For Father’s Day my son gave me a CD I’ve wanted for awhile, Merle Haggard’s “Bluegrass Sessions.” In that CD lies a story about how America has changed in less than a generation.

Hags has always had a checkered reputation among white liberals as does most country music. It reminds me of the famous line from the original “Grand Ole Opry,” when host George D. Hay said, “This ain’t grand opera it’s the grand ole opry!” For white liberals, especially of the limousine variety, country music gets associated with the word redneck a lot and many of them think of Merle Haggard as the biggest redneck of them all. Some progressives would no more have a Haggard CD in the house than watch Bill O’Reilly or read a book by Ann Coulter.

But to lump Haggard with those two is to completely misread the man. First, he’s got more talent. I remember reading once that his voice covers eight octaves. He also recorded one of the first country concept albums–and one of the greatest American recordings–a two record tribute to Jimmie Rodgers titled “Same Train, Different Time.”

Merle Haggard is actually one of a dying breed, a country performer who came up the hard way, from the poorest of backgrounds with a stint in San Quentin on his record, where legend has it he heard Johnny Cash and decided to become a country singer.

Like Cash, Loretta Lynn and others, Haggard gave a voice to those who didn’t have a voice, who needed someone to tell their stories, from those who worked the cotton fields like Cash’s family or the mines like Lynn’s or the California labor camps filled with displaced Okies like Haggard’s family.

The Counterrevolution tried to turn Haggard into an icon, an Ann Coulter with a guitar, but he shunned the role, for he is a more complex soul than that. He also was plainly uncomfortable with being used. Sometimes when he would sing “Okie from Muskogee” he would do it with that famous Haggard smirk he can get. Some got it, some didn’t, and some refused to say they got it.

Back a few years ago, country music stars wrapped themselves in the flag and those who didn’t were soundly castigated. Remember the Dixie Chicks? In a London concert lead singer Texas native Natalie Maines said on stage,

We’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.

Immediately after the remarks hit this side of the pond, a firestorm broke out, with people calling for a boycott of the Chicks and smashing CDs in demonstrations designed to attract as many cameras as possible. In one of the most controversial reactions, radio stations stopped playing Chicks’ recordings. Gail Austin, Clear Channel’s director of programming for two Jacksonville, Florida stations said:

Out of respect for our troops, our city and our listeners, [we] have taken the Dixie Chicks off our play lists.

That was 2003, but in a signal of things to come, one of the country performers who spoke out for the Chicks was none other than Merle Haggard.

Five years later even stars such as Toby Keith, who plays a star-spangled guitar, and Tim McGraw had changed their tunes. According to CommonDreams.org

:Now Keith says he is a lifelong Democrat and has claimed he never supported the war….Tim McGraw - the biggest contemporary country star - has a hit single with If You’re Reading This, about a dead soldier’s last letter home, and the Dixie Chicks, boycotted in 2003 after lead singer Natalie Maines told an audience in London: “We’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas,” won five Grammy Awards this year.

But the biggest story of all is Haggard. This fall when Haggard came out with the “Bluegrass Sessions” he had America talking yet again. This time the center of attention was a song titled “What Happened?” The tag line of which is:

What happened? Where did America go?

I can’t quote any more of the lyrics because of copyright restrictions, but let’s just say “What Happened?” is an interesting song the covers a lot of bases. Some of them echo themes in the book Strange Death. For example, Haggard’s chorus laments the decline of “mom and pop” owned stores at the expense of corporate behemoths such as Wal-Mart. He also hits the high price of gasoline (and this was before it hit $4) and one of his–and America’s favorite topics–the evening news.

On the other hand there a Reagan-like complaint about Uncle Sam spending your money and an ambiguous line about “truth that stood for years” no longer means anything. Finally there is the requisite reference to 9/11.

In many ways, “What Happened?” is a laundry list of the complaints that you can find in any recent poll about the attitudes of American voters. In short, they are angry and frustrated. Back a year ago, just before the Iowa primary, a Des Moines Register poll showed:

Sixty-four percent of Iowans believed “things have gotten off track.

After the release of his album Haggard did a most un-Haggard-like thing: he hit the road hustling his CD and gave interviews that made clear exactly how he felt about what had happened to America under one George W. Bush.

No less than Time ran a story, “Does Merle Haggard Speak for America?” which laid it all out:

Merle Haggard has always had his guitar hardwired to the gutbucket pulse of Middle America. Back in the Vietnam era, he seemed the essence of a historic political migration: white males fleeing the feminized, antiwar, politically correct Democratic Party.

In the interview Haggard went after George Bush, mincing no words:

The folks don’t have a say-so anymore. They’re being force-fed—music, yeah, but every other darn thing too. I supported George W. I’m not exactly a liberal. But I know how that Texas thing works, who those oil folks are and what they wanted in Iraq… I’m a born-again Christian too, but the longer I live, the more afraid I get of some of these religious groups that have so much influence on the Republicans and want to tell us how to live our lives.

But Haggard wasn’t done:

The thing that gets under my skin most about George W. is his intention to install fear in people. This is America. We’re proud. We’re not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. But this government is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We’re changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other’s dresses. Fear’s the only issue the Republican Party has. Vote for them, or the terrorists will win. That’s not what Reagan was about. I hate to think about our soldiers over in Iraq fighting for a country that’s slipping away.

Then Haggard did something even more unprecedented he wrote a song endorsing Hillary Clinton for President with the line:

This country needs to be honest/This country needs to be large/Something like a big switch of gender/Let’s put a woman in charge.

Back in the 1960s there was a saying that when Lyndon Johnson lost Walter Cronkite was when he knew he had lost the American people. When George W. Bush lost Merle Haggard he had to feel he had lost the American people. The Counterrevolution also has to be worried that maybe America is finally catching on to its game.

Haggard’s support of Hillary Clinton also hints at an important dynamic that the Democrats would be wise to heed. Clinton’s successes were fueled by what might be termed “Haggard voters,” working class people who have long represented the core of Haggard’s audience. With Hillary Clinton’s withdrawal from the election there has been much speculation about where these voters will go come November.

If I were Barack Obama and the Democratic Party I would be sure I did not lose the “Haggard voters.” The themes he evokes in “What Happened?” are essentially about a country in which the playing field has become tilted so much that we have to wonder, “Where did America go?” Merle Haggard may be trying to tell the Democratic Party it needs to recover this theme.

What do you suppose would happen if Haggard wrote a song for Obama? That truly would signal change is in the air.

Tags: bluegrass sessions, counterrevolution, country music, Democratic Party, Dixie Chicks, George-W-Bush, grand ole opry, Haggard voters, Hillary Clinton, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn, Lyndon Johnson, merle haggard, Obama, okie from muskogee, The Strange Death of Liberal America, Tim McGraw, Toby Keith, what happened, working class
Tagged with: bluegrass sessions • counterrevolution • country music • Democratic Party • Dixie Chicks • George-W-Bush • grand ole opry • Haggard voters • Hillary Clinton • Johnny Cash • Loretta Lynn • Lyndon Johnson • merle haggard • Obama • okie from muskogee • The Strange Death of Liberal America • Tim McGraw • Toby Keith • what happened • working class

I am on the road again for the first time in many years, returning to some places on the East Coast I had not seen since before the millennium turned. Being a Midwesterner, I always like Midwestern small towns because at least a few of them are trying to resist becoming what I term Gasoline Ghettos–those villages of motels, restaurants, and other tourist traps that now line the outskirts of virtually every major Interstate highway intersection.

The East Coast has a different appeal for me in the it is so old that Gasoline Ghettos often have a tough time muscling aside two-hundred year-old houses and shops. But I think what has impressed me most about the landscape of this trip is how much America is becoming alike.
Even on the East Coast now the Gasoline Ghetto is becoming the primary architectural style. And where there aren’t gasoline ghettos, the chains with their recognizable buildings and neon signs are everywhere. Whatever corporate marketi8ng department decided that all Pizza Huts or Best Buys should look the same should be consigned in the manner of Dante to a hell of sameness.

Before becoming disabled, I used to travel a lot, but I finally grew tired of what every serious business traveler knows as the “where am I now” syndrome that comes from staying in motels that all look the same no matter where you are so that one morning you wake up, look out the window and for a minute you have to think to remember where you are. So I started looking for bed-and-breakfasts or anything that wasn’t a chain. Once I stayed in a local motel so bad that in the morning there was a small snow drift inside the front door. But I knew exactly where I was.

When I started writing The Strange Death of Liberal America, I decided that each chapter would begin with a description of a place–a real place–because I felt one of the more insidious developments of the Republican Counterrevolution was that it was rapidly taking away the local and the unique. Everything is now owned by a chain and if everything is owned by a chain that makes all of us mere cogs in the wheels that those chains move.

Critics as far back as the late Lewis Mumford have been writing about the dangers of homogenization but I don’t think it really hit home until this trip. Because of my disability this is the longest trip I have taken away from home in five years and the only way I was able to manage it was to finally intimidate a certain airline into providing me with what is known as “handicapped” seating. I always though those seats were reserved for George Bush and Dick Cheney, but found out people like me that have trouble being shrink-wrapped into a seat in the middle of an aisle can actually avail themselves of these seats–although it practi8cally takes an Act of Congress to reserve one.

Two years ago on a car trip back from a college basketball tournament with my son it was he who was quite familiar with the ways of the Gasoline Ghetto, having ridden the team bus for four years and stayed in cheap motels. One morning at one of those ubiquitous buffet breakfasts, while my wife and I muddled through what for us was unfamiliar territory, he had a plate full in less than two minutes. When I asked him his secret, he said, “They’re all the same. After four years you get so you can do it in your sleep.”

Then he told us that the night before after a particularly embarrassing loss their coach refused to buy them dinner and instead went to the grocery store and bought bags of cold cuts and bread. The players decided they wanted to eat as a team so they proceeded to take over the motel lounge until the manager threw them out saying the lounge was for guests only. They protested they were guests (in fact the team probably buttered their bread fairly well the two nights they were there), but the manager would have none of it.

In Strange Death I wrote about the impact of the chains on intellectual creativity, particularly the media chains that have made being an innovator like Elvis or a Louis Armstrong or any kind of rap or hip hop artist an endangered species because they threaten that eternal soundtrack that runs in supermarkets, telephone hold backgrounds, motel lounges, and restaurants. Until my son talked about life on the road, I didn’t really realize how corporate chains have insinuated themselves into our minds.

Most Americans now live in suburban developments where the houses are churned out by computers and look the same whether in New York or Georgia or New Mexico. When we travel, we stay in a Gasoline Ghetto. In between we may listen to CD�s also turned out by the same conglomerates or one of those programmed radio stations owned by the likes of Clear Channel. Local or individual character is rapidly becoming extinct. You literally don’t know where you are.

What does this have to do with America? Think Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s warning that a very clever Michael Moore turned into Fahrenheit 9/11. But Moore missed the deeper message–although it does not diminish the power of his movie–that is, if you live in an environment of physical sameness, sooner or later it will metamorphose into an environment of intellectual sameness. Gasoline Ghettos become intellectual ghettos, for the minds no longer stimulated by the unique, the unusual, the imaginative lose the power to imagine. They atrophy the way any muscle atrophies that is not used.

Atrophied brains lead to people who are easy to manage, people who are willing to give the president the benefit of the doubt. Even more, those who protest or even engage in the intellectual equivalent of my son’s basketball team eating in the motel lounge will swiftly be dismissed.

We need to do all we can to insure that architectural uniqueness and independent voices do not die. This is also where the blogosphere comes in. Right now it is the only outlet for some of us. We need to fight to be sure it does not become the equivalent of a Gasoline Ghetto dominated by the equivalent of chains. Because when it does guess who will be wearing the chains?

Tags: architectural sameness, blogosphere, chain stores, Chicago, Clear Channel, clear_channel, college_basketball, creativity, Dick-Cheney, Elvis, fahrenheit_451, fahrenheit_9/11, gasoline_ghettos, George Bush, interstate highway, lewis_mumford, Louis_Armstrong, Michael_Moore, motels, ray_bradbury, The Strange Death of Liberal America, where_am_i_now_syndrome
Tagged with: architectural sameness • blogosphere • chain stores • Chicago • Clear Channel • clear_channel • college_basketball • creativity • Dick-Cheney • Elvis • fahrenheit_451 • fahrenheit_9/11 • gasoline_ghettos • George Bush • interstate highway • lewis_mumford • Louis_Armstrong • Michael_Moore • motels • ray_bradbury • The Strange Death of Liberal America • where_am_i_now_syndrome

As just about everyone in blogdom knows, recently the Democrats decided to issue credentials to CERTAIN bloggers to attend the convention. I have long referred to what Skippy the Bush Kangaroo call blogtopia as blogdom, because in recent years it has turned into a rather feudal place where certain well-connected blog nobility seem to call the shots, from getting noticed by the national press to being invited to conventions.

Anyone who has lived in blogdom can predict who is on the list. I won’t increase their already inflated hit counts by citing them here. I will only say that these blogs are to the Net what ABC and CBS are to the mainstream media. Their voices are as predictable and as independent as the New York Times. These are not folks who will rock the boat. You won’t see any posts coming out of Denver that focus on Bill Clinton’s role in the mortgage crisis.

Sounding as if he were hyping a stale donut, Aaron Myers, Director of Online Communications for the DNCC, stated:

Since we began planning, one goal has been at the core of all our efforts: to engage as many communities as possible in the Convention experience. We’re excited to provide bloggers with the opportunity to be the eyes and ears of so many at this Convention. Today, we are shattering the standard we set just four years ago, when the 2004 Democratic Convention was the first to credential blogs. This year, we will more than triple the number of blogs credentialed to witness history in the making.

Bobby Clark, Deputy Director of ProgressNow–for whom progress is made one baby step at a time–uttered this BS about the credentials:

We are proud to cooperate with the DNCC to ensure that for the first time, so many citizen journalists will have the tools and access they need to cover a national Convention. The progressive movement really is a ‘Big Tent’, and we think this unique event will be a huge hit with bloggers, non-profit leaders, and even some members of the professional media.

Note that word “cooperate.” When this campaign is over check the final financial statement filed by the Convention and if you don’t find a payment to ProgressNow, I will be very surprised.

As for the number of bloggers, triple means 55. Fifty-five–that’s all the bloggers who will be invited to the Democratic National Convention–and some of those were invited only after the AfroSpear protested that the bloggers were predominantly white. Not only are they white they are Wonderbread white–long since grown stale and irrelevant.

Those of you who are reading this have randomly wandered on this blog–which according to my tracking stats a fair number are reading for the first time–or even got here because Google sent you to this site because this post mentions sex [just had to throw that in there]. Any Newbie who has cruised blogdom knows that choosing 55 blogs to cover the convention is about like choosing the winner for American Idol [we'll get that link in here also].

There are literally thousands of blogs of the Net. What is interesting about the Democrats’ choices is that the blogs that dominate their short list are old and stodgy and frankly somewhat middle-of-the-road. When you think about it this is not only narrow-minded, but stupid. This is going to be a close election and blogs could play a role in determining the outcome, but by choosing the old guard, they have revealed that they have little interest in reaching out to a variety of ideas.

Pam Spaulding at Pandagon all but predicted what would happen:

As a candidate in the general pool, which will be announced at the end of the month, I think that list will probably generate even more heat than the release of state blogs, given the volatile nature of the blogosphere “A-List” — and “everyone else” conflicts that erupt from time to time.

To top this off, a “Big Tent” for bloggers will be in part hosted (and no doubt raking in money) for the most notorious, hypocritical, exclusionary and frankly self-promoting blog on the net–the one with the orange pages. If the “Big Tent” is anything like the orange blog expect folks to be kicked out for drinking the wrong kind of coffee, wearing the wrong t-shirt, letting slip the wrong phrase, or speaking in the wrong accent. Also expect Big Orange to make Big Bucks off this effort.

In the official announcement the Democrats put out about inviting blogs to the Convention, you have to read the fine print to find out:

Bloggers will be required to pay for their own travel and accommodations. All bloggers are invited to apply for housing through the DNCC media housing process.

Now some of the better bloggers I know are not rich folks. We all know what will be the inflated price of lodging at the DNC, so if you’ve got a spare thousand or two lying around you might be able to cover the convention. In other words, the bloggers covering the DNC will be the same bloggers who fell all over millionaire Ned Lamont a few years ago because they did not have a clue what working class voters wanted or thought about. These are also the bloggers who said in 2006 the economy was not an issue and as late as last spring sang the same tune.

But guess what, even for the princes and princesses of Blogdom, covering the DNC will hardly be a picnic. Pam Spaulding relates the rules for bloggers that were laid out to her by Myers:

Floor access for the general pool bloggers (that includes the MSM), will given in 30-45 minute blocks of time via floor pass credential, which will be obtained at a specific table/area in the hall. There will be no limit on how many times a general pool blogger can receive this pass during the convention. The general pool bloggers will also have a designated area to obtain the pass separate from traditional media so they aren’t competing with them for floor access.

When you aren’t getting your valuable 30 minutes of floor time guess where you will be–on a basketball practice court that has been converted into a media room where you get to watch on TV just like the rest of us. Think about the thirty minutes? Have you ever been to or seen one of those conventions? It can a good part of thirty minutes just to get from one part of the floor to another or to find a specific delegate you might want to interview.

And here is another thing you can bet on: those passes will be very scarce for the “big moments” such as Obama’s speech. But just supposing you land one of those coveted passes–will someone drag you off the floor in the middle of the speech because your thirty minutes are up?

So in that overused phrase here is the bottom line for bloggers at the DNC–fork over $1,000 or so for airline tickets, lodging, food all to sit on a practice basketball court and watch the goings-on on television. Of course, we know certain bloggers will have their expenses paid.

Perhaps the best idea for the right way to do this came from Jason Rosenbaum at The Seminal:

I’d like to propose a different way of selecting blogs for these positions. Blogs are an outsider phenomenon. They represent the everyday citizen and activist commenting on political goings-on. Likewise, the Democratic party says it is the party of the average American. Given our party and our movement’s focus on people, I propose those bloggers with the least access should be given credentials.

This means people who work for the state or national party or traditional media outlets are passed over - those well connected in politics can find other ways to attend the convention and there will be plenty of traditional media coverage there already. The focus should be on those who traditionally are outsiders. This means bloggers going to the convention should be activists who occasionally work against the party establishment, women and minorities who are always underrepresented, and community builders who have brought together average citizens outside the normal political establishment.

As for the rest of us we’ll be watching on TV in comfortable chairs, maybe even wearing our pajamas (remember when they called us pajamahadeen), probably with our favorite brew on hand, and if like me you are disabled, maybe even blogging from bed.

Maybe in the end we got the better deal.

BTW: Just so this won’t be viewed as sour gripes, I did not apply or want to apply for blogging credentials. Seems like their application form said little about those of us with disabilities.

Tags: American Idol, Barack Obama, blogdom, bloggers, blogs, blogtopia, Democratic National Committee, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party, sex, Wonderbread
Tagged with: American Idol • Barack Obama • blogdom • bloggers • blogs • blogtopia • Democratic National Committee • Democratic National Convention • Democratic Party • sex • Wonderbread

Sometimes I tend to get behind, so I am now writing about a special Juneteenth which occurred on Thursday, the nineteenth. According to the National Registry:

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery in the United States. Dating back to 1865, it was on une 19^th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free. Note that this was two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact on the Texans due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive order. However, with the surrender of General Lee in April of 1865, and the arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

At events across the country, families again gathered to tell the stories yet one more time, stories that speak of the resilience and creativity of African Americans.

Juneteenth should also be a day in which all of us recognize how African Americans have enriched this nation. It would not be too much to say America moves with an African American rhythm, sometime awkwardly, sometimes imperfectly, and many times hesitantly, but that syncopated, off-the-beat cadence is there not merely in our music, our poetry, our speech, the way we walk and dress, but in the very soul of America.

There are those who would deny that soul exists and others who would hold that what W.E.B. DuBois called the “souls of black folk” could never exist in the minds of white folks. But just the same it is there, for without Juneteenth America would be something else, something not quite aa vital or alive.

But something special ran through Juneteenth in this extraordinary year, something that had to bring a special edge to the celebration, for this Juneteenth, African Americans could rejoice that for the first time in American history a black man carried the Presidential nomination of a major political party. A year form now the celebration could be about an African American President.

In honor of this special Juneteenth, I include a poem that is sometimes read on this day, Maya Angelou’s “Still I Rise:”

Tags: Abraham Lincoln, African Americans, Barack Obama, Civil War, emancipation proclamation, Juneteenth, Maya Angelou, W.E.B. DuBois, YouTube
Tagged with: Abraham Lincoln • African Americans • Barack Obama • Civil War • emancipation proclamation • Juneteenth • Maya Angelou • W.E.B. DuBois • YouTube

In the current feud running through the Democratic Party, supporters of Hillary Clinton blame the Democratic National Committee for much of the mess because the DNC would not bow to Clinton’s demands over the Florida and Michigan delegations. But actually the situation is more complex than that.

It goes back at least as far as the 2004 Dean campaign and actually back even to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Both Dean and Clinton challenged the regular establishment–Dean from the left and Clinton from the right. By the time Clinton left the White House he and his Democratic Leadership Council were the establishment as signified my the elevation of Clinton aide Terry McAuliffe to head of the DNC.

But McAuliffe was bounced after the debacle of 2004. John Kerry’s loss was bad enough, but the Democratic Party took a big hit in that election and blamed McAuliffe. There were some in the Party who felt that McAuliffe had not mastered the new modern campaigns that Howard Dean and Karl Rove both emblemized, campaigns that used the Internet and other communications technologies to mobilize the grassroots. The grassroots Rove and Dean appealed to were, of course, entirely different, but each in his own way had proven effective.

So when it came to selecting a successor to McAuliffe, Dean threw his hat in the ring and even though the DLC types were not happy with his candidacy they failed to mount a formidable opposition candidate. From the beginning Dean clashed with the DLC which by now had become the old guard.

Some of the conflict between Dean and the DLC stems from the 2004 campaign. In that campaign Dean was asking a very relevant question: What if the whole Hollywood production that has been titled “America’s Right Turn,” was nothing more than a phantom, a marketing creation, a fad, right up there with Pet Rocks and Cabbage Patch dolls? What if the strategy of the Democratic Party was merely like one of those bad Hollywood sequels, Rocky VIII, Crocodile Dundee Does Kansas City, Superman Redux? What if there was an error on the part of all the pundits who have made American politics a cacophonous squawk like a huge flock of crows descending on a particularly foul and rotting corpse?

Dean officially announced his presidential candidacy in June 2003, fully a year ahead of the convention and half a year before the first primaries. In his announcement he threw down a gauntlet to his own party saying, “Most importantly, I have wanted my party to stand up for what we believe in again.” What Howard Dean was trying to tell us was that the rise of the Republican Counterrevolution could be a much more complex and sinister phenomenon that the mere fact that one bright morning in America people had suddenly awakened and decided to become Republicans.

Howard Dean showed that Liberal America still had a pulse, and a pretty strong one at that. All the prescriptions and therapies being advocated by the self-designated care givers such as “slowing down” and “relaxing,” “toning down” the advocacy may in fact be doing the patient more harm than good.

After his election as head of the DNC, one of the biggest disputes was over Dean’s “Fifty State Strategy,” which was designed to rebuild the party from the ground up in every state. The old guard saw this as ridiculous because it was essentially throwing away money on states the Democrats could never hope to win.

After the Democrats won in 2006, you would have thought it was a time for rejoicing, but the DLC-types were determined to poison the water. Former Clinton aide and now-television-commentator James Carville fired a shot at Dean during an election night analysis on CNN. It surprised me that a person for whom numbers represent the main weapons of a well-stocked arsenal should come out shooting without any ammunition other than remarks from some anonymous Republicans (his wife, maybe). After comparing Dean to Donald Rumsfeld (as low a blow as one Democrat can make against another), Carville pointed out,

“There was a missed opportunity here,” he said. “I’ve sat down with Republican pollsters to discuss this race: They believe we left 10 to 20 seats on the table.”

The morning after Carville became even bolder calling for Dean’s resignation in a meeting with reporters:

Asked by a reporter whether Dean should be dumped, Carville replied, “In a word, do I think? Yes.”

The candidate Carville actually proposed to replace Dean was none other than Democratic Leadership Council chair and Kentucky Representative Harold Ford:

Suppose Harold Ford became chairman of the DNC? How much more money do you think we could raise? Just think of the difference it could make in one day. Now probably Harold Ford wants to stay in Tennessee. I just appointed myself his campaign manager.

For those of you not familiar with the Democratic Leadership Council a brief aside is in order. In 1985 a group dominated by conservative Southern Democrats including Al Gore, Chuck Robb, Sam Nunn, John Breaux, and an Arkansas governor named William Jefferson Clinton organized the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) with the initial mission of securing the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination for a moderate Southerner.

By 1990 Bill Clinton had became chair of the DLC. His first act was to preside over the formulation of the 1990 New Orleans Declaration. This document would become the blueprint for Clinton’s future and that of the Democratic Party. The most telling of these principles are:

We believe the Democratic Party’s fundamental mission is to expand opportunity, not government.

We believe that economic growth is the prerequisite to expanding opportunity for everyone. The free market, regulated in the public interest, is the best engine of general prosperity.

When Howard Dean entered the race in 2004, many saw his candidacy as an opportunity to end the reign of the DLC. When he became head of the Democratic National Committee similar hopes emerged. But the DLC would make like difficult for Dean. Carville was not the main thorn in Dean’s side, that came from former Clinton staffer and supporter Rahm Emanuel, who during the 2006 campaign openly feuded with Dean, at one point storming out of a meeting with DNC chair. According to Chicago Tribune reporter Neftali Bendavid, who witnessed the meeting Emanuel banged his hand on the table then:

Chided Dean’s grassroots plan, “No disrespect, but some of us are arrogant enough, we come from Chicago, we think we know what it means to knock on a door. You’re nowhere Howard. Your field plan is not a field plan. That’s fucking bullshit.”

Emanuel then released a letter demanding Dean release funds to his own Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). Fortune called the letter:

The political equivalent of Microsoft executives arguing over how many Xboxes to ship where for the Christmas season.

Fortune went on to note Emanuel could sling the mud just as well as Carville, saying that in a meeting Emanuel:

Obliquely suggests that Dean is nearly as big an obstacle as Karl Rove to a Democratic win.

Any systems thinker worthy of the name could see the ultimate result of the Emanuel strategy would be a one-state party. But what is more important to note is that the Emanuel-Dean feud is about more than money–it is about ideological control of the Party. A lengthy investigation by Truthout uncovered the ideological roots of Emanuel’s machinations:

According to Democratic candidates who ran for House of Representative seats in 2006, Rahm Emanuel, then head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, took sides during the Democratic primary elections, favoring conservative candidates, including former Republicans, and sidelining candidates who were running in favor of withdrawal from Iraq.

An examination of individual races reveals a pattern of financial and political support for wealthy conservative candidates and an assault on their grassroots-supported opponents who were running on platforms that included a full withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.

In review of Bendavid’s book on Emanuel in The American Prospect, Sarah Goldman writes:

He is adamant that “we have no base!,” a view that clearly guided his strategy for selecting candidates. As Bendavid writes, “he would not support the most loyal Democrats, or those whose populism was purist. His only criterion, he said, was who could win.” This kind of single-minded, values-be-damned vision is anathema to some on the party’s left.

The plot gets even more elaborate. In researching this article, two names popped up that make the credentials fight a bit clearer. One is Donna Brazile, the former Gore campaign manager who is currently being pilloried for her vote in the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegations and the other is Nancy Pelosi. Here is reporter Nina Easton’s account of a meeting between Brazile and Emanuel:

As I arrive for a July interview with Emanuel at DCCC headquarters, former Gore campaign chief Donna Brazile is standing on the sidewalk, buttonholing him. A party veteran, Brazile has seen more than her share of internal Democratic Party squabbles, and she’s worried about this one.

Some party activists view Emanuel as the instigator of a feud that is dividing the party. Dean may be the object of sighs and eye-rolling by pragmatic, big-donor Democrats-the crowd that has generally signed on with Emanuel-but as a populist hero to party activists and the “netroots” he helped spawn, the former presidential candidate has his own powerful base. So Brazile tells me she is here to deliver a compromise plan she hopes will cool the fires between the two men.

So TWO YEARS AGO, Brazile, to her credit, was trying to settle the dispute.

As for Pelosi, according to a recent report, guess which candidate she is supporting to replace Barack Obama in the Senate should he win the White House? Rahm Emanuel.

At this point, we need not go over the bitter hearings over the seating of the Florida and Michigan delegations other than to place them in the context of this larger dispute between Howard Dean and the DLC:

There has been a struggle in the Democratic Party between Howard Dean’s DNC and the Clinton wing of the Party. The alternative organization Dean formed after his unsuccessful bid for president, Democracy for America, was a direct slap at the Democratic Leadership Council. So the struggle yesterday was a struggle between two factions of the Party.

In the end the dispute was about something much bigger–the future of the Democratic Party. In many ways it resembled the conflict between Dean and the DLC resembles the conflict that almost tore apart the 1912 convention. That also was a dispute between Democratic progressives and conservatives. While my ideological sympathies are clearly with the Dean wing, it is clear the feud has to end or the result will be disaster next fall.

Donna Brazile may not exactly be well-liked by Clinton supporters but two years ago she had the right idea when she went to visit Rahm Emanuel and propose a compromise. Brazile and others like her will hold the key to extricating the Democratic Party from its difficulties.

Several weeks ago I predicted Dean would be gone as a result of the delegates dispute. Sometimes it is nice to be wrong. Barack Obama renamed Dean as head of the DNC, showing where he stands in the feud. Hopefully this will move the party forward and perhaps end the feud.

I wrote a piece about Obama facing a task comparable to that of Woodrow Wilson in uniting a divided Democratic Party. Let us hope this move helps to heal those divisions much as Wilson was able to heal those of 1912.

Tags: 2006 election, Democratic Leadership Council, Democratic National Committee, Democratic National Convention, Democratic Party, Donna Brazile, fifty-state strategy, Hillary Clinton, Howard Dean, James Carville, John Kerry, Karl Rove, Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, Terry McAuliffe, Woodrow Wilson
Tagged with: 2006 election • Democratic Leadership Council • Democratic National Committee • Democratic National Convention • Democratic Party • Donna Brazile • fifty-state strategy • Hillary Clinton • Howard Dean • James Carville • John Kerry • Karl Rove • Nancy Pelosi • Rahm Emanuel • Terry McAuliffe • Woodrow Wilson

Of all the culprits involved in the current Democratic Party mess none has drawn more ire than the media. Many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters believe the media cost their candidate the nomination.

Admittedly the media have become America’s favorite scapegoat. Something goes wrong and we blame it on the media. It has especially become the favorite scapegoat of those who themselves depend on the media and even cultivate media attention–Hollywood types, politicians, public figures. Their whining about the media many times has the tone of someone who was spurned by their dream date.

The public also loves to blame the media, perhaps because they are the one scapegoat you can invoke around the Xerox machine and not worry about getting someone angry. Everybody loves to hate the media. They routinely come in near the top of least-trusted American institutions.

Being a hoops fan, right now the talk is all about how some shadowy inner circle conspired with the media to make sure that the NBA finals would feature a Lakers-Celtics matchup. Plays are dredged up from previous games that may have been dubious calls as prime exhibits in the case against the media as rigging the finals. After the Celtics remarkable comeback the other night, people I know were saying there was no way the media would let the series end at six games. These conspiracy types have this series penciled in for seven, because that will give the media the maximum take.

The Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama feud has provoked some similar comments. Partisans of candidates who dropped out of the race say the media wanted an Obama-Clinton contest all along. Clinton backers are saying the media inflated Obama’s appeal and cost their candidate the huge early lead she had piled up. Obama partisans are saying the media prolonged the contest after it was clear Obama had the momentum. Both think the media are contributing to the current mess.

At the epicenter of this earthquake are the debates. The media’s role in them can be broken down into several concerns: 1) the issue of the media hosting and controlling the debates, 20 the format of the debates, 3) the questions–who was asked what and how many times, 4) who was invited to the debates, and, 5) their fairness to each candidate.

Beginning with the first issue, in the past national organizations such as the League of Women Voters served as hosts and organizers of the debates with details about format and time being worked out with representatives of the candidates. This year marks the first time the media involved themselves so extensively in this role.

By doing so they crossed a line that has serious implications for our democracy. The media have now become the queen/king-makers of our government. This gives them unprecedented power. Add to that the growing media concentration plus the trend towards partisanship most exemplified by the nation’s first overtly political network–Faux News–and we have a volatile combination. If the media choose the candidates, then it behooves the candidates to be nice to the media.

The Constitution, of course, would prohibit Congress from forbidding the media to host debates, but the parties and candidates could put a stop to this ominous new perversion of our political system by refusing to participate. The problem is that none of them wants to bite the hand that feeds them.

The 2008 debates for both parties illustrate why we should be concerned about this unprecedented media power. The scripts for both parties were eerily familiar the way they played out with an early front-runner who lost support, a dark horse no one thought could win emerging from the pack, and the neglect shown so-called minor candidates in both parties. Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul were similar candidates in their outspoken views and both received little media attention.

This leads to issue number two–the format for the debates. The media decided the format, the questions and even screened the audience. In those debates that focused on audience participation, the questioners and their questions were carefully auditioned ahead of time, seemingly using the same criteria the media use for quiz show contestants.

Only the debate questioners passed through an even more rigid screening. You will see more diversity on the Price is Right than you saw at the debates. Questioners were inevitably white–except when a point needed to be made, such as with the stereotypical choice of a Latino voter to ask the immigration question. Questioners also represented the inhabitants of TV Land in that they tended to be young, photogenic and frankly more articulate than the rest of us. By the end of the debates the audience and their questions had become as predictable as the characters in a sitcom.

The format had another serious flaw we all recognized: none of them were debates. With an eye on their own news programs, the networks went for the soundbite answer, rarely permitting candidates to give detailed explanations. On top of this the candidates were rarely permitted to engage in real debates with each other. It is symbolic that the media controlled whether a candidate was allowed to respond and for how long. I remember Hillary Clinton was even interrupted for a commercial! The media made it very clear they were in charge.

Instead of a debate we witnessed the equivalent of Meet the Press, or at times the O’Reilly show. That the late Tim Russert moderated a fair number of these debates as if he were moderating his own program added to the impression. Just as Meet the Press has long viewed itself as a kind of Washington gate-keeper, so the media viewed the debates the same way. The candidates that emerged would have to pass their tests. The two parties, the American people and the candidates themselves had no so say in the process.

This leads to a second serious charge: the media controlled who was invited and who was questioned. From the beginning the so-called minor candidates received little attention. It was almost as though the media read the polls the day before and doled out questions in virtually the same percentage as the candidate’s percentage in the standings. Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich received the cold treatment during the Democratic debates. The press chose who was asked what question and who was allowed to follow-up.

Although this is a subjective impression, I believe Hillary Clinton’s supporters have a legitimate beef about this. The media appeared determined to make the campaign a horse race and in the early going seemed to be conducting auditions for who would take on the front runner. With those auditions the main focus, sometimes it seemed the front runner was neglected.

When Obama won Iowa, the media had their horse race. The Democratic contest now became a two-candidate contest, which for them is the easiest to cover. By then the so-called minor candidates could read the script. Money played a role in suspending their campaigns, but just as critical was the lack of attention the media paid them. The chief victim of this was John Edwards, who once was presumed to be Clinton’s main rival, but having been assigned to the role of number three suddenly found his debate time diminishing.

So the media helped to make the race a two-candidate contest. When they started excluding the minor candidates from the debates, they stepped over another line. At this point the political parties and Congress should have stepped in, but they allowed the media to write the script. Nowhere was the irrelevance and powerlessness of the two major parties better demonstrated.

Now we come to the most critical issue, the questions themselves. We’ll wait for the scholars to count the minutes and types of questions and weigh in with the real data–which curiously have been absent, but meanwhile it seems clear to anyone who watched the debates that all the candidates probably have legitimate gripes.

One interesting side light is that as far as I remember there was not a single question asked about the media themselves, especially not about major issues such as the politicization of the media, media concentration and the cozy relationship between the media and corporate America. In fact there were few questions about corporate America, especially corporate scandals such as Enron or the mortgage foreclosure fiasco. Of what I term the four cornerstones of Liberal America: social and economic justice, voting rights, media fairness and educational equity there was little discussion. I wager to say there was more about Reverend Wright than all these area put together.

The minor candidates were rarely asked substantive questions and when they were they were usually in response to questions directed at major candidates. Of the major candidates, Clinton seemed to suffer from being ignored early and then immediately after Obama’s Iowa victory.

This neglect carried over into the reaction shots the cameras often showed when a candidate was answering a question. Once the media had decided the race was between Clinton and Obama one rarely saw reaction shots of the other candidates, but instead if Clinton was answering, the cameras focused on Obama and vice versa.

As Obama surged ahead, the situation dramatically reversed and suddenly the media placed him on the defensive. Suddenly all of America was focused on Reverend Wright. Now the front runner, he attracted the feisty questions that formerly had gone to Clinton.

I remain convinced until I see data otherwise that the media played a significant role in deciding the final candidates by their control of the debate format and questions. Their neglect of the minor candidates said to voters, “We’re not going to waste our time on these people and neither should you.” The desire of the media to have a horse race and their long-standing tendency to nurture scandal also contributed to the rift between the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

At this point they would love to see the feud carried into the convention. Anyone can write the script: the reporters will be prowling for Clinton delegates who gripe about the contest, the pundits will try to stir up any controversy they can between the two no matter how tenuous, and, of course, they will dredge up Bill Clinton yet one more time.

While there were conflicts between the campaigns and both sides had questions about their rivals, the media fanned these sparks into a major wildfire that badly burned the Democratic Party. The role of the media has now shifted form serving as impartial, neutral observers to instigators and active participants in the process.

To me the ultimate symbol of the debates were those giant television screens that dominated so many of them, ominously looming over the candidates and the proceedings like something out of Brave New World. Those giant screens not only symbolized the media’s domination of the process but also how the reality was not what was going on on the stage but what was occurring on the screen.

Let us hope that before the next Presidential primary season, the political parties. Congress and the American people insist on having real debates and that the networks fulfill their proper role of covering them rather than running them.

Tags: Barack Obama, Boston Celtics, debate questions, Democratic Party, Democratic Presidential candidates, Dennis Kuncinich, fox news, Hillary Clinton, john edwards, League of Women Voters, Los Angeles Lakers, media, Meet the Press, Presidential debates, Reverand Wright, role of the media, Ron Paul, the Constitution
Tagged with: Barack Obama • Boston Celtics • debate questions • Democratic Party • Democratic Presidential candidates • Dennis Kuncinich • fox news • Hillary Clinton • john edwards • League of Women Voters • Los Angeles Lakers • media • Meet the Press • Presidential debates • Reverand Wright • role of the media • Ron Paul • the Constitution

White folks should probably stay out of internal disputes in the African American community, but the latest controversy over the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s opinions about blogs reminded me so much of another dispute from the past that I had to comment.

Here is what Jackson said to Howard Witt of the Chicago Tribune

Internet bloggers can serve the meal better than they can farm. Farming requires tilling the soil, removing the debris, planting, being patient, letting it germinate. That’s the strength of labor unions and churches and civil rights organizations.

The white media love Jesse Jackson because he still fulfills their fantasy that certain African Americans serve as the voices of their community. The history of the symbiotic relationship between Jackson and the white media would take many pages to describe, but to coin an analogy, just as white sports casters keep searching for the next Michael Jordan; white reporters have been looking for the next Dr. King for four decades.

If they can designate someone as the voice of African Americans it makes their lives easier. They just pick up the phone and get a quote, without having to build up real sources in the community. They don’t even have to go into the community. It’s just like the old South [and North] where every community had an invisible line and folks were supposed to stay on their side of the line.

That line is still there. Just look at the issue of inner city crime. As long as it stays on its side of the line, white folks say, “It ain’t my problem.” But when crime does cross the line retribution can be as swift and nasty as it was a century ago when someone crossed the line.

What Jesse Jackson’s remarks remind us is that the line has now come to blogdom. Check of the blog rolls of so-called progressive whites and how many African American sites do you find. Note how many white bloggers quote black ones. In a bizarre way, even in the ether there is a line. The Democratic Convention reinforced this when it first issued credentials to mostly white bloggers. Only after some protest were credentials issued to members of the AfroSpear.

As many of you know, I am admirer of the Fannie Lou Hamer. Jackson’s remarks sound a lot like the stuff Hamer was hearing back when she and many others were organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP was a grassroots movement organized by and for African Americans. Even the paid spies of the Mississippi Gestapo could not find any white folks involved, even though they loved to blame attempts to thwart segregation on “outside agitators.”

M