After Pennsylvania: What Really Matters?

After Pennsylvania: What Really Matters?
by John Delloro

Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania and now all the pundits ponder the meaning of 10 points—the new numerology for the new millennium. Some try to read the minds of the “bitter” white working class. Some conclude that there is a winning magic in the dark arts of negative campaigning. Some dismiss Clinton’s victory as an illusion and others praise her miraculous comeback onto the stage. Frankly, after spending last week away from the elections and marching 28 miles with thousands of different workers in Los Angeles, I find this whole show to be really ridiculous. It is too easy to be caught up in this superbowl of elections and its recent devolution to “kitchen-throwing” game play and forget what this race is really about. For some of us, this election is not about whose more electable but something deeper.

Last week, janitors, hospital employees, teachers, homecare workers, iron workers, machinists, dock workers, actors and actresses, probationary officers, security guards and many others trekked by foot over 28 miles through Los Angeles over 3-days from “Hollywood to the Docks” to fight for good jobs. Over 350,000 workers in Los Angeles have union contracts expiring this year. The march ended with thousands of workers rallying around the ports. I walked with them under the sun across the expanse of the Los Angeles region. Along the way, different people shared their stories with each other. Joe, an Asian American actor, commiserated with David, a Latino iron worker over the tenuous nature of their jobs. Joe and his pregnant wife had to turn to Medicare for healthcare benefits despite the fact that he possesses a Masters degree and has appeared in a number of plays and films. The web world of downloadable films has left him and many actors and film crews behind with no right to residuals. David, an ironworker, found himself without a job as the economy entered recession with few opportunities for those who build with their hands. They walked in step with Theodore, a Korean probationary officer, who wants to continue helping the next generation and remembers a young man, a former juvenile on probation, who approached him: “ He came up to me..to thank me for what I did for him. I was happy to see him on a path to success.” They and many other workers took turns pushing my 7-year old daughter Mina in a stroller who begged to join the march because she wanted to be around a large group of people who deeply cared for her. Maria Elena Durazo, head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor knelt down next to her and told her that we all really love her.

We all knew that the march would not automatically lead to better working conditions but we all appreciated the new community nurtured across age, race, gender, and jobs. We all understood the power of creating new community and regular people taking control of their lives. This was the first time in LA history that all these different workers and unions joined together for something that was not strike support or election mobilization. We knew we would be there for each other and the future. We knew we were making history by crossing the lines that have long divided us.

Like the emerging camaraderie of the historic 28-mile march in Los Angeles, I saw a similar synergy in the coalescing of new voters around the Obama campaign. For some of us, this presidential primary is not about who can beat McCain by any means necessary but how we can rebuild our sense of community as a nation again.

By the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, it cannot be doubted that Hillary Clinton positioned herself as the candidate who knows how to work the status quo but not change it. She cast herself as “Republican-Lite” by arguing that only big states count, justifying negative and divisive attacks as a necessary evil to vet the best candidate to take on McCain and exploiting the fears of people. In a sense, she has become a faint shadow of McCain. She has made herself to be, to quote community leader Eric Mann’s words, the “anti-hope candidate.” To applaud her victory in Pennsylvania, we not only overlook Obama’s success at shrinking her 20-point lead in a state we expected Clinton to win but we are saying that we accept “the way things are” and the same way we have been doing politics for the last several decades—the same approach that has alienated young people, new voters and the wider electorate who have usually sat out of the elections. The last time we had large numbers of young people, African Americans and independents coming out in large numbers our country witnessed an emerging Civil Rights Movement and dramatic changes in our national consciousness.

This primary election is not just about Clinton versus Obama but how do we want to do politics. Like the actor, ironworker, probationary officer and many other workers who walked through Los Angeles, we want to create the community that will support my daughter and future generations. We need someone who is willing to help us challenge ourselves to walk one step further and risk saying “ we will not accept the way we have always done things.”

The Campaign Marches: On Why Obama Can't Finish Off Clinton Despite Money, Organizers, Delegates

sent to me by ethan young

The Campaign Marches: On Why Obama Can't Finish Off Clinton Despite Money, Organizers, DelegatesBy Holly Yeager 04/23/2008 The Washington Independent http://www.washingtonindependent.com/view/the-campaign-marches

As the results of the Pennsylvania primary sunk in Wednesday, the question that had been forming for weeks became a chorus: Why can't Sen. Barack Obama close the deal? In the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama (D-Ill.) has enjoyed a commanding lead in both the delegate count and the popular vote, a large fund-raising edge, an army of wired and eager volunteers, the momentum brought by a string of victories -- and an opponent with high negative ratings. But Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's 9-point victory on Tuesday was the boost her campaign needed. It quickly brought an infusion of much-needed millions into her campaign war-chest and fueled the argument she has been making to party leaders: she is the best candidate to counter Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in November. The Obama campaign appeared to make several quick adjustments. Speaking in Indiana -- which, along with North Carolina, will hold its primary on May 6 – Obama sharpened his focus on McCain. At the same time, his campaign began honing its argument to superdelegates – the party leaders likely to decide the nomination – that, by bringing in new young and independent voters, and broadening the electoral map playing field, Obama stands the best chance of defeating McCain in November, its own version of the electability pitch Clinton has been making for weeks. But even as it talks about the general election, the Obama campaign cannot avoid the fact that it is still sparring with Clinton. That Obama has not yet landed a knock-out punch may be due in large measure to the very essence of his candidacy. From the start, the first-term senator has promised a new kind of politics, willing to work with adversaries to get things done. But the Pennsylvania race took a sharply negative turn, with tough sparring from both camps. "Pretty vile stuff," is how Gov. Ed Rendell, Clinton's top surrogate in the state, put it Wednesday in a conference call with reporters. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., and a longtime observer of politics in the state, said that the move to negative politics poses its own problems for Obama. "He now appears like a mortal," Madonna said. "He is a regular candidate now. He's throwing mud. He's no longer a unifier. He no longer is the guy who can pull everyone together." That dilemma – how to stay true to his promise of a different kind of politics, while being tough enough to put an end to Clinton's candidacy – is a serious one. Negotiating how for to go, without going too far, will be a challenge for the campaign. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the Obama campaign would turn even more negative in the coming weeks, with aides "likely to turn to the controversies of Bill Clinton’s White House years -- Hillary Clinton's trading cattle futures, Whitewater and possibly impeachment." David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, denied such a plan. "We're not going to do that," Plouffe told reporters on a conference call. "We have not talked about those issues in the campaign and we won't." Ron Fournier, a long-time political writer for The Associated Press, listed "mettle" as one of the reasons Obama has been unable to wrap up the nomination. While he still hasn't convinced some Democrats that he is tough enough, "Clinton's backers love the fact that she fought Republicans — not to mention the 'right-wing conspiracy' — during her husband's presidency," Fournier wrote. Obama is also dogged by charges of inexperience, discomfort among some white voters with his race, and what Fournier called "friends in trouble," including Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., fund-raiser Tony Rezko and William Ayers, the 1960s radical. Another weak spot for Obama is women voters. White women comprised 47 percent of primary voters in Pennsylvania, according to exit polls, and they favored Clinton by an astonishing margin, 66 percent to 34 percent. Tuesday's results showed Obama continuing to do well among blacks, young voters and the wealthy. But exit polls showed Clinton remained strong among the white, blue-collar voters, who are the core of the Democratic electorate, beating him 69 percent to 30 percent in that demographic. Joe Scarborough, the MSNBC host and former Republican congressman from Florida, put it simply: "Unless he can connect with blue-collar Democrats, he can't put Hillary Clinton away." Simon Rosenberg, a veteran of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign who is president of NDN, a progressive think tank, said Obama must sharpen his economic message if he is to appeal to these voters. "His economic argument is still too political, too focused on attacking Sen. Clinton over her NAFTA position than on offering a compelling argument on how he intends to raise the standard of living of all Americans," Rosenberg wrote this week. "The inability of the Obama campaign to organize themselves around the struggle of the middle class has been, and continues to be, one of the great strategic weaknesses of this year's remarkable campaign." After watching the race unfold in Pennsylvania, Madonna said that when it comes to talking about economic issues – which 55 percent of Tuesday’s primary voters said was their top concern – Clinton "has the advantage of being more specific." "Obama goes into these generalities that people think is uplifting," Madonna said. "But she deals in specifics." Despite that, Obama had started to make some headway in his economic pitch. "I really thought he was connecting," Madonna said. But any progress was diverted by two weeks of attention on comments Obama made at a San Francisco fund-raiser, that small-town Americans become bitter and cling to guns and religion when faced with tough economic times. As he presses on, Obama should stay true to his original pledge to change politics, and talk more specifically about policy, Madonna said. "I'd go back to the Obama the up-lifter, Obama the unifier," he said. "And I'd start talking about this program and that program, and how we're going to fix that problem." In fact, the best way to defeat Clinton may be to look past her. "I'd go after McCain as representing a third Bush term," Madonna said, "and I'd leave Hillary alone."

A Measure of Racism: 15 Percent

sent to me by ethan young

A measure of racism: 15 percent?
By: Roger Simon
April 22, 2008 07:45 AM EST Politico

I was talking the other day to a prominent Republican who asked me what I thought John McCain’s strongest issues would be in the general election.

Lower taxes and the argument he will be better able to protect America from its enemies, I said.

Republicans have a pretty good track record with those two.

The Republican shook his head. “You’re missing the most important one,” he said. “Race. McCain runs against Barack Obama and the race vote is worth maybe 15 percent to McCain.”

The man I was talking to is not a racist; he was just stating what he believes to be a fact: There is a percentage of the American electorate who will simply not vote for a black person no matter what his qualities or qualifications.

How big is that percentage? An AP-Yahoo poll conducted April 2-14 found that “about 8 percent of whites would be uncomfortable voting for a black for president.”

I don’t know if 8 percent sounds high or low to you, but I was amazed that 8 percent of respondents were willing to admit this to a pollster. And I figure that the true figure is much higher.

The same poll, by the way, found that 15 percent of voters think Obama is a Muslim. He is, in fact, a Christian. But thinking a person is a Muslim probably does not encourage you to vote for him in America today.

And consider this little nugget from Monday’s Washington Post, in a story by Kevin Merida and Jose Antonio Vargas datelined Scranton, Pa.:

See Also
Five things to watch in Pennsylvania
Obama prepares to spin loss as victory
ISG moves from consensus to conflict
“Barack Obama’s campaign opened a downtown office here on March 15, just in time for the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. It was not a glorious day for Team Obama. Some of the green signs the campaign had trucked in by the thousands were burned during the parade, and campaign volunteers — white volunteers — were greeted with racial slurs.”

Signs burned? Racial slurs shouted out loud? In this day and age? Maybe that 15 percent estimate is low.

I am not suggesting for a second that McCain would exploit race in a campaign against Obama. He would not. But the real question is whether the racial issue has to be “exploited” at all. It is pretty powerful just sitting there on its own.

Ronald Reagan began his presidential campaign in 1980 by giving a speech at a county fair in Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers — James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman — had been murdered in 1964.

Reagan made no mention of the murders or civil rights in that speech but did say, “I believe in states’ rights.” “States’ rights” was common code in those days for letting states discriminate against black people.


A few months ago, David Brooks, a conservative columnist for The New York Times, defended Reagan, claiming it is a “distortion” to say Reagan opened his campaign “with an appeal to racism.”

But Brooks also wrote: “Reagan could have done something wonderful if he’d mentioned civil rights at the fair. He didn’t. And it’s obviously true that race played a role in the GOP’s ascent.”

In 2005, then-Republican Party chairman Ken Mehlman gave a speech to a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People convention in Milwaukee denouncing the use of race as a wedge issue.
“Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,” Mehlman said. “I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”

On Monday, McCain went to Selma, Ala., where on March 7, 1965, more than 500 civil rights marchers were beaten and clubbed by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge as the rest of America watched on television.

“They watched and were ashamed of their country,” McCain said. “And they knew that the people who had tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge weren’t a mob; they weren’t a threat; they weren’t revolutionaries. They were people who believed in America — in the promise of America. And they believed in a better America. They were patriots — the best kind of patriots.”

The Associated Press noted that McCain drew a crowd Monday of about 100 people that “was mostly white, although, as the campaign noted, Selma’s population is 70 percent black.”

“I am aware the African-American vote has been very small in favor of the Republican Party; I am aware of the challenges, and I am aware of the fact that there will be many people who will not vote for me,” McCain said. “But I’m going to be the president of all the people.”

Which was an intriguing point: Sure, there are voters who will not vote for Obama under any circumstances, but McCain was saying there are also voters who will not vote for him under any circumstances.

But which group, if either one, will hold the balance of power in November?

© 2007 Capitol News Company, LLC

Hayden: Why Hillary Makes My Wife Scream

Why Hillary Makes My Wife Scream

by TOM HAYDEN

[posted online on April 22, 2008] The Nation

My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior, since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack Obama's transformational appeal.

For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From First Lady to Lady Macbeth.

It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amidst the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle. I even had framed a flattering autographed message from Hillary. But as the campaign has gone on and on, her signed portrait still leans against the wall in my study. I don't know where she belongs anymore.

At least Hillary was a known quantity in my life. I knew of the danger of her becoming more and more hawkish as she tried to break the ultimate glass ceiling. I also knew that she could be forced to change course if public opinion was fiercely opposed to the war. And I knew she was familiar with radical social causes from her own life experience in the Sixties. So my progressive task seemed clear: help build an anti-war force powerful enough to make it politically necessary to end the war. Been there, done that. And in the process, finally put a woman in the White House. A soothing bonus.

But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.

Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person, who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville, whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.

To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working-class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are.

To take just one example, the imagined association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers will suffice. Hillary is blind to her own roots in the Sixties. In one college speech she spoke of ecstatic transcendence; in another, she said, "our social indictment has broadened. Where once we exposed the quality of life in the world of the South and the ghettos, now we condemn the quality of work in factories and corporations. Where once we assaulted the exploitation of man, now we decry the destruction of nature as well. How much long can we let corporations run us?"

She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale law school meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.

Most significantly in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Truehaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists". Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. (All these citations can be found in Carl Bernstein's sympathetic 2007 Clinton biography, A Woman in Charge.)

All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the Sixties of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?

It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American Right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.

It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with FOX News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic superdelegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House, whether or not she is the nominee.

Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: if Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.

Unions Vote to Support ILWU May 1 Strike to Protest the War

Vermont AFL-CIO and California Federation of Teachers Vote to Support ILWU's May 1 Strike to Protest the War

California Federation of Teachers 2008 Convention, April 11-13, 2008

(http://www.cft.org/home_news/conv08adoptedres.pdf, page 52)

Late R E SO L U T IO N 32

May 1st Resolution

Submitted by Yvette Felarca, Berkeley Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 1078 Committee Socio-Political



Be it resolved that the CFT will publicly support state-wide and local actions on May 1st against the war and in support of immigrant rights, including the ILWU’s port-wide, West Coast shutdown, marches, boycotts, and other mobilizations of labor, community, and student organizations.
16 April 2008



Vermont AFL-CIO calls on workers to support West Coast strike against war



by Vermont AFL-CIO



The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their “unequivocal” support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq.



Montpelier, VT –The Executive Board of the Vermont AFL-CIO, representing thousands of workers in countless sectors across Vermont, have unanimously passed an historic resolution expressing their “unequivocal” support for the first US labor strike against the war in Iraq. The strike, being organized by the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), will seek to shutdown all west coast ports for a period of 8 hours on the day of May 1st 2008. The Vermont AFL-CIO is the first state labor federation to publicly back the Longshoremen; other state federations are expected to follow.



The resolution, among other things, calls the war in Iraq “immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary”, states that the vast majority of working Vermonters oppose the war, and contends that the war will only be brought to an end by “the direct actions of working people.” Many other Vermont labor unions and organizations, including the Vermont Workers’ Center, have also made official statements condemning the war.



The resolution also calls on working Vermonters to “discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008.”



“Workers in Vermont and all across this nation are against this war. We have already demanded that the government end it, but they have consistently failed to heed our words. Therefore working people are beginning to take concrete steps to make our resistance known. If the war does not immediately end we, the unions and working people of Vermont, will also be compelled to take appropriate action,” said David Van Deusen, a District Vice President of the Vermont AFL-CIO.



Traven Leyshon, President of the Washington, Lamoille & Orange County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, said, “Vermont labor has long called for an end to this war. The untold billions being spent on the war could instead be used to address our domestic needs. It is working people who pay the cost of the war - in some cases with our lives, but always with our sacrifices.”



***



Vermont AFL-CIO Resolution

In Solidarity With Longshoremen’s

West Coast Strike Against War

April, 2008



Whereas the war in Iraq is immoral, unwanted, and unnecessary,



Whereas this unjust war is opposed by the great majority of Americans & Vermonters, the bulk of organized labor, and by thousands of enlisted military personal,



Whereas this unjust war has already resulted in over 4000 American dead (including a disproportionate number of brave Vermonters), and tens of thousands of service men & woman being wounded,



Whereas this unjust war has further resulted in untold number of Iraqi deaths,



Whereas the Federal Government has not made any constructive moves towards the ending of this war and the full removal of US troops, and instead has taken the course of escalation and indefinite occupation,



Whereas the government of Vermont, and especially Governor Jim Douglas, have failed to find ways to bring Vermont National Guard troops home from Iraq,



Whereas this war will only be brought to an end by the direct actions of working people,



Therefore, Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO continues to stand in firm opposition to this war, and unequivocally supports the decision of the Longshore Caucus of the International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU) to shutdown the west coast ports for a period of 8 hours on May 1st, 2008, as a means of resistance.



Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO stands in full solidarity with the New York Metro National Association of Letter Carriers who have resolved to conduct two minute periods of silence on May 1st, 2008, at 1PM, 5PM & 9PM in protest of the war and in support of the Longshoremen.



Let It Be Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO encourages all Vermont workers to stand in solidarity with the historic actions being taken by the Longshoremen & other labor unions to end this war.



Let It Be Further Resolved that the Vermont AFL-CIO calls for all Vermont workers to discuss the actions of the Longshoremen, to wear anti-war buttons, and to take various actions of their own design and choosing in their workplace on May 1st, 2008 as a means of resistance against this unjust war.

FOR WORKERS’ ACTION TO STOP THE WAR (ILWU)

WHEREAS: On May 1, 2003, at the ILWU Convention in San Francisco resolutions were passed calling for an end to the war and occupation in Iraq; and

WHEREAS: ILWU took the lead among labor unions in opposing this bloody war and occupation for imperial domination; and

WHEREAS: Many unions and the overwhelming majority of the American people now oppose this bipartisan and unjustifiable war in Iraq and Afghanistan but the two major political parties, Democrats and Republicans continue to fund the war; and

WHEREAS: Millions worldwide have marched and demonstrated against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but have been unable to stop the wars; and

WHEREAS: ILWU’s historic dock actions,

1) like the refusal of Local 10 longshoremen to load bombs for the military dictatorship in Chile in 1978 and military cargo to the Salvadoran military dictatorship in 1981 and

2) the honoring of the teachers’ union antiwar picket May 19, 2007 against SSA in the port of Oakland stand as a limited but shining example of how to oppose these wars; and

WHEREAS: The spread of war in the Middle East is threatened with U. S. air strikes in Iran or possible military intervention in Syria or the destabilized Pakistan;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED:

That it is time to take labor’s protest to a more powerful level of struggle by calling on unions and working people in the U. S. and internationally to mobilize for a “No Peace No Work Holiday” May 1, 2008 for 8 hours to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U. S. troops from the Middle East; and

FURTHER BE IT RESOLVED:

That a clarion call from the ILWU be sent with an urgent appeal for unity of action to the AFL-CIO, the Change to Win Coalition and all of the international labor organizations to which we are affiliated to bring an end to this bloody war once and for all.

Submitted by:

ILWU Local 10

passed overwhelmingly after thorough debate

If you need any further information or wish to send messages of support and solidarity please contact Bob McEllrath, International President, ILWU, 1188 Franklin Street, San Francisco, California 94109.

Tel: (+1 415) 775 0533 Fax: (+1 415) 775 1302. Email: robert.mcellrath@ilwu.org

Messages of support and solidarity should also be sent to ILWU Local 10 President Melvin Mackay
fax (+1 415) 441 0610 and/or melmackay@aol.com

Baiting Obama

Submitted by ethan young

Baiting Obama
By Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042108J.shtml
Monday 21 April 2008

Bill Ayers is one of the more interesting people I've known, and I would
love to discuss how, in the heat of the Vietnam War, he went from running a
Summerhill school in Ann Arbor to bombing government buildings as a leader
of the Weather Underground. I could even explain why I thought then - and
still think - that Bill was wrong to do so.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a provocative theologian, whose heated
rhetoric bears a striking similarity to some of the later speeches of
another black preacher, the Rev. Martin Luther King. We could all learn from
studying King's words, and those of the Reverend Wright, and decide for
ourselves where we agree and disagree.

White workers in the rust belt, whether bitter or offended, could
similarly teach us a great deal, especially when political scoundrels such
as Dick Cheney sing the praises of "Guns, Guts and Glory" as they send
a disproportionate number of those hard-pressed workers, their sons and their
daughters to fight and die for the freedom of Big Oil in Iraq.

But using "bittergate," Wright and Ayers to drag down Barack Obama
has nothing to do with fair-minded debate and discussion. Nor is all this a
needed vetting of Obama, as Hillary persists in saying. The current noise is
nothing less than the predictable rebirth of an American political
tradition. Call it redbaiting, witch-hunting or McCarthyism, the old slime
is back and the reasons go far beyond the demands of Gotcha journalism and
electoral combat.

As anyone addicted to surfing the web knows, right wing Internet web
sites, Fox News, and right wing talk radio have for some time been smearing
Obama as a secret Marxist, Leninist elitist, secret Muslim and hater of
Israel. Many of the attacks have specifically raised the specter of Bill
Ayers and the Reverend Wright. The poison reached The New York Times on
April 14, when the neo-conservative columnist William Kristol led a stinging
attack on Obama with six paragraphs on Karl Marx and his description of
religion as "the opium of the people." The ever-smiling Kristol headlined
his attack "The Mask Slips."

Within hours, Fox News put the issue to Sen. Joe Lieberman: Is Obama "a
Marxist as Bill Kristol says might be the case?"

"I must say that's a good question," said Lieberman. Quickly gathering
his frayed liberal cloak about him, Lieberman added that he would "hesitate
to say" Obama is a Marxist. "But he's got some positions that are
far to the left of me and I think mainstream America."

None of this was a secret to the Clinton campaign, which kept saying
Obama had not been vetted and would prove an easy target for those nasty old
Republicans. Hillary directed this argument to the super delegates, but I
suspect she was also trying to encourage mainstream journalists to go after
Obama with the same smears the right wing had been using. Then came ABC's
prime time debate and - no surprise - Hillary teamed up with Charles Gibson
and George Stephanopoulos, Bill Clinton's former press secretary, to
red-bait Obama as if he were a reluctant witness called before HUAC, the
House Un-American Activities Committee.

Those of us of a certain age have seen this movie before, and I could
not help hoping Obama would reply to his self-appointed inquisitors as Woody
Allen did in the 1976 film, "The Front." "Fellas, I don't recognize
the right of this committee to ask me these kinds of questions. And furthermore,
you can go fuck yourselves." But no. Far cooler, Obama did his best to pivot
and turn back to the real concerns of those Joe Lieberman calls "mainstream
Americans," which is exactly the way to go. In time, Obama might also rise
above the fray with his huge smile and that great quip from Ronald Reagan,
"There you go again."

Obama will certainly get plenty of practice. redbaiting is how America's
right wingers and their conservatized liberal allies have long fought to
kill progressive social and economic change. Accuse the change-makers of
being godless Commie pinkos. Berate them for associating with godless Commie
pinkos. Damn them for not doing enough to root out all the godless Commie
pinkos and their sympathizers, whether from the State Department, Hollywood,
the unions, the media, charitable foundations, under their beds or wherever
else the beasts of the night might lurk.

Don't laugh, it works. In the late 1940s, President Harry Truman
proposed universal health care. right wingers branded it "Communistic"
and smothered it at birth. We still don't have decent health care for everyone,
and even John Edwards feared to suggest anything as "Socialistic" as a
single-payer system. Better to find "a pragmatic compromise" existing
insurance companies and HMOs might accept, as Hillary did so successfully in
the 1990s.

Desegregate the races? Heaven forbid! Billboards and leaflets all over
the South showed photographs of Martin Luther King attending "a Communist
training school," and many white liberals shied away.

Organize workers into unions? Not on your life! Employers and their
paid-for politicians branded the organizers as "Reds" and used flag-waving
American Legionnaires to beat early unionists to a pulp or ride them out of
town on a rail.

In a similar, if less violent, vein, Hillary now sounds like a
card-carrying member of what she used to call "the vast right wing
conspiracy." McCain has wasted no time trying to link Obama to Hamas. And,
should Obama become president, he will run into wall-to-wall redbaiting as
he tries to bring about such terribly Marxistical reforms as universal
health care, well-paying jobs, more progressive taxation, serious regulation
of Wall Street speculators and an end to our military occupation of Iraq.

As for my old friend Bill Ayers, I haven't seen him in nearly 20 years,
but I doubt he has his neighbor Obama's ear. When asked about Ayers in the
ABC debate, Obama identified him as an English professor. William Ayers is a
widely respected and very outspoken education maven, and if Obama has spent
any serious time with him, the senator would surely have known Bill's
life-long passion has been to find more effective ways to teach our
children.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly
Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a
magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.

Marable: Racializing Obama

“Racializing Obama”
Along the Color Line
By Dr. Manning Marable, PhD
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

[“Along The Color Line”, written by Manning Marable, PhD and distributed by.BlackCommentator.com, is a public educational and information service dedicated to fostering political dialogue and discussion, inspired by the great tradition for political event columns written by W. E. B. Du Bois nearly a century ago. Re-prints are permitted by any Black-owned or Black-oriented publications (print or electronic) without charge as long as they are printed in their entirety including this paragraph and, for electronic media, a link to http://www.BlackCommentator.com.]

From the beginning of Barack Obama’s quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, there were African-American critics who accused him of not being “black enough.” Ironically, some of those questioning his ethnic credentials were neoconservatives, or apologists for the Republican Right Wing.

For example, conservative writer Debra Dickerson, author of The End of Blackness declared in January, 2007, that “Obama would be the great black hope in the next presidential race, if he were actually black.” Journalist Stanley Crouch took a similarly negative approach, stating that while Obama “has experienced some light versions of typical racial stereotypes, he cannot claim those problems as his own – nor has he lived the life of a black American.” Juan Williams, of FOX News, warned that “there are widespread questions whether this son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father really understands the black American experience.” Even Al Sharpton challenged Obama’s legitimacy, stating, “Just because you are our color doesn’t make you our kind … It’s not about his genealogy, it’s about his policies … What is it that you’re going to represent?”

As late as December, 2007, roughly one-half of all African Americans polled still favored Hilary Clinton over Obama as their Democratic presidential candidate. Some of Obama’s sharpest “racial doubters” were even from Chicago, his home base. Eddie Read, chair of Chicago’s Black Independent Political Organization, for example, predicted that “nothing’s going to happen” from the Democratic Senator’s candidacy, because “he doesn’t belong to us. He would not be the black president. He would be the multicultural president.”

Such criticisms were based, in part, on the Obama campaign’s initial presentation of its candidate as both “nonracial” and “multicultural.” Obama’s diverse family and kin network are a multicultural collage of divergent ethnicities traditions and languages. For months, the Obama campaign deliberately downplayed discussions about “race.” Even their young campaign workers and volunteers have chanted, “Race doesn’t matter!” as their rejoinder to critics. Obama and black Democratic politicians like Corey Booker, Newark, New Jersey’s mayor; Massachusetts Governor Duval Patrick, and former Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford, represented themselves as a “post-black, colorblind” political elite who are now attempting to come to power, supplanting both the traditional civil rights/social activism style leadership of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, as well as the black elected officials who owed their easy re-elections to the existence of majority minority legislative districts.

As the Democratic primaries progressed, however, Obama established the ability to win a significant share of whites’ votes. He consistently won majorities among all voters under 30, voters earning over $50,000 annually, and college-educated voters. After the South Carolina Democratic primary, where Bill Clinton’s race-baiting alienated thousands of voters, the African-American electorate swung decisively behind Obama.

As the percentage of blacks’ votes for Obama increased, the tactics used to discredit or derail his campaign changed. Instead of “questioning” Obama’s racial legitimacy, the anti-Obama forces switch to a strategy of “blackening” him.

One decisive step in “blackening up Obama” was Clinton’s controversial “3 a.m. ringing telephone” advertisement. In theory, the ad was designed as a “National Security” advertisement, designed to highlight Hillary Clinton’s superiority as a global problem-solver. But as Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson observed, if one simply turned off the advertisement’s soundtrack, the visual images of the political commercial were almost identical with a sinister “home security ad”: Innocent children and white babies sleeping, shadows revealing a possibly intruder, the urgency of an unanswered telephone in the middle of the night.

Patterson argued that to many Southern whites, all that was missing was black man in a ski mask, slipping through an open window. It would not be terribly difficult within the white American imagination to perceive Obama as a sophisticated, articulate “Willie Horton,” the black murderer whom George Herbert Walker Bush manipulated in advertisements to his electoral advantage in 1988, winning the White House. Barack, in baggy Levis and a sweatshirt, might easily be mistaken for Amadou Diallo, coming home in the Bronx, confronted with guns by the New York Police Department’s Street Crimes Unit.

The next stage in “blackening Obama” came in Mississippi’s Democratic primary, where Obama easily trounced Clinton. Media pundits were quick to attribute Barack’s victory to the overwhelming mandate of Mississippi’s African-American electorate. Not surprisingly, 92 percent of Mississippi black voters had supported Obama. Obama’s white vote in Mississippi was 26 percent, a figure which frankly surprised me because it was so large. More instructive was the fact that Clinton’s greatest vote totals came from conservative Republican counties. Despite, Obama’s strenuous efforts to present a color-blind campaign, the American electorate is so indoctrinated by “race” that the Illinois Democrat was unable to escape his black identity.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Manning Marable, PhD is one of America’s most influential and widely read scholars. Since 1993, Dr. Marable has been Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York City. For ten years, Dr. Marable was founding director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University, from 1993 to 2003. Dr. Marable is an author or editor of over 20 books, including Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America's Racial Future (2006); The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero's Life And Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, And Speeches (2005); Freedom: A Photographic History of the African American Struggle (2002); Black Leadership: Four Great American Leaders and the Struggle for Civil Rights (1998); Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics (1995); and How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society (South End Press Classics Series) (1983). His current project is a major biography of Malcolm X, entitled Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, to be published by Viking Press in 2009. Visit his Website manningmarable.net.

BlackCommentator: Obama and Bitternness Analysis

Obama and Bitterness Analysis
By BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Members
Bill Strickland
James Jennings
Martin Kilson
David A. Love

http://blackcommentator.com/273/273_obama_and_bitterness_analysis.html

Recently Barack Obama was criticized for making the following statement about working people in rural areas of the U.S. who have suffered from economic downturns:

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

What follows is an analysis of that statement and the reaction to it by four BC Editorial Board members.

William L. (Bill) Strickland

Too many Americans, by and large and,unfortunately, seem ensnared in a self-
delusional bubble; unable to stand the truth about their society or history
whether those unpalatable truths are uttered by Reverend Wright, Barack
Obama, The United Nations Commission for Human Rights (re the illegality of
torture and the need to close Guantanamo), or that rabid left-wing critic, Alan
Greenspan, who explained the Bush-Cheney intervention in Iraq with one simple
word: OIL.

It is, symptomatically, par for the course that, in the predictable rush to
excoriate Obama for speculating about the psychological/political behavior of
the american working class in Pennsylvania,that no one mentions that Thomas
Frank made many of the same points in his 2004 book WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH
KANSAS?

In that book Frank asks: Why do so many Americans vote against their economic
and social interests? Where's the outrage at corporate thievery? Why do illusory
sleights to the Ten Commandments trouble some people more than do the prospects of falling wages or monopoly power or THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR VERY WAY OF LIFE? (emphasis mine)

This, it seems to me, is the Great Contemporary Contradiction of american politics and life; a contradiction that causes me to ask why more, if not all Americans,are not "bitter" over the fact of our collective victimization just a very brief summary of which includes the following,that:

* The oil companies made more profits last year than any corporation in western
history and yet they are also receiving 18 billion dollars in tax subsidies out
of our pockets. And,of course,there is no investigation of oil profiteering.

* Bush has destroyed the dollar, virtually turning it into toilet paper against
the euro and the pound where it has lost 50% of its value.

* He has likewise destroyed the economy with his tax cuts for the rich, reducing
federal revenues such that he must borrow abroad to cover this year's admitted
450 billion dollar deficit. But more than that, in his two terms Bush has made
America the greatest debtor nation in the history of the world. (But in this
election cycle so far only George McGovern and Jesse Ventura have even called
attention to our 9 trillion dollar debt.)

So,not bitter yet? Wait,There's more...

* Your tap water is contaminated with drugs and sewage and human waste because Bush is indifferent to enforcing the Clean Water Act.

* Given Columbine, Northern Illinois, Virginia Tech et al,it is no longer safe to
send your child to school because the NRA lobby opposes gun control.

* They've raised the age requirement for receiving your Social Security benefits, hoping that you'll die before you reach the eligible age for a significant return. But,then,should you live long enough to be entitled to some modest recompense for your lifelong labor, they will,sympathetically, tax your
benefits.

Then there's the unspoken corporate scam. Check the due dates on your bills, especially your credit card bill. But also gas and electric, i.e., our
oil/energy friends. Typically, you will receive your bill nearly a week after the
bill's statement date. But the due date for the bill is usually two weeks, sometimes three,from that statement date. Given the time it takes to reach you through the mail and then for you to return it, customers often have to pay a late fee. But the interest on late fees,computed by the company's accountants, tends to rival what was condemned as usury in the Middle Ages! At any rate, using these tactics US companies made 6.1 billion dollars on late fees in 2006!

And in keeping with the above, 61% of US corporations paid no taxes at all last
year.

* Then,according to the New York Times, house foreclosures are occuring in
America at the rate of 20,000 a week.Thank Bush's deregulation policies once
again. But don't fixate on Bush alone. He could not have so blithely castrated
the public interest without the help of his party and some "centrist" Democrats.

* Then there's the hypocrisy...Bush and his cohorts who are always yelling "support the troops" are, in fact,destroying the very army they celebrate. For example, they hire private military contractors - and give no bid contracts to their friends - in order to avoid the possible political consequences of a draft. The result of this policy of course is that the troops sent back onmultiple deployments are suffering marital breakdowns, experiencing emotional disorders by the thousands, and, upon their return home, are committing acts of violence against others and themselves. Last year 121 vets from Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide! See the new movie, Stop Loss.

* The point Americans need to understand is that Bush and the gang do not care
about us. He can veto children's health insurance without giving it a second
thought.

* But let's fasten a moment on the latest news item:airline safety...Without
conscientious whistle-blowers,the public would never have been alerted to the
danger that we are in. We knew that our flights are overbooked, that our flights are often cancelled, that our bags are often lost, damaged or stolen, and that the airlines are about to charge us $25 for checking a second bag. But no one made a big deal that we are flying in 35 year old planes monitored by an underfunded and understaffed airtraffic control system that is itself 35 years
old. Nor were we told that NASA had conducted a four year study that involved
interviews with 29,000 pilots andthat that study had identified the very
problems now acknowledged by the FAA. However NASA turned down past Freedom of Information requests from the media for the results of the study because it "didn't want to undermine public confidence OR HURT AIRLINE
PROFITS." (emphasis mine)

So there you have it. And black people should recognize this mercantile
immorality first of all because it is the same mentality that gave the world
the slave trade...Profits uber alles.

So if you're not bitter and don't want to change this nefarious system,don't
blame Obama,look closer to home.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member William L. (Bill) Strickland - Teaches political science in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he is also the Director of the Du Bois Papers Collection. The Du Bois Papers are housed at the University of Massachusetts library, which is named in honor of this prominent African American intellectual and Massachusetts native. Professor Strickland is a founding member of the independent black think tank in Atlanta the Institute of the Black World (IBW), headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. Strickland was a consultant to both series of the prize-winning documentary on the civil rights movement, Eyes on the Prize (PBS Mini Series Boxed Set), and the senior consultant on the PBS documentary, The American Experience: Malcolm X: Make It Plain. He also wrote the companion book Malcolm X: Make It Plain. Most recently, Professor Strickland was a consultant on the Louis Massiah film on W.E.B. Du Bois - W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography in Four Voices. Click here to contact Mr. Strickland.

Dr. James Jennings, PhD

Again, the corporate-oriented media has shown its aversion (of course...) to the interests of White working-class people in this nation.

The attacks on Obama for his statement take place because it actually represents an opportunity for working-class people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to discuss and analyze their plight.

The statement by Obama represented an opportunity to dialogue about a political reality...the fact that certain sectors of the White working-class sees itself as 'white', first, and then working-class.

It is almost silly to deny that many working-class people are not bitter, or that race has not been utilized in divisive ways to direct this bitterness towards, the 'other' or, 'them', or 'those people'.

Religion and guns have been used by powerful interests to remind some working-class people that they are 'white' before they are poor, or low-income, or working-class. The intense criticism by the Clinton campaign to the effect that the statement belittles small town and rural residents actually shows the little regard it has for the same people it is 'defending'.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member James Jennings, PhD - Professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University. Click here to contact Dr. Jennings.

Dr. Martin Kilson PhD

When Senator Barack Obama remarked to a private fund-raiser in California on April 6th, that he thought many White working-class voters he encountered campaigning in the towns of Pennsylvania felt unhappy about their economic plight and that this unhappiness got reflected in their social and political outlook (“they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them...”), he never imagined that his words would immediately become cannon fodder for Hillary Clinton's campaign. Clinton and her campaign staff - and her supporters in cable television (CNN & Fox News) and conservative Talk Radio - pounced fervently on Obama's remarks, cleverly labeling them as “elitist”. His comments, she said, were “not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.... People embrace faith not because they are materially poor, but because they are spiritually rich.”

Of course, Obama had to back down from his somewhat leftist characterization of the interplay between American citizens' social discontent and their religious and political choices, because it amounts to a one-dimensional observation of working-class socio-political patterns in our society. Obama admitted the error of his observation, saying he had used “ill-chosen words”.

Also, his “ill-chosen words” were made public by the Huffington Post Web Site and by April 10th Senator Obama was squarely on the defensive, and remains so as I write this on Tuesday, April 16th.

This can be viewed as Obama's first major gaffe, by which I mean a political comment that gives his opponent Clinton an easy political missile to throw at him. And particularly in the current primary contest in the important state of Pennsylvania where around 55% of the White voters are, we might say, disinclined toward Senator Obama's candidacy - mainly working-class and lower middle-class White voters. The Obama campaign has to gain between 5% to 10% of Pennsylvania's working-class/lower middle-class White voters in order either to win the Pennsylvania primary or keep Clinton's victory under a 10 percentage point margin.

Thus, my first reaction is that Senator Obama must recognize that when he's offering political discourse at either private fund raisers or public events, the situations are not academic-debate milieu but real power-game milieu . Which is to say, they are milieu in which a politician's words might carry heavy political consequences. This understanding was clearly not at the forefront of Obama's consciousness at the California fund raiser on Sunday, April 6th. It should have been.

Second, Obama's gaffe translated into an unnecessary tactical error insofar as it gave political maneuvering space to the Clinton campaign at precisely the wrong time. At the start of the week following Obama's April 6 fund-raiser gaffe, the leading front-page article in the Boston Globe (Monday , April 7) on the Democratic primary campaign was titled “Top Strategist For Clinton Quits Post Amid Uproar”. The article reported the removal of Mark Penn from his powerful post as chief strategist for Clinton, owing to his participation as a lobbyist for the government of Columbia's bid to have a trade pact with the United States enacted—a pact that major American trade unions oppose. Furthermore, the following day it was revealed that Bill Clinton had also gained large fees for unofficially assisting the Columbia government. Moreover, Clinton's campaign was simultaneously struggling to counter broadly negative public reactions to her telling a grossly false tale about her trip to Bosnia, a falsehood she repeated on several occasions over the course of several months. So Obama's observation about “small town religion” was just a bad gaffe.

Be that as it may, another fundamental aspect of Obama's gaffe is that the political mileage the Clinton campaign can derive from it is conditioned by racial mindsets among some White voters in Pennsylvania. The New York Times columnist Bob Herbert addressed this issue directly and candidly in his column in the Times April 15, 2008:

There is no mystery here. Except for people who have been hiding in caves or living in denial, it's pretty widely understood that a substantial number of [white working-class] voters—in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia and elsewhere - will not vote for a black candidate for president. Pennsylvanians themselves will tell you that racial attitudes in some parts of the state are, to be kind, less than enlightened.

Moreover, Bob Herbert's forthright characterization goes further and provides us a keen understanding of the dynamics that enable the Clinton campaign to maneuver Senator Obama's gaffe—his “ill-chosen words”—into an easy political missile for Clinton to toss in his campaign's path. As Herbert put it: “This toxic issue [white working-class racial mindset] is at the core of the Clinton camp's relentless effort to persuade superdelegates that Senator Obama 'can't win' the White House. It's the only weapon left in the Clintons' depleted armory.”

Thus, as Bob Herbert's keen analysis makes clear, the political dynamics flowing from the Obama gaffe tell Americans more about the depraved political norms and values that have come to define-and-propel Hilliary Clinton's campaign. Interestingly enough, versions of Herbert's analysis can be found in both editorial columns and leading articles in centrist-liberal magazines like The New Republic (March 26, 2008). Here's how what might be called the “Herbertian” view of the politically depraved Clinton campaign was formulated by The New Republic's editorial:

....It wasn't the fact [that in lead-up to Ohio/Texas primaries] she was attacking Obama that was problematic, it was how she was attacking him—namely, in a way that will make it more difficult for Obama should he, as is still likely, be the Democratic nominee in November. For instance, it would have been fine for Hillary to argue that she'd make a better commander-in-chief than Obama; but it was wrong for her to essentially argue, as she did on more than one occasion, that she and John McCain would make better commanders-in-chief than Obama. Similarly, her strange hedging on “60 Minutes” about whether she believes Obama isn't a Muslim only added fuel to the unfounded rumors that are already circulating about his faith. Frankly, Clinton's chances are slim enough that a win-at-all-costs mentality from her campaign is not worth the risk of doing irreparable damage to the candidate who will likely be her party's nominee. (Emphasis Added)

Finally, the most recent polls suggest that the political damage that the Clinton campaign's “win-at-all-costs” depraved political maneuvers has been , happily, minimal. A Zogby Poll published in the Wall Street Journal (April 14, 2008) shows Obama “chipping away at Sen. Clinton's double-digit lead in Pennsylvania, with support from 43% of likely voters to 47% for Sen. Clinton.” However, when only Pennsylvania White voters are polled, a Quinnipiac University Poll also published in Wall Street Journal (April 14) shows White voters favoring Clinton 59% to 34% for Obama.

These two polls suggest that Obama's campaign must do one particularly crucial thing in the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary to checkmate the overall White-voters' preference for Clinton. Namely, produce a maximal turnout of Black voters-- thereby ensuring an 85%-plus Black vote for Senator Obama. This can be achieved. Meanwhile, a Gallup Poll on April 12th as reported in Boston Globe (April 9) showing “Obama holding on to a 10-percentage-point advantage over Clinton among [national] Democratic voters [50% Obama to 40% Clinton], matching his biggest lead of the campaign.” Despite Obama's “ill-chosen words” gaffe, the Obama campaign is in-good-stride and vibrant, en route to gaining the Democratic Party presidential nomination at the party's convention in August.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member Martin Kilson, PhD - Hails from an African Methodist background and clergy: From a great-great grandfather who founded an African Methodist Episcopal church in Maryland in the 1840s; from a great-grandfather AME clergyman; from a Civil War veteran great-grandfather who founded an African Union Methodist Protestant church in Pennsylvania in 1885; and from an African Methodist clergyman father who pastored in an Eastern Pennsylvania milltown--Ambler, PA. He attended Lincoln University (PA), 1949-1953, and Harvard graduate school. Appointed in 1962 as the first African American to teach in Harvard College and in 1969 he was the first African American tenured at Harvard. He retired in 2003 as Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government, Emeritus. His publications include: Political Change in a West African State (Harvard University Press, 1966); Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970); New States in the Modern World (Harvard University Press, 1975); The African Diaspora: Interpretive Essays (Harvard University Press, 1976); The Making of Black Intellectuals: Studies on the African American Intelligentsia (Forthcoming. University of MIssouri Press); and The Transformation of the African American Intelligentsia, 1900-2008 (Forthcoming).

David A. Love, JD

Far too often, it is difficult to find the words “politics,” “intelligence,” and “historical context” in the same sentence. Obama chose the path less traveled when he injected intelligence and historical context into the political season with his statement regarding the bitterness of small-town and rural Americans.

If the senator from Illinois offended the “Alabama” region of Pennsylvania, the middle area between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, then he must have offended humanity as well. The notion that people, bitter, frustrated and economically insecure, will lash out against others and create scapegoats, is a universal phenomenon. Throughout world history, there has been this game of blaming the Blacks, or blaming the Jews, or blaming the Muslims, or the Tutsi, or the immigrants, or the dissenters, or the poor, or anyone outside of one’s group who is perceived as different. With the flames of division often fanned by the political elites, such scapegoating only serves to deflect attention from the real sources of people’s woes, including the policies of those who are in control.

A leader who tells the people what they need to hear, however inconvenient, is not offensive or elitist, but a truth teller. Rather, it is offensive for politicians, their wealth amassed through public service, to drink a beer or a shot of Crown Royal whisky with us and pretend to be with us. Bush became the occupant of the Oval Office because - in addition to stealing votes and getting help from the Supreme Court - some voters believed they would want to have a beer with him. Of course, the Bush presidency has been the most disastrous, elitist and out-of-touch administration in American history. The people need more than beer, and they certainly know that after eight long, painful years. That is why Obama is still standing.

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member David A. Love, JD is a lawyer and journalist based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive Media Project, McClatchy-Tribune News Service, In These Times and Philadelphia Independent Media Center. He contributed to the book, States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons (St. Martin's Press, 2000). Love is a former Amnesty International UK spokesperson, organized the first national police brutality conference as a staff member with the Center for Constitutional Rights, and served as a law clerk to two Black federal judges. His blog is davidalove.com.

Dreier & Candaele: Labor's Self-Inflicted Wounds Threaten Progressive Movement

Video of SEIU-CNA Conflict at Labor Notes Conference


Labor's Self-Inflicted Wounds Threaten Progressive Movement
by Peter Dreier and Kelly Candaele

Just this week, violence broke out at a union conference in Michigan when members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) - the nation's largest labor organization - attempted to protest a scheduled speech by the president of the California Nurses Association (CNA). The two unions have been attacking each other vociferously for months, each organization claiming that the other was at fault for one or another transgression, and in recent weeks the war has escalated out of control.

Regardless of who is at fault - both organizations claim the other has interfered to disrupt organizing drives - the fighting among these two dynamic workers organizations has to stop. There is only one result that is predictable if the conflict continues - hostile employers and right wing forces in general will benefit.

Throughout the course of U.S. labor history, bloody battles have occurred between intransigent employers and workers who have tried to organize to improve their lives. Corporations once used hired guns to thwart workers' rights. But in recent years big business has used lawyers and consultants to help them fire workers for participating in organizing drivers and have threatened to close workplaces if employees unionize. Indeed, keeping American workplaces "union-free" has evolved into a billion dollar industry.

But there have also been critical moments when unions have fought one another. The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was formed in 1935 from a split with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), when legendary Mineworkers leader John L. Lewis led the effort to establish a separate organization dedicated to organizing workers in the industrial sector of the American economy. The CIO helped usher in a dramatic wave of successful union organizing.

During the Cold War of the 1950s, the labor movement was divided by ideology and power struggles, when the major union federations ousted unions led by radicals, a split that business groups encouraged. In the California grape fields, the United Farm Workers and Teamsters fought over the right to organize farmworkers in the 1960s. Two years ago, a number of the nation's largest unions -- including SEIU, the Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers, UNITE HERE, and others -- split from the AFL-CIO to form the Change to Win coalition, critical of other unions' failure to invest more resources into organizing the unorganized workforce. And in Los Angeles, two unions representing actors and radio artists are currently at odds over several issues as critical negotiations have just begun with powerful Hollywood producers.

Some labor historians have argued that competition among labor groups can be beneficial - by pushing unions to find innovative ways to organize the unorganized - but the current fights are mainly self-destructive. For example, both SEIU and CNA are in many cases attempting to represent the same workers at the same health care facilities. Unions should be spending their time, money and energy organizing the 89 percent of American workers who are unorganized rather than fighting each other.

Ironically, organized labor's self-inflicted wounds are taking place just as the movement was resurging. Last year, for the first time in decades, the proportion of American workers in unions increased. A number of unions have been creative in winning organizing drives in places and industries that some thought would never see a labor victory -- such as janitors in Houston. In Los Angeles, carwash workers - some of the most exploited people in the country - have recently turned to organized labor for help.

Ironically, the confrontation between SEIU and CNA has occurred just as Los Angeles' growing labor movement was putting on a show of strength. This week it sponsored a three-day 28-mile march from Hollywood to the shipping docks in San Pedro, weaving across the city, to unite its diverse unions and its allies among community groups, clergy, and environmentalists.

Over the next few months, 30 unions with close to 400,000 members will be negotiating new contracts. Under the leadership of Maria Elena Durazo, the charismatic head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, these unions are mobilizing public support for their contract talks, calling it a "fight for good jobs." Actors, nurses, hotel workers, janitors, garment workers, truck drivers, security guards, school teachers and other union members have joined forces to highlight the centrality of the labor movement to restoring the key components of the middle class -- secure and well-paying jobs, health insurance, decent housing, and the ability to save to send children to college, take a yearly vacation, and retire with dignity.

Indeed, for over a decade, Los Angeles has been a bright spot among organized labor. Los Angeles unions have been adding members , building bridges between ethnic and racial groups, and exercising their political muscle to help elect pro-labor candidates in City Hall, the state legislature and Congress. The Los Angeles labor movement has found strength, energy and a new generation of leaders, many of them immigrants. It has renewed the concept of "social unionism" by reaching out to groups concerned about affordable housing, public schools, immigrants' rights, women's rights, and the environment. In one of its most creative efforts, the Campaign for Clean and Safe Ports, the Teamsters union has joined environmentalists, religious leaders, community activists and civil rights leaders to push for fundamental changes in the way the movement of goods is conducted in LA and Long Beach, the nation's largest port and the biggest source of pollution in the region. If the campaign is successful, the air will be cleaner, the port will be safer, and the truck drivers will gain wages and benefits that will dramatically improve their lives.

The rest of the labor movement needs to learn from the Los Angeles approach. In the next decade, organized labor as a social, political and economic force will either grow or die. Today, union's collective bargaining agreements play a less important role in the United States than in other affluent nations. Only France, with 10% of its workers represented by unions, ranks lower than the United States (11%) among industrialized nations in the density of union membership.

In the 1950s, unions represented more than one-third of all U.S. workers. The decline of union membership, which accelerated starting in the 1970s, coincided with the upsurge of Big Business and the Religious Right, the network of right-wing think tanks, TV and radio shows, newspapers and magazines, and the GOP takeover of Congress and many state governments. Over the past 30 years, we've seen a protracted battle over women's rights, environmental regulations, workplace safety, housing reform, health care, militarism, and the widening gap between the rich and the rest.

Countries that were behind the US on measures of economic and social well-being have now surpassed us. For example, Americans work more hours each year than employees in Canada, Western Europe, Japan, or Australia. In 2004, the most recent data collected by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), employed Americans worked an average of 1,824 hours annually, compared with 1,816 in Australia, 1,789 hours in Japan, 1,751 hours in Canada, 1,669 in England, 1,585 n Sweden, 1,443 in Germany, 1,441 in France, and 1,363 in Norway.

Unlike every other affluent country, the U.S. has no statutory minimum vacation policy. As a result, American workers spend fewer weeks on vacation than workers elsewhere. Most countries mandate that workers get at least four weeks of paid vacation a year. France, Austria, Denmark and Sweden require five weeks.

And we know that the U.S. is the only country without a system of universal health insurance. It is also the only country without mandated paid maternity leave. We spend less on job training, child care, and affordable housing, and much more on prisons, than other well-off nations. Our workplace safety laws are weak and poorly-enforced compared with elsewhere. The U.S. also has the widest gap between rich and poor and the highest poverty rate among developed nations.

The weakness of the American labor movement, compared to its counterparts in other affluent, democratic societies, accounts for many of these disparities. But Americans are not generally anti-union. A recent poll found that 58 percent of non-managerial workers would join a union if they could. But they won't vote for a union, much less participate openly in an organizing drive, if they fear losing their jobs for doing so. That's why the next President and Congress needs to make reform of our nation's outdated and pro-management labor laws a top priority.

Organized labor still has a significant capacity to moblize both money and members to influence the outcome of elections. Union members are more likely to vote, more likely to vote for Democrats, and more likely to volunteer for campaigns than people with similar demographic and job characteristics who are not unionized. In the 2004 presidential election, union members represented 12 percent of all workers but union households represented 24 percent of all voters. Despite John Kerry's tepid campaign and upper-crust demeanor, union members gave him 61 percent of their votes over George W. Bush. In the battleground states, where unions focused their turnout efforts, they did even better. In Ohio, for example, union members favored Kerry by a 67 to 31 percent margin.

When voters' loyalties were divided between their economic interests and other concerns, union membership was a crucial determinant of their votes. For example, gun owners favored Bush by a 63 to 36 percent margin, but union members who own guns supported Kerry 55 percent to 43 percent, according to an AFL-CIO survey. Bush carried all weekly church-goers by a 61 to 39 percent margin, but Kerry won among union members who attend church weekly by a 55 to 43 percent split. Among white males, a group that Democrats have had difficulty attracting in recent Presidential elections, Bush won by a 62 to 37 percent margin. But again, Kerry carried white males who were union members by a 59 to 38 percent difference. Bush won among white women by 55 to 44 percent but Kerry won white women union members by 67 percent to 32 percent

The prospects for a progressive resurgence haven't looked brighter since the 1960s. In the political arena, the labor movement is expected to form the backbone of the Democratic Party's efforts to take the White House and expand its majority in Congress in November. Unions, with more trained organizers and rank-and-file activists than the rest of the progressive movement together, have been poised to send their troops, and their funds, to Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Florida, Colorado, Minnesota and other battleground states to register voters and get them to the polls on election day.

The upcoming election will be the most important in memory. But will the labor movement be able to marshall its potential resources to bring about "regime change" in Washington? A few months ago, the answer seemed to be yes. But now the situation is cloudier.

There's room for disagreement about how the labor movement should change its structure to accommodate the transformation of the economy and business. But in addition to honest disagreements among labor activists about how to move forward, there are also unnecessary turf wars and ideological splits, what Freud called the "narcissism of small differences." While labor engages in these internal fights, Republicans and their allies among Big Business and the Religious Right -- who until recently anticipated major setbacks in this election season -- are coalescing around McCain.

It's bad enough that the two remaining contenders for the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination are attacking each other, giving presumptive Republican nominee John McCain ammunition to increase his chance for victory in November. But when unions -- the institutions that provide the most effective ground troops and other resources for Democratic candidates, progressive legislation, and building a movement for change -- are also at each others' throats, Republicans and corporate America can only sit back and smile.

Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics at Occidental College and chair of the Horizon Institute, a progressive think tank based in Los Angeles. Kelly Candaele is the Horizon Institute's Executive Director.

Ehrenreich on Obama's "Bitterness" Remarks

Of Bitterness and Boilermakers

By Barbara Ehrenreich

I spent an hour yesterday trying to persuade Tom Frank, author of 'What's the Matter with Kansas?' and the apparent intellectual source of Obama's remark on white working class "bitterness," to weigh in with an op-ed somewhere. Unfortunately, he'd already had 20 calls before mine on the same theme, so our conversation moved on quickly to the Disney Princess Cult and its pernicious influence on 3-year-olds. Although all this was off the record, I do not think I am betraying a confidence by revealing that Frank judged Bittergate to be "silly."

Because, of course, a lot of people, and not only in the white working class, are bitter, though "pissed off" might have been a better choice of words. Real wages have been stagnant or falling for years; fuel and now food prices are going through the roof; the repo guy is picking at the locks. Sticking to that most exotic of all demographics—white working-class men—and drawing entirely on my own circle of relatives and friends, I can confirm Obama's observation.


There's my old friend Trice, for example, a flight attendant who's bitter that his company's top executives are about to pamper themselves with fresh bonuses while he's taken a 30 percent pay cut in recent years. There's my nephew Shannon, a former delivery-truck driver who's bitter because he's discovered that his recently acquired college education in computer networking gets him only low-paid, short-term, contract work. And then there are the owner-operator truck drivers I've just gotten to know in the course of interviewing them about their nationwide slowdowns to protest $4-a-gallon diesel oil. Actually, they're not "bitter" so much as righteously up in arms because they, and so many other people, can no longer make ends meet.

Where both Obama and Clinton have gone wrong is in their stereotypes of white working class men-involving guns, religion, and now, in Clinton's case, boilermakers. There is no known correlation between the size of one's arsenal and the degree of one's bitterness; and the same goes for religiosity. It should be noted, in fact, that both the Christian Right and the sport of hunting are in precipitous decline. For what it's worth, the most heavily armed white guy I know is a vegan and animal-rights crusader who's always on my case about cheeseburgers.

As for boilermakers: The drink apparently originated among the copper miners of my native city of Butte, Mont., and it is by no means universal, as I discovered when I ordered one a couple of years ago in a Holiday Inn lounge in rural Ohio. I did not order it for purposes of pandering to the construction workers at the bar, but because I'd had a long, hard day at the podium. It turned out that my bar-mates found my choice of beverage so fascinating that I could not drink in peace. They'd never heard of the drink, so I had to explain, with increasing clarity as the drink went down, that where I come from, boilermakers are a comfort food.

When they either pander to or attempt to analyze white working-class men, the candidates risk tripping over some nasty stereotypes—as in, hard-drinking, white-bread-eating, gun-bearing bigots. When I blogged about the truck drivers' protests last week, I got comments complaining about my sympathy for "rednecks." This is class prejudice, and it is just as ugly as misogyny or racism.

The only thing you can say for sure about the white—or black or brown—working class is that it is being driven ever further down into poverty. Other than that, no generalizations, please—either from the $10-million-a-year Clinton or from the merely upper-middle-class Obama.

[Barbara Ehrenreich is an activist and writer, author of Nickel and Dimed, For Her Own Good: 200 Years of the Experts’ Advice to Women (with Deirdre English), The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment, Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class, Kipper’s Game (a science fiction novel), and Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War.]

Online Fundraising Revolution

Online Fundraising Revolution
Obama’s record-shattering successes put him in a position to become the first insurgent since Jimmy Carter to win a major party’s nomination.
Sat. Apr. 19, 2008
by James A. Barnes


It was an unusual time for a presidential candidate to extol the value of his small donors, but that didn’t deter Barack Obama. The Democratic front-runner told a roomful of supporters who had forked over $1,000 to $2,300 apiece to attend the April 8 fundraiser, “We have created a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign, [and then] they can get on the Internet and finance it. And they will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign [as] has traditionally [been] reserved for the wealthy and the powerful.”

To be sure, Obama’s prodigious fundraising machine has collected more than its share of large checks from the “wealthy and the powerful,” including $500,000 worth at the Washington event where he rhapsodized about the supporters who click in with more-modest contributions. And Obama’s advisers hastened to add that his comments were not a signal that he would opt out of the 32-year-old public financing system for the general election, something that no presidential nominee—Democrat or Republican—has ever done.

But the senator’s remarks underscored an amazing point: He probably could. In the past, a candidate who was spending $1 million a day in a fierce struggle for his party’s presidential nomination would hardly be in a position to consider turning down an $84 million check from Uncle Sam to fund a nine-and-a-half-week-long campaign in the fall. Then again, no other candidate has ever built such an enormous fundraising base.

Well over a million people donated more than $230 million to Obama’s campaign through the first quarter of this year. And, fueled by his Internet fundraising machine of small donors, the candidate pulled in more than 40 percent of that cash in just two months, $55 million in February and $40 million in March. During that brief time, Obama almost doubled his donor pool to 1.3 million, his campaign says. Obama hopes to have 1.5 million donors by early May.

In political circles, the generally accepted definition of a “small donor” is someone who contributes less than $200. Through February, about 90 percent of Obama’s donors fit that description, according to information from his campaign and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. If March continued that trend, Obama has more than 1.1 million small donors.

Even if that estimate is a bit high, Obama’s army of small donors is nevertheless very impressive. According to an analysis by the Campaign Finance Institute and the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, a total of 625,000 small donors gave money to a major-party presidential candidate in 2000. In the 2004 race, that number surged to between 2 million and 2.8 million. Obama is already halfway to that historic high—with six more months to add donors to his fold if he wins the Democratic nomination and opts out of public financing.

The significance of Obama’s record-shattering success as a fundraiser is enormous. His donor base puts him in a position to become the first insurgent candidate to win a major party’s presidential nomination since 1976, when Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nod in the first election under the public financing regime. Obama’s financial advantage over Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton enabled him to outspend her in the string of post-Super Tuesday contests in which he built his lead in pledged delegates and established himself as his party’s clear front-runner.

Political analysts have traditionally viewed public financing as the ally of insurgents because the system offers a federal match for individual contributions of up to $250 once a candidate agrees to abide by certain restrictions. The system can give little-known candidates the ability to raise enough money to compete in the early primaries and caucuses against establishment candidates with national fundraising bases. The regime also puts caps on the amount of money that candidates can spend in individual states and in the overall campaign—limits that can help level the financial playing field. (In the current campaign cycle, all of the remaining candidates declined to participate in the public financing system for the primary season.)

Internet fundraising can often resemble “donors chasing fundraisers. It’s kind of an unnatural act.”
--—Hal Malchow, direct-mail fundraiser

Some political observers and scholars, however, suspect that the caps actually disadvantage insurgents by preventing them from raising enough money to overcome establishment candidates’ inherent advantages, such as endorsements and support from party leaders, elected officials, and interest groups.

To be sure, the grassroots energy behind Obama’s candidacy is a vital ingredient in his success, but having the dollars to build an organizational apparatus to harness that excitement has also been key. “There’s no question his fundraising capacity has been a big factor for him in some of these states,” said veteran Democratic presidential strategist Tad Devine.

So, is Internet fundraising likely to transform the next presidential contest and other races? “I think that we all are sort of learning some tactics and principles, ideas, and tools that will apply in the future,” said a Democratic consultant and senior Obama strategist who requested anonymity. “But I do think there is a foundation of uniqueness that drives this stuff for this campaign that is uncommon in campaigns.”

Obama’s Cash Cow

Obama isn’t the first contender to strike political gold on the Internet. In 2000, it was Republican John McCain who became the first presidential candidate to benefit from Internet fundraising. In the week after the senator from Arizona won the New Hampshire primary that year, supporters flooded his campaign website with $2.2 million in contributions.

“It was all over-the-transom money,” recalls Becki Donatelli, chairman of Campaign Solutions, an Internet fundraising consulting firm that counts McCain as a client. “There is still that today, but it’s also become part of Fundraising 101 [to include online] direct marketing in addition to creating a [website] where people bubble up.”

In the 2004 Democratic presidential nominating contest, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was the Internet’s darling. In the year leading up to the primaries, Dean collected more than twice as much money as his nearest rival on the fundraising front, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Dean’s campaign used the popular Internet social-networking site Meetup.com to gather and galvanize supporters. The campaign also created an interactive baseball bat on its own website to periodically challenge supporters to send in contributions for a particular cause or by a certain time. As contributions rolled, in, the virtual bat would fill up like mercury rising in a thermometer.

In one novel challenge, Dean successfully exhorted his donors to contribute $250,000 in a single day to offset the sum that Vice President Cheney planned to raise at a luncheon with GOP fat cats. “What drove all of this was the enthusiasm that people had for Howard Dean. The Internet is a bunch of wires. If you have the juice, things will move,” said veteran Democratic direct-mail fundraiser Hal Malchow. Internet fundraising can often resemble “donors chasing fundraisers,” he joked. “It’s kind of an unnatural act.”

Internet fundraising tends to track the emotional highs and lows of a political contest, but sometimes in unexpected ways. Two days after Obama lost the New Hampshire primary to Clinton, he raised twice the amount that McCain had raised in the week after his 2000 victory in the Granite State—some $4.4 million. Clinton has had good money-raising streaks, too. In the two days after her strong showing in Ohio and Texas on March 4, she took in about $4 million.

Obama’s record $55 million haul in February—$45 million of which was contributed online—was boosted by his early victories. “There was that enthusiasm and excitement to giving: ‘Obama won another election,’ ” an Obama strategist said. “That’s one of the reasons why February was so extraordinary.”

Still, even an also-ran presidential candidate who barely drew any actual votes broke online fundraising records earlier this year. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, raked in more than $4.2 million in a single day when a Florida music promoter linked an Internet appeal for the anti-war libertarian to Guy Fawkes Day, the November 5 anniversary of the attempt to blow up the British Parliament in 1605. Paul’s campaign went on to raise some $6.2 million over the Internet on December 16, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

But Obama is the clear leader in taking Internet fundraising to new heights. In the spring and summer of 2007, the Obama campaign held rallies that drew 5,000 people, 10,000 people, or more. Partly to manage such large crowds, the campaign had asked supporters to sign up online or at campaign offices in advance to attend a rally. That sign-up process yielded a lot of e-mail addresses. At the same time, the Obama campaign was beginning to build its online community, giving supporters opportunities to meet one another and volunteer for door-to-door canvassing, phone-banking, and other activities.

The presidential campaigns have recently adopted an online fundraising tool linked to search engines. And once again, the Obama campaign has shown the way.

On Google, the Web’s most popular search engine, the company’s advertising program, AdWords, allows a campaign (or any other advertiser) to sponsor an ad that pops up next to the results page when a user’s search includes particular key words. The campaign pays Google only when someone actually clicks on its ad. If the campaign buys more than one triggering word—“Iraq” and “immigration,” say—the advertising program indicates which word lured the new supporter to its ranks. That information can help the campaign tailor messages to particular subsets of Obama boosters.

In the world of politics, presidential campaigns are today’s biggest users of search engine advertising to reach out to potential donors instead of waiting for them to find the candidate’s website. But down-ballot campaigns are increasingly joining in. “I think there will be a day pretty soon where everyone from presidential to state legislative candidates will be using Google AdWords and other tools,” predicts Peter Greenberger, team manager for Google’s Elections & Issue Advocacy business unit.

Social trends are likely to make that happen. Direct mail, the traditional mainstay for attracting small donors, has been most effective among the oldest voters. “As long as we have a constituency who doesn’t do [electronic] commerce—meaning, use their credit card to make a purchase or give a donation—direct mail will be alive,” said one 2008 presidential Internet strategist. “But as they die, so will direct mail.”

Raising money over the phone, another staple of campaigns past, has grown more difficult as people have given up land lines and rebelled against telemarketers. “The future for the telemarketing industry in politics is not especially bright as more and more state legislatures look for more-robust enforcement of Do Not Call lists,” said Philip Musser, president of New Frontier Strategy, a public-relations firm that focuses on state issues. Musser, who also advises Google on politics and state issues, noted that the Internet allows people to “consume [a fundraising appeal] at their pleasure rather than be forced to hear a message when they don’t want to.”

Whether future presidential candidates will replicate Obama’s Internet fundraising machine remains to be seen, but White House hopefuls of both parties are sure to try. Given the range of candidates who have succeeded to some extent at “Net-raising,” from McCain to Dean to Clinton to Paul, tomorrow’s contenders will probably expect to be able to light up the Net-roots.

Moreover, if Obama is the eventual Democratic nominee, political elites and the news media will surely expect future candidates to demonstrate the ability to raise money on the Internet just as they now must show that they can sign up impressive names for their finance committees.

If a candidate can’t milk the Internet like a cash cow, said University of Wisconsin political scientist Byron Shafer, an authority on the presidential nominating process, “then we know you’ll be limited to what the bundlers can drag out for you. You’re not going to start a campaign and say, ‘This wild Obama thing, I’m not going to bother.’ You’re going to hire a guy and say, ‘Make this work for me.’ ”

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