Guardian Election Feed
- Mad about the boy
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/76822?ns=guardian&pageName=Mad+about+the+boy%3AArticle%3A1298523&ch=From+the+Guardian&c3=Guardian&c4=Sarah+Palin%2CUS+elections+2008+%28News%29%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news%2CMedia%2CPolitics%2CRepublican+convention+2008%2CRepublicans+%28US%29&c6=Ed+Pilkington&c7=09-Oct-31&c8=1298523&c9=Article&c10=Interview%2CFeature&c11=From+the+Guardian&c13=Saturday+interview&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FFrom+the+Guardian%2FSarah+Palin" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">When Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol became pregnant during last year's White House race, her then boyfriend Levi Johnston shot to fame. Now he is trading insults with her mother and about to strip off for a magazine</p><p>For a man who is to be crowned by the Gawker websites at an awards ceremony in New York next month as America's biggest emerging sex symbol, Levi Johnston cuts a very modest figure when you meet him in person. He is wearing a pair of black canvas work trousers that are splattered with mud, a scraggy T-shirt advertising Browning rifles and a khaki cap from under which a splodge of rather greasy dark hair curls up. He badly needs a shave.</p><p>To be fair, he has just got back from what he calls a "suicide trip", meaning a spontaneous hunting expedition, to the Alaskan outback. He and three buddies tracked and killed two black bears, skinning the hide off the 7ft-long animals to turn them into trophies (they didn't keep the meat because he says its "not very good").</p><p>Immediately before that he was away for a fortnight's moose hunting. And earlier in the summer he was out on the mountain ranges hunting sheep. Wait a minute, I say, as we sit talking in an office in downtown Anchorage, Alaska's largest city. Did you say hunting sheep?</p><p>"Yeah. But it's a totally different kind of sheep. They are living in the craziest, hardest mountains to climb, with cliffs on either side – if you slip and fall you are done. Besides, sheep are very smart animals."</p><p>I interject a second time. Sheep are very clever animals.</p><p>"Yeah. Dall sheep are very smart."</p><p>I've been with Johnston for under 10 minutes and already the conversation has taken a turn that, were we anywhere else, would seem bizarre. But that's the way with Alaska, and certainly with Levi Johnston – you cannot understand the place, or the man, unless you suspend judgment.</p><p>It was, after all, while Johnston was out hunting sheep on the Delta river that he received the news that was to change his life. It was 29 August 2008. When he returned to his truck at the end of the day he found his mobile phone full of messages from his girlfriend, Bristol Palin.</p><p>Her mother, the then governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, had just been chosen as John McCain's Republican running mate, to go head-to-head against Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the US presidential elections.</p><p>That announcement didn't just propel Palin from relative political obscurity into the stratosphere, turning her into the darling of large sections of the Republican rump and a soon-to-be bestselling author. It also dragged Johnston kicking and screaming behind her. Before that moment, his life had been unremarkable. He planned to be a professional ice hockey player or, if that failed, an electrician like most of the men in his family.</p><p>But from that instant, he found himself sucked into a media scrum within which he's been confined pretty much ever since. When it was revealed just a few days after Palin's candidacy was announced that her daughter was pregnant, interest in Johnston exploded. His photograph was plastered over newspapers, TV channels and billboards in the US; his childish MySpace utterances were forensically dissected; there was talk of a White House wedding should there be a McCain-Palin win.</p><p>Since the election last November, the birth of his son, Tripp, and his later split with Bristol, there has been no let up. His unsophisticated tastes have been recast into the image of a male model, a would-be Hollywood actor, and now Gawker award-winner. In short, the sheep hunter has been transformed into an international sex symbol.</p><p>At first he resisted. When he heard Bristol Palin's phone message on that fateful day, pleading with him to quit hunting and come home from the mountains, his instinctual reaction was to say no.</p><p>"I didn't want to go down there in front of the cameras. I didn't want to get involved in all that TV and stuff. I wasn't that kind of kid. I don't go to parties, I never went to the prom. I just hang out with a tight group of hockey friends, just doing our own thing."</p><p>Over time, though, his resistance turned into acquiescence and then into enthusiasm. He has accepted the lot that fortune has thrown at him and decided to run with it. He recently starred in a television ad, for pistachio nuts, which features him standing beside his bodyguard with the voice over: "Now Levi Johnston does it with protection." He is in dialogue with a satellite TV station to do a reality show on an undisclosed theme. And he is to appear naked in Playgirl magazine, for which he has been training in the gym up to three hours a day, six days a week. All at the tender age of 19.</p><p>The plan to turn Johnston into a celebrity belongs to the two African American minders he took on board a few months ago: a lawyer called Rex Butler and a bodyguard – he of the pistachio ad – called Tank. It is in their offices that we are sitting and talking. Tank works as a private detective doing criminal work and what he calls infidelity cases. Butler is a litigation lawyer who represented Johnston's mother when she was charged last December with prescription drug violations (she is currently in jail awaiting sentencing). Butler has newspaper cuttings of his cases all over his office walls, and a plaque that reads: "You're in trouble. Big trouble. You need a lawyer. You need Rex Butler."</p><p>Between them, the two men act as Johnston's bodyguards, media agents, advisers, mentors, guardians and priests all rolled into one. It's obvious from the way Johnston interacts with them that he depends on them. "No 'yes' and 'no' answers!", Tank barks before we start the interview, and Johnston dutifully obeys, only rarely falling into the monosyllables for which he is notorious.</p><p>This unlikely pair of minders is also helping Johnston to steer his way through the most sensitive and difficult on-going challenge: his relationship with Sarah Palin. As the father of her grandson, Tripp, who was born on 27 December, Johnston will forever be linked to Palin.</p><p>As she gears herself up for the launch of her multimillion dollar and already massively bestselling book, Going Rogue, she is being increasingly goaded by Johnston. Though he split up with her daughter in March, he continues to act as Palin's irritant-in-chief, accusing her of blocking his access to his son, of being a hypocritical politician and a distant mother, and unfit to govern should she run for the presidency in 2012.</p><p>It was not always so sour between them. "We were pretty close until after the election," Johnston says. "Sarah is really good at throwing on that face and smile and being friendly. I always thought she liked me, but later on I discovered that I don't think she did."</p><p>In Johnston's account of what happened in the run-up to the presidential election, Palin treated him like modelling clay – taking this rugged teenager and smoothing him out to fit the image of the perfect, loyal family man that she wanted presented to the news channels. Even before she was chosen as McCain's running mate, she was pressuring him and Bristol to marry, he says. "Oh yeah, that's what Sarah and Todd [her husband] wanted. She just kept mentioning that we should, she was all in a hurry, so I was 'Alright, I'll do it!'"</p><p>Johnston claims she even offered to adopt Tripp. He says he and Bristol were appalled by the suggestion, which Palin made over the phone while he was at a tattoo parlour, though Palin has strongly denied this.</p><p>After the election any positive feelings between Johnston and the Palin family vanished, though he still wears Bristol's name in a floral tattoo on his ring finger, having not got round to having it removed. Sarah Palin's attitude, he says, changed overnight after she lost the race. "Suddenly it was 'Maybe you ought to think again about marriage, wait, maybe do it next year.' So at that point I had to think that she had just wanted us to marry to make herself look better in the campaign, to boost things up."</p><p>The marriage wasn't the only way the Palin campaign sought to mould him. When he arrived in Minnesota last September for Palin's big speech to the Republican National Convention, he was met by wardrobe artists sent to prepare him for the cameras.</p><p>"These guys came up to me and said they were going to cut my hair. I had a mullet at the time and they cut it off. It was a joke in the first place, a hockey guy joke. I'm glad they cut it off – if I had gone on national TV with that thing! Wow, it was ugly!"</p><p>Then they gave him new clothes. "So they are getting us all pretty [pronounced 'purdy'], and they have these monographed suits laid out on the bed. Armani, Burberry, all kinds of wardrobe. I hadn't even seen Armani clothes before. I just thought, come on!"</p><p>Palin's marching orders to him at the convention were "stay calm, don't talk to the cameras and don't do anything," which for a then 18-year-old, better versed in the behaviour of Dall sheep than of the world's media, was probably sound advice.</p><p>As the election campaign progressed, Johnston says he started noticing a growing split between the Sarah Palin he knew, his future mother-in-law, and the one she presented to the American voters. "Some of the things she said! It was funny; you could catch her out lots of times. Like when she couldn't answer on TV what paper she read. She don't read a newspaper! I never saw her read a newspaper. A lot of things she said, I knew she was lying."</p><p>In front of the crowds, she was Palin the huntin' and shootin' Alaskan. Yet Johnston – who really is a huntin' and shootin' Alaskan, there's the mud on his trousers to prove it – remembers her asking him to show her how to shoot a gun she kept hidden under her bed, and he only saw her fish once for the benefit of the cameras. "I'd say she's definitely stretching it big time, 'cause for three years I never even seen her touch a gun, or go fishing."</p><p>The experience of watching her perform through the election, knowing what he knows about her, has left Johnston sceptical about a Palin run on the White House in 2012. "It's a horrible idea. I just don't think she's got a chance to make it."</p><p>Would she make a good president?</p><p>"No."</p><p>Tank is in the room, and gives him one of his menacing looks as if to say: "No 'no' answers".</p><p>"I don't know," Johnston stutters on, dutiful again. "I just don't think she's got it. She had enough problems running Alaska, she can't run a country."</p><p>There is an undertow in what Johnston says that is clearly threatening to Palin. He says he knows "a lot – I still know more out there" and if he were to talk, it would "hurt her, or get her into trouble", though he insists he doesn't want to do that.</p><p>Palin, through her spokeswoman, has accused him of exploiting his relationship with the family for his own ends, rather than seeking to do what's best for his son. So is he?</p><p>"There's bad and good in everyone. But some of the shit she pulled on me, encouraging Bristol not to let me see the kid. From her acting like she liked me, to that ... The route I chose to pick was because they wouldn't let me see my kid."</p><p>What about Palin's claims that he is lying about her in order to forward his own celebrity?</p><p>"Everything I've ever said is the truth. People can think what they want – that's cool. I'm not asking for everyone to like me. I don't care. I'm just doing my thing, that's what I care about."</p><p>In a funny way, Johnston and the woman who almost became his mother-in-law are strangely similar. He is trying to carve an acting career out of nothing but the fact that he once had unprotected sex with the daughter of someone who went on to become famous.</p><p>Palin was mayor of a town with 9,000 citizens, did well to become governor of Alaska, one of the most remote and sparsely populated states in the US, and was plucked out of nowhere and into the spotlight by a struggling McCain. Now she is poised to launch her bestselling book, and then, who knows, another run on the White House?</p><p>Levi Johnston is preparing to pose for Playgirl. In our celebrity culture, they are a perfect match.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/sarahpalin">Sarah Palin</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-elections-2008">US elections 2008</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/republicans2008">Republican convention 2008</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/republicans">Republicans</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=News&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499094728649630720553503"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=News&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499094728649630720553503" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/edpilkington">Ed Pilkington</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" />
Posted: 10/30/09
- Tory plans to reform parliament would give voters chance to alter bills
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/94989?ns=guardian&pageName=Tory+plans+to+reform+parliament+would+give+voters+chance+to+alter+bills%3AArticle%3A1286614&ch=Politics&c3=Guardian&c4=Conservatives%2CPolitics%2CWilliam+Hague%2CHouse+of+Commons%2CLaw+%28News%29%2CUS+elections+2008+%28News%29%2CBarack+Obama+%28News%29%2CConstitutional+reform%2CUK+news%2CWorld+news&c6=Nicholas+Watt&c7=09-Oct-04&c8=1286614&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Politics&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FPolitics%2FConservatives" width="1" height="1" /></div><p>Voters will be given the power to rewrite laws under Tory plans to transform the way parliament works by importing a popular scheme championed by Barack Obama in last year's US election.</p><p>William Hague will tomorrow announce that the Conservatives will introduce a new stage for parliamentary bills, known as the public reading stage, that will allow voters to reject and rewrite clauses.</p><p>The scheme will be based on the US mixedink website, used by Obama last year. Under the Tory plans, a parliamentary bill would be introduced in the way it is now. The first and main debate – the second reading stage, in which the broad principles of the proposed new laws are debated on the floor of the Commons – would be held in the normal way.</p><p>But once MPs have held this debate, the bill would be thrown open to voters before it is considered line by line at the committee stage. A website would allow voters to comment on and rewrite the broad principles of the bill, and individual clauses.</p><p>Contributors would rank comments so the most popular suggestions appear at the top. This is similar to mixedink, which allows voters to argue for and against various policies and suggest their own ideas.</p><p>The top item on mixedink today was Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the US supreme court.</p><p>Hague will say: "A public reading stage for new legislation will throw open the doors of parliament and enable the public to play a role in the legislative process." The party leadership believes its plan is an example of the "post-bureaucratic age" – a phrase first used by supporters of Bill Clinton, suggesting that in the age of the internet voters can exercise a greater influence on figures in authority.</p><p>The Tories will work with Tom Steinberg, the founder and director of the non-partisan mySociety organisations, which run a series of open-government websites. These include TheyWorkForYou, which tracks MPs, and FixMyStreet, where people report local problems such as potholes.</p><p>Steinberg is a strong voice in the Free Our Data campaign, supported by the Guardian, which demands greater access to government information.</p><p>He said: "A smarter use of IT by government can do more than just deliver services more quickly and efficiently, it can also open up the institutions of state and make our lives as citizens more effective and rewarding. I am looking forward to being part of this change."</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/conservatives">Conservatives</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/williamhague">William Hague</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/houseofcommons">House of Commons</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/law">Law</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-elections-2008">US elections 2008</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barack-obama">Barack Obama</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/constitution">Constitutional reform</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Politics&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499274996739514273615792"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Politics&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499274996739514273615792" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/nicholaswatt">Nicholas Watt</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" />
Posted: 10/04/09
- Acorn – the new Republican bogeyman | Brad Friedman
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/86256?ns=guardian&pageName=Acorn+%E2%80%93+the+new+Republican+bogeyman+%7C+Brad+Friedman%3AArticle%3A1279004&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Republicans+%28US%29%2CDemocrats%2CBarack+Obama+%28News%29%2CUS+elections+2008+%28News%29%2CRace+issues+%28News%29%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news%2CUS+politics&c6=Brad+Friedman&c7=09-Sep-20&c8=1279004&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=CIF+America+%28Blog%29%2CComment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FCif+America" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">If rightwing operatives succeed in bringing down the community group, Democrats and minorities will have lost a valuable ally</p><p>Communism is dead. Al-Qaida isn't as scary as it used to be. But an American rightwing without a bogeyman to fear can't long survive. Enter <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-acorn16-2009sep16,0,1980998.story">Acorn</a> – the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now.</p><p>Finally, something for the Republican party to use to stoke fear among its constituency. Acorn is perfect. The nationwide community group is full of scary black and poor people – who tend to support the Democrats. And, most convenient of all, it registers millions of them, legally, to vote in US elections. Spooky.</p><p>Stop Acorn, and you can stop the rise of citizen democracy altogether – you know, "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address">government of the people, by the people, for the people</a>", as we used to like to say here in the US. Or so the Republicans have convinced themselves.</p><p>Acorn has long been a target for Republicans, who have attempted to tar and feather it with <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2008/10/07/acorn_nevada_offices_raided.html">accusations of "voter fraud"</a>. They <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/15/uselections2008-democrats">pilloried the group</a> before the 2008 election (and several elections prior) when <a href="http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12432392">names like Mickey Mouse</a>, Donald Duck and Mary Poppins showed up on a handful of voter registration forms collected by Acorn. (Never mind the fact that <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6512">none of these fictional characters actually voted</a> and that Acorn itself flagged the fraudulent registration forms and turned them in to election officials, as required by law.) The Bush administration's own department of justice was found to have been illegally helping to target the group for political prosecutions and even John McCain, before receiving his talking points, had <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6508">keynoted an Acorn convention</a>, declaring the group is "what makes American special". Oops.</p><p>But now the vilification of Acorn is <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/us/politics/16acorn.html?partner=rss&emc=rss">in full swing again</a>. A couple of rightwing operatives, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/17/AR2009091704805.html?hpid=topnews">acting as a prostitute and her pimp</a>, caught a few, dumb, low-level Acorn employees suggesting ways in which they could get around US law and avoid paying taxes on her "business". Acorn immediately <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090910/ap_on_re_us/us_acorn_hidden_camera">fired the employees</a>, of course, after the videotapes were made public. But that hasn't stopped Republican opportunists, led by Fox News, from calling for the entire organisation's destruction.</p><p>The point of the demonising is to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125323372671921657.html?mod=googlenews_wsj">shut down their effective voter registration operation</a> and, in the bargain, further the Republican push for state-issued photo ID requirements at polling places, even as they know full-well that some 20 to 30 million Americans – mostly urban, elderly, minority and student (read: Democratic-leaning) – voters don't have such IDs and would not be allowed to exercise their legal franchise.</p><p>In fact, though you're unlikely to hear about it on Fox News, Republicans themselves regularly engage in actual instances of voter fraud. Superstar Republican pundit Ann Coulter <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4538">narrowly avoided</a> felony voter fraud charges in Florida and is being <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6900">investigated for voter fraud in Connecticut</a>.</p><p>The head of the California Republican party's own voter registration firm, Mark Anthony Jacoby of Young Political Majors (YPM), <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7237">plead guilty</a> to charges of voter registration fraud earlier this year. Republican outfits like YPM have actually changed registration forms from Democratic to Republican without telling voters, and even shredded Democratic registration forms altogether, disenfranchising thousands of Americans.</p><p>It's funny how when the American government itself – at its absolute highest-levels – was discovered to have tortured and abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, resulting in actual death, the very same wingnut apologists write it off as the act of a few low-level "bad apples". No accountability for those who actually instituted the policies.</p><p>But when a few actual low-level bad apples – who happen to be African-American, and working for a group fighting for the American Dream for all Americans – commit petty stupidity, the entire organisation must be brought down in order to save the country.</p><p>And Democrats, as weak-kneed and foolish as they are, can't seem to come up with the courage to fight back.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/republicans">Republicans</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/democrats">Democrats</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barack-obama">Barack Obama</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-elections-2008">US elections 2008</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/race">Race issues</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-politics">US politics</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499365502565596603341573"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499365502565596603341573" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/bradfriedman">Brad Friedman</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" />
Posted: 09/20/09
- Beware the rise of the angry white man, Mr President | Michael Crowley
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/99824?ns=guardian&pageName=Beware+the+rise+of+the+angry+white+man%2C+Mr+President+%7C+Michael+Crowley%3AArticle%3A1262976&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=Obs&c4=World+news%2CBarack+Obama+%28News%29%2CUS+healthcare%2CUS+elections+2008+%28News%29%2CUS+Congress%2CUS+domestic+policy%2CBusiness%2CUS+economy+%28Business%29%2CUS+politics&c6=Michael+Crowley&c7=09-Aug-16&c8=1262976&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Comment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">Bill Clinton faced the sometime violent fury of middle America's dispossessed. Now, the same ugly face confronts Barack Obama</p><p>On that heady evening last August when Barack Obama claimed the Democratic presidential nomination before an adoring throng in Denver, it seemed possible he could change the very nature of American politics. Americans, Obama said, had "lost our sense of common purpose". He vowed to restore "the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort". It seemed entirely plausible, as Andrew Sullivan had argued in an influential December 2007 <em>Atlantic</em> magazine essay: "If you are an American who yearns to finally get beyond the symbolic battles of the boomer generation and face today's actual problems, Obama may be your man," Sullivan wrote. Obama, he argued, could usher in a new era of post-baby boomer politics, one that would transcend the culture wars that had dogged America since Vietnam and the rise of Richard Nixon.</p><p>One year later, politics in America has indeed changed, but largely in the sense that the fury that liberals once directed at George W Bush has largely been transferred to the conservatives now raging against Obama. That much has been clear in the spectacle at this month's congressional town hall forums around the country, where the debate over Obama's healthcare reform plan has become a focal point for familiar themes of conservative cultural resentment.</p><p>The town hall events attracted gun rights zealots carrying handguns. Anti-abortion fanatics screamed at congressmen about taxpayer-funded infanticide. Anti-government ideologues, including the newly unemployed Facebook provocateur Sarah Palin, warned of socialism, the loss of "freedom" and technocratic elites allegedly plotting to decide which infirm Americans shall live and which shall die before what Palin has despicably labelled "death panels". So much for common purpose and the grace to bridge divides.</p><p>To witness the mad, hysterical spectacle is to appreciate what has become increasingly obvious for months now: that despite the earnest hopes of the misty-eyed Obamamaniacs, things are not so different in Obama's America. Indeed, we are witnessing the latest iteration of the long-running American culture war that Sullivan and others promised Obama would transcend.</p><p>To be clear, this is not the religious culture war that raged from the Monica Lewinsky scandal and through the Bush era. During that period, evangelical Christians were on the march, promoting their agenda of banning gay rights, stifling stem cell research and discrediting Charles Darwin. But the Christianists have lost their punch after seeing their agenda fizzle even under a two-term Republican president (remember, Bush never came close to banning gay marriage), and crusaders like the Reverend James Dobson have largely withdrawn from the political front lines.</p><p>No, today's culture warriors are more reminiscent of another famous type in recent American politics: the Angry White Male. This was the archetype of the political force that rocked Bill Clinton's presidency during the 1994 congressional midterm elections, in which Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and Senate. The catchphrase was based on the huge shift by white men to the Republican column in that election; just 39% voted for Democratic House candidates that year, a 10-point dip from the 1992 election. The anger was something more intang-ible, but also quite real: storm clouds of bile filling the conservative talk radio airwaves. Most memorably, perhaps, in the autumn of 1994, the Watergate-conspirator-turned-talk-radio-host G Gordon Liddy advised a listener worried about intrusions by federal agents to "shoot for the head".</p><p>Today, white men again symbolise the conservative resistance to a Democratic president. And with a black man in the White House, the racial element is even more pronounced. Think of the recent cast of heroes trotted out by the conservative message machine. Last autumn there was Joe Wurzelbacher – better known as "Joe the Plumber", the Ohio voter who confronted Obama about his tax policies on the campaign trail. It was through this burly, working-class everyman that John McCain was finally able to crystallise a clear campaign theme, one which warned that hard-working, blue-collar Americans were about to be steamrolled by know-it-all elites with visions of a socialist utopia. Implicit in the celebration of Joe the Plumber, whether intentional or not, was also a racial contrast with the African-American Democratic candidate. In this sense, the message was cultural as much as economic, one that reached back to Richard Nixon's appeals to the Silent Majority.</p><p>The working-class white hero resurfaced this spring, with Obama's Supreme Court nomination of judge Sonia Sotomayor. Conservatives hammered at Sotomayor's foolish past statement that a "wise Latina" judge should be able to reach a better decision than a white man. And they lionised the white Irish and Italian firefighters who had been denied promotions by a 2008 ruling in which Sotomayor had concurred, arranging to have the firefighters testify in full, noble uniform before the Senate judiciary committee before the national television cameras.</p><p>But it was midsummer that brought us the apotheosis of contemporary angry white man politics. On 20 July, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested on the porch of his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after breaking through a door that had been jammed, leading a passerby to report a possible burglary. After haranguing the responding police officer, sergeant James Crowley, Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct. Asked about the incident at a televised press conference, Obama responded that, although he didn't "know all the facts", the Cambridge police had "acted stupidly".</p><p>Obama was probably right, but he, too, had acted stupidly. The off-the-cuff comment dominated national politics for days, as Americans debated the precise questions of class and race that Obama most dreads. Crowley, it turned out, was a hardy family man who spent his evenings on the softball field, while it emerged that Gates, a friend of Obama, enjoys riding his shiny red adult tricycle around Martha's Vineyard. To conservatives, here was an fine example of the president siding with his Ivy League intellectual pal, who also happens to be black, against the blue-collar white man trying to do his job.</p><p>It was precisely because Obama recognised this explosive culture-war dynamic that he quickly intervened in the controversy, admirably seeking to turn it into a "teachable moment" by inviting Gates and Crowley to sit down for beers at the White House. But it was also in this context that the inexplicably popular Fox News host Glenn Beck, perhaps the most cynical demagogue of the moment, articulated the venal id of this new moment last month. Obama, Beck explained, "has exposed himself… as a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture".</p><p>Beck's idiotic commentary may have been self-defeatingly crazy. (Several advertisers have since boycotted his show.) But as a general proposition, it's hard to dismiss the notion that a carefully orchestrated white man's cri de coeur is at last partly to blame for dragging down Obama's agenda. The president's approval ratings have been sinking steadily and public opinion is now turning against his healthcare reform plan. Polls reveal rising voter trust in Republican ideas on other issues, like taxes and the economy (although Republican approval ratings overall remain dismal). With a new political narrative in motion, it may be that such cultural resentments may lead Republicans to a strong showing in the 2010 midterm elections.</p><p></p><p></p><p>In the face of such an onslaught, Obama's best hope for salvation lies not in teachable moments but in the prospect of economic recovery. Nothing makes white men angry, after all, like the humiliation of lost jobs and diminished earning power. And, while recent economic data has been mixed, there are hopeful indications that a recovery may be under way, one which Obama can attribute to his much-derided economic $787bn stimulus plan – just in time for those midterms.</p><p>There is also the possibility that the culture war can backfire on the right. The town halls may be good theatre, but they are also troubling. Passions are rising to irrational, even dangerous levels. Last week, a Maryland man was detained for holding a "Death to Obama" sign outside one congressional town hall meeting. Experts who track hate groups report a nationwide spike in violent rhetoric targeted at the president on the websites of white supremacists and militia groups. In this context, it's worth remembering that the last round of angry white man politics went well beyond a change in congressional power. On 19 April 1995, anti-government fanatics bombed the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. With that act, the culture war stopped being an abstract concept and became something more literal. (Although, ironically, that tragedy led the American public to rally to Clinton's side, a shift that may have rescued his presidency.)</p><p>We can only hope it doesn't come to that again. But that such a thought even needs uttering may show how sadly ephemeral was the belief that Obama might magically heal the deepest wounds in America's divided culture.</p><p></p><p><em>Michael Crowley is a senior editor of the </em>New Republic Magazine</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barack-obama">Barack Obama</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/healthcare">US healthcare</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-elections-2008">US elections 2008</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/congress">US Congress</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usdomesticpolicy">US domestic policy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy">US economy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-politics">US politics</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499423951804882841083353"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499423951804882841083353" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/michaelcrowley">Michael Crowley</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" />
Posted: 08/15/09
- What might the world look like if the bailout works? Like Sarah Palin | Naomi Klein
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/4814?ns=guardian&pageName=Capitalism+doesn%27t+care+that+centuries+of+pillage+will+pull+the+world+ap%3AArticle%3A1256030&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=Guardian&c4=Sarah+Palin%2CGlobal+economy+%28Business%29%2CEnvironment%2CClimate+change+%28Environment%29%2CGlobal+recession%2CBanking+%28Business%29%2CUS+foreign+policy%2CUS+domestic+policy%2CUS+news%2CUS+economy+%28Business%29%2CUS+elections+2008+%28News%29%2CBusiness%2CWorld+news%2CUS+politics&c6=Naomi+Klein&c7=09-Jul-30&c8=1256030&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=Comment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FComment+is+free" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">She was the last clear expression of capitalism-as-usual. And if we waste this chance, it will be back to drill-baby-drill</p><p>The US bailout is a robbery in progress, the greatest heist in monetary history. But consider for a moment: what if it actually works, what if the financial sector is saved and the economy returns to the course it was on before the crisis struck? Is that what we want? And what would that world look like?</p><p>The answer is that it would look like Sarah Palin. Hear me out – this is not a joke. We're so busy laughing at her we may not have given sufficient consideration to the meaning of the Palin moment. Think about it, Sarah Palin stepped on to the world stage as vice-presidential candidate on 29 August 2008 at a McCain campaign rally. Two weeks later, on 15 September, Lehman Brothers collapsed, triggering the global financial meltdown.</p><p>So in a way Palin was the last clear expression of capitalism-as-usual before everything went south. That's quite helpful because she showed us – in that plain-spoken way of hers – the trajectory the US economy was on before its current meltdown. By offering us this glimpse of a future, one narrowly avoided, Palin provides us with an opportunity to ask a core question: do we want to save that pre-crisis system? Or do we want to use this crisis, and the electoral mandate for serious change delivered by the last election, to radically transform the system? Progressives need to get clear on our answer now because we haven't had the potent combination of a serious crisis and a clear progressive democratic mandate for change since the 1930s. We use this opportunity, or we lose it.</p><p>So what was Sarah Palin telling us about capitalism-as-usual before she was so rudely interrupted by the meltdown? Let's first recall that before she came along, the US public, at long last, was starting to come to grips with the urgency of the climate crisis, with the fact that our economic activity is at war with the planet, that radical change is needed immediately. We were actually having that conversation, and <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/139537" title="polar bears were on the cover of Newsweek magazine">polar bears were on the cover of Newsweek magazine</a>. And then in walked Sarah Palin. The core of her message was this: those environmentalists, those liberals, those do-gooders are all wrong. You don't have to change anything. You don't have to rethink anything. Keep driving your gas-guzzling car and keep going to Wal-Mart. The reason is a magical place called Alaska. Just come up here and take all you want. "Americans," she said at the Republican National Convention, "we need to produce more of our own oil and gas. Take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska, we've got lots of both." And the crowd at the convention responded by chanting: "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhvRQyRdVEI" title="Drill, baby, drill.">Drill, baby, drill.</a>"</p><p>Watching that scene on television, with its weird creepy mixture of sex and oil and jingoism, I recall thinking: "Wow, the RNC has turned into a rally in favour of screwing Planet Earth." Literally.</p><p>It's not a question of whether Americans are nuts enough to elect Palin in 2012. What Palin was saying is what is built into the very DNA of capitalism: the idea that the world has no limits. She was saying that there are no such things as consequences, or real-world deficits. Because there will always be another frontier, another bubble, another Alaska. Just move on and discover it. Tomorrow will never come.</p><p>This is the most comforting and dangerous lie that there is: the lie that perpetual, unending growth is possible on our finite planet. And we have to remember that this message was incredibly popular in those first two weeks, before Lehman collapsed. Despite Bush's record, Palin and McCain were pulling ahead. And if it weren't for the financial crisis, and for the fact that Obama started connecting with working-class voters by putting deregulation and trickle-down economics on trial, they might have actually won.</p><p>The president tells us he wants to look forward, not backwards. But in order to confront the lie of perpetual growth and limitless abundance that is at the centre of both the ecological and financial crises, we have to look backwards. And we have to look way backwards, not just to the past eight years of Bush and Cheney, but to the very founding of the US, to the whole idea of the settler state.</p><p>Modern capitalism was born with the so-called discovery of the Americas. It was the pillage of the incredible natural resources of the Americas that generated the excess capital that made the Industrial Revolution possible.</p><p>Early explorers spoke of a New Jerusalem, a land of such bottomless abundance, there for the taking, so vast that the pillage would never have to end. This mythology is in our biblical stories – of floods and fresh starts, of raptures and rescues – and it is at the centre of the American Dream of constant reinvention. What this myth tells us is that we don't have to live with our pasts, with the consequences of our actions. We can always escape, start over.</p><p>These stories were always dangerous, of course, to the people who were already living on the "discovered" lands, to the people who worked them through forced labour. But now the planet itself is telling us that we cannot afford these stories of endless new beginnings anymore. That is why it is so significant that at the very moment when some kind of human survival instinct kicked in, and we seemed finally to be coming to grips with the Earth's natural limits, along came Palin, the new and shiny incarnation of the colonial frontierswoman, saying: Come on up to Alaska. There is always more. Don't think, just take.</p><p></p><p>This is not about Sarah Palin. It's about the meaning of that myth of constant "discovery", and what it tells us about the economic system that they're spending trillions of dollars to save. What it tells us is that capitalism, left to its own devices, will push us past the point from which the climate can recover. And capitalism will avoid a serious accounting – whether of its financial debts or its ecological debts – at all costs. Because there's always more. A new quick fix. A new frontier.</p><p>The question that we face is whether our job is to bail out this ship, the biggest pirate ship that ever was, or to sink it and replace it with a sturdier vessel, one with space for everyone? One that doesn't require these ritual purges, during which we throw our friends and neighbours overboard to save the people in first class. One that understands that the Earth doesn't have the capacity for all of us to live better and better. But it does have the capacity, as the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, said recently at the UN, "for all of us to live well".</p><p>Because make no mistake, capitalism will be back. And the same message will return, though there may be someone new selling that message: You don't need to change. Keep consuming all you want. There's plenty more. Drill, baby, drill. Maybe there will be some technological fix that will make all our problems disappear.</p><p>And that is why we need to be absolutely clear right now. Capitalism can survive this crisis. But the world can't survive another capitalist comeback.</p><p><em>This is an edited version of a speech from The Progressive's 100th anniversary conference. A longer version is in the August edition of the </em><a href="http://www.progressive.org/klein0809.html" title="Progressive magazine"><em>Progressive magazine</em></a><em> </em></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/sarahpalin">Sarah Palin</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/global-economy">Global economy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change">Climate change</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/globalrecession">Global recession</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/banking">Banking</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usforeignpolicy">US foreign policy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usdomesticpolicy">US domestic policy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/useconomy">US economy</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-elections-2008">US elections 2008</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-politics">US politics</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499471101455655216064249"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499471101455655216064249" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/naomiklein">Naomi Klein</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" />
Posted: 07/30/09
- Franken laughs last | Brad Friedman
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/92565?ns=guardian&pageName=+%7C+Brad+Friedman%3AArticle%3A1240142&ch=Comment+is+free&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=US+Congress%2CDemocrats%2CRepublicans+%28US%29%2CMinnesota+%28News%29%2CUS+elections+2008+%28News%29%2CUS+news%2CWorld+news%2CUS+politics&c6=Brad+Friedman&c7=09-Jun-30&c8=1240142&c9=Article&c10=Comment&c11=Comment+is+free&c13=&c25=CIF+America+%28Blog%29%2CComment+is+free&c30=content&h2=GU%2FComment+is+free%2Fblog%2FCif+America" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">The long-running battle for Minnesota's Senate seat is finally over. Democracy – and Al Franken – won fair and square</p><p>In the end, the conspiracy theories became so laughable that the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee (RSCC) quietly removed its own <a href="http://minnesotarecount.com/">"Minnesota Recount" website</a>, once it became clear that no, the Democratic candidate Al Franken was not "stealing" the US Senate election in Minnesota, as the Republican party had been shamefully declaring, without actual evidence, for weeks following election day back on 4 November 2008.</p><p>Nearly eight months on from election day, Franken finally got to celebrate his election as Minnesota's next US senator after the defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman dropped his quixotic legal challenge, and the state's Republican governor announced he was going to formally approve Franken's victory.</p><p>Although the victory was sealed today, the Republican claims of "voter fraud" became impossible to support long ago, because hand-marked paper ballots – nearly three million of them – as cast by the voters in the squeaker of an election, were actually being counted, in full view of the media and any interested citizen alike. To a ballot, they were all accounted for, and any disagreement about voter intent on those ballots was adjudicated in an open process by a bipartisan state canvassing board. All but a handful of those votes were determined unanimously by the board to have been cast either for Franken, for Coleman, for a third party candidate or for nobody at all.</p><p>The only question remaining after the weeks-long, painstaking, public hand-count was whether a number of uncounted absentee ballots, rejected as per the state's strict standards for counting, should, in fact, be counted.</p><p>A tripartisan, three-judge panel took their time, in yet another fully public process, in reviewing evidence and hearing witness testimony presented by both sides. A few hundred more ballots were deemed to be legitimate and improperly rejected, and those too were then publicly counted – the counting again witnessed by all – and added to the final tally.</p><p>Hand-counted paper ballots proved, yet again, to be the gold standard in this election, which the state canvassing board, the three-judge election contest panel and now the <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7271">state's supreme court has affirmed</a> as won by Franken, the former radio talkshow host and comedian, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/30/al-franken-norm-coleman-minnesota">by a mere 312 votes</a>.</p><p>Minnesota's excellent election law, requiring both the secretary of state and the governor to sign the election certification only after all election contests are settled in the state, has assured that the next senator from Minnesota will not serve under a cloud of suspicion. Only the most insane and/or disingenuous could challenge the findings from one of the longest and most transparent election hand-counts in the history of the US.</p><p>Coleman, of course, may do exactly that. Though it's exceedingly unlikely the US supreme court would rule in his favour – or even deem to review the case – Coleman <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/06/minnesota-supreme-court-rules-on-colemans-appeal-he-lost-franken-won-the-election.php">still has the right</a> to decide whether or not he'll continue his fight, by taking it to the highest authority in the land. </p><p>If other states, and even the nation, had a law requiring that all ballots actually be counted, and all contests be fully settled before seating, we might have avoided the clouds of illegitimacy which always shrouded the Bush administration following the disputed election results in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004, as well as countless other races – including Iran 2009.</p><p>When ballots are counted in secret (or, in many cases, not counted at all), democracy is dangerously imperilled. Lucky for Minnesotans, that wasn't the case up there, even if it meant some eight months without proper representation in the US Congress. It was worth the wait.</p><p>Transparency was no match for the conspiracy theorists, including <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6660">the RSCC</a>, <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6959">the head of the Republican party</a> and even <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6918">the Republican National Lawyers Association</a>, who embarrassingly joined <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6649">the black helicopter crowd</a> in touting <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6665">evidence-free claims</a> of Franken's "efforts to steal a seat in the United States Senate".</p><p>Coleman, of course, was entitled to his contest, though it quickly became a desperate comedy of errors for the ousted Republican. His election contest began with a presentation of <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6857">doctored evidence</a> and concluded with the revelation of <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6951">hidden legal notes and witnesses</a>. The more he challenged the election and the counting of previously rejected absentee ballots, the wider Franken's <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7049">margin of victory grew</a>.</p><p>The hard-fought post-election contest was understandable, of course. It's a pity that Democrats don't fight like hell for each and every vote they're entitled to (yes, I'm speaking to you, John Kerry, and too many of your colleagues, or would-be colleagues.) Franken's victory will now offer the Democrats a 60-vote, filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, following the recent party jump by former Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter.</p><p>Minnesota's law is a good one, but as with any law, there is no guarantee it won't be abused, as Coleman has done for so many months by filing specious challenges, flipping and flopping on ballots he first <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/02/franken-lawyer-coleman-complains-about-rejected-ballots----after-he-threw-out-votes.php">fought to keep from being counted</a>, only to change his mind later in hopes of having them counted after all, once it appeared he was on the losing side of the democratic draw.</p><p>And what of those <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/13/election-acorn-voter-fraud">infamous claims of Democratic "voter fraud"</a> by all of those Acorn voters? After the most detailed, ballot-by-ballot, voter-by-voter analysis of an election likely in the history of the country, surely the Republicans would be able to show at least <em>one</em> case of fraud committed by <a href="http://bradblog.com/acorn">their favourite bogey-man</a> community organising, voter-registration group, right? After all, Acorn managed to register more than 42,000 new voters in Minnesota in the last election cycle. With <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/oct/16/republicans-acorn-voter-fraud">all the claims of voter fraud</a> being committed by the group, surely this election, of all elections, would be where evidence of all that fraud would finally be revealed for all to see, no? Um, no. Apparently not.</p><p>Not a single allegation of Acorn-related voter fraud was presented by the Republicans throughout the entire eight-month contest, even in an election in which just a few hundred votes separated winner from loser. The closest anybody came to presenting evidence of such fraud was when Coleman's own witness admitted that he hadn't signed his ballot, and that it had been <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6870">forged by his girlfriend</a>. Coleman fought to have that ballot, and others that were also illegally submitted, accepted in the final tally. So much for the Democratic voter fraud canard. If nothing else, this election once again revealed the Republican claims of voter fraud to be amongst the biggest frauds in modern American elections. Transparency has a way of doing that.</p><p>Despite <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/24383.html">his concession speech</a> this afternoon, Coleman could still try his luck at the US supreme court, and given the wild-card make-up of that body, anything could happen, I suppose. The law has little to do with it, it seems (see 2000's Bush v Gore). But the story here is that democracy only works when every citizen is allowed to participate both in the casting and – as importantly – in the counting of the ballots.</p><p>When democracy is visible to all, it works. When it becomes buried behind secrecy, insider tabulations and computerised black boxes, the very basis of our system of government is put dangerously at stake.</p><p>Transparency wins again. Along with the voters of Minnesota. Nice to see the voters win one for a change. Now if Barack Obama puts his money where his mouth is and delivers some of the transparency to the American people that he once promised, we might stand a chance at rebuilding this country. That appears a difficult fight at this time. But the results, if we can get them, just as in Minnesota, will be worth every moment of that fight.</p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/congress">US Congress</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/democrats">Democrats</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/republicans">Republicans</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/minnesota">Minnesota</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-elections-2008">US elections 2008</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-politics">US politics</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499513849550939121123002"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Commentisfree&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360499513849550939121123002" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/bradfriedman">Brad Friedman</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" />
Posted: 06/30/09
- Barack Obama won using 'old school' technology, says his campaign manager
<div class="track"><img alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.20.3/93611?ns=guardian&pageName=Barack+Obama+won+using+%27old+school%27+technology%2C+says+his+campaign+manage%3AArticle%3A1237786&ch=Media&c3=GU.co.uk&c4=Cannes+Lions+ad+festival+2009%2CBarack+Obama+%28News%29%2CDigital+media%2CUS+news%2CTelevision+industry+%28Media%29%2CAdvertising+%28media%29%2CMarketing+and+PR%2CWorld+news%2CFacebook%2CTwitter+%28Technology%29%2CTechnology%2CUS+elections+2008+%28News%29%2CDemocrats%2CWeb+2.0%2CUS+politics&c6=Mark+Sweney&c7=09-Jun-25&c8=1237786&c9=Article&c10=News&c11=Media&c13=&c25=&c30=content&h2=GU%2FMedia%2FCannes+Lions+2009" width="1" height="1" /></div><p class="standfirst">David Plouffe, mastermind of Obama's 'web 2.0 campaign', downplays role of Facebook and Twitter in US election victory</p><p></p><p></p><p>David Plouffe, who masterminded Barack Obama's lauded web 2.0 presidential campaign, today admitted that it was "old school" technology including emails and TV advertising that propelled the campaign to victory and not Facebook and Twitter.</p><p>Obama's campaign had been feted as a successful example of harnessing modern digital media, including social networking websites, to win campaigns.</p><p>However, Plouffe, speaking at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, admitted that much older web technologies and a good dose of old-fashioned TV advertising were chiefly responsible for the victory.</p><p>"It was a historic marriage, in US politics at least, between digital technology and grassroots [campaigning]," he said.</p><p>"We did have a big Facebook presence and MySpace. When we started, Twitter wasn't really around, it was at the end. The real drivers were old school, email and web [traditional websites for the campaign]. We did build a social networking [presence] but it was web and email."</p><p>Plouffe said that the campaign, which included a massive amount of classic door-to-door campaigning, harvested 13m email addresses. During the course of the presidential race more than 1bn emails were sent and people made 4m donations online. Total online donations topped a record $500m (£307m), with the average amount $85.</p><p>However, Plouffe was quick to debunk another myth, that the Obama campaign was a pioneer of online donation, pointing out that John McCain was very successful at it in 2000 in his challenge to George Bush for the Republican nomination. "Lucky he forgot this time around," he said.</p><p>While hailing the combination of digital and grassroots strategy, Plouffe pointed out that the campaign was hugely dependent on solid TV advertising.</p><p>"It is fashionable to suggest that TV ads are less and less important, but we needed to have balance, and they were incredibly important to the campaign," he said.</p><p>However, the Obama camp adopted a different TV strategy to traditional US political marketing doctrine.</p><p>The campaign ran a half-hour TV ad in the closing days of the campaign – "it could have been presumptuous, could have turned people off" – but sacrificed traditional 30-second and 60-second adverts in favour of a specifically targeted two-minute TV ad as the economy hit the skids in September.</p><p>"We sacrificed reach for targeting," he explained.</p><p>The two-minute TV ad, which Plouffe describes as "probably the most important ad we ran", aired in all battleground states with a no-nonsense message about Obama's view on the economic situation and policy.</p><p>He said that the advert ran with no music, jargon or sound bites and no graphics other than a website address at the end.</p><p>"We talked to people like they were adults," he said. "Nothing is more important than authenticity. People have very sensitive bullshit-o-meters. There was a lot of depth to that ad."</p><p>Plouffe said the campaign learned that online video was watched much more avidly by consumers, young and old, than other media.</p><p>He paid tribute to online activity from outside the campaign that had an impact. He pointed to the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/12/d-ad-awards-black-pencils-droga5" title="phenomenal impact of clips such as Sarah Silverman's The Great Schlep ">phenomenal impact of clips such as Sarah Silverman's The Great Schlep</a> to galvanise Jewish voters; the music video created by Black Eyed Peas singer Will.I.Am, which features stars such as Scarlett Johansson, using lyrics from Obama's speeches; and the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2008/dec/11/top-viral-ads-2008" title="2008 version of the famous Budwieser "Wassup" TV ads">2008 version of the famous Budweiser "Wassup" TV ads</a> which featured the characters in dire circumstances, such as being posted to Iraq.</p><p></p><p><em>• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.</p><p>• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".</em></p><div class="related" style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><ul><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/cannes-lions-ad-festival-2009">Cannes Lions 2009</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/barack-obama">Barack Obama</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/digital-media">Digital media</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/television">Television industry</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/advertising">Advertising</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/marketingandpr">Marketing & PR</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/facebook">Facebook</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/twitter">Twitter</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-elections-2008">US elections 2008</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/democrats">Democrats</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/web20">Web 2.0</a></li><li><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-politics">US politics</a></li></ul></div><div class="guRssAdvert"><a href="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/click.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Media&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360500202335438393583051857"><img src="http://ads.guardian.co.uk/image.ng/richmedia=yes&site=Media&spacedesc=rss&system=rss&transactionID=12591360500202335438393583051857" border="0" /></a></div><div class="author"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/marksweney">Mark Sweney</a></div><br/><div class="terms"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk">guardian.co.uk</a> © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our <a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html">Terms & Conditions</a> | <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/feeds">More Feeds</a></div><p style="clear:both" />
Posted: 06/25/09
