HorsesAss.Org

Beer, vulgarity and erudite chit-chat flowed freely last night, as we begin to get back into our Podcasting Liberally groove.

Me (Goldy), Lee, Dan, Carl, and John provide live coverage of Hillary Clinton’s big win Barack Obama’s disappointing 23-point victory in Mississippi’s Democratic primary, a philosophical discourse on the intersection (difference?) between politics and prostitution, the tanking prospects of Sen. John McCain in WA state and what this means for Republicans down-ticket, plus a conversation with EOI Executive Director John Burbank, a candidate for WA’s 36th Legislative District. Tune in and find out what would have made the life of this particular downtrodden white boy so much easier and more successful.

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_march_11_2008.mp3]

The show is 47:56, and is can be downloaded here as a 43.9 MB MP3.

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Darryl for producing the show, and Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

I don’t care what party you’re with, anyone who spends 80 grand on high priced hookers shouldn’t be a governor anymore.

UPDATE [–Goldy]:

I’m not so sure I agree with Will. If patronizing a prostitute were suddenly a disqualification for office, we’d have an awful lot of high profile resignations to report today. And if marital infidelity were made a disqualification, Washington D.C. would become a virtual ghost town. I myself have never been unfaithful, and I don’t have much sympathy for people who have, but it seems to me to be the human condition rather than a peculiar of flaw of folks like Spitzer.

On the bright side, Spitzer will always be remembered for delivering to New Yorkers their first black governor, Gov. David Paterson:

How sad is it that a trailblazing feminist like Geraldine Ferraro is turning out to be a huge goddamn racist?

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color), he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

It’s particularly sad to see the old, gas bag feminists of yesteryear attack a man who could be America’s first black president. She’s basically saying that America has jungle fever, that Obama’s blackness has intoxicated his supporters. She’s implying this, and all the while is still with the Clinton campaign.

Obama responds:

“I don’t think Geraldine Ferraro’s comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive. I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd,” he told the Allentown Morning Call. “And I would expect that the same way those comments don’t have a place in my campaign they shouldn’t have a place in Senator Clinton’s either.”

Ferraro is just another sad old fart who sees history being made and is irritated by it.

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E—some of us show up a little early to sample from the terrific menu.

Tonight’s theme song? What else could it be but Missy ‘Misdemeanor’ Elliott’s One Minute Man:

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally . Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

Much ado has been made recently over a proposal by a group of local business “leaders” to save the Sonics and keep them in Seattle. The local group proposes buying the Sonics and investing $150 million of their money in renovating Key Arena, conditioned on an additional $150 million in matching taxpayer funds.

This is by far the most reasonably reasonable arena proposal pitched thus far, or at least it would be if not for a handful of obvious stumbling blocks: A) the Sonics’ Oklahoma City based owners insist the team is not for sale; B) NBA Commissioner David Stern has promised that Seattle would not get another franchise if they allowed the Sonics to leave; and C) there was no chance in hell the tax authorization legislation could make it out of Olympia this year, coming just a week before the end of the session. And oh yeah… D) a substantial majority of Seattle voters don’t seem to give a shit whether the team stays or leaves.

According to a March 3, SurveyUSA/KING-5 poll which seemed to fly under the media and political radar, 77% of respondents said they opposed spending public funds to renovate Key Arena… about the same percentage of voters who approved Initiative 91 in 2006, a citywide measure that barred exactly that. Only 37% of respondents indicated they even care if the Sonics leave Seattle in two years, and a full two-thirds of respondents believe the team’s move to Oklahoma City is already a done deal. Hardly a popular uproar demanding the Legislature to drop all their current business and push through an arena funding bill.

Not that the folks behind this proposal ever believed they’d get a bill out of the current session. These are savvy folk. Rich folk, who’ve spent plenty of money on Olympia lobbyists in the past. They know how the system works, and they know that any proposal pitched during the final week of the session isn’t a serious proposal at all. Why they pitched it at the very last minute, I don’t know, but before any of you diehard Sonics fans get too excited by media efforts to hype this proposal into genuine hope, take a look at the facts. No bill is going to pass this session to rebuild Key Arena, and until we hear otherwise, no NBA team is available to play in it.

I’m not saying the proposal isn’t for real, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the local group eventually gets the taxpayer money they seek — if they can actually produce a team — but I’m guessing the sudden display of urgency is mostly intended to impress their fellow billionaires at the upcoming NBA owners meeting. And while I suppose it is interesting to watch the intricate mating rituals peculiar to the strange birds who comprise our nation’s moneyed elite, I’m just not so sure that us average folk really care all that much anymore.

When I snarkily commented a while back that while the rest of the presidential field was flying around on chartered Boeing 737s, only Sen. John McCain was campaigning from a French built Airbus A320, I had no idea that McCain’s choice in aircraft was anything more than symbolic. But in the wake of the controversial Air Force refueling contract, we’re learning that McCain’s connections to both Airbus and the tanker contract are closer than anybody imagined.

It was McCain who authored an amendment undermining “buy American” rules that formerly required military equipment to be manufactured in the United States, and McCain who “prides himself in the role he played blocking an earlier version of the tanker deal that gave the contract to Boeing.” And now we learn that three of McCain’s current top aides have been lobbying the Air Force — and presumably McCain — on behalf of Airbus.

Top current advisers to Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign last year lobbied for a European plane maker that beat Boeing to a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract, taking sides in a bidding fight that McCain has tried to referee for more than five years.

Two of the advisers gave up their lobbying work when they joined McCain’s campaign. A third, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, lobbied for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. while serving as McCain’s national finance chairman.

[…] McCain, the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, has been a key figure in the Pentagon’s yearslong attempt to complete a deal on the tanker. McCain helped block an earlier tanker contract with Boeing and prodded the Pentagon in 2006 to develop bidding procedures that did not exclude Airbus.

McCain’s campaign claims that “they never lobbied him related to the issues,” so I guess those two letters McCain wrote the Defense Department were purely coincidental.

In December 2006, just weeks before the Air Force was set to release its formal request for proposals, McCain wrote a letter to the incoming defense secretary, Robert Gates, warning that he was “troubled” by the Air Force’s draft request for bids.

The United States had filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization alleging that Airbus unfairly benefits from European subsidies. Airbus in turn argued that Boeing also receives government support, mostly as tax breaks.

Under the Air Force proposal, bidders would have been required to explain how financial penalties or other sanctions stemming from the subsidy dispute might affect their ability to execute the contract. The request was widely viewed as hurting the EADS-Northrop Grumman bid.

The proposed bid request “may risk eliminating competition before bids are submitted,” McCain wrote in a Dec. 1, 2006, letter to Gates. The Air Force changed the criteria four days later.

Rep. Norm Dicks called the removal of the subsidy language a “game changer” that “tilted to Airbus.”

“The only reason that they could even bid a low price is because they received a subsidy,” Dicks said last week. “And Senator McCain jumped into this and said that (the Air Force) could not look at the subsidy issue — which I think is a big mistake, especially when the U.S. trade representative is bringing a case in the (World Trade Organization) on this very issue.”

And it’s not just partisan bloggers like me who are questioning the intersection between McCain’s interference in the tanker contract and his close ties to Airbus lobbyists.

“The aesthetics are not good, especially since he is an advocate of reform and transparency,” said Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with the aerospace consulting firm Teal Group. “Boeing advocates are going to use this as ammunition.”

Damn right they are. (And if any Boeing advocates want to forward me some ammunition, I promise strict confidentiality.)

Meanwhile, as WA’s Democratic congressional delegation has been noisily defending Boeing and cheering on their decision to officially protest the contract, our region’s lone Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert, has been awfully damn quiet about the loss of 9,000 local jobs and the role of the man he’s endorsed for president. But then, what do you expect from the 419th most powerful man in Congress… a man who lost his bid for a coveted Appropriations Committee seat to an Alabama congressman who had just days before publicly endorsed Airbus over Boeing?

Geez… the only thing more damaging for Reichert than campaigning with President Bush might be campaigning with presidential wannabe and French aerospace enthusiast John McCain.

“We Wuz Robbed” seems like an incredibly bankrupt campaign strategy to me. But bankruptcy hasn’t stopped Dino Rossi, who is still perpetuating the idea that he was cheated out of being Governor:

Residents heard from Attorney General Rob McKenna, who’s seeking re-election, and Dino Rossi, who’s back on the campaign trail as a candidate for governor, jokingly telling people he’s seeking re-election as well, after an extremely close vote the last time he ran.

The Sore Loser Express™ is currently steaming through Eastern Washington saying things like this:

“It’s a different campaign, completely different,” said Rossi. “Last time when I decided I was going to run for governor, I only had 12 percent name ID statewide. Almost everybody in this county thought Dino Rossi was some sort of wine.”

Of course, another difference is that, recently, Washington state has been rated one of the best managed states, and as having one of the best business climates in the country. He continues:

“If people want to, they can control every single election,” said Rossi. “If they get their aunt, who doesn’t think their vote counts anymore to vote, get their 18-year-olds registered to vote. Just get everybody out to vote. If you exercise the vote that you’re given, you can control every election.”

Yeah…that’s it, Dino. Get Aunt Matilda to go out and vote. You’d better just hope that Aunt Millie doesn’t remember the cries of election fraud that were found to be without merit by a Judge in one of the most conservative county in Washington. And hope that she doesn’t remember your un-statesmanlike slamming the Washington state Supreme Court when you begrudgingly ended the contest:

“With today’s decision, and because of the political makeup of the Washington state Supreme Court, which makes it almost impossible to overturn this ruling, I am ending the election contest

Because, even Aunt Millie knows a sore loser when she sees one!

Earlier today I accused Democratic state legislators of spouting BIAW talking points in defense of their opposition to SB 6385, the Homeowner’s Bill of Rights, and I stand by my accusations. I know some of these legislators personally, I value their support on other issues, and I certainly don’t expect them to agree with me 100% of the time. But when they align themselves with the likes of the BIAW, they are doing their constituents and their party a great disservice.

The BIAW is as determined and effective a foe of progressive causes and Democratic candidates as there is in Washington state, an early financial backer of the Northwest militia movement, and an emphatic and relentless critic of environmental protections. These people play hardball, and when they win, they’re not shy about kicking us while we are down. On the election of Jim Johnson to the State Supreme Court, the BIAW’s Erin Shannon once kvelled, “It was a big ‘Fuck you!’ to all the liberals out there. […] We are kicking their ass. How many years have we whipped labor?” And these were the carefully chosen words of the BIAW’s PR Director, talking to a reporter. Message sent; message received.

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and we can’t always choose our allies (hell, even Dori and I couldn’t avoid agreeing in our mutual opposition to puppy tossing), but when you adopt the BIAW’s talking points you grant them a credibility that they do not deserve, and help them further an agenda that is diametrically opposed to the interests of your constituents and to that of Washington’s Democratic majority. For if those anti-6385 talking points are presumed authoritative and evenhanded, why not the many other talking points the BIAW spews forth on a regular basis:

“One of my priority goals as the 2008 President of the Building Industry Association of Washington is to replace anti-small business and antiaffordable housing Governor Gregoire with her pro-small business and affordable housing challenger Dino Rossi. […] I am therefore not upholding my oath if I do not speak the truth about Gregoire’s record and do everything in my power to defeat her. She attacks affordable housing, and BIAW members are in overwhelming need of relief from her onslaught of attacks against the homebuilding industry. […] BIAW and its members are Rock Solid behind Rossi.”
— BIAW President Brad Spears, January 2008

“I urge you to call on President Bush to fire John McKay, U.S. Attorney for Western Washington. […] I presume Mr. McKay has adamantly refused to investigate because he’s a Democrat… I thought the process by which Mr. McKay, a Democrat, was appointed was reprehensible… Please ask the White House to replace Mr. McKay”
— BIAW Executive VP Tom McCabe, Letter to Rep. Doc Hastings

“Yellow-booted thugs at DOE have shut down builders because some dirt ran off their job sites. […] These self-anointed priests of nature and the bureaucrats who encourage them are using tactics similar to those used 70 years ago in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia.”
— BIAW Executive VP Tom McCabe, September 2007

“There’s an apocalyptic pessimism which seemingly runs through Seattle liberal environmental advocates. […] This attitude and this pessimism likely explains in part why Seattle has lost its children. For those optimists who look for a silver lining in everything, conservatives are having babies and liberals are not which means that eventually conservatives will outnumber liberals in Washington State.”
— BIAW Executive VP Tom McCabe, September 2007

“Is this Gregoire’s new plan to revamp her Hillary Clinton-esque image of a heartless, power-hungry she-wolf who would eat her own young to get ahead?”
— Building Insight Newsletter, January 2008

“I’d like to see Frank Chopp run for Governor,” says Tom McCabe, executive vice president of the Building Industry Association of Washington, which has spent millions of dollars supporting conservative causes and Republican Candidates. “I have a great deal of Respect for him.”
— Seattle Times, July 2006

That is the wit and wisdom of the BIAW, the folks some Democrats are looking to for rhetorical guidance in discussing this issue. The only thing more arrogant and politically dangerous than McCabe and his crew is the delusion Speaker Chopp and other Democrats seem to hold that these are people they can work with. You don’t need to watch your back Frank, because when the time comes, McCabe will thrust that knife in so deep that you’ll see the blade emerging from your chest.

Democratic Gov. Elliot Spitzer of New York, who once prosecuted a high-end prostitution ring as Attorney General, has apparently been uncovered as a customer of one as well. “Sources” expect his resignation is imminent.

Of course, we do not yet know the details of the investigation, or whether Spitzer is legally guilty of anything more than the misdemeanor of hiring a prostitute (if that), so I’m not prepared to comment on whether he should or should not resign. I am, however, deeply disappointed in Spitzer, who I had viewed as a rising Democratic star.

That said, I would like to take a moment to comment on the difference between the way Democrats and Republicans (the “family values” party) react to sex scandals. Spitzer has immediately come forward with a personal and public apology, but that hasn’t halted a wave of demands for his resignation from progressive bloggers, legacy media types and fellow Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans Larry Craig (soliciting sex in a men’s room) and David Vitter (diaper-wearing john) both still serve in the US Senate, while former Rep. Mark Foley’s Republican colleagues covered up his sexual predation for years, leaving House pages at risk. Republicans Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain all infamously engaged in adulterous affairs without apparent harm to their political careers… while Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob.

If Democrats want to demand higher personal standards from our own politicians than Republicans obviously demand of their’s, well, that’s up to us. No doubt Spitzer has admitted to a supreme act of hypocrisy. But if Republicans and the “objective” and “impartial” media want to join in and demand Spitzer’s resignation, they better demand the resignation of Sen. Vitter as well, lest they be branded equally hypocritical.

In defending their opposition to SB 6385, the Homeowner’s Bill of Rights, several Democratic representatives have been responding to constituents with BIAW talking points, but by far the most transparently silly is this line of defense, which has been put forward in one form or another by multiple legislators:

A law passed by the legislature years ago to protect condominium owners had an unintended consequence of creating an “insurance crisis.” Because insurance for building condominiums was not available, the town center of Mercer Island has 400 plus apartments!

During the last five years, the legislature, through passage of “Cure,” “Affirmative Defense” and “Condominium Act” reform, began the process of bringing back predictability to the contractor insurance market that had been damaged from earlier Legislation. This was in response to the lack of insurance available to builders–especially condo builders.

SB 6385 would undo all that has been gained and would force medium and small contractors out of business because they would not be able to obtain third-party warranties and general liability insurance. At the very least, the cost of housing would dramatically increase for all new homebuyers.

Forget for a moment that this “insurance crisis” was created by damage claims arising from crappy construction, and that if builders and insurers had wanted to avert this crisis they could have implemented a construction inspection program instead of waiting for the Legislature to mandate one. And disregard the fact that SB 6385 merely gives single family homebuyers the same protections currently granted condo buyers today, including those reforms of the last five years, so the bill doesn’t actually “undo” anything.

Forget all that. Let’s just assume for the sake of argument that the statements above are irrefutable fact, and if so… wouldn’t that imply that Speaker Frank Chopp and the other conscientious defenders of affordable housing should be working their asses off to repeal the condo warranties? Don’t condo developers deserve the same immunity from lawsuits currently enjoyed by developers of single family homes? Isn’t anybody going to protect our state’s vulnerable builders from the predatory practices of their own customers? Mercer Island already has (gasp) “400 plus apartments” for God’s sake… when will this savagery end?

You see where I’m going.

Unlike others, I don’t entirely blame the Eastside Democrats who are doing the BIAW’s dirty work; they either believe the talking points they spew, or they’ve made the shrewd political calculation that this is what they need to do to hold office in their swing districts. (Or, perhaps, some combination of the two.) But the Dems don’t need their votes to pass this bill in the House, so in the end, it all comes down to Speaker Chopp. So what is it Frank…? Who deserves your protection more, homebuyers or condo builders? Because if you’re gonna stand by and quietly watch your members repeat BIAW bullshit like this, you are laying the groundwork for the latter.

Once again, a local professional sports team’s threats to move the franchise are resulting in lawmakers flouting their own rules (and, oh, yeah, the desires of a vast majority of their constituents) in order to throw public money at a project which will primarily serve to benefit team owners. And once again, local TV, radio, and newspapers are breathlessly fawning over the proposal, without bothering to note that said media outlets have a tremendous financial interest in the success of the proposal. So sliced bread has nothing on this latest unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to Save “Our” Sonics.

Sigh.

It’s not the fault of the Sonics’ current owners, of course, that we’ve been down this road so many times now, with Safeco Field, Qwest Field, Key Arena, and the Bank of America Arena (which is at least owned by a public entity, UW, and whose renovation was mostly paid for by private donors). The financings of Safeco and Qwest in particular were ugly affairs in which the clear will of local voters was defied by politicians in order to accommodate team owners. So you’ll forgive folks a bit of “here-we-go-again” knee-jerk hatred for yet another fleecing, again joyously celebrated by willfully tone-deaf local media.

I actually think the proposal on the table now from four local billionaires to renovate Key Arena with $150 million of their own money, matched by $75 million each from the city and state, is about as good a proposal (and therefore about as reasonable a compromise) as one could hope for, given that the economics of modern pro sports now rely on the public to build teams’ playpens, and there’s always another sucker (in this case, Oklahoma City; previously, the Mariners were heading to Tampa Bay, the Seahawks to Southern California) willing to pay the price. In any other circumstances, this deal would work.

But there’ always a context, and this is a specific proposal, not an abstraction. As such, there are still three major problems we’re not hearing about from our sycophantic local media.

First is that the proposal’s success relies on current Sonics owner Clay Bennett selling the team to our local guys. Bennett has been telling anyone and everyone, consistently since day one, that he has no interest in selling the team. So the whole exercise is unlikely to result in “saving” the Sonics. Moreover, NBA commissioner David Stern, who has a lot to say about the matter, has warned that if the Sonics leave, Seattle won’t get another team.

The proposal is set up to meet the restrictions of (overwhelmingly voter-approved) I-91, which requires that the city at least break even on any arena improvement deal. So the public’s $150 million is to go to overall improvements to the arena, things that will also help with concerts, exhibitions, and the like, while the private $150 million is supposedly the only part dedicated wholly to pro basketball amenities like locker rooms and luxury suites. But that’s a game, of course; this is all about the Sonics. Nobody’s demanding $150 million in improvements so that the public can enjoy rock concerts in greater comfort. Given that, what we’re talking about is an extremely expensive public investment in appeasing a team that’s likely to move anyway. That’s one minor problem.

The second is that even if this were an ideal proposal (i.e., one with a chance of accomplishing its stated goal), the process is awful. By coming to the state legislature for $75 million six working days before the end of the session, boosters are essentially asking lawmakers to ignore all legal procedures and drop all state business in the remaining week in order to consider a very local problem: the “blight” that results if Key Arena were to lose 41 basketball games a year (some of which would be replaced by concerts that now can’t be booked). To use the appropriate analogy, it’s as if a coach whose team is losing badly midway through the fourth quarter suddenly insisted on throwing out the results, starting the score at 0-0, and if his team is still losing at the end of the game, continuing to play (a special session) until they win.

Each legislative session, a couple thousand bills are proposed, most of which fail — not because they’re bad bills, but because the session’s limited time forces politicians to prioritize. The Sonics proposal wants to skip the committee approvals, the public hearings, the deadlines, all the normal hoops bills must jump through, for what in the greater scheme of things is a pretty low state priority.

Lastly, there’s the local $75 million, which Mayor Greg Nickels has already generously pledged. Aside from the fact that it’s supposed to be the city council, not the mayor, who makes city spending decisions, isn’t this the same Greg Nickels who not a month ago wasn’t paying assistance to dislocated renters because there was no money for it? And now he’s magically found $75 million for a bunch of wealthy Oklahoma businessmen, for a proposal whose local economic benefits would be negligible even if it were successful in saving the team? Which it probably won’t be?

There’s a word for this whole process. And it’s not “generous.”

Yeah, Sen. Barack Obama won the Wyoming Democratic caucus yesterday by a twenty-plus point margin, but his bigger victory came in Illinois, where he won a proxy war with Sen. John McCain in the special election to replace former House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Obama cut an ad on behalf of Democrat Bill Foster while McCain personally campaigned with Republican Jim Oberweis. Foster won by a comfortable 53% to 47% margin in a traditionally Republican district in which President Bush garnered 55% of the vote in 2004, and that hadn’t elected a Democrat since the 1970’s. Those who have argued Obama would have long coattails in November are surely cheered by the results.

But yesterday’s special election has deeper implications that have Republicans worried nationwide, possibly presaging a second Big Blue Wave that could potentially reshape congressional politics for a decade or more:

The defeat — whether or not there are national implications — is a major setback for the NRCC and House Republicans. The NRCC spent nearly $1.3 million defending the seat, a significant percentage of the $6.4 million the committee showed on hand at the end of January. That is a major investment of limited resources — only to come up empty.

House Republicans, already dispirited by the loss of their majority in the 2006 election and more than two dozen retirements within their ranks since then, will likely take this defeat hard. Watch to see whether a rash of retirements breaks out over the coming weeks as vulnerable members take the Illinois special election as a sign of things to come in the fall.

Party identity sticks hard, but we may be in the midst of the type of large scale partisan realignment we haven’t seen since the Democrats lost the South in the 1960’s. In 2006 Northeastern Republicans were virtually eradicated from the congressional map, and 2008 is shaping up to do the same in the Midwest. What this means for Washington’s most vulnerable Republican, Rep. Dave Reichert, remains unclear, but… well… it can’t look good from his perspective. Twice now Reichert has been bailed out by multi-million dollar NRCC expenditures in a district that used to pump money into the party under Rep. Jennifer Dunn instead of sucking money out; with an unprecedented number of open seats to defend and a staggering cash disadvantage, the NRCC is going to have to make some tough choices about where they invest their resources.

With so many other fires to fight this cycle, does it make sense for the party to continue to prop up a perpetually needy Reichert? Or, would they be better off protecting stronger incumbents elsewhere, and then coming back with an energetic Reagan Dunn against a freshman Rep. Darcy Burner in 2010, a cycle in which Democrats are due an electoral backlash? I know conventional wisdom dictates that a party’s first priority is to defend the seats they hold, but if Burner is as much of a lightweight as Republicans claim they believe her to be, a 2010 strategy could prove politically savvy. And besides, desperate times call for desperate measures, and the NRCC simply may not have the option of continuing to throw good money after bad.

Regardless of the nominee at the top of the ticket Democrats are poised to make substantial gains in both houses of Congress. How big and lasting those gains are remains to be seen, but either way, shifting demographics and party alignment don’t bode well for the GOP in WA-08.

Rep. Steve King (R-Cowardstowne) is fucking insane! (via Crooks and Liars):

(Other media clips from the past week in politics are posted at Hominid Views.)

No doubt my friends in the establishment press are looking forward to a bitter and divisive brawl between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all the way up to the Democratic National Convention, but the truth is that even at its nastiest, the 2008 presidential nominating process has thus far been an extraordinarily civil war compared to previous campaigns. Still, while the candidates have mostly managed to stay out of the muck, their partisan supporters in the blogosphere are now poised to march into combat rakes in hand, the posts and comment threads of many of our leading blogs serving as battlefields in an increasingly bloody war of words.

To which I caution my comrades in the progressive netroots… who the hell cares?

There isn’t a nickel’s difference between Obama and Clinton on most policy issues, at least not substantive enough that it can’t be overcome by a commanding congressional majority, and both candidates arguably occupy the same center/center-left ideological niche. We may prefer one candidate’s health care plan over the other, or one candidate’s historical record on the occupation of Iraq, but both Obama and Clinton largely share the same agenda, and either would be far preferable to the Republican alternative. But most important to movement progressives like me, while both are good Democrats, and both have clear paths toward victory in November, neither is exactly what we would call a “netroots candidate,” and thus neither deserves the sort of unrelenting partisan passion that now threatens to distract our ranks, if not actually split them.

I personally like Clinton, and believe she has the makings of an excellent president… but isn’t she an icon of the very Democratic establishment we are all working so hard to challenge? And I do find Obama genuinely inspiring, and believe he may be able to deliver the kind of personal leadership we desperately need at this unique moment in our nation’s history, but… as phenomenally successful as his grassroots efforts have been both on- and offline, hasn’t he merely borrowed the techniques and technology of the netroots while showing little if any interest in growing our movement or building our institutions outside the narrow interests of his own campaign?

Both candidates have raised staggering amounts of money online and harnessed the power of the Internet in ways barely imagined just a few years before, and we should all be greatly encouraged by this shifting political paradigm. But Obama and Clinton’s Internet strategies have had little more to do with the progressive netroots than the surprising online success of Ron Paul. They are not, and never have been our candidates; they are merely the last two standing.

Nor should we have had any reasonable expectation of nominating a netroots Democrat in 2008, at such an early stage in a movement that will take at least another decade or two to reach full fruition. The presidential contest is necessarily the race on which we have the least influence and the least impact, and regardless of who wins, the White House is the office to which we will surely have the least direct access. As this campaign unfolds the blogosphere will play an increasingly critical role in helping to shift media coverage and shape the public debate, but the decisions of a handful of campaign strategists will be far more decisive in determining the outcome of the presidential race than we can ever hope to be in this particular cycle. The netroots are surely a force to be reckoned with — but in the context of presidential politics that sentiment is best conjugated in the future indicative.

It is hard not to get caught up in the hopes and passions of the race for the White House, but bloggers and other netroots activists must not get distracted from the long, hard task of building the infrastructure that will make a true “netroots president” a realistic objective. That candidate will come from the ranks of the House or the Senate or from a governor’s mansion, and that candidate must be someone who doesn’t just share our values, but who has also shared our burden in building a new progressive movement from the ground up. That candidate may be one of the dozens we are now working to elect this cycle, but we will never find out if we don’t succeed in putting them in an office where they have the opportunity to establish their credentials on a national stage, while working with us to build toward the future.

It is not that the choice between Obama and Clinton isn’t important, it is just that as bloggers we cannot afford to allow this drawn out nomination process to distract us from the House, Senate, gubernatorial and other local races where we can truly make a difference. These true netroots candidates can’t wait until the end of August for us to refocus our attention; they need our energy, our creativity and our financial resources now. Neither Obama nor Clinton can secure enough pledged delegates to seal the nomination, and so for better or worse, the decision is now in the hands of the party establishment. Let them deal with it, while we keep our eye on the prize of gradually and relentlessly transforming the party itself.