MLK Day was surprisingly bland here in SC — there was a parade in downtown Columbia (led by Sen. Obama) followed by some fairly typical speeches. The unusual cold put a damper on things. Or maybe it was the dozen or so protesters, wearing Confederate flags and signs that declared the NAACP “racist.”
Now, I’m fairly open-minded about a lot of things; I can even understand how someone can make the claim that the Confederate flag is about some kind of local pride and has nothing to do with race, but it’s hard to not put two and two and two together when folks are declaiming the NAACP, on Martin Luther King Day, while wearing Confederate flags. If there truly are folks out there who believe that the Dixie symbol has nothing to do with race, it might help their cause to go out and do some counter-protest? (Likewise, patriotic liberals, stop letting those bellicose conservatives claim the American flag for their own.)
Anyway, back to the parade. I won’t pretend to begin to understand the complex racial dynamics that underlie society and politics here, so I am sensitive to the limitations that we Northeasterners possess in how we handle those same issues. As some have archly pointed out, it’s easy to be tolerant when you live in homogeneous neighborhoods. So don’t look for me to be throwing any stones from my glass house.
I managed to fit in a short run this morning (it was, btw, surprisingly cold, even for a Bostonian), and a nearby set of payday loan shops really caught my eye. I was glad to hear them brought up tonight in the debate (it may have been Edwards who mentioned them first). It’s astounding how much of our economy of the past few years has been built on credit, and that middle- and upper-class families have been treating their homes no differently than paychecks they could borrow against. The potential unraveling of the world economy because of a few years of Bush-and-Greenspan pyramid schemes is quite frightening. It almost makes me want to keep Bush in the White House for four more years, as a punishment (he would clearly rather be in his ranch). Maybe he could be kept on retainer to answer letters from families who have lost their homes.
The debate tonight provided great red meat for those in Obama HQ, but the more negative note that the campaign has taken — I do have to say that it’s still remarkably civil compared with the Republican bloodfest and past primaries and elections — alarms me. Strategically, it’s clear that Clinton (both of them) can burn down a lot of land to reach the sea, and as the Establishment, it’s both their strength and prerogative to do so. Obama’s in a much trickier situation, as challengers always are. He can’t stay on the high road forever and let accusations go unchallenged, yet he can’t get too dirty either. And while Michelle Obama is an excellent and strong speaker, she’s not a former President and can’t play surrogate attack dog the way Bill can. So Hillary comes with some hefty assets.
Hillary’s strengths also happen to be exactly the assets that turn off Republicans, independents, and a new generation of Democrats, but it’s entirely her strategy (as was Rove’s) to pander to the base and keep the rest home. Trying to build a new majority, as Obama is doing, means foregoing certain advantages and bucking received wisdom (such as the nostrum that youth and independents don’t vote in primaries). But you can’t keep cobbling together coalitions of convenience to govern. The fundamental problem is that the nation is still, after all these decades, running under a dissipated Reagan mandate, and whatever hay Clinton tries to make out of it, Obama is right that Reagan succeeded tremendously at building and sustaining a new, effective, working majority. (Personally I think Obama could have sounded a much stronger note in his blue+red America theme by daring to embrace Reagan even more strongly rather than tiptoeing back from his earlier statement, without alienating anyone who would likely have voted for him anyway). Clinton is also right that it takes more than setting a new vision, or forging a new majority, to get things done. But she seems to think that getting things done is all that is needed, when, in fact, what those things are matters quite a bit.
As to the substance of the debate, the one issue that’s caught my attention is the health care mandate vs. health care subsidy divide that’s gotten the three candidates in a tangle. As someone living under the former system (the very system that Romney is, incorrectly, taking credit for in Massachusetts) seems unworkable, unfair, and a very bad compromise to live under. Edwards is absolutely wrong to compare his and Clinton’s plan to Social Security: Social Security is not run by private entities, while both health insurance and the actual delivery of care are. Taking money out of your paycheck, as in SS, and putting it into a nationalized, single-payer health care plan is simply not on the table. But forcing people to buy health care strikes me as one of the most illogical plans I’ve encountered, except perhaps for a student-import state like Massachusetts.
I know it’s not his normal style, but I’m waiting for Obama to, just once, chain-cite a pile of data and statistics to back up his arguments. As a former law professor and president of Harvard Law Review, he’s certainly got it in him. He’s got to dispel the notion that Clinton has a monopoly on wonk, even as he sticks to his main message of hope.
