Samantha Power has resigned and apologized for remarks about Senator Hillary Clinton, which the LA Times quotes as follows:

"We f------ up in Ohio," Power said in the interview posted on the newspaper's website. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.

"She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything," Power said, trying to withdraw her remark.

"You just look at her and think, 'Ergh.' But if you are poor and she is telling you some story about how Obama is going to take your job away, maybe it will be more effective. The amount of deceit she has put forward is really unattractive."

The "monster" bit goes too far, it is true. But the rest of it? Well, obviously Clinton won more than just Ohio, but that last paragraph and "stooping to anything" sound about right to me.

So is this the part of the media narrative on Obama where the Golden Boy begins to stumble into a relentlessly negative news cycle from which only he can save himself through a possible Comeback in Pennsylvania? Is this where the decision to "go negative" undermines his Lofty Campaign of Hope and Change?


"Old Republican tactics" - like, say, implying that your opponent is a threat to national security and the safety of your children? How about threatening to sue if election results and process rules don't give you the outcome you desire?

Senator Hillary Clinton scores a point in the LGBT column for her public appearance (albeit via satellite transmission) with openly lesbian icon Ellen Degeneres on the campaign trail. As Scott Shrake reports, the crowd was pretty openly gay, too.

Good for Clinton. Some may scoff that Ellen is the most mainstream-friendly gay icon, not exactly a challenge to hetero-normative ideology, but I think Clinton runs two big risks here. First, Democrats have been pretty quiet about queer issues since conventional wisdom blamed "gay marriage" for motivating Christian Conservatives and other homophobes to tip the balance for George Bush over John Kerry in 2004. So for once Clinton is defying conventional wisdom by bringing Ellen, who made pop culture history by coming out of the closet on her show and attempted to address queer issues in its last season, into her campaign. This is very different from appearing on Ellen's talk show, where Barack Obama showed up last Fall to show off his dance moves (Ellen and dance are also closely linked concepts these days, for better or worse.) Ellen's campaign appearance is Clinton's answer to Oprah's Obama advocacy.

The second risk is for Clinton, personally. The Right has made no qualms in making lesbian jokes about her, and even contending that she is in fact a closeted lesbian herself. In a sane world, questions about a candidate's sexuality would be dismissed as irrelevant or idle gossip - or even better, we would happily have an out-and-proud lesbian President. But in this world, photos of Clinton palling with an openly gay public figure run risks of inflaming irrational fears and biases among voters similar to those provoked by, say, a photo of Obama in a turban. (FTR - no, I don't think the Clinton campaign spread it around, but it's not like they are above that sort of thing.) In other words, Ellen's appearance on Clinton's campaign trail offers the Right wing attack machine plenty of fodder.

Like I said, good for Clinton. She didn't let that scare her. Perhaps she and her staffers ran a cost-benefit analysis (Shrake thinks Ellen appeals to a youth vote.) But I like to think that maybe, just this once, Clinton threw caution to the wind and said, "Fuck 'em."

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for Obama to crawl out of the deficit column where he landed thanks to that whole McClurkin thing.

Senator Joe Lieberman and SCOTUS Judge Antonin Scalia, having watched too many episodes of "24", want to leave the "torture" option open just in case that "ticking time bomb" scenario ever comes up.

And apparently so does John McCain. Despite his own experiences as a tortured POW, McCain will back a Bush veto of the just-passed legislation banning waterboarding. Well, at least McCain showed up to vote against the bill. His Democratic rivals were too busy campaigning.

Oh, and: While the BushAdmin's DOJ spokesman declared that waterboarding is indeed currently illegal, the BushAdmin reserves the right to change that in the future. Don't worry, they'll notify Congress.

Leave it to Barbara Ehrenreich to get to the root of what has bothered (at least) me about Senator Clinton's remarks regarding LBJ and MLK:

But Clinton's LBJ remark reveals something more worrisome than racial tone-deafness - a theory of social change that's as elitist as it is inaccurate. Black civil rights weren't won by suited men (or women) sitting at desks. They were won by a mass movement of millions who marched, sat in at lunch counters, endured jailings, and took bullets and beatings for the right to vote and move freely about. Some were students and pastors; many were dirt-poor farmers and urban workers. No one has ever attempted to list all their names.

My fears that the political news media and public intellectuals would push the Democratic nomination race into a race-vs.-gender competition have become reality with nauseating rapidity. Adam Nagourney, writing the best piece I have seen on the matter, does his professional best to maintain balanced coverage of both Clinton and Obama camps; but it is hard (for me, at least) to not conclude that the Clinton campaign - both the candidate and her surrogates - has not acted at their best. Much of the problem, in my view, is not that they are deliberately making race an issue, but that their actions and comments are ridiculously racially biased in reflecting white privilege and in assumptions about black voters.

Consider Geraldine Ferraro's quote from Nagourney's story:

“As soon anybody from the Clinton campaign opens their mouth in a way that could make it seem as if they were talking about race, it will be distorted,” Mrs. Ferraro said. “The spin will be put on it that they are talking about race. The Obama campaign is appealing to their base and their base is the African-American community. What they are trying to do is move voters from Clinton by distorting things. What have they got to lose?”

Ferraro is wrong on at least one thing: the base of Senator Obama's support has not been the Africa-American community. For the past year, Obama has built his campaign from a wide coalition of forces spanning age, gender, race, ethnicity and class. But he has also been at pains to convince African-Americans that he is a legitimate candidate. Remember the whole "Is he black enough?" thing? Indeed, political observers have long assumed black voters supported Clinton by default due to long-standing ties the Clintons have had with them. Yet Ferraro assumes that Obama's biracial identity makes him the default candidate of black voters.

So what did the Clinton campaign "open its mouth" about? Let's go back to the original sin, Senator Clinton's remark about President Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King. I don't think Clinton was attempting to demean King - indeed, she acknowledges his leadership and bravery. Her problem was one inherent to her privileged position as a prominent white person with elite biases.

Well, and historical blindness. People forget that Senator Lyndon Johnson was instrumental in weakening the Civil Rights Bill of 1957 in concessions to Southern objections in the Senate, effectively setting the struggle back another seven years. If King, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers and thousands of other citizens had not kept up the pressure, that weak legislation would have been the last word on the matter for at least a generation. So, sure, it takes politicians to get legislation passed, but without sustained organized pressure from the people, don't count on it.

Cartoonist Pat Oliphant is a brilliant caricaturist and political cartoonist. But this is downright sexist. It takes Senator John Edwards' criticism of Senator Clinton's emotional moment (as I will keep saying, she didn't actually cry, she got verklempft) to an even worse level. As much as I support Edwards over Clinton -- in fact, because I worry more that Clinton is a hawk is dovish costume -- I object to the caricature of Clinton as a "weepy, weak female" (to put a stereotype in irony quotes) who can't be "tough" (ditto) on the international stage. Indeed, it is such sexist stereotyping that Clinton has consistently sought to overcome in her public persona and that may have motivated her (and her Democratic male colleagues) to take such cynical positions granting war powers authorization against Iraq and supporting Kyl-Leiberman on Iran.

My good friend Barry Deutsch has taken me to task on a cartoon I did a couple months ago portraying Clinton as weeping into her husband's arms following criticism she received during the October 30th debate. Remember, "politics of pile-on"? Kate Phillips provided further context for the controversy, and indeed it is that context, as well as Clinton's cynical attempts at foreign policy "toughness," that inspired the cartoon. In my view, Clinton's defensive use of gender identity in response to legitimate criticisms from her political rivals was not an instance of her being a "weepy, weak female" but of being a (more gender-neutral) "cry baby." Instead of handling the criticism directly, she tried to make it seem that she was the target of a "boy's club." Put together, such defensiveness, cynical use of gender politics, and bringing in her husband to defend her against "those boys" created the impression that she was not the feminist ground-breaker she claims to be.

That's where I was coming from. But what an artist intends and what the art does on its own can be two different things. Barry is probably right that the final panel of my cartoon plays into sexist stereotyping, no matter what I intended. That experience has made me a bit more cautious (and I think I'm pretty cautious as it is) in how my artistic responses to political events and politicians' behavior reinforce stereotypes, cant and other moronic assumptions. Had Bill Clinton been the candidate responding in a similar fashion (minus gender politics), my portrayal of him as "cry baby" would have been more clear, at least by not being clouded by cultural attitudes toward gender. Yet had I portrayed him weeping into his wife's arms, would it have implied that he was "emasculated" or "less than a man"? Possibly yes.

In conversation (in person, not online) Barry had asked me if I thought Elizabeth Edwards' defense of her husband against Ann Coulter's "faggot" remarks were any different from Bill Clinton's defense of his wife. I would say, yes, given the context: Coulter's criticisms were indefensible, whereas the criticisms from Hillary Clinton's rivals were reasonable responses to contradictions she had made in a debate; and, again, Bill's "those boys" comment followed on the heels of Hillary's "boy's club" comment and her campaign's "pile-on" YouTube video. That said, my cartoon should have been more explicit in criticizing these tactics and clarifying that context. To some extent I was trying to do too much at once. The image itself - Clinton sobbing in the arms of her husband - resonates far beyond my own intentions and serves to subvert my criticism. 

Too Sense Blog joins a rising chorus of responses to Steinem's racism-vs.-sexism argument:

.... women don't stop being white because they're women. And Hillary Clinton has not lost her access to white privilege because she is a woman. The current media narrative, even as Obama takes the lead in the polls, is so utterly familiar: White is substance, black is style. She's the real deal, he's the flash in the pan. She's "competent" while Obama is merely inspiring. He is a good show, but not "presidential" as old fat white dude Andy Rooney would say.

Steinem embraces this narrative, because adressing white privilige would complicate the mantle of victimhood she is attempting to drape herself with. Yes, it is very true that the media has been unfair to Hillary Clinton...but she has yet to be accused of being a Muslim radical in disguise. That accusation would hold as much truth leveled at Hillary as it does directed at Obama, but he's black, so the "Madrassa" story sticks.

The whole post is worth reading, btw.

UPDATE: Fulfilling her role as Gloria Steinem's bizarro world counterpart, Camille Paglia offers her sexist analysis of Hillary Clinton's "sadomasochistic" psyche as part of her justification for voting for Barak Obama.

UPDATE UPDATE: I'm just posting this stuff as I come across it. But Frances Kissling's "Why I'm Still Not for Hillary Clinton" is truly worth reading.

Following Iowa, voters were pummeled with the word "change." Following New Hampshire, will we be soaked with weeping candidates?

What drives me nuts about the Crying Hillary meme:

• Senator Clinton did not, in fact, cry. She got a little misty. She was verklempft.
• The woman who asked the question that everyone attributes to Clinton's New Hampshire victory did not, in fact, vote for Clinton. She voted for Obama. As she told Hear & Now this morning, Obama's passion made her cry.
• How utterly stupid it is to make a voting choice based on a candidate's perceived tear duct expression.
  
• According to the meme, women voted in huge numbers for Clinton, not because of her positions on the war or health care or something substantive, but because she "cried," evoking sisterly solidarity against Senators Obama and Edwards, who were perceived to "gang up" on her once again during Saturday's debate.

This last point seems to confirm Gloria Steinem's contention that Clinton has "no masculinity to prove" - that she has broken through the "Muskie/Shroeder" barrier inhibiting expressions of "soft" emotions. Yet Maureen Dowd has an apt rejoinder to that notion:

But Hillary did feel she needed to prove her masculinity. That was why she voted to enable W. to invade Iraq without even reading the National Intelligence Estimate and backed the White House’s bellicosity on Iran.

One could argue that Dowd is conflating "masculinity" with national security "toughness," but I think she's acknowledging a conflation that has troubled Democrats since the war in Viet Nam, to the benefit of Republicans who indulge braying machismo. John Kerry and John Edwards voted for the war, too, making the same mistakes and with the same presidential ambitions.

Which brings me to the more substantive reason to oppose Clinton's candidacy: the needle of her moral compass points wherever political expediency attracts it.

Do I then apply a double standard, letting Edwards off the hook? No. Edwards has repeatedly acknowledged that he was wrong, blames no one else for "misleading" him, maintains a consistent criticism of the war in Iraq and advocates a foreign policy that reflects the lessons learned from this gigantic mistake (e.g., no "bellicosity on Iran.")

Tom Tomorrow's "The Trouble With Hillary" neatly summarizes my feelings towards her candidacy.

However, I do like the meme that suggests that, as Rebecca Traister put it, "New Hampshire voters served up a major 'Fuck you'" to the coronation of Obama by the news media and right wing pundits.

Click image to enlarge

While watching CNN's breathless coverage of the returns from the Iowa caucuses, my daughter Katie cheered on both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. At nine years old she thought it would be a great thing if a woman or a black man became President. For an adult, such thinking seems superficial; you vote on the issues, you vote for the candidate who offers the best hope (or on my more cynical days, who will do the least damage), all in the context of competing interests, corporate influence, existential crises in the environment and geopolitical theater. Yet for a young biracial girl, these matters are not superficial. They are a pretty big deal.

I cheered on Obama, too, as well as the white man with the Southern drawl who knocked Clinton to a close third place. Of the three speeches delivered by the Democratic "frontrunners" I think John Edwards delivered the most passionate critique of America's class system with a clear eye towards how to level the playing field — or at least make it less tilted. Obama invoked the Civil Rights era, evoking a whoop from my daughter, who has been reading up on her Black history. Meanwhile, Clinton sounded like she couldn't get out of Iowa fast enough. If we end up with Edwards or Obama getting the Democratic nom, I'll be happy.

As for the Republicans, Huckabee is probably a flash in the pan. He has no organization, despite his charm and Ed Rollins. But I could be wrong. I am more interested in seeing Romney go down in flames, taking Giuliani and Thompson with him.

The Guardian reports that the Obama people and the Clinton people are fighting over a possible character "slur" that columnist Robert Novak claims the Clinton people have leaked to him about Barak Obama.

What if - and I'm just putting this out there, so don't think there might be any basis for this speculation - what if Robert Novak is just being a dick?