Bitter white women cling to Clinton

As soon as crackly audio of Barack Obama’s comments about “bitter” rural dwellers surfaced, the histrionics began.

Hillary Clinton, John McCain and the pundit class declared this was It – the defining moment of the campaign, that would seal Obama’s fate as a macchiato-sipping McGovernik destined to be a footnote as that black guy who adorably thought he could run he free world.

But most polls in Pennsylvania haven’t budged and Obama maintains a comfortable lead nationally. More of those rural voters gave him money than Clinton.

So what if a candidate stumbled and no one cared? Why, the talking heads and seething rivals would keep wailing on it until people did.

So much for the media being in the tank for Obama.

Under our modern rules of simplistic, soap opera-style politics, Obama should be a goner. This campaign has been an endless parade of stupid statements, often by surrogates, typically followed by feigned outrage and resignations. Sideshow antics are deemed critical turning points, from Hillary the “monster” to Rev. Jeremiah Wright to anything that froths from Bill Clinton’s yap.

Lady Hillary’s entire raison d’être for staying in a mathematically impossible race is to goad Obama into saying something that finally convinces the unwashed masses (and superdelegates) he’s unelectable.

Obama must be taught a lesson, Senator Schoolmarm insists. You just can’t say this in politics:

“But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.

“And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Shame on you, Barack Obama. Shame on you for that ghastly gaffe (which the brilliant Michael Kinsley defines as when a politician tells the truth).

Spend a day in the rural 7th Congressional District and tell me Obama isn’t dead on. That’s the reason a smooth-talking preacher like Republican Tim Walberg beats an effective congressman with the promise to round up illegals and rescue fetuses from slaughter. That was more important to dowtrodden voters two years ago than Joe Schwarz busting his hump to secure $10 million to expand I-94 or save hundreds of jobs at the Battle Creek Air National Guard Base.

McCain and Clinton are still piling on. There’s something mildly amusing about two long-time multimillionaires blasting the guy who grew up on food stamps as a shameful snob.

It’s unfortunate politicking by McCain, who in January admirably told Michiganders the truth that auto jobs weren’t coming back.

But Clinton’s jabs are fiercer, since she desperately needs “Bittergate” to be the death blow for Obama. Now Hilly’s got a gun and recently recovered memories about hunting ducks with Gramps (let’s hope these hold up better than sniper fire at Tuzla). She’ll reign over us with the sunny optimism that’s marked her indignant, calcified campaign.

Too bad she once slammed southern working-class whites this way: “Screw ‘em.”

The year was 1995. Newt Gingrich’s Republican revolution had engulfed the nation as a backlash to Clintonism. Angry white men were everywhere, railing against their witchy wives and black guys taking their jobs. And Hillary was incensed by their betrayal.

But there’s an eerie parallel with the bitter white women who are the bedrock of Clinton’s campaign today.

Their narrative (just ask Gerry Ferraro) is a page out of the angry white male handbook: Baby Barack is an affirmative action hire out to snatch the job out from under the vastly experienced Clinton. Missing from this (racist) feminist parable is the obvious fact that our heroine’s résumé is only worth considering because she has her husband’s last name (ooh, gutsy move, Mrs. C.) and claims his time in the White House as her own, a truly ballsy move.

“It’s her time!” the Clintonistas whine.

So when I heard about their “I’m Not Bitter” bumper stickers, I almost spit out my Merlot, elitist that I am.

Look, their girl used to be young and idealistic like Obama, but she learned, thanks to that vast right-wing conspiracy, that getting down and dirty was the only way to win. The new face of Girl Power looks a lot like Machiavelli: The ends justify the means, baby.

So if Obama glides to the nomination on that unbelievably naïve “Hope” campaign, it’s just not fair.

Which is what almost certainly will happen, gaffes be damned. The Clintonian kitchen sink strategy is crumbling.

And that’s a truly bitter pill to swallow.

Susan J. Demas featured in the Guardian U.K., Forbes

Korea trade deal an issue in Michigan election

From The Guardian U.K. and Forbes
By Soyoung Kim

DETROIT, April 17 (Reuters) - Deepening woes in the U.S. auto industry have raised concerns about a free trade pact with South Korea, and analysts say it could sway Michigan voters when they cast their presidential ballots.

The pact, signed last year and awaiting legislative approval in both nations, is viewed by many as punishing an industry already in the middle of a wrenching restructuring.

Democratic hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have seized on the backlash and made their opposition to the deal their top selling point in Michigan. But presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has endorsed it.

The Democrats' strategy has a good chance of paying off in a race that is likely to be tight, political analysts say.

"There is certainly a backlash against trade agreements with nations like South Korea in Michigan, which has seen thousands of jobs shipped overseas," said Susan Demas, an analyst at Michigan Information & Reserve Service in Lansing.

"Obama and Clinton definitely have the upper hand in Michigan on trade," she said.

From 2000-2005, Michigan, home to General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler, lost 42 percent of its auto assembly jobs, versus a 14 percent loss in the rest of the nation, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Rising imports and more production in southern U.S. states by Asian rivals such as Hyundai Motor have helped make Michigan's unemployment rate -- at 7.2 percent -- the highest in the nation.

LIFTING TARIFF, ENDING TAXES

The trade agreement calls for the immediate elimination of South Korea's 8-percent tariff on U.S. vehicles and the U.S. removal of its 2.5-percent tariff.

It would also remove South Korea's system that levies taxes based on engine size, a disadvantage to larger U.S.-made autos. It also has a clause that if South Korea violates the promises, U.S. tariffs on South Korean cars, which topped about $220 million in 2006, would snap back into place.

But Detroit is more concerned about South Korean autos and parts flowing in than about gaining market share in Korea. Less than 4 percent of cars sold in South Korea are imports, the lowest market share for imported autos of any industrialized country.

"It's various nontariff barriers that change the game to make it difficult for foreign automakers to compete, not the 8 percent tariff," said Stephen Collins, president of the Auto Trade Policy Council which represents Detroit carmakers.

SHADOW OVER RATIFICATION

South Korean president Lee Myung-bak, who is in the United States this week in his first official visit to the country, pledged a swift ratification of the pact in an investor forum in New York on Wednesday.

Expectations are growing that South Korea will soon take a step to fully opening its market to U.S. beef, which U.S. lawmakers say is a prerequisite for the auto pact to be ratified in Congress.

But concerns that the annual $11 billion loss in automotive trade with South Korea will only widen, along with the beef feud, are casting a shadow over speedy resolution.

Ron Gettelfinger, head of the United Auto Workers, attacked the Bush administration for backing the South Korea deal.

"We don't value our industry as a nation compared to other nations," Gettelfinger told a forum in Canton, Michigan, this month. "South Korea exported 700,000 vehicles to the United States. The United States exported 7,000 vehicles to South Korea."

U.S. auto employment peaked at 1.1 million in 1999 but has since fallen by 27 percent, according to Automotive Research. The center estimates employment by Detroit's Big Three will fall another 15 percent by 2016 from about 241,000 at the end of last year.

UNION CLOUT

The UAW has yet to endorse a Democratic candidate. Once it does, it will make a substantial difference in a state that has voted for a Democrat in every presidential election since 1992 but now appears to lean toward McCain, said Phil Power, head of the Center for Michigan, an Ann Arbor-based think tank.

"I've seen recent polls suggest Senator McCain is ahead. I think part of that is caused by the fact there's no Democratic nominee at this point and that the Michigan primary election was so confused and messed up that Michigan voters are not very happy about the Democratic Party right now," Power said.

The national party invalidated the Democratic nominating contests in Michigan and Florida in January because the states violated party rules. The states were denied delegates to the August party convention that picks the nominee.

What the media get wrong

John McCain is one angry man. Everyone knows that. So no one was surprised last week to learn of his tirade against a hapless Teutonic foreign minister at the 2006 Munich Security Conference.

"I haven't come to Munich to hear this kind of crap," the Mighty Mac roared, unleashing the biggest German explosion since the Hindenburg.

That led to much tittering about the perils of having a petulant president with his creaky finger on the button.

There was only one problem: The McCain meltdown never happened. The account of one anonymous source was promptly contradicted by several eyewitnesses on the record, including former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz.

"There was a bit of tension for 15 or 20 seconds when there was a problem with the translation," recalled Schwarz, who had sat six feet from McCain. "There was no outburst, no shaking, no rising out of his chair."

Newsweek, which didn't even check the story with the senator, issued a semi-retraction this week. What happened is all too familiar. In the magazine's rush to churn out a piece in the familiar Mad McCain motif with a new twist, the staff didn't vet the lead anecdote.

It seemed true, so it must be. After all, who wouldn't be scrapping for a fight after being shot down in the Vietnam jungle and tortured for more than five years? And McCain did seem awfully peeved to have lost in 2000 to that ingrate, George W. Bush.

Throw in a couple shoutfests with Sens. John Cornyn and Chuck Grassley and presto! McCain is a walking land mine.

Just like back in 2000, when priggish presidential hopeful Al Gore was slapped with the "serial exaggerator" label. When he was misquoted about taking credit for discovering Love Canal, few media bothered to correct it. Instead, they ran with the "There he goes again . . ." storyline.

Good thing the man who did make it to the White House never lied about anything of life-or-death consequence, like the al-Qaida-Saddam Hussein connection, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or Saddam's uranium-hunting trip to Niger. And kudos to the media for dropping those bummer storylines.

We've officially entered the silly season in politics.

Forget the hysterical whining about lib-rul media bias (and the flipside in the lefty blogosphere). Here's the real problem with media coverage.

Whatever policy debate there was (i.e. a brief segue about the apparently permanent surge in Iraq before in-depth analysis of Angelina Jolie's baby bump) has evaporated into the fresh spring air.

Tee-vee personalities, who wouldn't know journalistic standards if they read them off a teleprompter, have dug into tough political issues like Hillary Clinton's cleavage malfunction and Barack Obama's abs glistening on a Hawaii beach.

But the neverending Democratic brawl has worn on actual reporters, who last saw their kids in a media-release program for an hour over Christmas before the Iowa caucuses.

Sleep-deprived and slap-happy during a season that was supposed to end on Super Tuesday (sorry, Hillary), journalists have to bustle at a breakneck pace through Puerto Rico's June 1 primary or even the Denver convention in August.

The unforgiving 24-hour news cycle and incredibly shrinking newsrooms mean more work, like insipidly blogging about wintry mix forecasts on the trail in Iowa for the world's greatest newspaper, The New York Times.

It's enough to drive you mad. So reporters succumb to pack journalism and pump out pieces assiduously free of policy debate that follow a set narrative, which often are quarantined from what's actually happening.

Better yet, they can just play those four clips of Obama's irascible pastor (the only dude even angrier than McCain!). Heaven forbid we see an endless loop of the senator's speech on the racial question, a truly spellbinding oratory that scholars will still scrutinize in decades to come.

But buxom, Botoxed Fox News babes carped it was all about Obama hatin' on his white grandma, making you shudder at how they'd have shrilly bashed Bobby Kennedy or Martin Luther King back in the day.

These storylines do serve a useful purpose for those who don't care to pay much attention. You now have permission to vote against Obama. Not because he's black (oh, no) but because his craaaazy preacher means he simply cannot be trusted to solve the foreclosure crisis.

Same goes for McCain. It's not that you think he's an old coot; it's just that he lacks the correct temperament to fix Medicare.

The sad part is they're two of the most authentic and genuinely engaging candidates we've had to choose from in decades. The media do them and the public a tremendous disservice by boiling this race down to sound bites and stereotypes.

This is the contest the press has been clamoring to cover since Kennedy-Nixon. Not a mudslinging slugfest between the lesser of two evils, but a reasoned choice between political philosophies, policies and leadership styles.

If we get the chance, let's not blow it with braggadocio. The stories will practically write themselves.

Book Review Politics for junkies

Susan J. Demas

For the Enquirer

Dana Milbank dedicates his tome to Tom DeLay -- and that pretty much says it all.

Political junkies will delight in the absurdism of a tribute to the indicted Republican bad boy known as “The Hammer” for his soto voce leadership style.

And if you can’t quite place who DeLay is, well, “Homo Politicus” isn’t for you. In fact, it’s so smirkingly inside-the-beltway that even politicos outside the Washington orbit might feel a bit lost.

A creature of the Capitol for two decades, Milbank writes the merrily nipping “Washington Sketch” column for the Washington Post. Like his column, the book supplies slaps and flesh wounds to the Capitol gang, without going for the jugular like H.L. Mencken or Molly Ivins. Milbank’s goal isn’t to rail against the political power circle and call for its overthrow; he’s just the court jester who gabs and jabs – but ultimately doesn’t want to lose his place in the kingdom.

It’s written in anthropological tongue-and-cheek, chapters commencing with exotic anecdotes about the Vikings, Aztecs and the Masai tribe in Kenya. There also are scores of subheads on “Totem poles” (symbols like motorcades), “Kin selection” (parties choosing candidates) and “Moka partners” (gift-giving, lobbyist-style).

All this is meant to underscore the wackiness of Washington, i.e. Potomac Land, just as Horace Miner satirized American culture in his seminal, “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema.”

In 276 pages of often too-clever-by-a-half metaphors, Milbank hammers home his theme like any good stand-up comic or rush-hour radio DJ: No, it’s not just you. Your leaders really are crazy.

One reason for this: In the era of hyperpartisanship, Milbank sagely surmises, “Democrats and Republicans alike will tolerate almost any oddity in a person’s character as long as that person contributes to the strength of the party.”

The book is a series of snapshots of politicians’ most outrageous comments and egregious sins, belying “Potomac Man’s trademark sense of entitlement.” One might expect a D.C. insider to reveal rare morsels about pompous poobahs, but his passages on Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld and Howard Dean mostly rehash well-known yarns.

Milbank’s real genius is in his deft descriptions of luminaries, like that of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert “a huge and rumpled figure” known as the “accidental Speaker”(much as former state House Speaker Craig DeRoche was). Rep. John Conyers is skewered for treating “the House floor as his legislative playground” and helping “himself to a wife from his staff.”

The author nails Dick Cheney perfectly as “impossibly dour, his lips sagging in one corner, emerging occasionally to speak about the imminent demise of humanity, the absolute correctness of the Bush administration, or both.”

Milbank is at his least amusing and convincing when he critiques the Washington social scene of which he’s a part, taking a few swipes at his more gregarious colleagues.

He’s at his best penning an explanation for an empty index, which Milbank knows will frustrate Potomac Man, who narcissistically flips there first to find his own name and those of his rivals.

The highlight of the book is the glossary, which translates famous phrases such as George W. Bush’s “I don’t pay attention to the polls” (My job approval rating is 32 percent) and John Kerry’s “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it” (I am trying to lose the election).

Milbank’s true genius is mixing self-deprecation with sublime self-promotion. His back-cover reviews include Sen. Barbara Boxer slamming him for “taking trash journalism to new heights” and a poll by snarky Wonkette.com: “Dana Milbank is … emblematic of the deterioration of the American media, 12.1% … the savior of American journalism, 13.5% … a publicity whore, 74.4%.”

In the end, “Homo Politicus” is a mirthful, breezy read – at least for those of us hankering for a break from C-SPAN’s “Road to the White House” or CNN’s “Ballot Bowl.”

The sad, short political life of John Edwards

John Edwards stood before me, cradling an angelic 11-month-old popping a pacifier with the serenity only a father of four has.

His now famously $400-coiffed hair was shaggier then, his powder-blue Oxford collar unbuttoned and his cauliflower eyes less crinkled. There was an ease to the then-freshman senator on that sultry August day in 2003.

Speaking to a gathering of 40 university-types in a sprawling Iowa City backyard, Edwards relished his sunny, upstart campaign, much like Mike Huckabee did this time around.

The expert litigator didn't unfurl a fiery speech, as would become his trademark in 2008, nor did he spend much time on labor issues, save for his "son of a millworker" spiel. He deftly touched on the death of his oldest son, Wade, which propelled him into politics.

But in spite of his paper-thin political résumé (far skimpier than Barack Obama's), he looked presidential in a Hollywood sort of way. And he definitely had the kissing babies part down.

So I wasn't particularly surprised that he scored second place in the Iowa caucuses in '04. Nor was I by his repeat performance this year.

The difference was, after moving to the cornfields for a couple years, coming in No. 2 again was the death-knell of his campaign. I had my suspicions even back in August 2007 after talking with Edwards strategist Joe Trippi.

In the spin room after a Chicago debate, Trippi refreshingly didn't fall over himself to invent all the ways his guy won. He wisely said the field was winnowing to three, lumping Edwards and Obama together as the reform candidates.

When I asked if Edwards would hold a fundraising and organizational advantage over Republicans, Trippi replied, "Whoever the Democratic nominee is - whether it's Edwards or someone else - will inherit a much better operation."

When your communications guru stops painting you as an invincible superhero, you've got problems. Even Dennis Kucinich kept hope alive by adorably telling audiences, "When I'm president . . ."

There was a surrealist melancholy to Edwards' second run, as his wife, Elizabeth, wilted from a recurrence of incurable breast cancer. Both of them seemed itching for a fight - and who could blame them?

But for a former political Pollyanna, Edwards' newfound anger seemed off-key and his love affair with unions (after previously sitting on his hands in right-to-work North Carolina) came off contrived.

His worst moment came at that Chi-town debate, when a disabled steelworker who could barely stand at the microphone pled with candidates about universal health care.

"What's wrong with America?" Steve Skvara asked, neck pulsating in pain. "And what will you do to change it?"

Edwards blithely dispensed vague promises of reform, before proclaiming himself to be the true workers' candidate.

"Who was with you in crunch time?" Edwards grinned ingratiatingly at the crowd.

It was a truly chilling exchange, which his campaign didn't get, instead trumpeting the footage on YouTube. I wondered how a man whose wife has metastatic stage four cancer could respond that way.

After a string of dismal showings before Super Tuesday, Edwards quit. He never captured the limelight he felt he'd earned as a former vice presidential nominee, usurped by Hillary Clinton primping herself for coronation and by the superstar status of the silver-tongued Obama.

("We can't make John black; we can't make him a woman," Elizabeth Edwards had once scowled on the stump).

As the increasingly bitter Democratic brawl drags on, attention is turning to party elders to inject some sanity. But although a steady drip of superdelegates have come Obama's way, Edwards has stayed mum.

The conventional wisdom was that Edwards would endorse the frontrunner. They'd both ganged up on Clinton as the corporate candidate, who defended taking boatloads of lobbyists' cash because they "represent real Americans."

The golden boy hasn't and is now said to favor Clinton, whom he respects as a fighter, underscoring his resentment of Obama's successful healer-in-chief campaign.

The Edwardses are, not surprisingly, passionate about health care and prefer Clinton's blueprint to Obama's. This has always been a bizarre argument amongst the Dems, who all sport strikingly similar plans that are miles from John McCain's and the status quo.

There's a legitimate debate to be had over mandates (Obama doesn't have one for adults) but it's really just academic. Plans are just a starting point for negotiating with Congress (which Clinton blew big-time in 1993).

Four years after that Iowa City garden party, I'm still not quite sure who John Edwards is.

What is it that he wants? Does he want attorney general, terrorizing Wall Street a la Eliot Spitzer (sans the hooker mess)? It seems doubtful that he covets a second crack at veep. And he seems too restless to settle back down at the admirable anti-poverty organization he founded.

I don't think he knows.

He appears to be a man adrift in the face of losing his rock of 30 years. Grief and ambition drove him into politics. Sadly, it's now become a circular quest.

Can Granholm pass the Kwame test?

“I’m a mother. I’m used to cleaning up other people’s messes.”

That’s long been Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s disarming reply to Michigan’s record unemployment, billion-dollar budget deficits and loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

Of course it’s not her fault (picture a certain rotund Republican governor who preceded her) but by golly, Granholm is going mop up the muck and set the Mitten State on a path anew.

Well, governor, have we got a mess for you.

The stench left by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s 12 indictments (eight of them felonies) this week for perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy has engulfed the state.

This isn’t a sex scandal. I know, those racy text messages of Kwame and his paramour/former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty (“And did you miss me, sexually?”) are on permanent loop on national TV. The Eliot Spitzer hooker extravaganza is sooo old, since the New York gov actually had the gumption to resign, so Kwame’s office boot-knocking is getting its due.

Whatever. What this is really about is Detroit and the state of Michigan.

It’s about hizzoner’s spending spree of more than $9 million of the city’s money to cover up firing police officers (the less titillating, but far more damning of the 14,000 text messages). Police had allegedly uncovered abuses in Kwame’s posse/security detail (all former altar boys, natch) and a certain wild party at the Manoogian Mansion that Attorney General Mike Cox dubbed an “urban legend.”

Cox’s investigation was less than thorough, as documents from the Michigan State Police now show, so expect more revelations on that front. And perhaps we’ll all find out why Coxie was so chummy with Kwame and if it has anything to do with the AG’s burning desire to live in the governor’s mansion in 2010.

As always in politics, it’s the cover-up that did Kilpatrick in. He lied about his affair under oath, as well as planning to sack the cops. The proof is there in black and white.

The outrage is that a city as economically bludgeoned as Detroit is being bilked by a corrupt mayor who feels no shame in treating his hometown like a brothel and making residents pick up the tab.

Motown has never recovered from the flight of the industrial base or the riots of 1967 – blocks of buildings resembling bombed-out Baghdad testify to that. Infant mortality and literacy rates are on par with third-world countries.

It is a travesty for Detroit, once a beacon of hope on the Underground Railroad and the source of inspiration for Henry Ford, to have become America’s living symbol of urban decay.

Kilpatrick tried to turn that image around and masterfully wooed the business community. But now we’re told that those efforts somehow should absolve him of essentially pilfering city coffers (and of his felonies) and keep him on the job.

Since he has no defense, he’s adopted the last refuge of scoundrels: Lash out at the media for reporting his misdeeds and make this about race (“I’ve been called (the n-word) more than anytime in my entire life.”)

This is sad and shameful and we all pay the price. Because whether you live in Benzie or Battle Creek, we’re all Detroiters, baby. What’s the first thing entrepreneurs think about Michigan nowadays? Kwame is the 300-pound, diamond-studded elephant in the room.

You can live in denial that our crumbling core city doesn’t affect you - but the rest of the world knows otherwise.

So should Kwame Kilpatrick stay or should he go? How is this even a question?

The biggest favor Kilpatrick could do for the city and state he claims to love is walk away. We’re struggling enough with 7.2 percent unemployment and record foreclosures, thank you very much.

But that ain’t gonna happen. So it’s up to Granholm to whip out the industrial Hoover and vacuum up the manure.

The governor does have the power to oust the frat-boy mayor, plain and simple. She denies that, but her narrow reading of the Michigan Constitution smacks of someone who skirts politically thorny decisions at all costs.

Anyone paying attention to six years of budget crises knows that. It’s clear to anyone who’s heard Granholm’s soaring rhetoric about education and watched her gut college funding up until this year.

Jenny doesn’t like to pull the trigger.

Look, this isn’t easy. Kwame’s a fallen star in her own party from the fiercest Democratic stronghold in the state (and one of the biggest in the country). But it would show tremendous leadership.

And it’s the right thing to do. It is crucial for Michigan - we all need to move on from the mayor’s wanton criminality and national humiliation.

This is a key test for Granholm and Democrats. Stop whining that you’re cleaning up John Engler’s mess and wipe out one of your own.

Susan J. Demas on "Off the Record"

"Off the Record," hosted by Senior Capitol Correspondent Tim Skubick, featured a panel Friday, March 21, of Susan J. Demas of MIRS, Bill Ballenger of Inside Michigan Politics, Kathy Barks Hoffman of the Associated Press and Dawson Bell of the Detroit Free Press.

The aborted Michigan Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton's Detroit visit, Bill Schuette's career options and the Blue Cross/Blue Shield bills were debated.

To catch the show online:

Off the Record 3.21.08