Impeach Bybee

One of the authors of the OLC memos laying down the legal justification for torture was Jay Bybee, who is now on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. He was confirmed by the Senate long before anyone had any idea that he had written these memos.

A movement has been building to impeach him. Jerrold Nadler, a Representative from New York (and my old Congressman), is one of the people leading the charge. Good for him. I strongly support this. Nadler is in a position to do something about this. He is chair of the Judiciary Committee's Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee. This is one of those moments that I am supremely thankful that the Democrats control Congress. It is also one of those moments that I am thankful that there are Democrats in Congress who are willing to disagree with the Obama administration on this. Daily Kos has, as usual, an excellent post about this, including what is being done at the grassroots level in California.

I do not know whether or not Jay Bybee should be removed from office, because he is innocent until proven guilty. I am not in a position to pass that judgment. But I believe that Congress has an obligation to investigate this issue to the fullest extent possible. The NY Times agrees with me:

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

One of the best things that an impeachment will provide is an opportunity to force legislators to make their positions clear: do you or do you not support the use of torture? I sincerely welcome that debate and that opportunity. There are many good Republicans and conservatives who oppose the use of torture. It needs to be made clear who in the GOP stands where on this issue, so that those who believe in the humane treatment of prisoners can separate themselves from those who believe in vengeance and despicable, unnecessary violence as a legitimate purpose of the government.

Impeach Bybee. It is the very least we can do.

Did they have Darjeeling at the tea parties?

There were tea parties across the country today. Not the kind with scones and raspberry jam. These tea parties were supposed to remind people of the original Boston Tea Party, the one that started the American Revolution. Except that these people have taxation WITH representation, so it's not clear what the parallel is.

The big liberal blogs have been all over the story all day. Daily Kos provides a comparison with the original. TPM has a great photo gallery of some of the protests. HuffPost had several posts.

The point of all these is to protest taxes and the government in general and Obama. From some of the pictures, these protests attracted a fair people from the fringe of the radical right.

Andrew Sullivan tried to take these protesters seriously. He linked to an incredibly cool graphic of exactly how and on what the federal government spends money. He summed up the salient point well:

it seems odd to describe this as anything but a first stab at creating opposition to the Obama administration's spending plans, manned by people who made no serious objections to George W. Bush's.
. . .
All protests against spending that do not tell us how to reduce it are fatuous pieces of theater, not constructive acts of politics. And until the right is able to make a constructive and specific argument about how they intend to reduce spending and debt and borrowing, they deserve to be dismissed as performance artists in a desperate search for coherence in an age that has left them bewilderingly behind.

It's almost trivial to describe these protesters as whackjobs. Obama is a fascist/socialist? Huh? There were people on the left who used that kind of language to describe Bush. Both Bushes. And they were ignored, particularly the second time around, even though W. was a much worse president than his father. They were ignored because the vast majority of liberals and Democrats - the 99% who are sane, rational people - realized that the crazies tainted the movement. Apparently the right did not learn this lesson.

I'm going to imagine for a moment that these folks are serious about cutting spending. Where have they been for the last 8 years? One of the largest items in the budget is interest on the debt. At the end of the Clinton administration, we were running a surplus. If we had kept doing that, we would have eliminated a huge chunk of the interest we pay on our debt, which would have made cutting taxes or dealing with this financial crisis even easier. Somehow this never comes up.

If these folks really wanted to cut the budget, they would have protested against Bush. But of course they didn't. And now that Obama is in office, with the horrendous problems he inherited from Bush, they're blaming him? Please.

They're angry about government spending, but of course they couldn't protest Bush, because they somehow see themselves as agreeing with him, even though he did the opposite of what they believe in. So Bush pissed them off, but they couldn't protest against him, so they are taking all their anger that was inspired by Bush, and aiming it at Obama.

Can you say dysfunctional?

This feels like one of those moments at a party when someone does something really embarrassing but doesn't realize it, so everyone else pastes uncomfortable smiles on their faces, waits for the moment to pass, and then doesn't say anything. Until maybe a few days later, when there is a hushed whisper here and there. And eventually the person somehow doesn't get invited to quite as many parties. Right now, many, many Republicans are incredibly embarrassed by this spectacle, but they're not saying anything, and they won't for a while. At least not in public. But this will have a strong impact on how many people vote.

What's unfortunate for those mainstream Republicans is that events like the ones today are great networking events. Thousands and thousands of business cards and phone numbers and emails were exchanged at these parties today. Which means that we have not heard the end of the tea partiers. It took many years and several devastating electoral defeats before the Democrats finally dealt with their nutcases. As Sullivan keeps writing, it is going to get worse before it gets better.

Academics and policy; Joseph Nye notes a lack of relevance

Joseph Nye, a former dean of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, writes in HuffPo one of those occasional posts that bemoan the lack of connection between academics and policy (the original OpEd piece is in the WaPo).

This has been a problem for how long now? Years, decades, centuries? Apparently the isolation of the ivory tower is getting worse. No doubt. I am familiar with this dilemma. I spent a fair amount of time and energy as an undergrad wondering if and how my philosophy degree would be relevant to real change in the real world. When I asked my philosophy professors about this, they seemed surprised by the question, as if it hadn't occurred to them. You would think that philosophy professors - of all people - would spend some time thinking about the meaning of their profession.

Nye cites a few trends/suspects for this widening gulf. Mostly, it's because once you're in the academy, you pay more attention to staying in the academy, and less attention to the outside world. Professional advancement within academia depends on impressing other people who are also within it, not the people outside.

That's probably true, but I lay the blame squarely on one facet of academia: tenure. There is one crucial difference between people in academia and people who are actually developing policy in the real world. That difference is that people in the real world are held accountable for how their ideas affect people, and academics are not. People in the real world have to deal with the consequences of their ideas. People in academia do not have to deal with those consequences. People in the real world can be fired if they screw up. People with tenure cannot be fired. If you can be fired because your ideas are wrong, you pay close attention to making sure your ideas are right, which means changing them when those ideas turn out to be wrong. If you are immune from being fired, you have no incentive to paying attention to how your ideas work in the real world. You can be wrong forever, and not pay any price.

This becomes self-perpetuating, because people who want their ideas to be relevant will work for organizations where their ideas will be relevant; think tanks, legislatures, newspapers, magazines, blogs, etc. Andrew Sullivan and Josh Marshall both have Ph.d.'s from Ivy League universities. People who are not as concerned about their relevance will tend to gravitate towards academia, where they can argue amongst themselves to their mutual hearts' content.

I should point out that this applies mostly to the humanities and social sciences. Academics in math, engineering, and the hard sciences are held accountable by their experiments. If a physicists' experiments don't work, he or she has to change his or her mind. I should also point out that my critique is aimed at higher education; I have much more respect for teachers in elementary and high school, who have the very difficult job of teaching. I have a lot of respect for teachers. I'm not a big fan of tenure at that level, either, but I don't think it has the same corrosive effect it does in higher education.

I had an argument about this with a friend who is an academic. My position was that academics are not relevant to society. He came back with "But you're assuming that they should be." To him, whether or not academics are relevant to social change or society in any respect is not an important question. This is a guy who minored in Latin and read ancient Roman poets for fun. He's perfectly happy going to conferences and teaching undergrads. Which is great. We need people to do whatever work he is doing, and I'm sure he does it quite well. The fact that he's perfectly happy with his job has a value in and of itself.

One thing that has changed very dramatically that Nye doesn't seem to notice is that there are vastly more opportunities today for people who are very smart and interested in ideas and want to see those ideas change society for the better. Andrew Sullivan and Josh Marshall are both making a living as bloggers. They both have an impact on politics. There was a time when colleges and universities were bastions of enlightened and progressive thinking, and if you wanted to hang out with smart people, that's where you went. That is no longer the case. So people who want their ideas to be relevant have options that they didn't have even 10 years ago. Which means, of course, that they have even less incentive to go into academia. Previously, they may have gone back and forth between academia and government, as Nye himself did. Now they can just leave academia with their Ph.d.'s and never look back.

I'm not as worried about this as I used to be. If people want to go into academia and argue about absurdly esoteric topics, fine with me. When I think of these people, I am reminded of the description of the earth in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "Mostly harmless." Every society has people who are smart but confused and misguided. Successful societies come up with a way to deal with these people that keeps them from ruining life for the rest of us. That's one purpose of tenure: academia has become a holding pen for people who are really smart, but basically wrong. As long as they stay there, they are mostly harmless. The rest of us should basically ignore them. This was what went wrong with the Ward Churchill fiasco: people actually started paying attention to him, and he became relevant and then controversial. If we had all ignored him, he would have stayed mostly harmless and basically irrelevant. I say "mostly harmless" because, of course, as an academic, he is teaching students, some of whom might actually take him seriously. This is an unfortunate side effect, but it is tampered by the fact that most students grow out of what they believe in college. It's like the other Churchill (the more quotable one) said: "If a man is not a Marxist at 20, he has no heart. If he is still a Marxist at 40, he has no brain." I'm actually not really sure if that's from Churchill, but it sounds good. And since I'm not an academic, I'm not going to worry about the historical accuracy of my citation. Because, as Oscar Wilde wrote, "Truth is absolutely and completely a matter of style." Not sure about the accuracy of that quote, either, but I think it sounds just as good as the one from Churchill.

For now, then, I'm not going to worry about whether or not there are enough academics in the Obama administration. That's because I am going to judge the Obama administration on whether or not they get the job done. They are held accountable on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Which is why I have much more respect for them than I do for academics.

Quote of the day

"The worsening economic situation is your [Republicans'] fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors."

Frank Schaeffer, in the HuffPost. And this guy used to be a Republican. He campaigned for McCain in 2000.

Chinese Democracy

The new Guns and Roses album, Chinese Democracy, has been released.

Just for the record, I could care less.

Is Kristol history at The Times?

HuffPost has a post about William Kristol possibly not having his contract renewed as a columnist at The New York Times. Apparently he only has a one-year contract.

First of all, very good call on the part of Times management to only sign him to a one-year contract. Second, I would bet good money on the Times not even offering him a renewal. Kristol says that he hasn't had a conversation with Times management, and that he's ambivalent. In other words, they aren't making a lot of effort, and he's not worried about whether or not they do.

The HuffPost article quotes George Packer in The New Yorker at length. He nails it here:

The real grounds for firing Kristol are that he didn’t take his column seriously.

Which is, in a sense, unfortunate, because the Democrats do need competent opposition. I've enjoyed Kristol's appearances on The Daily Show, and thot that his best asset as a commentator was his sense of humor, his willingness to laugh at himself. Of course, not being an intellectual heavyweight makes it that much easier to not take yourself too seriously.

If Kristol leaves the Times, it would be the beginning of a winnowing of conservative intellectuals. Hopefully Jonah Goldberg would be next - he's taking up valuable space at the LA Times. I have an old friend from high school, Mark Molesky, who wrote a book, Our Oldest Enemy: A History of America's Disastrous Relationship with France with someone from the National Review. Maybe the purging of a few conservative intellectuals will open up opportunities in the public sphere for people like Mark. He's very smart - he has a Ph.d. from Harvard - and he's a nice guy, with a great sense of humor. I can see him on Meet The Press. He certainly has more intellectual discipline than Bill Kristol.

So here's hoping that Kristol does make an amicable departure from the Grey Lady, and that a new generation of conservatives - ideally less rigid, less arrogant, and maybe even more compassionate - than the current crop takes the place of the current crop. That would be refreshing.

The Centripetal Web - working for me

Nick Carr has some concerns about the status of the Web. He's worried that, as opposed to the good old wide-open, anything-goes days of the 90's, more and more of us are sticking to what we know:

for most of us, most of the time, the World Wide Web has become a small and comfortable place. Indeed, statistics indicate that web traffic is becoming more concentrated at the largest sites, even as the overall number of sites continues to increase, and one recent study found that as people's use of the web increases, they become "more likely to concentrate most of their online activities on a small set of core, anchoring Websites."

It's a legitimate concern - the days when I would just surf and surf and surf to see what came up are long gone. It was a great deal of fun finding new Web sites just to see what they were about. I remember checking out the "Cool Site Of The Day." Wow, you can actually BUY BOOKS at Amazon? How cool is that?!? At the time, it was a thrill. Now, not so much. I distinctly remember a conservation, around 1997, when someone told me something to the effect of "I don't just surf for fun anymore." I rarely do that anymore. Except on YouTube.

Looking back is looking backwards. Those good old days were sort of like the good old days of getting your driver's license, or going off to college, or moving to a new city. You spend some time exploring just for the thrill of experiencing the new. But eventually the new isn't new anymore, and you settle down and start being more productive.

I surf differently these days because the Web is structured very differently, but it's also structured much more according to my needs. I use four blogs on a regular basis: Andrew Sullivan, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and Huffington Post. I use two newspaper sites: nytimes.com, and washingtonpost.com. I use those sites for two reasons. 1, I trust the analysis, and 2, they are great aggregators of content from around the Web. They surf so I don't have to. Andrew Sullivan posts constantly, and on a wide variety of topics, not just politics. He's a one-man aggregator. I also surf to some of his compadres at The Atlantic, like Marc Ambinder and Megan McArdle, because I am already at theatlantic.com. TPM, Daily Kos, and HuffPost aggregate a fair chunk of content within their own sites. The NY Times and Washington Post are old-fashioned aggregators, with their people out in the field.

One reason I am concentrating on those sites right now is that I am, like most of the rest of the country, not to mention large slices of the rest of the world, focusing on the very big picture of who will be the next president. There are lots of issues that I would like to following in greater depth, but for the next couple of weeks, I am going to ignore them. Partially because I know they will be there when I come back to them.

Carr's cynicism runs throughout his post. One negative development of the conglomeration that we are witnessing, according to him, is that

people began to demonstrate their innate laziness, retreating from the wilds and following the increasingly well-worn paths of least resistance.

Reading Daily Kos is about the farthest thing from "the path of least resistance" I can imagine. We're talking about a Web site which practically screams at its readers about donating to and working for the latest great progressive candidates, and generates far more content in one day than any single person can read in their spare time. Some people are naturally lazy and will make very little effort to go outside their comfort zone. I would argue the opposite of Carr: on the Web, it's almost absurdly easy to go outside your comfort zone. On the Web, you can be both lazy and ridiculously well-informed at the same time. Whether or not any one person goes outside their comfort zone says far more about them than it does about the Web.

One thing Carr ignores is that it's not just the amount of information that is categorically different these days, but the kind. Outside of politics, I follow the movie industry. I play the Hollywood Stock Exchange. I am currently following about 1,400 different movies. Talk about content aggregation. That would not have been physically possible for someone outside of a movie studio to do before the Web. HSX has also inspired a number of fan sites that provide additional content. Project Genome follows every single movie on HSX. That's my favorite starting place for doing movie research. Once again, they are doing the aggregating for me, and I trust them to keep doing it.

Carr uses Wikipedia as an example of a content aggregator that fails to inspire, because it is usually "good enough." I would agree with that, but I would disagree about whether or not it is a problem. I use Wikipedia all the time, even though I know it's not necessarily the best site for any particular given topic. But I don't necessarily want the best site for any given topic. For many topics, I want a brief overview, a quick synopsis. This is because there are many things that I have a passing, but not deep, interest in. I don't have the time or inclination to study in great detail everything that I am curious about. Wikipedia works for me because I would like to know a little bit about a wide range of topics, and a great deal about a few. Wikipedia is absurdly good for five-minute conversations with a coworker about something that both of you have heard of, and that you would like to know a little more about. But not a lot.

Speaking of curiosity, Carr bemoans the impact making searches much easier:

When convenience meets curiosity, convenience usually wins.

I could not disagree more. Convenience and curiosity are, if anything, complementary, rather than contradictory. If it's much easier to find satisfy an intellectual itch, you are much more likely to scratch.

Part of the reason for certain sites being better at aggregating is simply the nature of community. I check out Daily Kos because they cover topics that I am interested in. That is also true for thousands of other people, so we all check it out. And then Daily Kos makes more money from its ads, and gets better at what it does. At this point, it's getting pretty darn good. This is the same reason amost everyone I know can recite the lyrics for dozens of Beatles songs: we all like them.

If we all gravitate towards the same content, that's because it says something to lots of us. Carr claims that the centripetal forces of the Web means "The center holds." I would switch one letter in that sentence: I would move the "s" from the end of "holds" to the end of "center," so that it would read "The centers hold." There is no one center of the Web. There are thousands. I'm sure there are dominant, aggregating Web sites for knitting, poodle owners, water skiers, and Dead Kennedy fans. Mr. Carr would do well to update his metaphors.

Sarah Palin: The more we know . . .

Sarah Palin and Barack Obama have a couple of things in common. They both jumped into the national spotlight when they gave a speech at their party's national convention. Both have less on their resumes than would be ideal.

But after that, there's one powerful difference: the more you hear about Barack Obama, the more there is to like about him. He's got a great education, he has a strong work record that has prepared him a number of different ways for this campaign and for being president, he has great managerial skills and he's a damn good strategist.

The more we hear about Sarah Palin, however, the LESS there is to like. HuffPost rounds up some of the commentators - notably, some conservatives - who are not just disappointed with her, but angry at McCain for betraying their trust in him. Andrew Sullivan is nothing short of furious, and has been documenting her lies on an almost hourly basis.

There are almost too many shortcomings to repeat: she has almost no experience, she lies repeatedly, she's clueless about foreign policy, she's petty and vindictive. Etc., etc. She has inspired the base, but the longer this campaign goes on, the more liberals and moderates are not just upset, but thoroughly angry.

David Brooks sums up the issues very well today. Conservatism, he reminds us, once used to be unabashedly elitist, but has also had a strain of populism. Most important, Brooks reminds us of a very basic truth:

It turns out that governance, the creation and execution of policy, is hard. It requires acquired skills.

No kidding. Guess what, so is rocket science and neurosurgery.

This is why commentators like Brooks are turning on Palin: they have worked long and hard to get to where they are. They are elitists as much as anybody. So when Palin dismisses expertise and experience, she is dismissing them as well as politicians in Washington and the liberal elites of Hollywood.

I've said it before, and I will say it again. The right's enthusiasm for Palin erupted instantly and blossomed very quickly. She became a hero to many people over night. The reaction against her is building more slowly, but it is every bit as powerful.

People like David Brooks and David Ignatius are on the leading edge. By definition, they pay close attention to the details of political campaigns. It will take some time for all of these details to filter into the public consciousness. But the broad outlines of the narrative are being shaped. McCain's friends in the press are his friends no more. And they are read by millions of people.

Obama chooses Biden

Ending months of speculation and a few days of frenzy, Barack Obama has chosen Joe Biden as his running mate. Good call. Most excellent choice. Biden brings a great deal of foreign policy experience, with few downsides. Other than a tendency to occasionally let his mouth run a bit too much, he doesn't have any problems. Having run for president himself twice, he's pretty thoroughly vetted. He's very much an insider, which contrasts with Obama's "change" message, but is John McCain going to criticize someone for being in the Senate too long, when that has been his day job for a couple of decades?

Reaction is mostly positive. Andrew Sullivan is happy with it, and corrals some other responses. He's particularly happy with the contrast with the current occupant.

We've learned how disastrous a vice-president can be, in the current administration. No vice-president in American history has done as much damage to national security, constitutional integrity and the moral standing of the United States as Dick Cheney. Biden has aspects of the Cheney pick - he's older, more seasoned and more adept at foreign policy than Obama. But no one imagines that Obama would delegate - and all but abdicate - critical decisions to Biden the way Bush has to Cheney.

Nonetheless, it seems obvious that Biden speaks his mind frankly, and would have real heft and independence in the office. He knows enough that foreign leaders call him in international crises. That reassures me, as we face some grim days in the coming years in the war on terror.

This strikes me, in other words, as a pick for a candidate who is already very serious about governing - and making calls that forgo a campaign buzz for the sake of the country if he wins. Putting country first, you might say.

The more I think about it, the more I like it.

Daily Kos, meanwhile, rounds up reactions from other politicians, which are, as one might expect, pretty much glowing. The Kossacks themselves are feeling good today, as well. Kos himself isn't completely thrilled. Kos argues that Biden "fills a gap" in Obama's resume, rather than reinforces his message of change. That makes sense, but I think "plugging the gap" can also be read as "broadening his appeal." Obama has the base mostly locked down. He needs to expand his appeal to people who are interested in him, but not yet completely sold. Biden does that better than any of the other candidates.

Huffpost will have the video, and of course has completely obsessive coverage.

Bush embarasses us again

Dear God, the end can't come soon enough. This is a video of Bush meeting the President of the Philipines, Gloria Arroyo. First, notice the body language - staring at the floor, squirming, slumping - could he be any less dignified or uncomfortable? And, of course, stumbling through a basic English sentence. But then he compliments Filipino Americans by noting that the chef at the White House is Filipino. He didn't mention that she's a woman. The LA Times has a nice piece about Cristeta "Cris" Comerford. Even when he's trying to be just a good host, Bush messes up. It's a nice gesture to mention his chef, but this is about the most awkward way possible to do it. His chef is obviously someone very close to him, but this is the most prominent Filipino American he can mention? How about something like this: "I'm sure President Arroyo will enjoy dinner at the White House - our chef is a Filipino American, Cris Comerford. She's really taught me to appreciate Filipino cuisine." He makes this about himself; "when I eat dinner at the White House." If you're going to try to be gracious, it's really helpful to give someone a compliment. "A really good cook?" Of COURSE she's a "really good cook." She's the White House chef! She's got to be one of the best cooks in the country! Paying a compliment is an art form - and we all know what George W. Bush thinks about art.



I got this from from Talking Points Memo, who got it from HuffPost. In all fairness, I have to point out a mistake on the part of HuffPost, which described her as "a Filipino member of his kitchen staff." She is NOT "a member of his kitchen staff." That's like calling the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs a grunt. She is the White House chef, which is a great honor. In a kitchen, the chef is the head honcho, and accorded a great deal of respect. If you're going to criticize Bush for his insensitivity, don't make the same mistake yourself. If Bush had made it clear that he appreciates his chef for her artistry, that would at least made it sound a little better. HuffPost, please don't compound Bush's error.

Reasons to vote Republican - or maybe not

A few rather interesting reasons to vote for the GOP this year. The content of this short film WAS NOT approved by the Republican National Committee. From HuffPost. The original is on imvotingrepublican.com.

Great suggestion for Obama's VP!

Chris Kelly at HuffPost has analyzed Obama's VP choices, and has come up with a great suggestion. The person needs to fit this criteria:

Obama just needs a running mate who's old, Hispanic, southern, female and enjoys state-sponsored violence, especially war.

His suggestion? I was thinking about not posting this to preserve the element of surprise and force people to go to the original post, but it's just too funy.

Two words:

Eva. Peron.

That's just hysterical. Read the whole post.

The problem with Hillary and feminism

Hilary Rosen writes today at HuffPost about why she still likes Hillary, despite the very long shot that she is right now. It's a careful, thoughtful, balanced, very sane essay. She acknowledges the reality of where we are right now, and accepts it for what it is - the result of a race that Barack Obama won fair and square. She's also fairly articulate on the subject of how race and gender have functioned in this race.

whatever has been said about African-Americans by white people in this campaign has been heard by many African-Americans as one more layer of seemingly innocent comments built upon a lifetime of insensitivity and slights.

That's perceptive, and good to hear. She makes an honest effort to apply the same standard to Hillary's campaign:

Yet, for the past few weeks, when Hillary's supporters suggest that similar comments made about gender have the same hurtful impact, Obama supporters guffaw and most of the media ridicules the notion and ridicules the Senator herself as though she is suggesting that she is losing because of her gender -- which incidentally I have never heard her say.

I've tried to be very sensitive to feminism and feminist concerns my entire life. I still remember my mother wearing "ERA Yes" buttons. I think there probably has been a lot of sexism in this campaign. And I'm willing to grant, for the sake of argument, that Hillary Clinton herself has not suggested that she is losing because of her gender. That's probably true, if only because Hillary knows it would be political suicide for her to complain about losing because of gender - it would make her look like she was whining, and that would be the end of her "tough" image.

But Obama supporters are not judging Hillary or her supporters because they think claims of sexism are somehow amusing or shouldn't be taken seriously. Obama supporters are frustrated with Hillary herself because her performance, in many respects, has been undignified. There's a whole list: "hardworking Americans, white Americans," the Bobby Kennedy reference, dismissing certain states as irrelevant because she happened to lose them, making specious and ridiculous arguments about the popular vote, etc. She has refused to take responsibility for her own failures. The flip side of that is that she refuses to give Obama the respect due to someone who has clearly beaten her. I've said this many times: I was a huge Bill Clinton fan for many years. I liked and respected Hillary for a long time. But this campaign has been a major disillusionment, and my response has been, in part, anger. Bill Clinton betrayed me once, with Monica. The second time is even more painful.

So for me, while I understand that sexism is alive and well and a problem in this society, I find it hard to have sympathy for someone at the same time that I am very quickly losing respect for them.

But Rosen has some other, particularly eloquent points, that give me pause. I'm glad she wrote this; it's nice to hear a voice of reason and old-fashioned liberalism in this charged atmosphere. She has a poignant but not sentimental explanation for why Hillary is still going:

Hillary has found her voice and she is using it to speak to a group of people often ignored in politics. Women who have felt powerless to change or even complain about their own lives because they are just too damn busy keeping it together for everyone around them. And they certainly haven't had time for politics.

From the waitress in the diner to the school teacher to the executive on wall
street, women feel the daily slights that are often invisible to others. Yes,
many of her supporters need real and immediate help from the government, but so
many more are just grateful to be noticed.

It is difficult in this kind of environment to remember this kind of message, so it's great to hear it so well expressed. It's the kind of thing that would make Gloria Steinem proud. I'm all for it. I'm very glad that Hillary is speaking to women who could use a shot of empowerment. If Barack Obama were not in this race, and there were not a million other things going on, this is the kind of message that would have me writing a check and pounding the pavement.

But Barack Obama is in this race, and there are a million other things going on. And one of those things is that Hillary, at some point, is going to have to concede. And she is going to have to do it gracefully. I am of two minds at this point. On the one hand, the longer it goes on, the harder it is going to be for some of her supporters to let go and let bygones be bygones. On the other hand, the longer it goes on, the more obvious it becomes that Obama won fair and square.

There's another problem, as well: as inspirational as this message is, it's also exclusionary. I'd like to think that I can hear it, and I'm glad that Hillary is speaking up for and to women who feel powerless. As I've said before, I will never appreciate what it's like to spend your whole life not seeing people like you in positions of power. I will never be able to fully appreciate what Hillary's candidacy means to women.

But I'm not in that demographic. And there are lots of people who don't fit into that category. Hillary is not running for the President of the National Organization for Women. She is running for the President of the United States of America. At this point, I'm not even sure she cares about trying to reach someone like me. I don't think Hillary would put the interests of women ahead of the interests of men (and I understand that men did the reverse for centuries). But I can see how some men would be worried about that.

I'm more than willing to vote for a woman who runs for president. I'd love to able to campaign for one that I found really exciting. But I'm not going to vote for a woman just because she's a woman. And I'm not going to vote for her to score points with feminists. Barack Obama makes it clear that he is running to president of everyone in the United States. I'll vote for a woman who convinces me she thinks the same way. Right now, Hillary Clinton is not that woman.

Clinton-Penn: Dysfunctionality endures

Via TPM, we learn that Change To Win, the innovative and creative progressive labor coalition, is demanding that Hillary Clinton fire Mark Penn, the least popular staff member of any current presidential campaign. Why are they demanding this? Apart from the fact that they are a group of unions, and Penn has a reputation as a union buster? Apart from the fact that they are backing Obama, and this is just manna from heaven for Obama? Apart from all that, they are demanding this because SOMEBODY HAS TO. And I already did, but I don't have millions of members backing me up.

I can't believe I am writing this at this point. It's turning into Bush-Rumsfeld - she's refusing to fire a wildly unpopular staffer whose presence has become a lightning rod. I'm not the first person to make that comparison. Paul Begala made it, according to HuffPost. In public. Just how dysfunctional can all this get? Does Hillary actually enjoy this? Does she have some masochist streak that we don't know about?