As the Republicans gather in St. Paul reminders of what their Counterrevolution has done to America hang over the convention like inky clouds rolling in the sky, flashing warning bolts and cracks of thunder that herald a coming storm.

First, as another Hurricane heads for the Gulf Coast and reporters question whether the levies will hold; we cannot help but be taken back to the greatest human-caused disaster in American history–Katrina. The blame for not maintaining the levies and the flood control system probably should rightly be assessed to both political parties, for neither appropriated the money needed. The Democrats triangulated it away or decided to build bridges to nowhere in Alaska rather than fix New Orleans.

But like an insurance claim in which fault is assessed by percentage, a majority of the damage for Katrina rightly belongs to those people who will be celebrating in St. Paul. Their budget-slashing meant there was little chance New Orleans would receive the protection experts recommended it have. The larger policy decision–to cut back funding across the country for America’s infrastructure–has received little attention from the mainstream media and bloggers alike, but it is a debt the country and the next administration–whether that of Barack Obama or John McCain will have to pay. Katrina is only a symbol for a much larger problem; wages of neglect that have become wages of sin.

Under the Counterrevolution, America has become like a house whose owner has decided to defer maintenance while instead squandering money on questionable priorities and failed to save for the inevitable rainy day. The famous grasshopper of Aesop’s fable has nothing on the Republican Counterrevolution. So much was wasted on tax cuts for the rich who fiddled away their money on $1,000 bottles of wine and a war in Iraq while the deficit grew larger and faster under George W. Bush than at any other time in American history.

Less generally recognized is that these wages of neglect mark a deliberate decision. The Republicans have trumpeted that America needs less government since the days of Barry Goldwater and in Katrina and the other events described below we found out the consequences of that misguided philosophy. Cutting back on government is a bit like cutting back on maintenance of that house.

The consequences of this are a house that is in bad shape. The roof leaks, the furnace needs replacing, duct tape covers dripping plumbing, wiring has become dangerously unsafe, and windows and doors are broken. The Republican Counterrevolution’s doctrine that tax cuts for the rich would trickle down somehow increasing government revenue so those repairs could be made was about as ridiculous as hoping to maintain your house by buying a lottery ticket each week. This ridiculous assumption became a tragedy when Katrina hit New Orleans.

It was not that George W. Bush did not have warning. During the summer of 2004, while George was running for his second term, more than 250 federal, state and local officials representing 50 agencies including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the states of Mississippi and Louisiana gathered to watch those changing colors model a hurricane hitting New Orleans. The simulation data told the toll of the storm they named “Pam.” Packing 120 mph winds and dropping 20 inches of rain, Pam destroyed half a million buildings, leaving in its wake 30 million tons of debris and 237 cubic yards of hazardous waste. The human toll ranged from 25,000 to 100,000 deaths. Half the population became trapped in attics, on rooftops and in makeshift refuges.

As they watched Pam unfold, the participants concluded evacuation would be a major problem since an estimated 100,000 households in the area did not have a car. The survivors would need 1,000 shelters to remain open for months before it might be safe to rebuild. Search and rescue operations would require 800 searchers.

What happened after Katrina hit New Orleans played out live on television screens across the world, showing people everywhere the dark side of the Counterrevolution. But like many a disgrace, this nation has been quick to forget Katrina, to put New Orleans in some back closet where it can be forgotten. Yet, if nothing else, this election should be about Katrina, for the Republicans gathered in St. Paul will be spouting the same “less government is better government” philosophy that brought us Katrina.

We need to be reminded of Katrina and the lack of attention to New Orleans and its displaced people when we watch that convention and when we cast our votes this November. Remember the pictures?

Suddenly the faces of poverty stared from the front page. A crowd of African American women huddle around a slumped figure with a white sheet draped over her shoulder. A woman in a head scarf and striped t-shirt extends a hand in comfort, trying to assure the exhausted and overheated victim all will be OK. Behind her another woman holds her hands to her mouth in a mixture of shock and grief while a man near tears watches with two boys whose faces betray their anxiety and confusion. A second photograph: a large man holding a tiny baby over the shoulder of his football jersey pulls back a blanket to reveal the corpse of an old man as thin as a concentration camp victim slumped in a chaise lounge. Behind him lies the Superdome crowd that became a symbol for this disaster. To the side of the picture a woman walks towards the camera as she shouts at the photographer in frustration. There are no white faces anywhere. A third picture: an African American woman with her dress draped over her shoulder swims through water colored like a stained glass window by oil, dragging an overnight bag and bottles of water. A fourth: a young man with his foot in bandages lies on a cot clutching a bottle of water as vehicles drive by without even acknowledging him.

Then we see picture after picture of the crowds. Some huddle on bridges and overpasses that remain above the water, waiting for the rescue that is not coming. Others who have been fortunate to escape lie in makeshift camps that eerily resemble the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression. At times it seems more reporters and celebrities can get into the city than aid workers. Somehow they manage to bring Harry Coniff to the Superdome but they cannot get anyone out. As rescue plans stall somewhere in the ether, the Dome becomes a perverse tourist attraction for media photographers who fly over it and drive around it, but take no one out with them. Treated worse than zoo animals the people make their anger known.

Those images should be seared into our memories as we watch those delegates dancing in the aisles, for they will be dancing on abandoned houses of New Orleans and the abandoned people who can never come back and those who never will come back. As if this is not enough, up the river from where the Republicans are meeting lies another GOP-created disaster, nothing less than deliberate murder committed because Republicans thought it more important not to raise taxes than to fix bridges.

As readers of this blog know, I have issued two in-depth reports on the disaster criticizing flaws in the inspection methods, the decisions of the Pawlenty Administration, and infrastructure funding by the Bush Administration. Here is what I wrote:

In a report on the bridge collapse, Minnesota Public Radio pointed out:

In the legislative session that ended in May, Gov. Pawlenty vetoed a transportation funding package that included a seven-and-a-half-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase to pay for new road and road construction as well as for the maintenance of the current infrastructure.

In essence the GOP sold us the equivalent of the Titanic and now the Titanic has hit an iceberg–for the second time if you count Katrina. That is why I am angry. Those deaths did not have to happen. I am even more angry because they happened for the basest of reasons–greed. Billionaires received their tax cuts and we got Katrina and bridges falling into the river. Tax cuts don’t fix levees or bridges.

Like Katrina, the bridge disaster had plenty (should I say Pawlenty) of warning. I believe this blog was the only source I know that quoted the following paragraph from the actual bridge inspection report:

The long term plans for this river crossing need to be defined with replacement, redecking, etc. Due to the “Fracture Critical” configuration of the main river spans and the problematic “crossbeam” details, and fatigue cracking in the approach spans, eventual replacement of the entire structure would be preferable.

What leaped out to me were the references to the gusset plates which the investigation of the disaster singled out as the cause:

Panel Point #4 (East Truss Stringer Joint): Connection gusset plate has a weld overlap. (p. 20)

Panel Point #11 (East Truss): Section loss: at gusset plate bottom chord. (p. 23)

Panel Point #11 (East Truss): Pitting: inside gusset plate connection at L11. Stringer #3 has two bolts missing at the floorbeam connection. (p. 23)

Panel Point #13 (East Truss): Bottom chord gusset plate has section loss, flaking & pack rust. (p. 24)

Panel Point #9′ (West Truss): Truss bottom chord/sway frame connection (gusset plates) has section loss, pitting, heavy flaking rust. (p. 37)

Panel Point #8′ (West Truss Pier #7 Stringer Joint): Truss bottom chord/sway frame connection (gusset plates) has section loss with heavy flaking rust. (p. 37)

Panel Point #7′ (West Truss): Wind bracing gusset plate, at stringer #14 has loose bolts. (p. 38)

Note the number of times the words “section loss” appears.

But if you want to know the real consequences of the Counterrevolution Just go the Association of Civil Engineers “Report Card” to find a detailed explanation of the seriousness of our infrastructure problems:

It is estimated that it will cost $9.4 billion per year for 20 years to eliminate all bridge deficiencies. The annual investment required to prevent the bridge investment backlog from increasing is estimated at $7.3 billion. Present funding trends of state departments of transportation call into question future progress on addressing bridge deficiencies.

On top of these two disasters came a third reminder in last week’s Census report on American poverty. As reported by the Brookings Institution the report noted:

Poverty declined every year between 1993 and 2000, reaching its lowest level ever for black children, but then increased during the recession year of 2001 as well as in 2002, 2003, and 2004. The rate then declined slightly in both 2005 and 2006.

The 2007 data showed:

median household income edged upward and the number of Americans without health insurance decreased by more than 1 million.

However, a panel of Brookings experts found little cause for optimism. Senior Fellow Rebecca Blank pointed out the latest statistics are a bit misleading:

The Census numbers are a distributional story and the real growth has been at the top.

Blank went on to say:

2008 as I noted is by every measure going to be a worse year. These numbers are going to deteriorate.

Ron Haskins, Co-Director of the Brookings Center on Children and Families also pointed out:

Children’s poverty did increase and for those of us here at Brookings who study poverty, that probably is at least as important if not more important than the overall poverty — that children’s poverty we’re really concerned about and it did increase significantly this year so that’s an important part of this study.

Blank then laid out what the Bush Administration has cost America’s families:

The result in 2007 is that median income is $325, real — adjusted for inflation, below where it was in 2000 at the peak of the last cycle and we’ve not recovered. Poverty is 1.3 points higher than it was at the end of the last cycle, child poverty is 1.8 points higher, and
single female-headed poverty is 2.9 points higher.

On Monday the Republicans will grant George W. Bush, the architect of these disasters, a podium from which to speak. Those introducing him will trumpet the last eight years as if they represented a golden age. Yet by all rights George W. Bush should be standing in a dock facing a judge not up on a podium telling lies.

Better to wait until after he has spoken to detail these charges, but when you watch on Monday think about the three that hang around his neck like a dead and reeking albatross. The true equation of tax cutting and budget cutting is not merely about an American infrastructure that resembles a ramshackle house. It is that by choosing to reward the rich while ignoring America’s roads, bridges, electrical grid, energy deficiencies, river levies, transportation needs, communications upgrades, technology expansion, the crops we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the gasoline we put in our cars, the Republicans have left behind not merely a mess, they have left behind dead bodies, people who have died because of the neglect of the last eight years.

It is bad enough people are dying in Iraq because of a questionable war, but Americans are dying at home because of questionable priorities. That is the true tragedy of the Counterrevolution. Those delegates have blood on their hands and no amount of parting will wash it off.

Crossposts: ,My Left Wing, The Wild, Wild Left

Tagged with: aesop • America • American history • Barack Obama • bloggers • bridges • Brookings_Institution • Census • children's poverty • coming storm • convention • counterrevolution • delegates • Democrats • disaster • flood control system • George-W-Bush • Goldwater • Gov. Pawlenty • government • gulf coast • hurricane gustav • income • infrastructure • Iraq • john mccain • Katrina • levies • mainstream media • McCain • Minneapolis bridge collapse • New Orleans • policy decision • poverty • Republican Counterrevolution • Republican National Convention • St. Paul • statistics • tax cuts • television • victim • war in iraq

The most remarkable part of the remarkable speech Barack Obama delivered in Denver last night was that he truly offered a real possibility of cutting the Gordian Knot that has become Washington politics. For decades now, not matter what the issue both sides have dug in and waged protracted trench warfare. That is why I refer to our current period as the era of Bad Feelings.

The result has produced political gridlock and doubts among many Americans about the ability of their government to function with either of the two political parties in power. Even more it has turned Washington into a city of zealots, who fill the op ed columns, talk radio and even television with vitriol that has poisoned the air so every day in DC feels like one of those humid July afternoons when you feel as though you can’t breathe. When the tourists ride the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument and look over to the Capitol dome across the National Mall, they see not a symbol of democracy in action, but the rounded lid of a simmering pot that constantly seems to be boiling over.

Today it is impossible to turn on the radio, watch television or pick up a newspaper without finding an example of these partisan wars, which increasingly resemble one of those professional wrestling extravaganzas where two elaborately costumed, steroid-laden Neanderthals grope one another in a steel cage or pit full of mud. Any American could readily supply a top-ten list of examples.

In the nether reaches of the Internet, a wilderness punctuated by the tangled trails of emails and listservs where potshots come from the likes of “random,” “ch2,” and “coz,” lie electronic Tombstones and Deadwoods featuring no-holds-barred brawling and a hair-trigger impulse to shoot from the hip at the first perceived insult.

My son spent a summer interning in DC and has lived there teaching for Americorps the past year, participating as his school’s representative in several city-wide summits and he sees this first hand. During his time in Congress it seemed as though no matter what the issue both sides immediately moved to the extremes. Compromise became a dirty word. It meant that somehow your side had given up something vital, as if compromise was the equivalent of the famous parable of King Solomon cutting the baby in half.

In the ideological agenda pushed by the Republican Counterrevolution, the GOP viewed compromise as pragmatism and pragmatism was viewed as capitulation. Meanwhile on the other side of the aisle, values all but disappeared as the Democrats appeared to buy the media characterization of the Republicans as the party of values.

Instead the Democrats opted for something they termed triangulation, which was not even pragmatism, but a willingness to accept the GOP’s larger world view and try to take a position just to the left of the other party. So the Democrats signed off on the Iraq War, tax cuts for the rich, the Patriot Act. The Democrats appeared to have no principles at all.

Throughout this campaign I have voiced a fear that Barack Obama could merely be another Clinton, Kerry clone devoid of values. There was a suspicion that the word “change” masked a tendency to triangulate every issue.

What I heard from Barack Obama last night was something truly remarkable; a speech that began with principles yet offered real solutions to help cut the Gordian Knot that has plagued American politics. First, Obama quite deliberately began with principles. Chief among them was a venerable Democratic Party value that goes back to William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech and characterized every significant Democratic leader of the American Century.

First Obama defined the Republicans, something this blog had urged in a previous essay:

For over two decades — for over two decades, he’s subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy: Give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.

In Washington, they call this the “Ownership Society,” but what it really means is that you’re on your own. Out of work? Tough luck, you’re on your own. No health care? The market will fix it. You’re on your own. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, even if you don’t have boots. You are on your own.

Perhaps because he had said it the night before when he congratulated Joe Biden, Obama did not include the alternative, which perhaps he should have. That night he said:

At the start of this campaign, we had a very simple idea: Change does not start from the top down. It starts from the bottom up.

Here is Franklin Roosevelt in his famous “Forgotten Man” speech referring to the efforts of World War I:

It was a great plan because it was built from bottom to top and not from top to bottom.

Here is Woodrow Wilson in his First Inaugural:

There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to succeed and be great. Our thought has been “Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself,” while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves.

Here is William Jennings Bryan in “Cross of Gold:”

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.

The second key principle Obama evoked was equity. In his first Inaugural Woodrow Wilson uttered the phrase that stands at the masthead of this blog. In a preceding paragraph he stated:

With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes. The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people.

Society must see to it that it does not itself crush or weaken or damage its own constituent parts. The first duty of law is to keep sound the society it serves. Sanitary laws, pure food laws, and laws determining conditions of labor which individuals are powerless to determine for themselves are intimate parts of the very business of justice and legal efficiency.

Here was Barack Obama last night:

Ours — ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work.

Finally there is the value that I have evoked again and again as the heart of Liberal America, the level playing field:

At the heart of liberalism lies the belief that government exists to do good for the people. It serves to level the playing field when those with power and money seek to tilt things in their direction, to assure that the votes are counted fairly, to maintain a free and open “marketplace of ideas,” to stimulate our society to positive ends whether in the arts or research, and to provide an equal education so that every American not only starts from the same point, but also has the same opportunities every step of the way on into college and even professional school and work. Its values lie behind the ringing inaugural addresses of FDR and JFK as well as what is the single greatest American speech of the last century, Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” masterpiece.

Barack Obama did not use those words–I wish he had because they make the issue clearer–but he did evoke the concept when he spoke about America and the role of government. This was the only soft spot in a remarkable speech, for Obama appeared to be trying to walk down the middle of the road, using the word responsibility, but in evoking the need for responsibility he made it clear the basis of that responsibility:

What — what is that American promise? It’s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It’s a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

That’s the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper.

This may become Barack Obama’s contribution to the legacy of Liberal America, for on the anniversary of Martin Luther King, jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech he used Dr. King’s biblical language to reframe the level playing field in biblical terms. “I am my brother’s keeper.” That is at the heart of what Bryan, Wilson, FDR, and Truman had said.

In this current climate those are the words that need to be evoked, for in framing the level playing field in religious terms (”I am my brother’s keeper” is a concept common to all religions) he delivered two masterful blows to what the Counterrevolution had been saying for two decades or more: first, he coopted the so-called religious/values argument by evoking the most universal religious value of all; second, he exposed the hypocrisy of much that has transpired under the name of the Counterrevolution and its religious allies.

Obama then went on to steer a new course by specifically spelling out how these principles can actually be put into action. Yes. some of this was yet another list of programs that has characterized the Democratic Party for the last quarter century, but in the Obama speech because they quite deliberately followed the values section they become applications of those values.

Framed this way the programs become not what the GOP has accused the Democrats of being–a Party of special interests–but an actualization of values. As such they stand for something other than mere entitlements. In this sense Barack Obama’s speech resembles Harry Truman’s incomparable Kiel Auditorium speech.

But Obama went Truman one better, adding a third section to his speech which addresses the major issue of our time–governing. What the American people want to know is how will this President actually deal with an issue such as gun control? What will he do with the abortion zealots? How will he govern in the Era of Bad Feelings? Can he sever the Gordian Knot?

No politician of either party has had the courage to wade directly into these issues. Their positions have either been to stick to rigid ideology or obfuscate. What Obama promised was that we can bridge this ideological gridlock without descending into ideological warfare. This is the part of the speech that had me believing this man just might win in November. I quote this part of the speech at some length because no paraphrase could do it justice:

And Democrats, as well as Republicans, will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past, for part of what has been lost these past eight years can’t just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose, and that’s what we have to restore.

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.

he — the reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.

I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination.

You know, passions may fly on immigration, but I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.

If Barack Obama can succeed in framing the election as he did last night John McCain will have an uphill fight. If he can take the values card away from the Counterrevolution and put it back in the hands of the Democratic Party, he will win. If he can show that government can play a role in keeping the playing field level he will win, If he can show that he can deal with ideological rigidity and still forge solutions not anger, then he will win.

Now we wait to see what McCain will do. His convention does not promise an auspicious beginning, putting none other than George W. Bush on stage the first night. With the memory of Obama’s speech still fresh, the contrast should prove interesting. The man who helped to create the Gordian Knot will try to defend his tangled mess.

Crossposts: Progressive Historians, ,My Left Wing

Tagged with: abortion • America • american century • American people • american politics • bad feelings • Barack Obama • blog • capitol dome • Congress • counterrevolution • cutting the gordian knot • democracy in action • Democratic • Democratic Party • Democrats • Denver • equity • Franklin Roosevelt • GOP • Harry Truman • health care • hypocrisy • immigration • Iraq • Iraq War • jobs • Joe Biden • john mccain • justice • level playing field • liberal • liberalism • Martin Luther King • philosophy • political gridlock • poverty • principle • principles • prosperity • remarkable speech • Republican • Republican Counterrevolution • symbol of democracy • tax cuts • the people • trench warfare • triangulation • values • vitriol • washington monument • washington politics • william jennings bryan • Woodrow Wilson • zealots

Maybe it was all those flags which were everywhere last night, waving in time with the music, responding to good lines in what were three great speeches with exuberant sweeps of approval and standing motionless at the most solemn moments, but last night the Democratic National Convention finally came alive. With every delegate and those in the galleries holding a flag it seemed to symbolize the Party coming together. The set designers finally even seemed to get it, hanging a giant flag–which had been absent the first two days–over it all and even managing to get shimmering red, white and blue waves onto those silly Vegas-like neon stage props.

Maybe having a flag in their hand finally reminded the delegates of what’s at stake. Maybe having a flag in their hand finally reminded the delegates of why they were all there. Maybe having a flag in their hand finally had them truly believing that they together they could remake America, pulling it out of the deep hole it had fallen into under the Counterrevolution. Maybe having a flag in their hand reminded them of the heritage of their own Party and the history of the nation, of what one had built and the other had overcome. Maybe having a flag in their hand just flat out made them proud to be Americans again.

Whatever they did for the delegates, those flags must have given a huge boost to the Democratic Party, for there they were in front of millions of viewers and those verbose pundits (it is time to retire Mark Shields, James Carville and David Gergen) the Democratic Party took back the flag. It was the key symbol of a memorable evening. In American living rooms across the country the Democratic Party again became the Party of America and Americans. For each time those flags fluttered in response to a remark made by a speaker it sent a message that rather than being out-of-touch and anti-patriotic, this Democratic Party was there for the entire country.

No matter what the speakers said–and what they said was powerful–when the cameras panned out over that audience triumphantly waving Old Glory a bit of old glory returned to the Democratic Party. For decades it had seemed Democrats were afraid to pick up the flag. Some of them even bought into the misguided notion put forward by the Counterrevolution that old-fashioned patriotism was passe, something for Rush’s dittoheads. Not last night. Every delegate enthusiastically waved their flag. When the cameras frequently showed Michelle Obama waving her flag as exuberantly as the delegates on the floor, at times even seeming to act as head cheerleader, it reinforced the message even more strongly.

What made this flag-waving so powerful was that it was not the lock-step, robotized, doctrinaire flag-waving of the Republican Counterrevolution–a flag waving that high-jacked Old Glory as if it belonged only to one Party, one way of thinking, one vision of America and everyone who did not subscribe to that vision had no right to wave the stars and stripes.

The GOP’s flag obsession–for that is what it was–came from the dark side of American patriotism, the one that perversely equated segregation with the flag, the one that perversely equated McCarthyism with the flag, the one that perversely equated waterboarding with the flag, the one the perversely equated rich corporations with the flag, the one that perversely equated religious fundamentalism with the flag, the one that perversely equated putting government in our bedrooms and fundamentalist Christianity in our classrooms with the flag, the one that perversely equated a distorted view of executive privilege and Presidential power with the flag,the one that perversely equated Guantanamo and sending innocent people to Syrian torturers with the flag, the one that perversely maintained wiretapping and violations of civil liberties with the flag.

It was as if only certain people with certain ideas were privileged enough to wave the flag. Last night the Democrats blew those false assumptions away with every enthusiastic, spontaneous wave they made, for we saw people of color, people wearing union jackets, gays, straights, old, young, able-bodied, disabled, short, tall, lean, portly, bald, gray-haired, bearded, mustached, short-haired, long-haired all waving the same flag. With each wave they said, “We are all Democrats and all Democrats are Americans who love their country, for our flag is broad enough to include all these people and all their ideas.”

Last night the delegates were the true stars of the convention, even on a night of extraordinary rhetoric. Those cameras kept coming back to them, more than it had the first two nights. It captured two gay women dancing together and waving their flags. The cameras showed the guy in the suit and tie and the guy in the flannel shirt. They showed the women in knock-out dresses and the women in blue jeans. They showed folks proudly wearing some part of their state or their local community. They showed t-shirts proclaiming political messages to free Iraq and support our troops, to stop global warming and put an end to torture. They showed folks with contradictory views written on them like billboards dancing together waving their flags. They showed feed caps, cowboy hats, Uncle Sam hats, hats custom-designed in someone’s living room, servicemen and women’s hats.

Together they said THIS is America, not that white-washed, ersatz image purveyed by the slingers of vitriol, the Bill O’Reilly’s who somehow have the hubris to believe they could speak for the flag they way certain preachers believe their God only talks with them.  Networks, keep a copy of the tapes of those images and next week rerun them and contrast them with what you will see on the floor in St. Paul where there will not be as many diverse faces and certainly no gay women dancing. Next week you will have to look hard to find anyone who might have calluses on their hands and dirt in their fingernails.

In the contrast of the images of the delegates at the two conventions you will see two different Americas and in those two Americas you will see what is at stake this fall. John McCain seems to come shrink-wrapped in red, white and blue, courtesy of the media who have elevated those years in North Vietnam to mythic status. Perhaps George W. Bush will show up in his flight suit or will he exhibit the erratic behavior he showed at the Olympics?

After last night we will finally see the Counterrevolution as sunshine patriots who like a magician who covers his tricks with a sweeping cape tried to cover the most radical remake of this nation in its history with a wave of the stars and stripes. Clinton, Kerry and Biden ticked off the relevant statistics: the growing inequality, the high price of gas, the lack of respect from the rest of the world, the growing unemployment and falling wages, the worst health care system of any advanced democracy, the murders in Philadelphia and the loss of gains made by people of color, and most of all, Katrina, the greatest human-caused disaster in our history, which years later no Republican dares to visit because not only did they cause the problem they lied about fixing it. And there is a certain bridge in Minneapolis, a symbol of budget cuts traded for tax cuts traded for what amounts to government homicide.

But the real stars at the podium were the parade of vets. For once having many people testify made sense, for each had their own story and each story was powerfully told by those who had been to Iraq, from the three-star general to the wife of a soldier currently on duty to the wounded veteran who was somehow pulled from a burning helicopter.  But maybe the most moving moment of all was when the cameras turned on Barack Obama’s uncle, a wizened old white man who liberated Buchenwald and, who like all vets who have seen things that cannot be talked about, showed that mixture of surprise, humility and pride that was only reinforced when Michelle Obama embraced him in tears. For a moment black and white, past, present and future hugged.

In those flags waved at the Democratic Convention lies a vision of both an old and new America, an America spelled out in the best trio of speeches to grace a one night of a political convention in memory. They reminded us that the Democratic Party honors the best of its past, as Bill Clinton pointed out, that the Party offers a realistic view of the present, as John Kerry reminded us, and that it has a fresh vision for the future, as Joe Biden reminded us.

Seeing all the flags last night made me feel optimistic again, made me feel “yes we can” is not just empty campaign rhetoric. Most of all it gave me hope. I hope that every delegate and spectator who was waving a flag last night will take it home and stick it in their lawn or hang it by their front door or tie it to their car antennas. And each of them will say, “It’s time to take back America.”

As I watched those flags I could only think of Whitman, the gay poet who would not even be allowed in the GOP convention, writing in “I hear American Singing:”

I HEAR America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother—or of the young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day—At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

Afterward

I wrote on the first night and the second about the absence of the flag. I don’t know if they heard me and others or already had it planned, but maybe, just maybe, the Party will not get the idea to make the level playing field the center of their campaign, for that is what this is all about.

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The praise for Hillary Clinton is flowing all over Blogdom and the mainstream media. The general consensus is that the speech accomplished its mission which was to bring the Party back together.

I must admit like many others I thought it was one of the best speeches I have heard her give. When she had finished I was prepared to join the stampede and write an essay praising her words–that is until I found out what was going on behind the scenes. Then I realized Hillary Clinton has nothing on her husband, who was known as “Slick Willie” for his ability to charm people who would not realize they had been had until it was too late.

In short Hilary Clinton gave a speech that sounded great in praise of Barack Obama, but she quite cleverly avoided saying anything about the real issue which is the people organizing for John McCain in her name and the people still bitter enough about her loss they want to make Barack Obama look bad and even sabotage this convention.

I found this out after checking out the PUMA website in the wee hours of the morning to see how they were reacting to the speech. There were PUMAs still posting at three a.m. and what they had to say did not inspire any confidence the speech had any impact on them.

What I did learn changed my entire opinion of the speech, for the PUMAs and other die-hard Hillary supporters had spent yesterday organizing for a roll-call floor vote on the nomination. The PUMAs believed they might embarrass Obama with the size of the vote while clinging to the possibility that maybe people might finally see the light and nominate Clinton.

Here is what the PUMA site said yesterday:

The DNC and Nancy Pelosi, the Chairman of the Democratic Convention, are doing everything in their power to make sure that does not happen. With Obama’s flagging support, according to the polls, running neck and neck with McCain, they are very worried that Hillary will get the nomination if a roll call vote takes place on the convention floor. That is why they are making the delegates have a secret hotel vote, instead of the floor vote that’s been done since forever. The hotel vote will purportedly take place on Wednesday morning, August 27, 2008.

According to the PUMAs, the Democratic National Committee took the unprecedented step of organizing a “hotel vote” in which delegates would gather in hotel suites to tally their votes under the watchful eyes of DNC staff who would be in place in insure no mischief took place. Nothing like this has ever been proposed at a Democratic Convention.

The PUMAs were justifiably upset. Thinking this might just be a PUMA bit of misinformation I checked it out with other sources. The Denver Post noted:

Supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton furiously circulated petitions on the floor of the Democratic National Convention last night, hoping to stave off a plan to hold the convention’s roll call at breakfast Wednesday — out of the public eye — sources inside the delegations said.

The move being worked out between the Obama campaign and officials behind Clinton’s suspended bid, would work in two parts: Delegates would cast votes at their hotels Wednesday morning; that night, at the Pepsi Center convention site, the roll-call process would rely on the votes cast that morning, the delegates said.

As the Post reported, Democrats were working out the details of the “hotel vote” yesterday afternoon even as the PUMAs feverishly worked to block it. According to the PUMA site:

There is a DNC rule that says if 20% of a candidate’s delegates sign a petition for a roll call vote, it must happen. This means that Hillary needs 826 of her delegates to sign this petition.

So the PUMAs hit the streets to try to gather the needed number of votes. The PUMA site does not report if they were successful or not. In fact at this point I can find no reference to the vote even taking place.

All this is irrelevant because there is one person who could have put an end to this and that was Hillary Clinton. The one thread that runs through the PUMA site is that members were afraid that in her speech last night Hillary Clinton would release her delegates making the organizing and the hotel vote all meaningless.

Releasing her delegates was the one thing PUMAs feared:

However, we have an unconfirmed report coming from someone inside the Pepsi Center that Hillary Clinton will make a special announcement tonight during her speech. Although I’m ever the optimist, call me paranoid: Will she try to pre-empt this grassroots effort by releasing her delegates tonight?

Releasing her delegates was the one action many Democrats wanted Hillary Clinton to do in her speech last night. She had to have known about the PUMA effort and certainly knew about the hotel vote negotiations, meaning she knew she was the one person who could end this entire mess. She refused to do so. What the PUMAs feared she might do in her speech never took place.

Word is she will release her delegates at a private meeting with them today, but this will not have the impact of doing it in the speech. As I write this no one knows what she will tell them.

In addition, one other task her speech convincingly needed to accomplish was to disavow the mushrooming number of Hillary Trojan groups who are urging voters to support McCain in her name. She needed to single out the PUMAs, Clintons4McCain and their leaders and specifically disavow all of them. She needed to say these people are not acting in my name and what they are doing is contrary to what I believe.

She needed to do this in as strong a language as possible, making it very clear she not only did not support those groups but considered them to be a perversion of her own ideals.  There needed to be a section in her speech specifically devoted to these misguided people who would rather have another Scalia on the Supreme Court than Barack Obama in the White House. She did not do this either.

In retrospect, knowing what I now know, her speech was all talk and no action. Clinton refused to release her delegates and she refused to disavow the Clinton McCain groups. But there is more.

She also refused to disavow the criticisms she had made of Obama during the campaign, criticisms the McCain people are finding quite useful. In a last slap at the Obama people she refused to give them a copy of her speech until the last minute. Meanwhile various unattributed leaks have been flowing from the Clinton camp like a veritable river about their dissatisfaction with Obama.  Maureen Dowd, who has a great sense for such things caught the mood in a Times column yesterday. Dowd quotes Republican strategist Mike Murphy as saying the mood at the convention was “submerged hate.” Dowd then goes on the describe some of this:

There were a lot of bitter Clinton associates, fund-raisers and supporters wandering the halls, spewing vindictiveness, complaining of slights, scheming about Hillary’s roll call and plotting trouble, with some in the Clinton coterie dissing Obama by planning early departures, before the nominee even speaks.

That Dowd, who usually does not toe the GOP line, should quote a Republican criticizing the Democratic National Convention and then go on to support his accusations shows how out of hand things have become in Denver.

Behind much of this I see the hand of Mark Penn, the Clintons’ Karl Rove, who apparently played a major role in Clinton’s speech. By cleverly framing Clinton’s speech as all talk and no action, Penn/Rove continued to drive a wedge into the Democratic Party.

The only rational reason to do this is that the Clinton people, like the PUMAs, still believe they can turn the convention around. They are still hoping for some miracle in which the delegates come to their senses and nominate Clinton. If not this, they hope all of America sees the Democrats nominated the wrong candidate and won’t make the same mistake in 2012. It almost makes you believe the Clintons hope Obama loses. Here are Bill Clinton’s strange remarks yesterday in a story headlined, “Bill Clinton in Denver Again Undercuts Obama:”

Suppose for example you’re a voter. And you’ve got candidate X and candidate Y. Candidate X agrees with you on everything, but you don’t think that person can deliver on anything. Candidate Y disagrees with you on half the issues, but you believe that on the other half, the candidate will be able to deliver. For whom would you vote?

If Clinton had released her delegates it would have gone a long way towards lessening this tension. If she had gone even further and asked the convention to nominate Barack Obama by acclamation it might have helped to heal the wounds. She did not.

The question now is what will be the long-term consequences of this? Clearly, there are elements in the Democratic Party that will blame the Clintons if Barack Obama loses. In a strange way if Barack Obama does not win the White House, Hillary Clinton may close the door to the Oval Office on herself.

One thing is clear; McCain supporters are taking this and running with it. The PUMA website contained several posts with links to a Faux News story about Obama’s ties to William Ayers, a founding member of the 1960s and 1970s radical group the Weather Underground. One commenter noted:

We need help in this story please comment and make it hot we need to have it smoking hot for the morning there is less than 4 hours to do thanks,

Makes you wonder who this “we” is?

The vitriol on the site can get pretty amazing:

McCain has put his life on the line for our country and been willing to die for our country which is more than can be said for BHO OR Michelle. I swear I want to walk right up to BHO and pull his lapel pin off.

No, Michelle looked, as though she were trying to keep aloof, but there was a fire in her eyes. Like she was biting her tongue. I don’t understand what was drawing her ire, but the again, 20 years of Wright could make her angry, no matter what she heard?

Oh yeah… I haven’t heard him say his last name once without fumbling on the syllables. I suspect his difficulty in saying his name might be one of the reasons he gave up and said Barack America at the VP announcement speech.

I’m wondering if NObama will wear a TOGA on Thursday when he deliver his speech as selected nominee of the DNC, bought and paid for superdelegates.

He is his father’s son, his old man was the same way in Kenya, talk down on people, know it all. He died a failure and hated by a lot of people.

What the PUMAs have constructed ala Karl Rove/Mark Penn is an irrefutable argument: any criticism of Hillary Clinton shows that Obama supporters are really hate-mongers.  Here is one PUMA:

This is why so many of us stand by our statements that we are fighting for our country. BO inspires hate and this is evidenced every day by his supporters.

Hillary Clinton could easily put a stop to all this, but she does not. That may prove to be the ultimate tragedy of this campaign.

UPDATE: CLINTON RELEASES DELEGATES

This afternoon Hillary Clinton met with her delegates, thanked them for their support and released them, saying:

I have spoken many of you who have expressed your questions about what you should do. Now many of you feel a responsibility to represent the voters in your state. And others of you after this long journey want the chance to vote for what’s in your heart. Now still others will be voting for Senator Obama because they want to demonstrate their personal commitment for the unity of this party behind our nominee. I am not telling you what to do. You come here from so many different places having made this journey and feeling in your heart what is right for you.

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, an Obama supporter, gave exactly the right response to the situation:

If she’s not a strong enough leader to get her followers to do what’s right for America, then that would surprise me.

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