Pundit Elite Enraptured by Hillary's 'Flawless Campaign'

Let's think about this... Where does a significant share of the campaign contributions go? To the media for advertising.

No wonder they track the campaign contributions as though they were votes. The only way to get a fair debate and election is to allow equal time on PBS or another public access station for all candidates and prohibit spending on media.

Let ideas rule, not dollars. (Oops, I was dreaming again. Is it a common dream?)

walt: my visits to CD are becoming more sporadic and separated and I didn't see your post until now. My first reaction to your post was well, OK, I just made a flip post to sort of pee on the fence corner, you know?

But then what I realy understand made me laugh. Do you really believe the marketing of both the left and right concerning what corporate power has accomplished recently? Revolution, my ass. What we saw in 2000 was the end-game, and given who and what we are was inevitable. Just as our beginning the 21st century resource wars was inevitable. We are wedded to who and what we are, and whatever works against that will definately not be televised.

An alternate view:

Greetings fellow insurgents,

What lies ahead for our dying democracy? Could a truth-to-power political candidate such as Dennis Kucinich ever hope to capture the hearts of our media obsessed, consumerist culture? What kind of scenario might play out in coming months in years that could trigger the revolution that America so badly needs?

This 11-minute "Futurementary" begins with a bleak look at our current unfolding national nightmare, but ends on the promise of a future utopia of peace, community and radical localism. Please take some time out of your busy schedule to watch it, find inspiration, and pass it on to others.--Matt Power, Liberty News TV (www.libertynewstv.com).

Real Media Version (macs and PCs)
http://www.libertynewstv.com/RAW%20CLIPS%20and%20STILLS/OCT2007CLIPS/LNT...

Windows Media Version (PCs)
http://www.libertynewstv.com/RAW%20CLIPS%20and%20STILLS/OCT2007CLIPS/Pax...

If you want a higher resolution copy of the video on DVD that you can show at meetings, rallies or wherever, please send a $5 donation to Liberty News TV, PO Box 10847, Portland, ME 04104 --and we'll send you a DVD.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?%20SectionID=72&ItemID=12928
1. "Dealing with Serbia in the 1990s cemented the neocon-neolib entente. By Sept. 11, 2001, these two groups had converged as a single ideological family. They agreed that American nationalism was best expressed in world affairs as a progressive imperialism. The rallying call for armed action would be promoting human rights and democratic government among peoples who resisted American hegemony."

OR, some people, (not necessarily exclusively either neoconservative or neoliberal in their outlook), genuinely believe in promoting human rights and democratic government in the world outside Iowa City, an argument worth considering.

"In order that the proletariat of the Eastern countries may open the road to victory, the pedantic reactionary theory of Stalin and Martynov on 'stages' and 'steps' must be eliminated at the very outset, must be cast aside, broken up and swept away with a broom. Bolshevism grew to maturity in the struggle against this vulgar evolutionism. It is not to a line of march marked out a priori that we must adapt ourselves, but to the real course of the class struggle. It is necessary to reject the idea of Stalin and Kuusinen – the idea of fixing an order of succession for countries at various levels of development by assigning them in advance cards for different rations of revolution." – Leon Trotsky http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr07.htm

Furthermore, one person's hypocrisy does not make everyone who does believe in human rights and democratic government as rationales for using military force in their turn hypocrites. If you think Saddam Hussein or Milosevic are worth defending you are either severely delusional or genuinely just hate America- something I never thought I'd say, but is patently true when you come up with this kind of argument. I suspect Street simply hates America when he holds 'America' responsible, not the specific 'Americans' who are. It's a blurry line, but one must ask it of him when he says 'America' is not the 'answer'. To what 'question'?

"Acknowledging those crimes, I suspect, means dropping the arrogant imperial assumptions that the United States' "answer" is "the world's hope" and that the "world" is ours to "inherit." It means asking more, listening more and telling less when interacting with the world beyond our borders.

It also means taking an honest look in the mirror. With a deeply and increasingly unequal domestic society still badly damaged by Martin King's "triple evils" and by what the New Left historian William Appleman Williams called "Empire as a Way of Life," we have no business trumpeting ourselves as a potential "beacon" to anyone. The repair of broken societies and failed states begins at home." - Paul Street

Not everyone lives in a nice home and drives a nice car while you watch the news and write an editorial Mr. Street. Some people have no control over who you choose to associate with 'beacon' status with the strike of your pen on canvas. And I don't believe that there are no 'beacons' in our society worth imitating.

2. "U.S. presidential hopefuls who trumpet whitewashed perspectives on past U.S. imperialism are candidates to advance "rogue superpower" behavior in the future."- Paul Street

Double edged sword: if a state is rogue, it is rogue to the degree it is outside of 'the order'. Question: Is 'the order' worth perpetuating? If you actually read this article, no grand order of states is posited as useful other than the United Nations. What did the United Nations accomplish in Darfur? In Yugoslavia? This is a hogwash argument when you apply it to the world we actually live in. Even Chavez goes outside this 'order', (socialism in one country doctrine), to get things done in Latin America to perpetuate the Bolivarian project.

If you want to know the truth about where the cynicism is coming from, these quotes say enough. And I for one have had enough of it. To oppose Obama because he opposes the Taliban is ultimately where most Kucinich arguments lead to. It has taken me a while to see it, but in truth, Kucinich represents the frightened pacifism that led to looking the other way while Hitler took more and more power, while Mullah Omar took more and more power, and why Saddam Hussein took more and more power. I cannot support it. Neither did Trotsky, if you bother to read. Paul Street's criticism of theories of permanent revolution are superficial appraisals of Obama's senate votes in a world that must choose between the deeper context of ordering ourselves as a political community around fully disclosed and democratic relationships between people or cynically politicized covert and antidemocratic relationships between people. Obama speaks beyond ideology to the degree he speaks to these fundamental truths of politically organized societies, truths that are never addressed by his critics who nonetheless feel the need to lecture at great length on the history of political economic thought divorced from the realities of time, money, and people that structure political organizing.

"The most dangerous thing in politics is to fall captive to one's own formula that yesterday was appropriate, but is bereft of all content today."- Leon Trotsky http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330715.htm

Street's criticisms are merely justifications to go outside on a street front, hold up a sign, and walk home with a holier-than-thou sense of the world in which you live, (in 2007?), when the future of the world in which you live is being decided not in a protest, but in an election in which power will fall to either a candidate like Obama or the same old cynical political fortune tellers like Hillary and Giuliani. No candidate is perfect, but to preface criticism of Obama on the narrow grounds that America made life worse in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq overlooks some fundamental realities of the dictatorships that people like the Bosnians, Hazara, Tajiks, Kurds, Kuwaitis, Iranians, and Shia endured. I cannot support an America that walks away from supporting those political parties in the world that are democratically engaged. The world cannot go on forever without an evolution towards democratic relationships, whether or not you support capitalism, socialism, or a mix- as most people do. If there is any lesson in World War II it is to oppose those cynical overly politicizing fortune tellers at the beginning who seek to consolidate power in one country at any cost by isolating themselves from the world, because they are probably cynical of democracy too. America is uniquely positioned to militarily confront the bullies in the world, that responsibility is default in certain regions of the world, and to walk away from that as we have in Darfur, is not to choose 'peace', it is to surrender people to genocide.

"The basic mistake of the Sixth Congress lies in this, that in order to save the pacifist and national-reformist perspectives of Stalin-Bukharin, it ran after revolutionary-technical recipes against the war danger, separating the struggle against war from the struggle for power.... The inspirers of the Sixth Congress, these alarmed builders of socialism in one country – in essence, frightened pacifists – made the attempt to perpetuate the 'neutralization' of the bourgeoisie through intensified 'pressure' methods. But since they couldn't help knowing that their leadership up to now in a series of countries had led to the defeat of the revolution and had thrown the international vanguard of the proletariat far back, they endeavoured first of all to jettison the 'sharpened formulation' of Marxism, which indissolubly ties up the problem of war with the problem of the revolution. They have converted the struggle against war into a self-sufficient task. Lest the national parties oversleep the decisive hour, they have proclaimed the war danger to be permanent, unpostponable and immediate. Everything that happens in the world happens for the purpose of war. War is now no longer an instrument of the bourgeois regime; the bourgeois regime is an instrument of war. As a consequence, the struggle of the Communist International against war is converted into a system of ritualistic formulas, which are repeated automatically on every occasion and, losing their effectiveness, evaporate. Stalinist national socialism tends to convert the Communist International into an auxiliary means of 'pressure' upon the bourgeoisie. It is just this tendency, and not Marxism, that Radek helps with his hasty, slovenly, superficial criticism. He has lost the compass and has got into a strange current that may carry him to far different shores."- Leon Trotsky http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr08.htm

"He praises the architects of the Cold War for checking the Soviet Union's nefarious designs "to spread [in Obama's words] its totalitarian brand of communism."- Paul Street
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?%20SectionID=72&ItemID=12928

Obama's words? Give me a break. The fact that "the USSR modeled the possibility of independent national development outside the parameters of U.S.-led world-capitalist supervision" does not dismiss the fascism that made it possible. Hitler also modeled a possibility of independent development outside the parameters of British-led world-capitalist development. There is nothing intrinsic to that outsider status that is inherently good or bad.

"The so-called friends of the Soviet Union (left democrats, pacifists, Brandlerites, and the like) repeat the argument of the Comintern functionaries that the struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy, i.e., first of all criticism of its false policies, "helps the counter-revolution." This is the standpoint of the political lackeys of the bureaucracy, but never that of revolutionists. The Soviet Union both internally and externally can be defended only by means of a correct policy. All other considerations are either secondary or simply lying phrases.

The present CPSU is not a party but an apparatus of domination in the hands of an uncontrolled bureaucracy. Within the framework of the CPSU and outside of it takes place the grouping of the scattered elements of the two basic parties: the proletarian and the Thermidorean-Bonapartist. Rising above both of them, the centrist bureaucracy wages a war of annihilation against the Bolshevik-Leninists. While coming into sharp clashes from time to time with their Thermidorean half-allies, the Stalinists, nevertheless, clear the road for the latter by crushing, strangling, and corrupting the Bolshevik Party."

"Only the creation of the Marxist International, completely independent of the Stalinist bureaucracy and counterposed politically to it, can save the USSR from collapse by binding its destiny with the destiny of the world proletarian revolution."- Leon Trotsky
http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330715.htm

So long as we show up at the polls to vote, THEIR political ruse has credibility..... from the perspective of a professional politician, an electorate this naive, serve as leprechauns to mark the location of the pot of gold. I'll take Kucinich, but I do wish he'd temper down his health plan into a more responsibly-sounding package. Oh, and I'm glad to see AIPAC being recognized as the problem that it is.

>So by all means don't vote. Stay home. Leave the hard work (and hard choices) of democracy to someone else.

Oh for...OK. Deep breaths. :-)

Voting is not democracy. Voting is a sham. There's plenty to do to change the world for the better - but voting is just a way to get people *not* to do those things. Horrors, you say? Look around you. Engage in it if you will, but the frog (that would be us) in a slowly boiling (the rightward shift of *both* major parties in the US) pot of water (that would be, erm, capitalism) of which you speak not is going to do much but pull the wool over people's eyes long enough to think they can disengage from the larger political process, which is exactly what happened the last time we were faced with a Clinton. You want democracy, look south of the US, not towards the beltway.

Maybe - *maybe* - there would be a shift back towards the left if someone who actually was from the left was being positioned as a front runner - but like I said, look around you. Hate to tell you, but both Hillary and Obama are just shells in one of the world's oldest political games, with the third shell being (most likely) Rudy Giuliani. Or to put it more simply: get in a car, any car. Turn to the far right. Then turn a bit to the left. Then turn even more to the far right. Then turn to the left again, but a bit less than before. Where are you?

People lets rock the elite,"Vote Kucinuch"

little brother. I read your post three times and I still don't quite know what you are talking about ... except that you are patronizing me.

I am just trying to say that the past 7 years have had an enormous negative impact on so many real people's lives and we can lessen it or perpetuate it in this election. Because we don't have the best choices, so many decide not to vote at all.

Those who insist there's no difference between democrats and republicans seem to in some sense be invulnerable to the outcome no matter who wins. That's why you can afford to say "if I vote at all."

That's fine. If you don't vote, you don't matter. Like I said some one will be President. You'll have an impact one way or the other. You can't sit it out. You can't have no impact.

So by all means don't vote. Stay home. Leave the hard work (and hard choices) of democracy to someone else.

Talk about bubbles.

"Given the conservative tilt of the punditocracy, it doesn't surprise me that many in the media are seeking to anoint Clinton as the Democratic nominee, or that they (including at Fox News) tend to side with her in disputes with Edwards or Obama.

I'm old enough to remember that while corporate media exploited and savaged (perhaps partly in envy) Bill Clinton's sexual misbehavior, they liked most of his appointees and policies — especially his corporate-oriented "New Democratic" approach to economics."

The 'punditocracy' are no more than PR people in an advertising system in which political discussion is forbidden and ideo-tainment substituted.

I wonder how many people under the age 35 still have corporate broadcasters as their main source of information & opinion formation.

[W]alt's succinctly stated Lesser Evilism reminds me of those hokey white bubbles in Patrick McGoohan's surrealistic show "The Prisoner" that rolled after escaping prisoners like oversized self-propelling beach balls, engulfed them, and either killed them or rolled them back into captivity. I think the props were actually weather balloons.

I am fast becoming, or feeling, like Ebenezer Scrooge during his fantastic nocturnal Christmas visits, or perhaps Emily Webb briefly and poignantly returning from the afterlife in "Our Town" vis-à-vis meaningful political action. I expect I'll vote for Kucinich in 2008, if I vote at all. Here I stand. God help me. I can do no other.

I do want to say that I smile at pretentious "j'accuse!" admonitions that we recreants and knaves who fail to chain ourselves to an oar of the slave galley Hillary are perforce willing collaborationists with, and enablers or partners of, the Greater Evilists. I'm under no obligation to refute this conclusion, since it's the product of a tightly-linked mobius strip of circular reasoning that will coil a dissenter like an anaconda. From the outside, everything about this perspective screams "trap!".

As I recently wrote elsewhere [ http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/02/4268/ ]:

You know, in the era of blogging in the political mudslide of 21st Century
Amerika, I have continually been struck by persons who comment in what might
charitably be called a "tough love" perspective, and otherwise called
scolding, hectoring, gaming, and lecturing, with no attempt to sweeten their
palpable contempt, disdain, disgust, and frustration towards we perverse and
incorrigible maggots who remain unable or unwilling to get with the(ir)
program.

I know all of their rhetorical tropes by now, from the caustic pejorative of
"purity" to the Prime Directive of Not Letting the Perfect Be the Enemy of
the Good. The Lesser Evil Suite is a pretty limited repertoire: brittle
strategy, uncritical loyalty, rote ritual performances, leaden pragmatism
and obsession with process- and pride & satisfaction at being a team player
and embracing expediency and mediocrity. [...]

All that said, I can't tell you what "my solution" is; for me, it's not an article of faith that there is one. So you win the debate; good luck, and may the b... least evil candidate win!

The more money the MSM gets from the candidates, the more flawless the candidates get.

I'm going to wait for Iowa and New Hampshire before resigning myself to the idea that Americans have lost the power to choose their own president. The pundits can pund all they like. The pollsters can poll until the cows come home. If those primary voting machines aren't rigged, there's a fair chance we'll see some changes in the candidate rankings.

Hope springs eternal.

kivals October 5th, 2007 3:18 pm

"At some point we have to accept that we have a very limited democracy. The oligarchs always make sure we only have a very limited range of major party nominees, usually differing only significantly on the social issues. However, since the Republican Party has lurched to the right into clearly fascist territory, and the Democrats, even including Hillary, have not lurched as far in following them, there will likely be a significant difference this time, even if it is Hillary for the Democrats, and especially if it is Rudy for the Republicans."

I think you are engaging in wishful thinking. The evidence does not show that the Democrats are any less fascist than the Republicans. Among the three front runners for the Democratic nomination;

1. They have not only not sought repeal of the Patriot act they voted to expand it just before their August recess. Edwards of course could not vote but he has not made an issue of it.

2. They have taken no steps to close Guantanamo and have given no indication that they would do so if elected in 2008.

3. They have done nothing about the NSA spy program nor have they promised to if elected.

4. They have not promised to limit the use of signing statements used to thwart the will of Congress and the separation of powers

5. They refuse to promise to get out of Iraq even by the end of their first term in 2013

Lobo Gris

I actually think there should be no elections in 2008.
There should be a transitional government supervised by the United Nations to keep the fighting parties behave in a civilized manner, while the groundwork is being laid for FREE and FAIR elections for a MULTIPARTY election in 2010 or 2012. The transitional government will have a mandate to fix the dysfunctional electoral system and boosting alternative media to stimulate competition with the dysfunctional corporate media to create a real MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS for the upcoming election. In the meantime a TRUTH and RECONCILIATION commission should be established where former officials will be granted AMNESTY when they reveal as many of the secrets of the Bush regime as possible and the findings of the commission should get lots of MEDIA COVERAGE all over the world. The commission will investigate in a serious manner the stolen elections in 2000 and 2004, the 9-11 disaster, corporate fraud associated with the White House and Congress, the Iraq war and various associated crimes against humanity.
The new government elected by the people, not the corporations, will have a mandate to rewrite the constitution to close the LOOPHOLES that Republicans and other tin-pot dictators-to-be use to subvert democracy, so as to INSTITUTIONALIZE a one-man one-vote system once and for all. They will have a mandate to TRANSFORM the Supreme Court and to TRANSFORM the Department of Defense. It will also have a mandate to FOLLOW UP on the findings of the TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION to penalize the people that have been found guilty of war crimes.
I just don't know whether this will be a popular idea with Americans.
Am I a dreamer ? Well, it has happened, with some variations, in several other countries.

wjo h="whom" in last post. Just some dystypsia on my part.

As far as I am concerned, my vote will be cast for the person wjo m I think will follow through on my needs, cares, and concerns. I am greedy! Kucinich seems to represent ME!
Every other candidate represents the same old. same old. They continue to represent the interests that make my life, and many others lives, harder.

Pundit Elite Enraptured by Hillary's 'Flawless Campaign'

I'm enraptured by the idea that only a Bush or a Clinton can serve as president (small p intended) of the USA.

Hillary is the enemy. Not a dime's worth of difference between her and Rudy.

Hey reader, you want single payer? Forget Hillary.

Work for change in whatever way you can.

Just don't vote for the ultimate insider.

truepatriot is on to something. I had the wild thought that maybe we should all start backing Obama or Edwards. But let them know why.

If Hillary is ever unfortunate enough to have explosive diarrhea there would be members of the mainstream media sprayed all over the ladies room.

Hard to say if Hillary is, as Gore implies, a good person in a broken system. Or if she's corrupted by the broken system. I'm no Hillary fan, but what choice does she have if she really wants the job? She clearly knows what will impress the pundits, who are the people that matter in a country where most of the electorate are willfully ignorant and will vote for whomever the punitocracy favours.

The MORONS! All because some editor didn't have the regular reviewer available, so gave the ordinary reporter a couple of tickets.

And they never got over the experience even though they did a rotten job. So they've been doing a rotten job covering politics, suffering from the
constant delusion that they are play reviewers as
Paul Krugman pointed out the other day.

The revolution will not be televised.

One MINOR DETAIL…..with our vote counting process now TOTALLY in the hands of PRIVATE CORPORATIONS, do you all think for one minute that the outcome of the 2008 election will reflect the American voters choices??? With little input from citizens, our Democracy has been silently replaced…....electronic voting machines controlled by a few elite politicos now select our leaders!! To correct this, they give us heat sensitive printouts for verification…....look at any receipt you have that is more than a month old and you will see how well THAT will work!!! Instead of a vote count being conducted by citizen volunteers, it is now rushed through solely to get an INSTANTANEOUS RESULT FOR THE MEDIA….after all, they just can't miss their DEADLINES!!!

REFUSE TO VOTE ON THESE MONSTROSITIES!!
DEMAND PAPER BALLOTS!!!

To further my point on Hillary Clinton: Published in Reuters today:

. . . Senator Clinton's primary adviser, Mark Penn, who is like her Karl Rove, his firm is representing Blackwater. . . Blackwater is a private security firm whose employees have been accused of using their weapons too aggressively against Iraqi civilians and police. . . .
Penn, Clinton's pollster and senior strategist, is the worldwide president of Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm. A subsidiary, BKSH, helped prepare Blackwater founder Erik Prince for a contentious congressional hearing this week, but Burson-Marsteller says the relationship has ended. . . .
Penn's association with Burson has caused headaches for the Clinton campaign in the past. . .
The firm represents corporate clients accused of union-busting activity, as well as tobacco giant Philip Morris. While Penn says he does not personally work on any accounts that could be construed as anti-labor, labor leaders including Teamsters president James Hoffa have publicly expressed concern about his involvement with the campaign

COMarc 3:08 pm

I enjoyed your trenchant analysis-- as usual, I might add. I would only disagree to the extent that FWIW, I don't especially see Obama as a tabula rasa carved, like Pinocchio, into a politician by a committee of consultants.

Maybe you didn't mean that literally-- I think Obama has a bit of Bill Clinton-class charisma and political instincts, and thrives on broken-field oratorical bullshitting. All I'm saying is that I think his politics emerge from his own Inner Consultants, with the result you accurately describe, rather than being driven by his cadre of handlers.

Politicians don't inspire trust in me in general, to put it mildly. I can summon up a bare minimum of trust for politicians like Kuchinch, and even Mike Gravel to a lesser extent, though, because they seem human and lifelike.

The Mod Squad of Edwards, Clinton, and Obama all strike me as Pod Persons. It's all too easy to imagine their bodies suddenly bursting, and an alien life form stepping out of the shrivelled husk of their skins. I realize it's the eye of the beholder-- it's commonplace to hear Kucinich derided in similar terms. But my imagination is responding to the politicians' character or demeanor, not their superficial physical appearance. They're the Mod Squad-- ergo, teevee-quality good looks.

I used to say that the first female President of the United States would be a moderate Republican.

Looks like I'm going to be right.

But, I have a beef with the Cohen's assertion that, "most of our country wants out of Iraq". The polls I hear about say that most of America thinks invading Iraq "was a mistake".

There's still a vast lack of agreement about what to do about that "mistake". I believe that most Americans are resigned to "not winning" in Iraq, but they're still looking for an outcome other than "losing". This is morally indefensible, but that's the way it is.

Clinton's strategy is to play for those voters who are still on the fence about what to do next. Is this cynical and unprincipled, or is it RealPolitik?

I have to agree with Cohen that Big Money is calling the shots. The Big Oil interests are well accustomed to losing money for years before they hit a "gusher". For them, the game in Iraq is far from over. Right now they're looking for a "relief pitcher" to take over for BushCheney.

Clinton will be sElected to win the presidency in 2008, just as Kerry was sElected to lose it in 2004.

Well, It's the First Friday of the month... got to go join my local Peace Vigil. I can't change Clinton and I can't change the DemoCorporatic Party, but maybe I can change the opinion of a few of my neighbors.

From tiny acorns grow mighty oaks.

To JBS and all who will hear, check out this link. Screw the big 3 DEMONcrats. Stength through peace!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1AhaH1ozbg

If the Democrats were smart (a fantasy) they would highlight the fact that Mrs Guiliani used to torture dogs to demonstrate a surgical bandage.
____________________________________________________________________________

Nah-- they can't afford to alienate the Michael Vick supporting Democratic base.

There is deep ideological tie between the "intellectuals" in the media and elites in the political system. They share the same interests and it shows. It's not so much that the pundits like a particular candidate, they just represent their interests. The government-media complex has reached a pinnacle of sorts. By now it is so rigid that no alternative opinions -- including those of mainstream presidential candidates -- are allowed in. If you these people believed anything else, they wouldn't be media. They would have been Kucinichized (marginalized) by now.

Please...no more Bushes, no more Clintons, but more than anything else, NO MORE YALE GRADUATES!

The video is absolutely hilarious. I think we all need something like that to laugh to keep from crying.

And we need Dennis Kucinich. He's not in the corporation's pockets, he wants an end to the war and true universal healthcare and college for all... these are things that if the American people were informed about, they would be voting for him in a heartbeat. Spread the word, this article basically did, without saying his name.
So start saying it: DENNIS KUCINICH
http://www.kucinich.us

rtdrury,

You wrote that "Today capitalists are faced with the prospect that the planet's future is socialism and that they will soon be cleaning their own toilets."

I think that is getting to the crux of the matter. If you think about the evolution of capitalism and how it has come (probably inevitably) to financial engineering that enriches the financial manipulators and not the creators of wealth, you cannot have a firm belief in its future.

But we cannot assume all these corporate capitalists will behave in a similar manner when faced with overwhelming support for socialism, and one way to group them would be this:

(1) Those willing to risk thermonuclear war and human extinction, and to implement totalitarian fascist policies, to create a world society so polarized in wealth and power that the few can completely control the many, using the latest of military and artificial intelligence technologies.

(2) Those willing to concede to mass movements for socialism if such movements could only be opposed with extreme measures. They would not risk human extinction, engage in the mass murder of tens of millions, or set up totalitarian fascism to stop socialism.

Certainly Bush and Cheney and the great majority of Republicans are in group (1). And it is clear that virtually all of the Democrats would be in group (2). Hillary is the most difficult to place, though I would guess it is more likely than not that she would be in (2). She better be, because I doubt the corporate oligarchy will give us any better choice.

Farka, above, (October 5th, 2007 2:53 pm) describes Obama as some kind of anti-corporate, fairly good progressive. I disagree. Evidence? Paul Street has done the hard work of exposing Obama as a corporate, conservative, war-mongering, dangerous, non-progressive, deceptive candidate.

Here are some links:

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Feb2007/street0207.html

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm? SectionID=72&ItemID=12687

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm? SectionID=72&ItemID=12928

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm? SectionID=30&ItemID=12336

[I had to insert a space after each question mark to make each of the above three links less than 60 characters. Delete that space before searching with each of the above three links.]

Here is a speech Obama gave about foreign policy:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fpccga

Noticably absent from this speech is any reference to the two pillars of progressive foreign policy:

Benevolence and not selfish "national interest."

The global rule of law, not the so-called "global war on terror."

It takes some work to pull the curtain back to expose the corporate, militarist policies of Obama, for he shows himself as a charismatic, self-proclaimed "progressive." He isn't.

"I believe in pro-American trade"

President Hillary is a catastrophe waiting to be selected. What she means by "pro-American" is pro-corporate. Her masters provide her rhetorical sound bites to trick the people into believing she cares about the public interests. Such trickery IS the devious foundation of the class hierarchy.

Fortunately, the American people are learning that they do not need Hillary, or large corporations, or concentrated capital of any form.

We can vote third parties in elections and shift our individual exchange/association from power centers to local economies.

Today capitalists are faced with the prospect that the planet's future is socialism and that they will soon be cleaning their own toilets.

Comment by Atruepatriot (October 5th, 2007 1:37 pm) is just pure brilliance. Thanks. Clinton is the "Guiliani-wins" candidate. The corporate system with its media is staging a race between two international-law-denying, war-mongering candidates, with Giuliani most likely to win.

Regarding the article, Cohen uses "corporate media" rather than "mainstream media" and I think his term is a better, more progressive term than "MSM" or its longer equivalent. Also, the overall idea of the article is smart, helpful and supported by the evidence. The corporate media, in an Orwellian scam, is supporting lies and deceit to win their pro-corporate candidates. Progressives Kucinich, Gravel and (on the libertarian side) Ron Paul, are systematically excluded.

Those who follow politics should have figured out by now that "within the mainstream" has nothing to do with the general public and only means that a candidate is acceptable to the Business Roundtable, the Chamber of Commerce, and AIPAC.

At some point we have to accept that we have a very limited democracy. The oligarchs always make sure we only have a very limited range of major party nominees, usually differing only significantly on the social issues. However, since the Republican Party has lurched to the right into clearly fascist territory, and the Democrats, even including Hillary, have not lurched as far in following them, there will likely be a significant difference this time, even if it is Hillary for the Democrats, and especially if it is Rudy for the Republicans.

Of course we will live in a war-mongering corporate-run militaristic empire either way, but under a Republican it will certainly get significantly worse while under a Democrat, even Hillary, it might not.

I think there's a basic problem with this piece. Mr. Cohen touches on it, then moves on. The problem is that the underlying assumption is that the 'pundits' are independent people who are making an analysis of the candidates then expressing their views.

To me, I view the pundits as corporate spokespeople for the corporations that employ them (through ownership of the media companies that employ them). Thus, they support Hillary not because of their independent judgments of her campaign but because its in the interests of the corporations that employ them that Hillary get the nomination.

Mr. Cohen touches on this when he talks about the pundits holding views different from ordinary Americans, but he doesn't really follow through. This gives the piece a rather strange air. To me it starts with a false assumption, partially acknowledges this, then continues on with the false assumption.

Politics is so much about very peripheral images. Most voters and people responding to the polls don't watch all the debates. They get very quick images. That's what the 'support Hillary because she's a woman' bit works so well.

Personally, I don't like Obama. To me he's always seemed liked the creation of a media campaign. Like a group of consultants got together and said lets script and create the candidate that can win and the result was Obama. I find him almost impossible to listen to. To me he has the John Kerry quality of being able to talk for a long time, and sound good doing it. But when you try to think back and remember what he really said that was important, nothing is there. He might talk a lot about the problem, but he never clearly says the clear line that's a solution. You never get the clear point that says "I will do this!".

And I give Obama little credit for opposing the war. He was a State Senator from a district in Chicago. I lived in Atlanta at the time, and in urban areas and minority areas there was always a great deal of opposition to the war. So there was no political bravery involved in Obama opposing the war because he was just stating a position that was probably supported by 80% of his constituents. From that, I do not think that I can believe that he would have opposed it as a US Senator at the time. Obama is too slippery and too poll and consultant driven. So I can easily believe his position would have been very different as a US Senator vs being a State Senator. I don't get any sense that his opposition to the war is a deeply felt belief that would be there no matter what like you get from a Wellstone or a Kucinich.

I have to agree. The latest staged laugh attacks show who she's pandering to.

The Andy Dick video is really funny BTW, a bit dated but still funny.

Even though the Daily Show has been on this for the better part of a decade, it's seems a slow turning to wake the populace up to this crap.

I'm with everyone above on HRC, but what's with the dislike for Obama? He isn't perfect, but he was the only one other than Kucinich to see the Iraq War for what it was. His health care plan, as opposed to Edwards and Clinton, doesn't force insurance on the working poor. That tells me a lot.

Yes, he does his bit of saber rattling, but what do we expect? I loathe triangulation, but there are certain things a candidate has to say. As a leader, I think Obama would be better than we've had in almost a century. He isn't Eugene Debs, but he probably would've had an "accident" if he were.

Plus, the statement it would make to the world can't be underestimated. Despite his numerous flaws, all of my in-laws, friends, and casual acquaintances in Central America, Turkey and Europe love Bill Clinton. It is largely symbolic, but that means something. If we elected Obama, our image in the world would be renewed, maybe better than ever.

Is it that he enjoys popular support? Seems to me he gets lumped in with Hillary Clinton by virtue of his poll numbers. Issue for issue, Edwards is probably the best of the Big Three. Even so, how could the left expect better than Obama? I'm pretty far left (a Nader voter) but I'd be thrilled to have Barack in office. I'd suggest everyone study him further before putting him in the DLC category, because he is definitely not that.

What I would like to find out is where Hillary's poll numbers are coming from that show her so far ahead of both Obama and Edwards.

Methinks that mabe Republicans are declaring themselves as Democrats on the phone and giving her name as their choice.

Lobo Gris

How many more years of the Bush-Clinton crime spree must we suffer before the US voter wakes up?

This graphic sums up Hillary very nicely.

Help us, Obi-Wan Kucinich!!

The amazing thing is that everyone who thought about it for 2 seconds knew this was going to happen. She's a corporate-backed, center-right political low-life who is more concerned with power/money politics than helping the working class. I thought coporate money was the primary problem with our representation, yet so many (excuse me) imbecile Democrats are backing her. DLC, Republican-lite is really what we need right now. We all lose... AGAIN. This is why party politics in a big money political system will never work.

If the Democrats were smart(a fantasy) they would highlight the fact that Mrs Guiliani used to torture dogs to demonstrate a surgical bandage. Hopefully the red necks love their dogs more than they hate Hilarity.

Once she gets the nomination she is going to be viciously attacked.

To or at some point, each individual American is personally/independently guilty of being susceptible to the media propaganda. You've heard right-wing ghouls call Iraqis "too dumb for democracy," and though that is certainly not the case over there, I sometimes wonder if it is over here in our modern, coccooned, voluntarily ignorant, sedated, and overworked America.

enough of clinton. be it good or bad publicity, it is still publicity.! it is keeping her name out front and being talked about. let's hear more about the other possible candidates

Where does she get support - or Obama for that matter?

We keep hearing about it, but I'm beginning to think nobody's asked the opinions of the grassroots. I know many Democrats in my area and NOT ONE of them would vote for EITHER Hilary or Obama for Democrat candidate and definitely not to be president.

I guess the pundits think that because rich money is being donated, the hoi-polloi will have no choice but go along.

I really don't think that will happen.

It is only flawless because they have ordained it so. Instead of stupid we get how smart she is and people jump on the bandwagon of the manufactured inevitability and mindlessly echo all the talking points.
If she wasn't their willing paid advocate they would be ripping her apart at the seams. She knows what is good for her. She knows where to bow and scrape. Good for her. Good for them. Not for us.

Hillary Clinton was on the board of Wal-Mart and during their negotiations with the Labor Unions, remained unsupportive of the Unions whereby allowing Wal-Mart deunionized. How can any union organization support Hillary wherein fact her interests lie with the corporations, health insurance companies, and receives contributions from such.

Please note the following, between the top 3 candidates Hillary is the only one who loses to Giuliani, yet she is getting record contributions while Republicans are receiving low donations. (50% of Democrats, I suspect these Republicans are donating to Hillary and Obama.) She is receiving large corporate contributions. They are contributing to Hilary so that she would be the Dem's candidate thereby losing to Giuliani (look at the percentage chart below) who will then be our next president.
In a straw poll effort amongst thousands a couple of weeks ago, Edwards wins Texas by a large margin.

There are games being played, and Republicans are pushing Clinton to be the frontrunner.

Please note recent poll results in Missouri:

Source: SurveyUSA / KCTV-TV
Methodology: Telephone interviews with at least 499 registered Missouri voters, conducted from Sept. 14 to Sept. 16, 2007. Margin of error is 4.4 per cent.

A few questions now about the next election. If there were an election for president of the United States today, and the only two names on the ballot were (the following) who would you vote for?

Rudy Giuliani (R) 42% - 47% John Edwards (D)
Fred Thompson (R) 40% - 50% John Edwards (D)
Mitt Romney (R) 32% - 56% John Edwards (D)

Rudy Giuliani (R) 44% - 46% Barack Obama (D)
Fred Thompson (R) 45% - 48% Barack Obama (D)
Mitt Romney (R) 40% - 51% Barack Obama (D)

Rudy Giuliani (R) 48% - 45% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)
Fred Thompson (R) 45% - 48% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)
Mitt Romney (R) 40% - 51% Hillary Rodham Clinton (D)

This is both prophetic and pathetic as we witness the coronation of this neocon democrat. The poor naive women who have rallied around her in great numbers because of her social programs or just because she is a woman thereby insuring her victory in the democratic primaries will be shocked when they wake up and see us bombing Iran and reinforcing our permanent bases in Iraq the crown jewel in our Christian Zionist empire.

Dear Vince Lawrence. I'm not sure I want to weigh in on yet another HRC pile-on at Common Dreams, but I really do want to challenge your comment and mention that not only will the revolution be televised ... it was, when it happened. In 2000 and 2004, with a phenomenally well-funded propaganda machine, a cooked (nah make that crooked) electoral system, massive and outright voter's fraud and a judicial branch tucked firmly its oh-so-deep pockets, the neo-conservative radical right ... took over. And earth to all of you: we lost.

In truth, I find all this talk of worker's uprisings and promises that things will get more progressive when the American people "wake up" more than a little troubling. It's like no one realizes that the American working class has been co-opted by the right through lies and slander into self-identifying as "conservatives" themselves, that the massive numbers of independent and swing voters have been deliberately terrified by fabricated threats of terror and socialism, and that the entire population has been brainwashed into believing that the American ship of state is sinking faster than the Titanic and there's only enough room in the life boats for the privleged few and they are consequently driving themselves insane in an effort to become one of them. By and large, Bush and his 7 years of torture (not at Guantonamo Bay but on the American psyche) has forced most people with growing families, unstable jobs and shaky mortgages into a corner of the fear and self-recrimination and the only thing they know for sure is that they can't (again by design) turn to government for help. And here we are arguing over who the best candidate is to lead it. It may infuriate you but my vote goes to "Anyone but them!" And by "them" I mean the out front, proud and self admitted right wing.

The "Left" seems to be longing for some kind of "Rapture" that will over-take everyone somehow and sometime in the next 12 months and we will suddenly embrace Kucinich or Nader or whoever we believe was "right all along" or worse, the one who "shares our values."

We'll need more than three parties to find candidates who share values with all of America. What we need are politicians who can help us define shared values involving compromise and the common purpose in order to reflect the will of the many and create "the greatest good for the greatest number." No room for ideologues here.

Like it or not, America is still in trauma over 9/11 and thus far no politician in power has argued for the strength and courage to face it down. That's the only way we will survive: by moving past it. Prolonging it and promoting fear is the only way they will.

So you all hate Hillary (OK I will weigh in) but I see little indication that you LOVE anyone. There's as much acrimony for Obama and Edwards here as there is support. Many of you seem befuddled by this as you are by the popularity of Clinton. I only want to say there will be an election and you'll have to vote. (No you will HAVE TO VOTE) If you stay home and lick your bruised ego you'll be voting for Rudolph G. If you vote in conscience or in protest for someone you know won't win, you'll be turning your back on the Americans without health care, the troops on extended tours, the schools without direction, the environment without protection.

The problem is clear – it's the neo-con revolutionaries. The solution is simple – get them out! However we can and with whomever we can. Anything you do that could continue their reign under Guliani or Romney is obscenely immoral. You have to vote with your conscience not your pride and that might mean Obama or Edwards or even Hillary. But the game isn't over then. It's just beginning. Create a true and lasting democratic majority. Influence future Supreme and Federal court appointments. Pull the ship of state back toward the left. It won't happen overnight. But it will begin. And put pressure on the Democrats everyday they are in office and if they don't behave re-elect other democrats. The Democratic Party has changed. You all talk about it. What makes you think it can't be changed again?

And please let go of this all powerful media crap. Sure they are strong, but you are in the middle of a communications revolution that undercuts their power and control everyday compromising their so-called monolithic stature. Besides, the media is a whore and a cheap whore at that. It makes no revenues by giving people what they don't want. We control the media through the market place. I think the whole corporate media thing is an excuse.

Besides what are you saying we should do? Lay down? Protest now and build a grass roots organization on the left that will take it all back in what … 10 years? Uh I don't think a warning planet will wait for us, nor an over heating Middle East, nor a unhealthy and unprotected populace.

One of the strongest perceptions among average Americans since the rise of Reagan and the neo-con right has been the false contention that liberal-progressive Democrats consitue an elite. If we turn our back on them once again and indulge our principles over practicality, if we bicker among ourselves once more and fail to create a momentum to win the hearts and minds of not of the base but of the majority … well the charge might just be justified.

My only defense of Clinton is that she's not talking to the base (that seems to be what upsets you all.) She's competing in the national election NOW and I think it's pretty smart. She's campaigning against the Republicans not bickering with Democrats. She's trying to win among the people who don't necessarily think the way we do, who mistrust liberals, who don't see how we have their best interests at heart, and who will by the way determine the outcome of the election. Is that what you mean by wanting to win? OK I want our side to win.

Am I saying I trust HRC to do the right thing when elected? Well, I guess I'm saying I have to. The way I would have to trust any politician who has managed to get the popular vote and hope that the American democratic system works well enough to keep them honest and accountable. Miserable as the past 7 years have been, they are proof it does work. The Republicans are in retreat. Their revolution is in the toilet. Let's keep them there.

It's easy to be "enraptured" by her if all you do is to watch the campaign. If you actually LISTEN to what she is saying, it's a disaster. She has come out and told the blatant lie that if someone gives her massive amounts of money, she won't listen to them. What part of human nature is THAT? How much leadership does that show?

She has also come out and said that she wants as much lobbyist money as she can get. How much leadership does THAT take? Sounds more to me like she is pandering for more money from BIG MONEY. And she will no doubt get it. They have been pounding her candidacy down our throats since before Clinton left office. I for one have always been bemused by that. Other than being the wife of a president, what are her REAL qualifications? They don't mention any of that, just how "everyone" seems to want her. I DON'T, and I never have.

Seriously, I think that what we need is NO face time on video during the campaigns. That way it's the IDEAS that can come through, not what someone looks like. We do such a bad job of judging character in this country, we think that if someone LOOKS good, they MUST be good. Kucinich will never get a fair shot because he's not as photogenic as Edwards or Obama. But listen to his ideas and then tell me he's not right. He is the only one who seems to get the fact that we are all suffering out here thanks to the neocon policies of the last 27 years.

That and a complete removal of private money from elections. NONE allowed at all. Until we get rid of the graft and corruption that has become American politics, we are doomed to have people like Hillary who DO NOT represent what the majority of us actually want, or can even live with. Just more of the same.

NO dynasty politics at all. That means NO MORE Bushes and NO MORE Clintons. Time for someone ELSE to take us away from the policies of the neocons. Hillary won't be doing that, she is one of them. Follow the money.