Ready for This?

Josh Schrei is:

I want the Republican Party to look itself in the mirror and ask itself: ‘Really?’ Did we really just go there? Did we really just bank everything on ‘Joe Six Pack’ and ‘Divide and Conquer’ and the values of the Old South?

I want every racist in this country to look at the TV tonight and swallow the cold, hard, fact that the world has moved on without them.

I want the schoolkids in Tallahassee Florida — all grown up now — who threw eggs at my mother for having a black friend to see just how on the wrong side of history they were.

I want the woman who thinks that the world was created 4,000 years ago and that certain books should be burned as far away from the Whitehouse as humanly possible. And Wasilla is just about far enough for me.

I want every American who has ever been cynical — as I have — to realize, only if for a moment, what a truly amazing place this is. That the son of a working class white woman from Kansas and a Kenyan immigrant can beat ALL of the odds and become President of the United States.

I want the governments of the world — especially the ones who don’t even let their citizens vote — to take note.

This is going to be so f’ing huge, it’s hard to grasp.

Go vote for Obama.

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The Corporate Vote

Michael Kieschnick, President of CREDO, the mobile phone, long distance, and credit card company with very progressive values, makes a plea for corporate engagement in civic engagement when it comes to elections in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. Here’s an excerpt:

Many companies involve themselves in elections to gain a competitive advantage. A rare few speak out on issues of fundamental importance to their employees and customers, such as Patagonia on the environment or Apple on same-sex marriage. But there is much more that can be done easily, effectively and efficiently by the business community, to help prevent a bumpy election.

First, every company could send an e-mail to every one of its customers to encourage them to vote. A reminder to vote can be easily put into every online sales transaction confirmation and in-person receipt. Remind all employees that your company supports his or her right to vote and assure them this means that they can take time off from work to do so. Give everyone who works at your company a copy of a sample ballot or nonpartisan voter guide. And help answer the most common question – where do I vote? – by widely distributing the nonpartisan, online resource, www.govote.org.

Make sure you signal your company’s commitment to its civic duty to ensure a fair election in every part of your organizational chart. Encourage your managers to instruct your customer service staff and receptionists to close every conversation with a friendly reminder to vote. Offer to lend company vehicles – even the CEO’s limo, if you have one – to local organizations that offer rides to polling places for those without transportation. And urge your company’s lawyers to volunteer with the nonpartisan Election Protection Coalition, a group of attorneys and volunteers ready to answer questions to help voters having difficulty voting at the polls.

Good corporate citizens’ civic duty doesn’t end with election day. Ask your employees if they experienced any trouble when they tried to vote and, if so, find out the nature of their difficulties. As soon as you learn of any irregularities, speak out as a business leader against any form of voter suppression.

Kieschnick goes on to make a convincing case for businesses to be good citizens when it comes to voting. His company, CREDO, is a perfect example of what can be done when a business goes whole-hog into being a good corporate citizen.

Interestingly, after reading Kieschnick’s piece, I went to the New York Times website was confronted by a giant run of ads by Starbucks. The company is offering a free cup of coffee to anyone who comes in and says they voted on November 4th. The ads all link to this YouTube video, where the pitch is made in 60 seconds:

Now this might be the sort of thing that Kieschnick describes in the first sentence of the passage I quoted above, though on a smaller scale than he probably meant it. Starbucks’ benefit of giving people free cups of coffee is that it gets people tasting their product and in the habit of getting coffee from their stores. But I actually think this is a more genuine election move. The ad is powerful and straightforward. The ad buy looks huge. And rather than bringing people who click through the ad to a Starbucks.com splash page that captures email addresses, the ad links straight to YouTube. This is either a really powerful commitment to not put the filter of business between consumers and their message, or it’s that Starbucks just doesn’t get some of the basics of online advertising. I like to think it’s the former that’s true.

Ben and Jerry’s is also giving away free ice cream on election day.

Free things are great and maybe some people will decide that the incentive of getting a free cup of coffee and a free ice cream cone is enough to wait in line and vote in this election. But I’d hope that the executives at Starbucks and Ben & Jerry’s take a look at Kieschnick’s op-ed and follow his path for greater corporate engagement in growing civic engagement in this country. Businesses have the potential to help redefine how Americans experience election day for the better. I, for one, get tired of hearing every two years stories of lines extending blocks from polling places and voters having to leave without voting so they can get to work on time. A shift in business leaders’ attitudes towards election day and how we relate to voting would have great impact on what the government does to encourage easier and wider-spread voting in the future.

Disclosure: I used to consult for CREDO Action on their anti-warrantless wiretapping campaign. 

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Stevens: “I haven’t been convicted of anything”

Ted Stevens engages in what must be a late-in-the-game effort to break Begich voters’ jaws by causing them to hit the floor with previously unseen speeds that they remain hospitalized on election day:

“I’ve not been convicted yet,” Stevens said Thursday in a meeting with the editorial board of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. “There’s not a black mark by my name yet, until the appeal is over and I am finally convicted, if that happens. If that happens, of course I’ll do what’s right for Alaska and for the Senate. … I don’t anticipate it happening, and until it happens I do not have a black mark.”

Stevens reiterated that position during a televised debate late Thursday night, declaring early in the give-and-take with Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich, “I have not been convicted of anything.”

First, this is just factually and legally a lie. A big lie. Stevens is a convicted felon, seven times over. That’s what the whole trial in DC was about. As old as he is, I can’t imagine Stevens has forgotten the judge, the jury of his peers, the FBI tapes where he says to VECO CEO Bill Allen, “that the worst that could happen to the two was if anyone found what the company had done for him was that they’d have to spend a lot of money on lawyers – and perhaps serve a little jail time.”

Second, if we were to grant Ted Stevens his big lie, we would also be forced to concede that any number of murderers sitting on death row while appealing their convictions were, in fact, not convicted of anything. Except, you know, the sentence to death I suppose. I’m sure this is bully news for lots of those convicted felons on death row, though I’m not sure what it means from a practical standpoint.

Ted Stevens has been convicted of seven federal felony charges of corruption. The conviction by a jury of his peers was a statement of his breaking the trust with Alaskan citizens. That he has the audacity to flat out lie to Alaskan voters is simply appalling and offensive to the notions of both the rule of law and honest government. I never thought I’d have to go so far as to call out a convicted felon, but shame on Theodore Stevens. Stop lying. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to Jail.

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Concern Trolling Perfection

A few days ago my friend Fred Gooltz wrote about the great steps media outlets are going to appear balanced and in so doing fail miserably to report fact in politics.

Across town at the Old Gray Lady, the funniest headlines are the ones that try the hardest to not be criticized as liberal. The New York Times is apparently scared of being called liberal. How else to explain this headline:

Democrats See Risk and Reward if Party Sweeps

Holy. Slippery. Fuck. What!?

The point of a political parties is to win elections. This year, Democrats are going to win the big elections. To report such is not liberal. It is fact.

To feign an argument that a win for the Democrats is somehow a bad thing is so stupid that when the Philadelphia Phillies win the World Series on wednesday, and when there isn’t a pearl -clutching headline in the Times to the effect that:

Phillies Win, Worry Sinks In

or

Phillies Win, Will Phillies Lose?

or

Phillies Win, Lose

There’s a lot of this sort of nonsense going around and we’ll only see more of it into the election and in the immediate aftermath.

Chris Bowers of Open Left identified even more of this media concern trolling, both in terms of the Times’ article Fred posted about and bold pronouncements of risk for Obama purchasing 30 minutes of national tv time.

Look, the raison d’etre electorally focused political party is to win as many elections as possible. To argue that winning more seats is somehow a negative for any political party is exactly as stupid as arguing that it is bad for a sports team to win a championship. To even attempt an argument that winning an election is bad for a party is to enter the final level of concern troll mastery, where you begin to take on a light glow. …

Arguing that tonight’s commercial could hurt Obama is akin to arguing that campaigning at all could hurt Obama. It doesn’t quite give you the concern troll mastery glow, but it does mean you have almost achieved that level.

What has to be recognized in this is that this sort of coverage doesn’t stop after the election. Every positive action Obama and the Democratic majority take will be met in the press by some level of concern trolling about the potential risks associated with it. The source of these concern troll narratives will be the Republican Party, conservative business lobbies, and Blue Dog Democrats who will seek to undermine the progressive parts of Obama’s agenda.

It’s going to be a rough ride, folks, and we need to prepare for previously unimagined levels of stupidity from the punditocracy.

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The Palin-Giuliani Simulacrum

Maybe it’s not a worthwhile comparison, but for a few months after 9/11 Rudy Giuliani was a national celebrity. Those few months gave birth to a presidential campaign.

Sarah Palin was a national celebrity for a few weeks following being picked as McCain’s running mate (and has since been defined by series of train wrecks outside the Republican base). Those few weeks when she was a star, though, may bring about a presidential run.

Does anyone think that Palin could fair better than Giuliani? Her natural base is much wider than his would be, but his celebrity didn’t arise from a partisan moment. Moreover, Giuliani’s quasi-fascistic tenure as Mayor of New York City never received the same level of scrutiny concurrent with his celebration as America’s Mayor.

My guess? Palin will start off a less viable presidential candidate than Rudy Giuliani did, but would have more staying power. She’d be in competition with Mike Huckabee for support of the religious right, but there are a lot of men who will continue to support her because she winks at them.

I envision a Palin presidential campaign to be something like the offspring of  the Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, and Bill Richardson presidential campaigns. Like Rudy, it would be driven by an overwhelming sense of entitlement based on short-term celebrity, yet met with the odd reality that the more people get to know the candidate, the less they like her. Like Thompson, it will carry itself by on high theater, but be as substantive as wet cardboard. And like Bill Richardson, it will be so filled with gaffes and misstatements that even her opponents will hang their head in sorrow for the poor gal.

Palin 2012? You betcha!

The Obama Campaign in One Video

I’m fighting back tears watching this video of an Obama campaign named Charles from Boulder, Colorado.

This video is a distillation of the entire Obama message — change, hope, bringing people together. But that’s not what makes it powerful. What makes it powerful is that unlike a campaign ad or debate soundbite, this is true, demonstrably true. Attaturk is right:

I’ve yet to see a McCain ad that emits on one-hundredth of the emotional pull of this simple video, and contrary to what the McCain Campaign and rightwing pundits claim, McCain’s emotional ads are always about why he deserves to be President, never why we will have a better country when he is President.

McCain’s ads can’t do this, cannot be this emotionally powerful because they just wouldn’t be true.

Via Attaturk and Digby.

Republicans Against Stevens

Credit where credit is due – national Republicans have been pulling no punches when it comes to their reaction to Ted Stevens’ conviction on seven felony counts of corruption.

Senator John McCain:

“It is clear that Senator Stevens has broken his trust with the people and that he should now step down. I hope that my colleagues in the Senate will be spurred by these events to redouble their efforts to end this kind of corruption once and for all.”

Sarah Palin:

“As Governor of the State of Alaska, I will carefully now monitor the situation and I’ll take any appropriate action as needed. In the meantime, I ask the people of Alaska to join me in respecting the workings of our judicial system and I’m confident that Senator Stevens from this point on will do the right thing for the people of Alaska,” she said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell:

“This is a sad but serious day. Sen. Stevens was found guilty by a jury of his peers, and now must face the consequences of those actions. As a result of his conviction, Sen. Stevens will be held accountable so the public trust can be restored.”

NRSC Chair John Ensign:

National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman John Ensign (Nev.) offered a strong condemnation of Stevens and seemed to hint that this conviction would lead to his defeat.

“This is a sad day for the United States Senate,” said Ensign. “Ted Stevens served his constituents for over 40 years and I am disappointed to see his career end in disgrace.”

Of course, these people have to distance themselves from their friend and colleague as he is lead off to jail. Ted Stevens is a losing commodity nationally. He is an anchor to be hung around the necks of McCain, Palin, McConnell, and Ensign. That they turn around at try to bury his connections to them is a political necessity. I don’t know how well it will work for them, but at least they’re generally saying the right things.

What hasn’t been done yet is honest talk by McCain and Palin about what comes next:

  1. Will Sarah Palin vote for Ted Stevens for Senate?
  2. Will McCain pledge to not pardon Ted Stevens?
  3. Will McCain and Palin specifically ask President Bush to not pardon Ted Stevens?
  4. Will Palin begin immediate efforts to encourage the Anchorage International Airport to be renamed, in consultation with the Municipality of Anchorage?

Hopefully some intrepid reporters will be asking the Republican ticket these questions.

Update:

Palin pushes more chips into the pot, calling on Stevens to resign even if he’s reelected:

“I had hoped Senator Stevens would take the opportunity to do the statesman-like thing and erase the cloud that is covering his Senate seat,” she said in a statement. “Alaskans are grateful for his decades of public service, but the time has come for him to step aside. Even if elected on Tuesday, Senator Stevens should step aside to allow a special election to give Alaskans a real choice of who will serve them in Congress.”

No word yet if Palin will vote for Stevens before he resigns.