey’s Obama poster.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I stayed home from my liberal church fellowship’s Sunday service the day the sermon title was “The Obama Era,” which brought to mind associations with kings, pharaohs, and emperors. 

My sense of the idolatry fostered in the campaign of the inexperienced Barack Obama is well captured in this opinion piece by Jack Carlson that I stumbled upon this morning while scanning online news coverage. Titled, Obama as Roman emperor -- the rise and fall of the propaganda master, the piece was published in October, 2010 (prior to the midterm rout of Democratic candidates) in the Christian Science Monitor, but it’s message has become increasingly relevant since then:

Two years ago, Democrats were clamoring to ride in on Barack Obama’s coat tails. Proximity to the Obama persona was a prized political asset.

Today, amid dim presidential polling numbers, anxious Democrats are keeping their distance. Some, like Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, have even used campaign ads to tout their defiance of Mr. Obama’s agenda.

To understand Obama's fall, we must understand his rise; and to do that, we must look to ancient history. It was neither for his resume nor his policies that America fell in love with him. In fact, Obama's policy priorities have turned out to be quite unpopular.

It was instead by following the lead of Rome's greatest emperors that Obama won (temporarily) America's awe and devotion. This sort of ruler cult begins to crumble, of course, when the ruler is required to make decisions and take positions under unprecedented media scrutiny.

In the art of self-promotion through images, Obama's closest parallels lived long before the age of YouTube and the 24-hour news cycle. Rome's first emperor, Augustus (63 BC – AD 14), was a master of manipulating what “mass media” there was. Through the propagation of carefully crafted, semi-divine portrait types, vague but appealing buzzwords, and abstract association with heroes of the past, Augustus and his successors won the public's support.

Augustus' fixed “portrait-type” was disseminated and recreated for public consumption across the empire in the form of statues, coins, and other artworks. Archaeologist Paul Zanker's “Power of Images in the Age of Augustus” describes this contrived likeness as “a calm, elevated expression” marked by “a timeless and remote dignity” – not unlike the blue-and-red portrait type designed for Obama by guerrilla-marketer Shepard Fairey.

This latter icon is seared into the mind of every American. Like Augustus' portrait, the image's omnipresence seemed to translate naturally into prestige and authority. But this process is not automatic: The image's success was dependent on our own, Western tradition of ruler cult, which dates back at least as far as Alexander the Great.

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Nobel Peace Prize Committee redeems itself by recognizing three women activists

The Nobel Peace Prize lost  a little of its luster when the Committee awarded it to recently inaugurated President Barack Obama, not for anything he had accomplished, but for what they hoped his role would be as a peacemaker, and we all know how that has turned out.

The Committee redeemed itself with this year’s award to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman of Yemen "for their nonviolent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work.” Watch the video:

Why Obama can kill Americans

With the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaqi has Barack Obama set a precedent that hereafter will allow U.S. presidents to kill Americans anywhere in the world without due process? That’s what the Department of Justice’s secret memo suggests. This is scary stuff.

Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic has the story:

Outside the U.S. government, President Obama's order to kill American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without due process has proved controversial, with experts in law and war reaching different conclusions. Inside the Obama Administration, however, disagreement was apparently absent, or so say anonymous sources quoted by the Washington Post. "The Justice Department wrote a secret memorandum authorizing the lethal targeting of Anwar al-Aulaqi, the American-born radical cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone strike Friday, according to administration officials," the newspaper reported. "The document was produced following a review of the legal issues raised by striking a U.S. citizen and involved senior lawyers from across the administration. There was no dissent about the legality of killing Aulaqi, the officials said."

Isn't that interesting? Months ago, the Obama Administration revealed that it would target al-Awlaki. It even managed to wriggle out of a lawsuit filed by his father to prevent the assassination. But the actual legal reasoning the Department of Justice used to authorize the strike? It's secret. Classified. Information that the public isn't permitted to read, mull over, or challenge.

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In the good old days when Obama pledged to transform a broken Washington

Maureen Dowd’s acerbic, literary style is at its peak as she chides President Obama in today’s NY Times column, Of dystopias and alphas, and incidentally gives a favorable nod to Bill Clinton. One has to ask, though, where was Dowd’s razor sharp intellect in 2008 when she followed the lemmings over the cliff in support of Obama while doing her utmost to destroy both Bill and Hillary Clinton?

Ah, well, perhaps we can still enjoy seeing Dowd’s talent rescued from the trash bin of history and put to better uses in the summer of 2011:

President Obama was on the way to Alpha when a plea came for him to be, well, more alpha.

LuAnn Lavine, a real estate agent from Geneseo, a rural town just up the road from Alpha, Ill., the last stop on the president’s Midwestern bus tour, told The Times’s Jeff Zeleny: “Everyone was so hopeful with him, but Washington grabbed him and here we are. I just want him to stay strong and don’t take the guff. We want a president who is a leader, and I want him to be a little bit stronger.” 

Hers was a gentler message than the sign stuck on a post outside Alpha: “One Term President.” 

But her three words summed it up: Washington grabbed him. Why did this man whose contempt for Congress is clear, who ran on the idea that he could transform a broken Washington, surrender to its conventional timetable and bureaucratic language? 

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The irony of Michele Bachmann’s challenge to Barack Obama

There was a time when Democrats felt secure in holding on to the votes of a majority of women for they felt confident there was no place else for them to go. It’s the same dilemma faced too often by the battered wife. And that in a nutshell explains the abusive treatment Hillary Clinton took in 08 from the DNC and the superdelegates as they scurried off after Pied Piper Barack Obama, the hip young senator who was going to save the world solely by virtue of his personality and those sonorous speeches ringing with the cadences of an evangelical preacher.

Have you seen David Axelrod recently? The once oily smooth fellow with all the answers now looks harried and distraught. Must be tough facing the reality that 2012 isn’t going to be a repeat of 2008.

And then there’s the scary word out of Ames, IA that a conservative woman won the straw poll. Chris Cilliza at the  Washington Post:

AMES, Iowa — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann scored a victory in the GOP Ames Straw Poll on Saturday, a win likely to provide her considerable momentum as the 2012 race ramps up.

“What we saw happen today is this is the very first step toward taking the White House in 2012, and you have just sent a message that Barack Obama will be a one-term president,” said Bachmann (R-Minn.) after her victory was announced.

Got it, boys? A female GOP candidate is set to take down Barack Obama and from the mess the country is in today, you have to think she just might have a chance.

Bachmann’s rise is not just a wake up call for the good ol’ boys in the GOP, it’s also a wake up call for the good ol’ boys in the Democratic Party who called the shots in 08 and declared that racism was taboo, but it was open season for sexism. It must also be kind of depressing at this point for the Dems to realize that Bill and Hillary Clinton are both at the top of their game while Barack Obama is stumbling around, muttering something about “broken politics.”

A word to the wise, oh, great Democratic Party leaders: pick a leader next time.

Who loses when Obama and the Dems cave to rightwing extortion?

Photo credits: courtesy of the Nation

Leslie Savan, blogging at the Nation, talks about how the MSM ignores the debt ceiling deal’s effect on real people:

Right before a break on The Daily Rundown the other day, host Chuck Todd was talking about the debt deal and mentioned “unemployment lines.” Then he announced, “Coming up: Did Washington take its eye off the ball of what really matters?”  

For one naïve moment, I expected that “what really matters” would entail the debt deal’s effect on actual people, maybe even a sound bite or two from someone who depends on the newly threatened Medicare coverage or unemployment benefits (Congress’s “compromise” failed to extend federal emergency jobless benefits).

Instead, Todd returned to talk with two Washington journalists on what the deal means to the larger economy.A necessary discussion, for sure, but like most TV politi-chat these days, it didn’t touch onhow “the deal savages programs for the lower and middle classes,” as my colleague George Zornick put it in a post that breaks down the likely effects on veterans, students, seniors, the poor, and the unemployed. This Nation slideshow illustrates what most MSM avert their eyes to.  

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Edwards’ indictment again triggers memories of the 2008 Democratic Primary

I’ve been trying hard to move on from the 2008 Democratic primary, but every so often a recent event triggers memories of the endless weeks of idolatrous worship of Barack Obama and the simultaneous misogynist attacks on Hillary Clinton.

Today’s indictment of John Edwards did it for me once again. The AP reported:

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- A federal grand jury indicted two-time presidential candidate John Edwards on Friday over $925,000 spent to keep his mistress and their baby in hiding during the peak of his 2008 campaign for the White House.

The case of USA v. Johnny Reid Edwards contains six counts, including conspiracy, four counts of illegal campaign contributions and one count of false statements.

I could not resist reposting my response to Edwards initial confession of his marital infidelity on Saturday, Aug. 9, 2008:

 

Flashback to John Edwards’ Endorsement of Barack Obama

(first posted on Aug. 9, 2008)

In yesterday’s confession of his marital infidelity on ABC News, John Edwards said:

"Then I went from being a young senator to being considered for vice president, running for president ... becoming a national public figure, all of which fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe you can do whatever you want, you're invincible and there will be no consequences. And nothing could be further from the truth."

Those words prompted a flashback to an earlier post at Katalusis in which I quoted Kathleen Parker who had already made note of Edwards’ tendency toward “self-focus:”

Here’s the background: on May 13, Hillary Clinton won a landslide victory in the West Virginia primary, propelled mainly by working class voters. The breaking news the next day was the endorsement of Barack Obama by former candidate John Edwards at a campaign event scheduled that evening, obviously designed to upstage Clinton’s win.

Posting at Real Clear Politics, Kathleen Parker reported:

“As Edwards gave what amounted to a stump speech highlighting his favorite subject -- John Edwards -- and his own anti-poverty initiative, Americans were reminded of why the North Carolina son-of-a-millworker won't be their presidential nominee.

“Enraptured by his own message, Edwards seemed reluctant to hand over the microphone. He finally relinquished the stage, after describing, yet again, the ‘wall’ that he says divides Americans: ‘There is one man who knows in his heart that it is time to create one America, not two. And that man is Barack Obama.”’

Obama supporters were delighted by the Edwards endorsement, evidently convinced the guy who had gained notoriety for his $400 haircuts would help their candidate lure working class voters away from Hillary Clinton.

That never happened and after all the hoopla last May, we’ve already learned that Edwards won’t be appearing at the Democratic convention, and he’ll probably have no role in an Obama administration.

In the meantime, Elizabeth Edwards will likely continue to be one of the most widely respected women in America.

Note: That never happened either, and Elizabeth Edwards spent the last weeks of her life trying her best to protect her children from the fallout of their father's behavior and ensure their welfare after her death, which occurred on Dec. 7, 2010.

Barack Obama as Luke Skywalker (video)

Jon Stewart's review of 2010 for the Obama Administration in which he portrays Obama as Luke Skywalker - watch:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Barack Obama Is Luke Skywalker
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

David Corn: political hate machines are wrong depending on their targets

David Corn at Politics Daily is up in arms as 2010 fades into memory. He wants to know if POTUS can beat back the Obama hate machine in 2011.

I seem to recall that Corn was a vocal part of the Clinton hate machine in 2008 that went all out to destroy Bill and Hillary in order to assure Obama’s nomination. Guess David Corn thinks hate machines are wrong depending on their targets.

It’s the hate machine mentality that No Labels hopes to replace in the American political process with the radical notion of civility and cooperation in moving the nation forward.

The Founding Fathers had no labels. There were no political parties when they wrote the U.S. Constitution.

Here’s the New Year’s Eve update from No Labels:

Dear No Labeler--

From all of us at No Labels, we hope you’re getting to spend time this week with your loved ones and close friends. While the political world is mostly quiet, we’ve been hard at work planning for an exciting January and an incredible 2011. There’s a lot of hard work ahead for all of us, but we can’t wait to get going.  We're sending you this message because you've taken the first step by signing up to join us online or at a No Labels event, and we're counting on you to continue forward with us in the weeks and months ahead!

Join us on Monday, January 3rd for our weekly Citizen Leaders’ call to get the New Year going. We’ll be telling you all about our plans for the first meetups and sharing some exciting news about what we have planned for January. Please click here by Sunday at 12:00 EST to RSVP for the call and receive the dial-in.

In the meantime, while you’re wishing your friends a healthy 2011, make sure they’ve signed the No Labels Declaration so our democracy can be healthier too!

Sincerely,

Nancy Jacobson & Mark McKinnon
Co-Founders of No Labels

P.S. To remind you of how far we’ve come, we’re including three of the many pieces written about No Labels in the past few weeks. We have momentum!

A No Labels solution to Washington gridlock?
Can a centrist movement succeed?
Editorial: A welcome addition to the civility trenches

Who was the big winner in the lame duck session, Barack Obama or Olympia Snowe?

A few of us have been saying lately that recently passed legislation during the lame duck session was more about those affected by it than whether or not it was a "win" for President Obama. For example, the repeal of DADT finally allows gays and lesbians to openly die for their country.

Matt Yglesias explains how the media might have done better to anoint Olympia Snowe as the comeback senator rather than anointing Barack Obama the comeback kid:

The problem here, is that once we waited for the lame duck and wound up accomplishing all the legislative stuff that did in fact have substantial Republican support, all the press suddenly turned into how Obama was a “comeback kid” who was “winning” during the lame duck. Every fear that Bob Corker might have had six months ago about voting on Obama’s side of any bill was essentially vindicated. You could just as easily describe the lame duck session as a huge win for Olympia Snowe. After all, unlike Obama she got her way on START and DADT but also got her way on DREAM and one way to describe the tax cut compromise is really that she got Obama to shift to her position on taxes and got Mitch McConnell to give her cover on her right flank on unemployment insurance and ARRA extensions. But nobody is talking about how Olympia Snowe is the “comeback Senator” who, after 12 months of ineffectual moderation, succeeded in making the world turn on her pivotal status.

And yet congress just isn’t set up to function as a parliamentary body. If the passage of legislation per se is deemed a victory for the president, then it’s necessarily going to become an agonizing process to pass or repeal any kind of laws.