Gary Shuster's Blog

Understanding What Bush Did

Gary Shuster — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:21:49 EDT

Bush took office when the national debt was $5.7 trillion dollars. He will leave office with the national debt well over $11 trillion ($10.25 trillion today, plus $700 billion bailout, plus the continuing growth of the national debt as a result of a deficit over $400 billion/year. So George Bush added well over $5 trillion to our national debt (that is $15,000 for every human being in the United States).

Contrast to the market crash. Over the past year, the stock market's 5,000 biggest U.S. companies lost $8.3 trillion in value. Doing the math, that means the remaining value of those 5,000 companies is about $11.5 trillion.

So basically, this country would need to sell all 5,000 of its biggest companies to pay off its debt (obviously, it can't really do that since it doesn't actually own those companies). Remember that the debt was shrinking steadily under Bill Clinton. It has now doubled under Bush.

We LITERALLY can't afford four more years of out of control Republican giveaways to the rich. We can't afford four more years of Bush/McCain policies. Frankly, we can barely afford four more months of it. But thanks to our democracy, we can finally turn that corner, four months from now.

Thank you, Fired Up Veteran!

Gary Shuster — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:00:52 EDT

I'll admit it: I'm tired. No, I'm exhausted. I miss my kids. I miss my wife. I miss going to sleep early, without a knot in my stomach, without wondering if I could make even more of a difference in this election by staying up just another 10 minutes.

I keep telling myself -- and my wife keeps telling me -- that this is The Good Fight. This is the election that gives us back our country. One where we get a President sees the Bill of Rights as an oracle, not an obstacle. One where we earn a President who lives our pain instead of ignoring it.

But the poignant image in my mind, when I look back at the past year, is my baby -- now 18 months old -- learning to more and more effectively tell me that she misses me. The sad looks when she saw the suitcase as I packed for the Pennsylvania primary. The silent "bye bye" waves as I left for meetings. And now, as she gains her voice, the teared-up "bye bye da da". Yes, my wife is supportive -- she knows the stakes. My seven year old understands too -- although even she has matured over the year from superficial "Obama is cool" to issue oriented "Palin scares me because she likes people to shoot wolves from airplanes".

In this last month, this home stretch, I've worried I would start to lag. I gave up a high paying career as a litigator in large part because I couldn't conceive of a life where my family came second. Yesterday afternoon, I was wondering how I could keep the fire going when my baby daughter next chimed a teary "bye bye da da" then started to cry.

Last night I got my answer. We were registering voters -- and signing up volunteers -- at the Earth Wind and Fire concert. Twelve of us had backstage passes, yet none of us left our posts outside of the concert venue. I was there with my wife, and now our baby was at home with a babysitter. To top it off, we had heard a few under the breath comments -- and some loud ones -- about Obama that were less than honorable. So it was, near the nadir of my motivation, that the concert let out.

Out of the crowd came a loud voice -- "That's what I'm talking about!" I looked up, and saw immediately a community organizer. A man who, whether or not he had ever organized anything, had the presence, the personality, the fire, to light up a crowd and galvanize a community. He went on -- "Fired up! That's what I'm talking about," pointing at the twelve of us. People around were listening. People in the crowd were seeing what I was seeing (although maybe appreciating it differently): A young African American man, seeing what nobody expects to see in nominally Republican Fresno -- a big Obama presence. Then the line that put the fire back into my gut: "That's what I fought for. That's why I enlisted in the military. That's why I fought for America."

He's fired up. He's a voice that we need, one of millions of voices of reason, of patriotism, of freedom. His story is an American story. Not the false Americana of a 1950's that never was -- but the real, gritty, story of a man who loves the American people enough to enroll and fight in the military even for a commander in chief with whom he disagrees politically.

He was the reason we were there last night. It didn't take more than my asking once to have him promise to become a regular at our office -- he was saying yes before I got the question all the way out. And I dare -- DARE -- any voter he phonebanks to, I DARE any voter whose door he knocks on, to question Obama's patriotism, Obama's fitness for office. And when this election is over, I hope that the campaign will inspire him, and other patriots, to continue on the trail that Barack is blazing.

So I can do it. I can put my family through this. We are part of a team, each of us, from our own background, with our own hopes, and dreams and families. But we have a common goal, a common purpose, and a common patriotism, and we will move this nation forward together. And our children will be far better for it.

Four weeks from now, we will change the course of history. But it will be chorus of lone, loud, inspiring voices, rising millions of times from millions of crowds over the course of this journey, joined together over race, geography, economics, religion, and the other false dividing points that marks the true change that Barack and all of us have brought. We are one nation. We are one people. We will celebrate our differences, but never again will we allow our differences to divide us, or divert us from making this nation better for all within it.

Four more weeks.

Why Fresno Matters

Gary Shuster — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:59:34 EDT

I know a lot of us are exhausted. A lot of us want to catch up on our sleep, our day jobs, and our families. Why are we still in this sprint? Because this is our time. And Change We Can Believe In is also Change We Can Achieve.

Want to know how phone calls, canvassing, and small donations can switch an election's outcome? This site contains the answer: https://www.msu.edu/~sheppa28/elections.html
The electoral vote result in past elections would have been different with the switch of the following number of popular votes:

In 2004, 57,787 votes would have given us President Kerry

In 2000, 269 votes would have given us President Gore

In 1996, 575,515 votes would have given us President Dole

In 1992, 284,837 votes would have have made Bush 41 a two termer

In 1988, 537,766 votes would have given us President Dukakis

In 1984, 2,675,811 votes would have given us President Mondale (I know, that result wouldn't have changed based on some phone calls)

In 1980, 731,189 votes would have made Carter a two-termer

In 1976, 9,246 votes would have re-elected President Ford

In 1972, 3,174,786 votes would have elected President McGovern and spared us Watergate

In 1968, 135,284 votes would have elected President Humphry

In 1964, 2,058,258 votes would have elected President Goldwater

In 1960, 11,874 votes would have put Nixon in the White House much earlier

269 votes. 9,246 votes. 11,874 votes. These are all numbers small enough that a mid-sized city like Fresno can provide the field support to switch the outcome ALL ON ITS OWN.

At Camp Obama, Kevin Johnson told us that we need to not just stop at the finish line, but to SPRINT THROUGH the finish line. He's right. We can make those numbers.

If this is a 269, or 9,246, or 11,874 vote election, lets make sure we don't wake up the morning of November 5 and think "we could have been the difference." No, we're going to wake up and think "we WERE the difference." Us. Right here in Fresno. Yes we can!

Why Issues Matter

Gary Shuster — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:43:47 EDT

I've watched with frustration as the nation seems fixated on on anything but issues. As often as Obama tries to bring focus to the things that make our lives better, the McCain campaign distracts and distorts. Indeed, McCain has now taken to distorting a report about how he was distorting the facts. It is now wonder Americans are sick of politics as usual.

Well, I got a huge breath of fresh air today. Literally. I stayed up until the wee hours last night getting my work done so I could take a few hours today to go with my daughter's second grade class to the zoo. As I watched her incredibly hard working and dedicated teacher go about the crucial work of shaping my child's education, I was reminded of how many true heroes we have living in our midst. The people who do the hard work, day in and day out, of shaping a society we are proud of.

The real question in this election is not who said what, or who runs the meanest ads. No. The real question is whose policies will make the lives and work of these heroes easier. Who will help firefighters and police save lives. Who will help teachers shape the next generation.

The answer to that question: Barack Obama.

Community Organizer

Gary Shuster — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:59:25 EDT

I am still shocked that anybody -- much less a VP candidate from a major party -- would mock the hard, important work of community organizing. Isn't the PTA a form of community organizing?

If Palin organized middle class parents in a small community through the PTA, and Obama organized the economically disempowered on the South side of Chicago, why is it that Republicans look at his work as illegitimate and hers as experience that qualifies her for the Presidency?

Simply asking the question suggests the answer. Draw your own conclusions. I've drawn mine.

McCain-Palin?

Gary Shuster — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:24:14 EDT

A few years on city council and two years as governor?

Barack Obama has convinced much of America, and now seems to have convinced John McCain, that raw quantity of experience is not the right criteria for picking a President. After all, in 2004, nobody had more experience as a post-9/11 President as George Bush did, and we all know how his reelection worked out for America.

But McCain took only half of the lesson to heart. The second part of Obama's convincing argument is that it is the quality of judgment that is most critical. On that point, Palin, like McCain, fails the test.

Although I haven't heard anybody mention it (in the hour or so they've been discussing it on the news), I think we will see Palin used primarily to push McCain's "drill every drop of oil, no matter the cost" argument. Just like his overfocus on Iraq led him to overlook other regional threats (Afghanistan for example), we see McCain's lack of judgment playing out in picking a VP to primarily push a single point.

Democracy run aground

Gary Shuster — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 13:57:52 EDT

Barack Obama has run as a change candidate.

Before John McCain's conversion to a doctrinaire Bush clone,McCain called himself a "maverick".

Obama and McCain have a chance to bring maverick change today by agreeing to bring true democracy to our presidential elections for the first time in our nation's history.

As we all remember, George Bush 43 was elected president in 2000 even though he lost the popular vote by more than half a million votes. In 2004, Bush won the popular vote by a reported 3 million vote margin -- but almost lost the election. Ohio's electoral votes went to Bush based on a 118,775 vote margin. According to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., 160,000 Kerry votes were lost due to various illegal vote fraud and suppression tactics. But for this illegal activity, the winner of the popular vote by a nearly 3 million vote margin would have lost the election.

The message is clear: Our nation runs an unacceptably enormous risk of electing a president who lost the popular vote.

There is a movement afoot to solve this problem. http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ is promoting an agreement between various states where all of their electoral votes would be given to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of the outcome in any particular state. To avoid "unliateral disarmament" (where for example, blue states agree to give their votes to the nationwide winner, but red states do not, creating a situation where the republican wins if he wins the popular vote or the majority of electoral votes), the agreement only takes effect when states representing a majority of electoral votes (270) have signed on.

Many states are reluctant to enter into this agreement. It is understandible, given that even a state with three electoral votes will see more campaign spending and attention than California, with its 55 electoral votes. But how about a trial run?

If Barack Obama asks the big blue states to get on board with a trial run for true electoral change, and if John McCain asks the big red states to get on board with a trial run for a maverick trial of true democratic elections, we can have a guarantee that our next president will have the support of a majority of the voters in this nation.

If John McCain or Barack Obama wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote by a margin in the millions, this nation will enter an era of civil unrest unprecedented in modern times. Imagine the fury over an unpopular war, costing billions of dollars and thousands of lives, extended for four years based on an anachronistic electoral vote system that ignores the popular vote. Imagine the fury over ending that war when a majority of voters cast their lot with the candidate who promised to continue and expand it.

Florida in 2000 was decided by a vote margin in the hundreds. Five states in 2000 were decided by a margin of under one half of one percent. Three states in 2004 were decided by less than one percent, and Ohio's result will be forever questioned. It would be a constitutional crisis, a constitutional disaster, if we wake up on November 5 to the headline "Ohio, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico results too close to call; Candidates challenging voting irregularities in those states." Florida was only settled in 2000 when the Supreme Court stepped in. The potential for a disaster with multiple states in the "Florida posture" is too big to ignore at any time. We must not ignore it at this especially sensitive time, while the nation is at war, fighting terrorism, and struggling for its economic footing.

We need not decide today to scrap the electoral college permanently. But we should at least put in place an interstate compact that assures us that for this election, at this enormonus inflection point in American history, our votes will not be overturned by the electoral college system -- and that a close call in a few states would not cause a crisis if the national results are even slightly decisive.

** Disclaimer: The opinions in this post are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Obama campaign.

Moving past the primary

Gary Shuster — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:30:25 EDT

As we transition from the primary election to the general election, it is important to remember why the primary was so gripping. Certainly, there were the candidates themselves. However, the overriding thing making the primary exciting (sadly, a thing that is unique to the Democratic Party primary election) was this simple fact: Every vote had a chance to be THE vote that made the difference. Voters in California counted. Voters in Alaska counted. Nobody knew how the superdelegates would vote; there was disagreement on how to count Michigan and Florida; there were questions about whether pledged delegates could defect. Ultimately, perhaps because of that very uncertainty, every voter wondered "what if this came down to me?"

And it could have. It could have been a one-vote delegate majority picking the nominee. That one delegate could have been selected by a paper thin one vote margin. In short, the primary was exciting because every vote had the chance to be THE vote. Moreover, every door I knocked on, every voter I helped through the Voter Protection Program, could have been THE voter.

I live in California. We have the most electoral college votes, yet our state is so solidly Democratic in Presidential elections that many wonder if their votes matter. On a simple level, of course the votes matter. Winning by a narrow electoral vote margin may put Barack Obama into the White House; winning by a broad popular vote margin will give him the influence he needs to really change things for all of us. On an only slightly more complex level, however, our role as citizens is more than just voting. If we can afford to contribute to causes we believe in, we should. If we have time to call other voters (say voters in swing states) and make our case, we should. If we have time to travel, to canvass, to register voters, to participate in voter protection, we should

We each get only one vote. But we also each have three months to participate in our democracy and change the outcome of this election. The primaries were exciting because each of us wondered, "what if my vote picks the delegate who puts my candidate over the top?" In this general election, we can ask: What if those twenty voters I called every day for 100 days, those 2,000 other Americans who I talked with about our democracy, what if those voters give New Mexico and its electoral votes to Barack? And what if those make the difference?

The primary may have seen more exciting. It may have seemed to value our votes more highly. But that is an illusion. In the primary we picked between two candidates who would carry forward much of the same agenda. In the general election, we can pick between war and peace; debt and prosperity; cynicism and hope; McCain and Obama. And we can pick not just with our votes, but with our voices and our time. Nothing is more exciting than that.

Fresno Platform

Gary Shuster — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 17:00:18 EDT

For those who are interested, here is the platform we submitted as a result of our platform meetings in Fresno:

1. Begin the platform with “we the people”

a. Make it a platform plank that grassroots input be formalized and incorporated into every future platform.

Our Constitution starts with the words "We the People". The Constitution was a watershed event, a demarcation point between all that came before and the healthy democracies that have since spread across the globe. But for all of its brilliance and importance, the Constitution was written by a small group of elites -- and as such needed to be amended nearly immediately to provide such basic freedoms as freedom of religion and speech.

In little more than two centuries, the democracy that our Constitution birthed has reached adulthood. The people have been empowered. We the people have been asked what we think -- and what we think will matter. The Democratic Party has today made history by giving every American the tools of democracy, incorporating into this platform the thoughts, the needs, the dreams and the hopes of the People of the United States, as expressed at kitchen tables and meeting rooms throughout this nation. We must enshrine this watershed moment – our watershed moment – as a fundamental right.

This is the time that our democracy became fully participatory, and our party must recognize that no platform of this or any political party, now or in the future, is legitimate without open, public participation.

So let us celebrate the ascendancy of participatory democracy by opening our platform with the same words that birthed our democracy: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do" embrace and affirm the Constitution of the United States of America, and this platform of the Democratic Party, written by the people and for the people.

2. Health care

a. Universal health care

Access to health care is a universal human right. Health care is not a right to be earned at the workplace, inherited by accident of birth, or offered only to those unlikely to need it.

For too long, the tragedies of divorce, illness, job loss, and other major life events have been compounded by the loss of health insurance. For too long, hard working Americans have been forced to choose between feeding their children and immunizing their children. For too long, insurance companies have cost Americans their lives, their health, and their privacy by second guessing the medical decisions of doctors and patients. For too long, Americans have looked wistfully to other nations where illness and bankruptcy, where poverty and poor health, are not inexorably linked.

Our health insurance system is broken. The system we have is not slightly broken and in need of repair, but is irreparably outdated, unfeeling, dysfunctional, and in many cases deadly to those caught in its gears.

We have the best doctors and nurses in the world. We have the most innovative universities, scientists, and pharmaceutical researchers in the world. We must do better for our citizens while recognizing, rewarding and nurturing these American heroes.

The fear that has turned progress into paralysis is that in fixing access to health care, we will harm the economy and break all that is good about American health care.

This fear, this false choice, is an insult to the ingenuity of this nation. This nation cracked the atom. This nation landed a man on the moon. This nation is a beacon of light for freedom, and literally gave the world the light bulb. And the personal computer. And the internet. And the internal combustion engine. To doubt we can achieve universal health insurance while strengthening our economy and improving medical care is to doubt the very fabric of American ingenuity.

We are not a nation that stands quivering in the corner, cowed by fear of failure. We are not a nation that can abide the suffering of millions because we doubt our resourcefulness and creativity. We are not a nation so bereft of human feeling that we are afraid to do for our sick, uninsured brethren that which we would have them do for us.

The goal of this nation must be to adopt a universal health care system while nurturing the unmatched medical care and exceptional medical and research professionals who bless those Americans fortunate enough to have access to them. We must also ensure that, in remaking our health insurance infrastructure, the hard working men and women in that industry are not left unemployed, and that investors and the larger economy are protected.

This nation does not fail when confronted with a challenge. The same innovative, resourceful, creative, driven work ethic that gave America the best health care providers in the world can – and will – give us the best universal health care system in the world.

We must reject the false choice between universal health care and quality health care. Our nation deserves both, and under Democratic leadership, our nation will have both.

3. Environment

a. Global Environmental Harm

It is a moral imperative that each generation leaves the planet a better place for the next generation. For past generations, this has meant building infrastructure, finding and exploiting natural resources, and improving the quality of life without much regard for the environment.

Generations past have not been neglectful stewards of the environment. Rather, they have been ignorant stewards of the environment. For a millennium, humans have been burning fuel, cutting forests, overfishing oceans, and acting – understandably – as if the world was so large, and its parts so unconnected, that our actions in one part of the globe were unconnected to harm in another part.

This generation, our generation, is the first to truly understand how small the world is. We do not pass a single day where we do not eat, or touch, or use an object that was on the other side of the world mere weeks before. Fruit eaten in Denver, but grown in South America. Batteries built in China but used in New York. Gasoline from the four corners of the planet, burned on our interstates.

This smaller world is both convenient and fragile. Carbon dioxide from coal burned in China does not forever hover over China. Air, water, and wildlife recognize no national borders. Some have argued for years that damage to the environment anywhere on earth hurts the environment everywhere on earth. However, it is only in the past few years that the planet itself has unmistakably voiced the same argument.

The North Pole will soon have no ice in the summer. Violent, unpredictable storms have become common. Weather patterns are changing. Glaciers are falling into the ocean. Sea levels are rising.

Our planet’s warnings have reached a fever pitch, and only those too greedy, too stubborn, or too proud to admit their error can ignore them.

We can no longer claim ignorance. We can no longer act with an eye only to the next couple of years. To do so is to bequeath our children a scorched planet and a future marked not by a march to progress but by a struggle against regress.

This party, and this nation, must support the goal, as championed by Al Gore, of achieving an entirely renewable, carbon-free energy infrastructure within a decade. We must take steps to limit carbon dioxide emissions, including adoption of a carbon cap and trade system.

We must recognize that our oil reserves are safe where they are, and need not be immediately extracted under the false assumption that this nation cannot achieve sufficient progress in conservation and development of alternative energy sources. We are too strong, too ingenious a nation to think we must extract and burn every drop of oil on earth – and thrust the environmental consequences of that decision on our children. We must adopt, and achieve, a goal of eliminating the need to tap offshore oil, while at the same time damping oil prices and speculation by making clear that America’s offshore oil is a strategic petroleum reserve, ready to reduce demand for foreign oil in the event we are unable to timely achieve our conservation and alternative energy goals.

Let us recast the entire debate over oil. Certainly in the short term we must address the terrible impact of high fuel costs on the American family and our economy. In the long term, however, every drop of oil that we extract, and burn, is an admission of failure. We are too resourceful a nation, our scientists too smart, our drive for innovation too great, to assume that our future is written in oil. We have not prevailed if we empty our oil fields. We have not prevailed if we reduce our demand for foreign oil by replacing it with coal or domestic oil. We will have prevailed when we can turn on the lights, drive our cars, and power our way of life with clean power. Every gallon of oil that our innovation leaves in the ground is a gift of cleaner air and a more stable planet for our children.

b. Local Environmental Harm

This nation must adopt a goal of providing every person with clean air and a healthy environment within a decade. It is unacceptable that some communities have significantly worse air or water quality than others. The federal government must strengthen and enforce minimum air and water quality standards, and must achieve those goals with a combination of enhanced enforcement and federal aid.

c. Wilderness protection

This nation must continue to support its system of national parks. We must reverse the harm that the Bush Administration’s policies have done in opening national parks and forests to damaging commercial and other activities. Our wilderness is a treasure that should not be squandered, nor given away to corporate interests.

4. Elections

a. Public financing of elections

It is critical that our democracy not be tilted in favor of the wealthy. At the same time, it is incumbent upon us after eight years of Bush Administration policies to inflict no further damage to civil rights, including the First Amendment.

We must continue to support public financing of elections without impinging on the right of free speech.

At the same time, we must also provide public financing for the dissemination of candidate and campaign information. Those able to afford internet and cable television are bathed in political information, and that access to information reduces the efficacy of attack ads and independent expenditures. However, those without such access, whether for economic or other reasons, have less ability to check facts, put attack ads in context, or otherwise reach their own, informed opinion. Our democracy is only strong when its citizens are well informed. It is our obligation to make sure all of our citizens have direct access to political information, regardless of financial and geographic factors.

5. Civil rights

a. Commitment to civil rights

Benjamin Franklin wrote twenty years before the founding of our republic that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Our liberties were guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the 13th and 14th Amendments generations ago – a guarantee that that in a nation of laws would prohibit exactly the Faustian bargain that Franklin warned against.

We must remain a nation of laws. It is unconstitutional to spy on Americans without a warrant, regardless of FISA. It is unconstitutional to deny anyone access to an attorney or to due process of law. It is unconstitutional for a President to unilaterally rewrite laws with signing statements. It is unconstitutional for any citizen, even the President, to be exempt from the very laws they enforce against others.

One fetid legacy of the Bush administration is the lingering question mark after each one of our constitutional rights. The judiciary, executive, and legislative branches must be committed to protecting the freedoms our constitution and nation hold dear. The President must never act outside the law. The Congress must never cede its authority and obligation to write the laws and to hold the President accountable to enforce them. And neither the President nor the Senate should ever allow a judge to take the bench without an absolute assurance that any attempted violence to our basic civil rights would be immediately stopped.

But this is not enough. After the Korean and Vietnam Wars, Congress decided that the unsettled constitutional question of whether a President could unilaterally wage an undeclared war must be answered, and passed the War Powers Act of 1973. The squandering of our constitutional rights by the Bush Administration, and the substantial questions about the constitutionality of the unitary executive theory advanced by the Bush Administration, present no less an important question for our republic.

Congress must pass legislation that does for oversight of civil and constitutional rights what the War Powers Act did for undeclared wars. This Civil Rights Reporting and Oversight Law should set out a list of constitutional and statutory rights, including at least the Bill of Rights and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, and would be triggered by any executive branch order, action or program that negatively impacts such rights, unless clearly, specifically, and unambiguously permitted by statute or a decision of the United States Supreme Court. Once triggered, the President would be required to make a full report to Congress prior to acting on such executive branch order, action or program or, in the event national security or the protection of human lives requires immediate action, within seventy-two hours of such action.

b. Separation of church and state

Our nation must commit to continuing separation of church and state. In nations where religious beliefs serve both as spiritual guidance and the letter of the law, freedom to worship, communicate, or even leave the house unescorted is manifestly not an acknowledged human right. Our nation, and our people, are stronger for our diversity, and we must not allow the government to favor one religion over another, or indeed to reward or punish any religion.

c. LGBT equal rights

It is wrong for any person, business or government to discriminate based on sexual orientation. The federal government must amend its civil rights statutes include sexual orientation as a prohibited criteria for discrimination, on a par with the restrictions against discrimination based on race.

Human relationships and needs do not rely on governmental permission or licenses to exist. To treat gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgender citizens in a discriminatory manner in hopes it will reduce their numbers or somehow “cure” them is as ineffective as a policy matter as it is bankrupt as a moral matter.

Gay couples will continue to raise children, whether with a state sanction or not. Lesbian couples will continue to marry, whether with a state issued license, or not. Transgendered citizens will still populate our nation, whether the government considers violence against them a hate crime, or not. Bisexual people will continue to work in our industries, whether their jobs are put at risk by their sexual orientation, or not. Indeed, our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered soldiers will continue to fight, and die, for this nation, whether the military requires that they remain in the closet, or not.

We are not a nation that lives an imaginary existence, where our laws can change traits people are born with. It is as manifestly unfair to ban anyone with a Jewish mother from the military, or to allow job discrimination against African Americans, as it is to allow discrimination based on sexual orientation. In each case, the law cannot change the person; it can only punish them for how they were born. In a land where all people are created equal, let us not question the accident of that creation.

d. Supportive housing for the homeless

Christopher Gardner inspired millions with his story of rising from homelessness to head a major stock brokerage, as retold in the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness”. Hally Berry, Jim Carrey, Ella Fitzgerald, David Letterman, John Woo, Martin Sheen, William Shatner, and even Buddha and Nobel Prize winner Harry Edmund Martinson all overcame homelessness to gift our nation and the world with innovation, entertainment, and enlightenment.

While homelessness is not unique to this nation, and rising from homeless to inspiring success can happen anywhere, our nation is unique in the world in our embrace of the American Dream. This shared heritage is expressed on the Statute of Liberty, the very gateway to America: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free… Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Homelessness has always been unacceptable in America, but after eight years of the Bush Administration’s economic policies, and with the foreclosure crisis breathing down the necks of America’s middle class, our moral obligation to act has never been higher.

This is a nation of second chances. We must invest in programs that provide not only shelter, but a helping hand out of homelessness. The despair of homelessness can destroy families, lead to drug and alcohol abuse, and lock people in a spiral of hopelessness. The federal government should cooperate with state and local governments, and with charities and religious organizations, providing the funding and support needed to ensure that any American who wishes to overcome homelessness has access to the tools needed to do so.

In providing this helping hand, however, it is critical that the dignity of those being helped is also respected. Children in homeless families have just as much need for strong parental figures as any other children, and our helping hand must not usurp the guiding hand of the parent. The dignity of providing, within one’s abilities, for one’s self and one’s family must be respected and encouraged. And when those abilities fall short, we must lend a hand in improving those abilities.

Homelessness and poverty have plagued our nation from its inception. While much has changed, the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin rings as true today as it did in the time of our founders: “I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it.” We cannot simultaneously strip the homeless of their dignity, and expect them to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

6. Eliminate Federal Interference in Medical Care

a. The federal government must not interfere with the rights of states, doctors and patients to set legal limitations on treatment

Our nation was founded as a group of states, with limited powers provided to the federal government. It was never intended that a physician and a patient, sitting in the physician’s office, deciding upon a treatment that is legal under state law, would risk federal prison for a good faith effort to cure a disease. Yet this is precisely the situation that now exists. And it must end.

The most common unapproved drug to trigger this interference is medical marijuana. Numerous states have legalized the use of marijuana, with a prescription from a physician, to treat serious illnesses. The federal government must not override the well considered, fully informed treatment plans developed between a physician and a patient.

Many drugs are not approved for use within the United States, yet physicians and patients often find those unapproved drugs to be the best hope for treating a disease. The federal government must avoid substituting its judgment for that of the doctor and patient.

It is already well established in other areas that the federal government will defer to the judgment of an informed citizen. Many securities laws, for example, are suspended if the investor is “qualified”, meaning he or she is wealthy enough that there is an assumption that they are well advised and informed enough to weigh the risks for themselves. Well advised and informed patients deserve no less.

This nation must allow patients and their physicians, who are able to meet certain standards to show they are both well informed and able to weigh the risks, to engage in a treatment plan of their choosing, even if it involves medical marijuana or drugs that have been approved in certain other industrialized nations but not in the United States.

7. Social Security

a. Better accountability

This nation must adopt rules to ensure better accountability for the Social Security system.

8. Veterans

a. Improve benefits

It is unacceptable for veterans to return home without adequate medical care, transitional support, and other benefits. The government must review veterans benefits annually, and adjust them in light of the changing needs of veterans.

9. Foreign policy

a. Diplomacy not war

This nation must once again value diplomacy over war. While we must never hesitate to defend our nation, the debacle in Iraq has taught us that war is too unpredictable, costly, and deadly to be entered into lightly. We must commit to exhausting our diplomatic options before risking the lives of our soldiers.

b. Respect self determination of other democratic nations

It should be the policy of the United States to avoid interfering in the internal affairs of other democratic nations. However, this policy should not serve as an excuse to stand aside as human rights are infringed abroad.

10. Education

a. Public education funding for special education and autism

The federal government should provide incentives and, as needed, direct funding, to ensure that special education is supported. Children with special needs, including autism, must be provided an educational experience that maximizes their ability not simply to function in the world, but to thrive as an active contributor to the community.

Research to find cures and prevention measures for the underlying conditions that require special education must be supported. Because our nation shares the cost of educating, treating, and supporting children with additional needs, this nation’s moral and fiscal obligations are the same: We must commit to eliminating these underlying conditions.

In addition, the best methodologies to treat autism and other special needs must be supported. While many methods provide some improvement, it is incumbent that educators and medical professionals have complete access to the newest research and methods so as to maximize the efficacy of special education.

b. End no child left behind

No Child Left Behind must be repealed.

c. No vouchers

This nation must fully commit to a full, equal, free, high quality education for every child. Vouchers distract from that goal, drain money from schools that need it, and provide a disincentive for communities to work to fix the problems in their public schools.

11. Transportation

a. High speed rail

High speed rail is the most fuel efficient way to travel long distances. Furthermore, the limitations on electric vehicle range (currently approximately 90 miles) will prevent widespread adoption of electric vehicles unless a cheap, fast, and convenient method of traveling longer distances exists. By supporting high speed rail, the federal government would provide a side benefit of encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles and other efficient but short-range vehicles.

12. Taxation and budget

a. Restore progressive income tax, close loopholes

This nation must restore fairness to the income tax system. The system should be progressive, and loopholes eliminated.

b. Reduce government waste

The government must reduce unnecessary spending and waste.

13. Require each bill to address a single subject only

Special interest provisions are often slipped into bills and voted into law even though they have the support of less than half of each house and are opposed by the President. It must be the policy of the Congress to pass bills that address a single subject only.

14. Agriculture

a. Eliminate subsidized corporate farms

Subsidies for corporate farms have had a deleterious impact on the competitiveness of small family farms, eliminating this crucial piece of the American landscape. The subsidy program for farms must be reviewed and revised so that small farms may thrive alongside their larger counterparts.

15. Fight media consolidation

The massive media consolidation that has taken place in the United States has left the nation without the critical mass of news sources needed to perform the monitoring, analysis, and reporting function that we expect from the media. Nowhere was this effect more profound than in the run-up to the Iraq war, where significant evidence counter to the Bush Administration claims was under-reported or not reported at all. We cannot afford any further consolidation of the media. Indeed, we must take steps to ensure network neutrality and carriage on cable and satellite systems of new media sources in order to reverse the already overbearing consolidation.

16. Responsible sex education

This nation must adopt policies based in reality.

To assume that abstinence-only education can one day prevent all unintended pregnancies and eliminate all sexually transmitted diseases is an unreasonable, irresponsible abdication of the obligation to lead. The Bush Administration has spent more than one billion dollars promoting abstinence, yet studies show this enormous outpouring of cash has had no impact whatsoever on whether teenagers are sexually active.

We must provide parents with the tools to teach the importance of abstinence, just as we must provide them with the tools to teach their children responsible birth control and infection control.

So too must we provide schools with the funding and materials necessary to honestly educate teenagers as to the efficacy of various methods of birth control and infection control. Parents must continue to have the right to have their teenagers not attend such programs based on moral or religious objections.

Our policy makers must regularly consult with leading teachers, physicians, psychologists, and researchers in order to adopt policies that are effective in keeping children from becoming sexually active, and in preventing pregnancy or disease in those who do become sexually active.

We The People

Gary Shuster — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:27:56 EDT

The campaign is asking supporters throughout the nation to hold meetings that will be used to write the party platform.

Never before in the history of our nation has a major party candidate been willing to trust the people to do such a task.

Our Constitution starts with the words "We The People". The Constitution was a watershed event, a demarcation point between all that came before and the healthy democracies that have since spread across the globe. But for all of its brilliance and importance, the Constitution was written by a small group of elites -- and as such needed to be amended nearly immediately to provide such basic freedoms as freedom of religion and speech.

In little more than two centuries, the democracy that our Constitution has made possible seems to have reached adulthood. The people have been empowered. We the people have been asked what we think -- and what we think will matter.

So let us begin our platform with the same words that birthed our democracy: "We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do" embrace and affirm the Constitution of the United States of America, and this platform of the Democratic Party, written by the people and for the people.

A simple approach to understanding offshore drilling

Gary Shuster — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:21:33 EDT

The oil will not go away if we don't drill for it today. Offshore oil will stay just where it is, ready to be drilled for in the future.

Press coverage of the offshore drilling has been reductionist, yet ignores this simple fact: "McCain proposed lifting the ban on offshore drilling last week as part of his plan to reduce dependence on foreign oil and help combat rising gas prices." By contrast, Obama opposes lifting the ban on offshore drilling. The line of attacks against the McCain position have been that the environmental risks are too high, and the benefits (other than purely psychological ones) would take decades to be seen.

This is approach is a mistake. We are mistaken if we think the only way to win this argument is by changing the minds of those who think the environment must always take a back seat to short term human needs. More importantly, the argument that offshore drilling with oil delivery following decades later provides only psychological benefits in the near term is wrong. The Republicans analyze it using an economic approach that seems sound at first glance: If you have a scarce good, and you know more of that good will be introduced into the market in the future, the value of the good even today (especially among speculators) will go down. To illustrate with something more concrete, imagine if it were announced that a deposit of gold had been discovered that will yield ten times the current global amount of gold that had ever been mined, but that the gold would take ten years to extract and come to market. Gold prices would immediately plunge -- even though gold stocks will remain stable for the ten years it takes to recover the huge new stockpile. The Republican mode of analysis seems rather straightforward. However, like most things Republican, even when the mode of analysis is sensible, the Republicans have drawn the wrong conclusion.

In the case of oil, our offshore reserves will not disappear if we do not drill them today. Let me say that again, because this is the key point: A barrel of oil left in the ground, on property that the United States owns, will stay in the ground until we get it. More to the point, if we were to drill that oil out fifty years from now, improvements in technology will inevitably make extraction safer, more efficient, and less dangerous to the environment than it is today. And to top it off, if we learn that we do not need to drill it out (perhaps as a result of breakthroughs in clean energy), we don't have to. Additionally, the fact that the oil is there and recoverable is enough to create downward price pressure on oil (although less than if the oil were being extracted).

By contrast, wind and solar energy will disappear unless we use them. All the sunlight falling to earth today represents a lost opportunity. As we burn oil or coal to run our air conditioners, we cannot unburn the coal and use today's sunlight in the future.

In light of this, the economic method the Republicans have been using argues strongly in favor of a policy of conserve, develop alternatives, and make clear that we view offshore oil as a massive strategic reserve, only to be drilled in the event of a simultaneous catastrophic failure in conservation, alternative energy, and global markets.

Obama's position on oil is correct: We should not take steps to drill for oil in environmentally sensitive areas. Nobody has asked him the follow up question -- though I know he will answer that one correctly: "Are you taking offshore drilling off the table under all circumstances at all times in future?" The answer, of course, is that "offshore oil remains a valuable strategic reserve, and we can and will drill for it if it if our primary goals of conservation and development of alternative energy sources have failed to yield adequate timely results."

Maybe even McCain can figure this out given the right analogy: You have a piece of oily, polluting cake on the table. You also have every reason to believe there will be plenty of other, better tasting and healthier cakes in the refrigerator. Do you eat the cake on the table before you check out the refrigerator, just in case the refrigerator is empty? Or do you go to the refrigerator first, knowing that the cake on the table is not going anywhere?

Politico -- What are you thinking?

Gary Shuster — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 01:24:39 EDT

"If you look back, some people have been comparing one of the other candidates to JFK, and he was a wonderful leader," she said. "He gave us a lot of hope. But he was assassinated." Clinton supporter Francine Torge, a retired educator from Durham, January 8, 2008.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak. Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.” Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, May 16, 2008.

"Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama." May 23, 2008.

"NRA gathers ammo against Obama." -- Politico headline, June 30, 2008.

Lets get it straight: The Secret Service is good at what they do. No, they are great at what they do. Sure, some crazy might get lucky. But the fact that nobody has even come close to killing a President since Reagan was shot tells you all you need to know: The next President to die in office will likely die of natural causes or freakishly bad luck. Seriously, the biggest risk to Bush's health has not been a terrorist plot or a wacko, but an errant pretzel. The Secret Service is good enough at its job that the number of people who might wish a President ill has nothing to do with the chance of any person succeeding at such a horrific mission.

We should see articles celebrating the efficacy of the true American heroes at the Secret Service. Instead, we see comment after comment that seem to gloss over even the existence of the Secret Service. This shameful trading in fear must stop. It sells stories. It makes for grabbing headlines. And it exploits a myth. From a candidate or her supporters engaged in a tight race, or from a partisan Republican, I can at least understand the adrenaline that might lead to some of the still inexcusible quotes we have seen. But the press is not supposed to have a dog in this race.

Politico should apologize.

What about Dean?

Gary Shuster — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 01:33:31 EDT

Politico has an interesting article about longshot VP possibilities. The article largely lists people who are viable only as parts of a fun intellectual exercise. Once we remove the "really helps fill a void or answer questions about judgment" requirement, why stop where Politico stopped?

Of all the candidates who are great matches but for practical reasons of electability, Howard Dean should be high on the list. Seriously.

He opposed the war before we even spent our first billion.

He overhauled the Democratic Party infrastructure in a way that greased the wheels for Barack Obama's grassroots juggernaut.

He was the first major Democratic candidate to harness Web 2.0.

In short, if the primary qualification of a Vice President is the ability to carry forward the agenda of the President should the President become unable to serve, Dean is a great match.

Great in theory. Of course, the old joke arises: What is the difference between theory and reality? In theory, they are both the same.

Dean made the "scream". Dean is perceived as too liberal. Dean does little to help mend fences with the Clinton supporters. Etc. Yup, reality says he should be on Politico's list of interesting non-starters. But if I lived in the land of theory, I'd take a second look at Dean.

That said, Quayle. Cheney. Maybe you can pick a VP based on theory.

Personal Democracy Forum - First Thoughts

Gary Shuster — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:11:32 EDT

I attended the Personal Democracy Forum this week. There were a lot of interesting speakers, and even a surprise appearance by the Obama Girl.

The take-away? Obama's campaign has proven what those of us who make a living in technology have known for years: The future of politics is technology. Not technology for its own sake, but technology used to build communities and distribute power and tools much more evenly throughout society. Obviously, nobody is advocating abandoning traditional campaign tools. However, those tools alone will no longer get you across the finish line.

The other take-away? People at the cutting edge of using technology to build communities are overwhelmingly Democrats. Of course, that is also not news to those of us who work in technology.

Anyhow, about to catch my flight home, signing off.

Fundraisers and volunteers

Gary Shuster — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:11:29 EDT

Fundraisers. The big-dollar, photo with the candidate, fundraisers. In my lifetime, no major party candidate has obtained the nomination -- or even come close -- without holding them.

I made my donation in the primary without any thought to formal fundraisers. I just went online and gave because I believe in Barack Obama. However, last week I got a call from a friend saying "do you want to meet him?" Pretty much impossible to answer "no" to that. And so it came to be that in conjunction with making my general election contribution I met -- and got photos with -- Barack Obama on Monday night. I even got lucky -- I mean, freakishly, one in a million, how amazing is this, lucky -- that the only homemade video of the event that I could find online actually features me shaking his hand. So unlike others, I came away with still photos and a movie.

This event, though, was simultaneously one of the top ten moments of my life and one I feel bad about. To be clear, I am thrilled to have donated to Barack Obama's campaign. I've given my time, I've twice flown across the country for his primary Voter Protection efforts, I've given money. All that I would do again and more, because this is our movement, not just his.

No, what I feel bad about is that there are plenty of people who worked hard -- really hard -- right alongside me. But by the simple act of donating money, I got to go to this event and they did not.

Barack Obama has made history, and changed the system, in how he has campaigned. He proved that a positive campaign can upset the "firmly positioned" frontrunner. He proved that this nation is mature enough for a frank and honest discussion of the issues -- and a highly personal discussion of race in America.

So in a campaign that has rewritten the rules, lets try one more change: Equivalence between money and time in terms of access to these kinds of events. I have friends, trusted companions on this journey toward change, who have put in hundreds of hours working for this campaign. Those hundreds of hours are a donation as surely as a monetary contribution is.

The http://my.barackobama.com website already tracks "points" relating to campaign activity online. Lets start tracking overall campaign support units. Make an hour of time worth 10 units. Make a dollar donated worth one unit. Access to a fundraiser and a photograph with Barack Obama? 2300 units. A dinner speech with a surrogate speaker? 500 units.

I know Barack Obama believes in an America where hard, unpaid or underpaid work for a just cause is recognized as a powerful contribution to America's success. I suggest that his campaign formally recognize what surely it already knows: Hard work in the field is at least as meaningful as two minutes filling out a credit card form online.

The OTHER thing that should not be forgiven

Gary Shuster — Sun, 25 May 2008 17:10:26 EDT

This remarkable, ten minute editorial by Keith Olbermann offers an enormous list of things that "we" have forgiven Senator Clinton for.

Olbermann says that the one thing that is unforgivable is Clinton's raising the spectre of assassination.

His list, however, was all about her actions in pursuing the nomination. On this Memorial Day weekend, it is fitting to point out the one enormous issue not of process, but of substance, that was missing from Mr. Olbermann's list: Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the war in Iraq. 4,080 of our nation's children have given their lives for that war. By some estimates, the total number of casualties linked to the war range between 150,000 and a million human beings.

As Barack Obama notes, even the proponents of the war have "failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer." Yet, Senator Clinton continues to defend her vote to go war.

We cannot forgive that which Clinton has yet to acknowledge requires forgiveness. Come clean, Senator Clinton, admit what Barack Obama knew from the outset: The Iraq war should never have been authorized and should never have been waged. Until then, whatever forgiveness you need for mistakes you make on the campaign trail will pale in comparison to the unforgiven enormous lapse of judgment that has, sadly, given this nation 4,080 more true heroes to remember and honor on this Memorial Day.

A sad reminder of why we are in this

Gary Shuster — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:36:55 EDT

Ted Kennedy has a brain tumor.

Even with the a health care plan that equals what every American would get under an Obama or Clinton administration, he has a brain tumor. Even with the world's best health care, most patients with this kind of cancer are expected to lose this battle within one to five years. He may lose this battle, but his tireless work on our behalf should inspire us to win this war.

Not only must we provide health care for all Americans -- and let us meet Ted Kennedy's goal of having this in place by 2010 -- but let us also return our focus to spending money in a manner that makes us safer.

Barack Obama says that the Iraq far has made us less safe. But that is hardly the whole story. The cost of the Iraq war is at least one trillion dollars. The total cost of the Bush tax cuts is around three and a half trillion dollars. With a little over three hundred million people in the United States, that amounts to $1,500 per person. Every family of four has spent $6,000 financing the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy.

Total spending on all health research conducted world-wide was $129 billion in 2003, and was estimated to be rising at $10 billion per year. By this estimate, spending in 2008 will be $179 billion in 2008.

Quick math: We have spent, in tax cuts for the wealthy and the Iraq war, more than 25 times the total global annual investment in basic human health research. Imagine the progress we could have made, the lives we could have saved, had that money gone to seeking a cure for cancer and AIDS. How much safer our children would be if we had used the money to tackle the looming disaster of antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Would a decision to spend this money on research instead of war and tax cuts have resulted in a cure that would could today use to resolve Ted Kennedy's malignant glioma? Maybe not. But it has absolutely cost millions of people world-wide their health and in many cases their lives. Imagine if we had accomplished in the seven years since the tax cuts and war efforts had taken place what we will not, under today's spending scenarios, accomplish for decades? What if the state of the art of medicine in 2008 was equal to what, with today's spending, it will not be until 2033?

We will never know. And saddled with debt and war, it will be difficult to move toward progress. But move we will. There is hope. We are a strong nation. And we will find the strength to redefine our priorities in a way that makes us all safer -- not just from real or imagined military threats, but from all things that threaten our health or welfare.

Ted Kennedy, you have fought for the health of this nation for decades, and we thank you. We hope your unmatched determination keeps you by our side far into the future. But we will have learned nothing from your example if we do not pause and ask: If America had heeded Ted Kennedy's voice on health policy, tax policy, and the war, how many families would have been spared the sorrow that his family now feels? What diseases that now ravage our lives would be relegated to easily cured annoyances?

We stand on the edge of a sea change in American politics. It is fitting that Ted Kennedy, an icon of the future that could have been, stands today beside Barack Obama to seek the future that we deserve. It is easy to say "yes, we can". It is easy to say "change", or "hope". But today, in the most grim manner possible, we are reminded that those words have meaning.

Fixing Campaign Finance The Obama-Tzedakah Way

Gary Shuster — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:15:31 EDT

Much has been written about Barack Obama's "Amazing Money Machine." As of March 31, 2008, Obama had raised about two hundred thirty four million dollars from individual donors. This puts him on track to raise over half a billion dollars for the 2008 elections. And he is doing it with an average donation of under $100. Indeed, his fund raising base is so wide that almost one out of ten Obama voters has given money to his campaign.

It is clear that Obama's model has changed the thinking about campaign finance reform. Joshua Green's article in the Atlantic describes the impact as the conventional wisdom now casts it: "Obama represents a triumph of campaign-finance reform. He has not, of course, gotten the money out of politics, as many proponents of reform may have wished, and he will likely forgo public financing if he becomes the nominee. But he has realized the reformers’ other big goal of ending the system whereby a handful of rich donors control the political process. He has done this not by limiting money but by adding much, much more of it—democratizing the system by flooding it with so many new contributors that their combined effect dilutes the old guard to the point that it scarcely poses any threat."

This is a terrific achievement whose importance to democracy cannot be overstated. But the conventional wisdom that the significance lies in simply diluting the importance of big donors misses the point.

The significance is not that Obama's model ended the system whereby the "a handful of rich donors control the political process." Indeed, McCain -- apparently a campaign finance reformer only when it advanced his political ends -- proves that the rich still control much of the process. His McCain Victory '08 fund creates a "hybrid legal structure" under which "up to $70,000 in individual contributions [can be accepted] by channeling the money into different McCain-centric funds. The first $2,300 of that would go to McCain's primary campaign. The Republican National Committee would receive $28,500 of the donation. The remaining funds would be divided equally, up to $10,000 a piece, among four states the campaign has designated as battlegrounds for November: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado and New Mexico." So a husband, wife, and three adult children could donate $350,000.

It is a remarkable achievement that Obama has built his small money donor base to the point where he can seriously consider eliminating even the inference of improper influence by voluntarily capping donations at well under the currently federally permitted maximum of $2300. Indeed, he would be a formidable fundraiser even with a $150 cap. But as Clinton's $11,000,000 loans to her campaign and McCain's efforts to raise $70,000 per donor indicate, the small donor model does not work for all candidates. Indeed, that model did not work for Obama at the outset, as he was not able to launch his campaign solely with the small donations that he is considering making his sole source of financing going forward.

The significance of what he has done in this year is not that he proved small fund raising is viable in a presidential race (Howard Dean did that). Rather, he proved that functionally anonymous giving can drive a campaign's finances. And that people will give at least $2,300 with no realistic expectation of buying anything except a better chance for their candidate to win.

True, over $200, there is no anonymity -- it is all reported. I maxed out in the primary, and you can look that up on opensecrets, Huffington's fundrace, or directly from the FEC. But the point is that with over 1,500,000 donors, Barack Obama has no idea who I am. His staff doesn't know me. Honestly, I didn't even get a thank you note. And I shouldn't. Because this is not about me. It is not about any of the million and a half donors. Rather, it is about all of us. The thank you I want is Barack Obama, in the White House, keeping his promises. So I donated precisely because I don't get access based on my donation. And in an Obama administration, neither does Halliburton, or the drug lobby, or the $100,00 a pop Clinton "Hillraisers", or McCain's bundlers. Certainly, Obama has big donors in his past, but he has proven they need not be promised a thing -- as they are not central pieces in his fund raising. If he does move forward with voluntarily limiting donations to less than the federal cap, it will seal the deal.

Democrats are often criticized for not discussing their faith, and I should point out that this concept of anonymous giving forms a central part of mine. In Judaism, "Tzedakah", translated as a form of "justice", refers "to the religious obligation to perform charity, and philanthropic acts, which Judaism emphasises are important parts of living a spiritual life; Jewish tradition argues that the second highest form of tzedakah is to anonymously give donations to unknown recipients. Unlike philanthropy, which is completely voluntary, tzedakah is seen as a religious obligation." While it is preferable to give to an unknown recipient to avoid shaming them, when the identity of the recipient is important, Tzedakah teaches that we should still give anonymously, noting that "the greatest sages used to walk about in secret and put coins in the doors of the poor."

The wisdom of anonymous Tzedakah is obvious: One should not give for their own glory or private benefit.

Putting the lessons of the Obama campaign finance revolution together with the lessons of Tzedakah, it becomes obvious how campaign finance reform must play out in order to truly isolate politicians from the undue influence of the money they need to run their campaigns.

My Obama-Tzedakah proposal is this:

(1) Precisely flip the reporting rule. Currently, donors giving $200 and over must be identified in campaign finance reporting. Instead, only donors giving under $200 should be permitted to be identified.
(2) Require that campaigns be prohibited from directly accepting donations over $200.
(3) Allow donations over $200, but require that such donations be made to the FEC which collects the money and forwards it, together with many other donations, in one check to the candidate, while being required by law to keep secret the identity of the donor and the candidate to which they donated. The donor is not permitted to get any kind of receipt or canceled check that identifies the identity of the recipient. For online donations, the donor would be required to be donate through a site operated by the FEC.
(4) The FEC would report aggregate statistics, but not the amounts of individual donations (i.e. "in March 2012, Obama's reelection bid received $28,888,221 from 90,000 donors"). Preferably, the banks and FEC would not be permitted even to identify the fact that somebody had donated to federal campaigns, or to provide any receipt or canceled check for such a donation. If such a rule is not functional, the FEC should make that information available to the public, but only in an aggregate way, giving a single number for each donor's total contributions to all federal candidates combined.
(5) Candidates would be allowed to oversee the process using attorneys or accountants who are prohibited from reporting back to the campaign any specific donor identification information.
(6) To provide a disincentive to end-run the process through a 527 or a structure like McCain's Victory '08 Fund, the maximum donation cap should be significantly increased.

What do we get from this?

First, counter-intuitively, we get more transparency. While we lose the ability to see who gave to which candidate, we get an iron-clad list of everybody who was promised a quid-pro-quo: Nobody. Because a candidate cannot verify that a contribution went to them, even a donor who showed a canceled check for a huge sum could not prove to the candidate that it was made to that candidate, or even in that race.

Second, the free speech arguments that could ultimately fell existing campaign finance laws would be eliminated. The only remaining argument is that it is a free speech right to hand a big pile of money directly to a candidate -- hardly a convincing concept.

Finally, the benefits of the Obama model are immediately visited on the old fund raising models as well. While a person who truly believes in a candidate will still make a big donation, few people will believe they can donate their way to a federal judge or ambassador appointment regardless of the size of their anonymous donation or the number of anonymous donations they claim to have bundled.

The Vice Presidential Gambit

Gary Shuster — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:18:52 EDT

Many are questioning what Clinton wants out of this process. The math alone makes Obama the inevitable nominee. The Superdelegates are switching their Presidential preference or at least questioning it. So what is her exit strategy?

Nobody knows for sure. She may want help retiring her campaign debt, input on policy issues, or a role in picking Vice President. But these rewards are simply too small for her. She wants the ability to force herself onto the ticket as the candidate for Vice President. This ability, whether exercised or not, allows her not to request things of Obama, but to demand them. Refuse them, and Obama has a running mate not of his own choosing.

How does this work? The fact that Obama is rapidly closing in on the 2,025 delegate votes necessary to clinch the nomination does not mean that he can command those same delegates to vote for his Vice Presidential choice. Obama has a lead of about 168 elected delegates. The initial flood of superdelegates to Clinton, the pained stories of superdelegates suffering the anger of the Clintonites, all of the superdelegates who feel they have debts to the Clintons add up to a huge number of delegates seeking redemption from the Clintons even as they pledge to vote for Obama as the better, and inevitable, nominee.

Redemption could easily be offered in exchange for a vote for Clinton as Vice President -- even over Obama's objections. Even the pledged delegates might seek to heal wounds or form a "dream ticket" by putting Clinton in as Vice President despite Obama's objections. Certainly the superdelegates would be motivated to mitigate the Clintons' wrath. Assuming an even split in the preference of superdelegates (not who they will vote for, but who they wished would win -- a very different question), and assuming the 168 elected delegate gap remains, only 85 Obama delegates need to vote for Clinton for Vice President in order to put her on the ballot. By staying in until the bitter end, Clinton cannot win the Presidential nod -- but she can, and intends to, close the gap further in a way that strengthens her the Vice Presidential gambit.

This would be a horrible outcome. Barack Obama needs the ability to pick his own running mate. It would be unprecedented in modern times to deny a nominee his Vice Presidential pick. I am hopeful that delegates will honor history and reason in giving Obama his Vice Presidential pick. But forcing herself into the Vice President slot is very much within the reach of Clinton, and becomes closer with every delegate she picks up. The question is whether her ego forces her to flout tradition and reason in this way.

The Devolution Is In The Details

Gary Shuster — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:17:20 EDT

The "Gas Tax Holiday" debate points up a key difference between Clinton and Obama, but not the difference Clinton hopes. Clinton has made a point of taking positions that can be explained in a single sentence that appeals viscerally to voters, regardless of whether those positions are actually good policy.

The most recent example is the gas tax: "Hillary wants the oil companies to pay for the gas tax this summer - so you don’t have to." However, economists universally agree that a gas tax holiday "would generate major profits for oil companies rather than significantly lowering prices for consumers," "would encourage people to keep buying costly imported oil and do nothing to encourage conservation," and "would provide very little relief to families feeling squeezed."

Obama's position is that the economists are right, and what the people deserve is a comprehensive fix, not a band-aid. Unfortunately, a comprehensive fix is complicated to explain and even more complicated to get properly reported in the press. As articulated by Obama, it sounds like this: "That's why we'll put a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use it to help Indiana families pay their heating and cooling bills and reduce energy costs. We'll also take steps to reduce the price of oil and increase transparency in how prices are set so we can ensure that energy companies aren't bending the rules. And to help Indiana families meet the rising cost of gas, we'll put a middle class tax cut in their pockets that will save them $1,000 a year, and we'll eliminate income taxes altogether for seniors making less than $50,000."

Clinton and McCain have both shown their willingness to believe that a good idea will devolve to into a political disaster if it cannot be easily explained. Barack Obama is unwilling to compromise good policy for political expediency.

When Barack Obama is sworn into the office next January, we will put to rest forever the idea that Americans are simply too inattentive and disinterested to be swayed by an argument that requires polysyllabic words. We have insisted for generations on free, quality high school education for all our people. It is time to believe in the return from that investment.

Enough With The Elitism Arguments

Gary Shuster — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:52:54 EDT

I keep hearing Clinton surrogates claim Barack Obama is an "elitist". The latest is that he must win Indiana or he is an "elitist" and out of touch with white working class voters. Will somebody in the media please pull out a dictionary? At the outset, he is not elitist because he does not believe that an elite group should rule the nation (compared to, say, those who find it acceptable for two families to run the United States for 28 sequential years). The inevitable Clinton fallback is that his elite education set him up to be elitist. I went to Harvard Law School while Barack Obama attended, and that argument is totally contrary to that experience I shared with him.

There is no secret club, no secret handshake. If we were let in on a special natural right to run the world based on our "elite" education, I must have been absent that day. What I took away from my experience was not a respect for elite, top-down rule, but an abiding fear of it. It is this disdain for elitism that I hear in Obama's voice.

From the first day, we learned that judges make close calls. And they often make them wrong. Three years, and thousands of cases studied, reinforce these core truths: The world is not simple; judges and leaders make mistakes; and the mission of government is not to dictate truth, but to protect the ability of the people to fix those mistakes (or, as the "elitists" of the 18th century put it, to provide the people a mechanism for "redress of grievances").

I have long described Harvard Law's lingering lesson as recasting our bimodal "black or white" world as a spectrum of grays. I see this lesson reflected in Barack Obama's words that "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America." Our nation, in short, is not one where half of the people are right and half are wrong, but one we try to make our way to the right answer by compromise, discussion, and cooperation.

Our recent leaders, by contrast, have tried to break that great strength by casting us as a nation of opposites. They are wrong. They are selfish. And they are doing it to ensure that they perpetuate their own rule -- the very definition of elitism.

The argument that the Clinton campaign repeatedly makes to superdelegates, that Obama is less electable in a general election, is the model of elitism. We, the people, have a grievance: We are sick of politics as usual. We are ready for a change. The Clintons, having ruled the nation for a decade, know that the voters didn't really mean what they said with their votes. The voters are simply incompetent to pick the right candidate to run against McCain. And the Clintons are willing to overrule the people because they don't trust the judgment of the people. How much more elitist could one be?

Well, actually, slightly more. The Clintons also know which voters matter. Which ones should be listened to, and which ones should be ignored. Caucus state voters are simply activists -- ignore them. African American voters, students, highly educated voters -- they aren't the "real" democrats, ignore them. White, working class voters -- they know better than any of the others who the best candidate is. I hear in that a refrain that democracy be damned, and I say no. Democracy is at the core of our ability to fix the mistakes of the past. And none of us are so learned or elite that we dare tamper with the gears of our democracy.

What drew me first to Barack Obama was not his thrilling speaking style, but his substance. He gets it -- trust the people. His campaign is run from the grassroots. His great strength -- often mocked by those who believe in top-down rule -- is to inspire ordinary citizens to make a difference. To deliver to the people not the change they seek, but the tools to to make that change. His time in office will one day end, but those tools will remain to empower people for generations.

Hope, exceeded

Gary Shuster — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 20:05:03 EDT

Barack Obama is not going negative. He put the nail in that coffin with comments over the weekend. The incredulity of McCain over Obama's "backing out" of an agreement to stick with public funding. The paraplectic response of the Clintonites to the idea that mountains of favors earned are not destiny. These stem from a fundamental truth: The Obama campaign has won already. Not the Presidency, that is yet to come. But the battle to change how voters think about campaigns, and how politicians run them.

It is true that in Obama agreed early on (with some important nuance and limitations that, of course, never get reported) that if the Republican in the general election accepted public financing, so would he. It is also true that he seems reluctant to stick with that agreement. I hope his reluctance sticks, because that agreement came from a fundamental error: Obama may have had the audacity of hope, but when he agreed to public financing, that audacity was not coupled with a belief he could pull it off quickly enough. Somewhere deep inside he was still playing on the old playboard. One where nobody believed the public at large, by the millions, would reach into their pockets to take command of their own destiny. He has, apparently, exceeded his expectations. And when presented with this new information, he must do what any true leader does: Change his actions to conform to the new reality.

The same is true of negative campaigning -- although on this count, he exceeded the fears of the Clintons and the Republican machine, but not his own expectations. From the outset his campaign was about speaking truth and addressing issues. Yes, he is a wonderful speaker. Yes, he is as smart and reliable in his judgment as Bush 43 is not. But few outside the Obama team thought that voters would respond to truth, honesty, and a focus not on the flaws of others but on the failures of their policy. Indeed, he has approached this campaign much as Roger Fisher (a Harvard Law professor during Barack Obama's tenure at Harvard) suggests in Getting to Yes: Be hard on the problem, but soft on the person.

Getting to Yes stresses the importance of examples, and in a strange fit of timing, I have one. I am having work done on my kitchen, and the work started while I was in Pennsylvania for the campaign. Upon my return -- from working on a campaign where the Clintons were using a "throw the kitchen sink" strategy -- my kitchen sink had in fact been removed. In what is a Democratic family dispute about which family member gets the nomination, one of the family members has decided to destroy the family house in the process. I can tell you from personal experience, no matter what benefit you get from removing the kitchen sink, it is messy and very expensive to replace -- and nobody in the family is happy while the sink is gone. The family home becomes non-functional. This is, of course, an object lesson on why we must be hard on the issues without engaging in the kind of fratricidal attacks that injure us all.

In my view, the Obama candidacy is about two very important goals: Helping move America forward from within the White House, and rewriting the rules of how we pick our leaders. While the former goal is ahead of us, we are well on our way to achieving the latter. Already Obama has proven that a campaign can be flush with cash without being flush in political debt owed to lobbyists and special interests. Obama has proven that people will participate in the process -- by the millions -- when that participation is driven from the grassroots. Obama has proven that people can rise about cynicism.

Obama may yet have the nomination stolen from him by superdelegates driven away by a campaign that is hard on the person while ignoring the issues. He may yet lose the general election to the old politics of destruction and distraction. But he has fatally wounded that old system. That system may take a few cycles to die from the wound, but die it will. And the millions of Americans who worked hard to remake America through the Obama campaign can take credit for the inevitable rebirth of American democracy that will follow.

Passover and the Jewish Vote in Philadelphia

Gary Shuster — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:49:57 EDT

Today's Philadelphia Inquirer has this fascinating quote:

"Voters can save themselves and elections officials trouble by ascertaining their polling place in advance, [Deputy City Commissioner Fred] Voigt said. He noted that synagogues, for instance, will not be used for voting this year because of Passover."

I know from working on the Obama Voter Protection effort in Texas that when a polling place moves, some number of people who normally vote there can't find their new polling place and run out of time or just give up. I am assigned to monitor a polling place in Philadelphia that is located at a school and has been there for some time, so I won't be able to see for myself if the "can't find it" effect is happening, but I suspect it will.

Moreover, those at risk are people who normally vote at the now-moved synagogue polling stations. Of those people, the late deciders and weak preference voters are most likely to give up. If the undecided voter participation is suppressed by the movement of these polling stations, that probably helps Obama. Making a little demographic leap, let us assume that neighborhoods where the polling station is normally a synagogue are likely to have a higher percentage of Jewish voters. While I could not find a recent Pennsylvania poll with cross-tabs that included Jewish voters, an older national poll shows Clinton with about a 5% edge among Jewish voters. My personal, non-scientific experience as somebody active in quite a few Jewish organizations is that her edge may be somewhat larger. Either way, in a state where approximately 4% of the population is Jewish, the accident of the primary happening over Passover and the resultant movement of polling places (and absence of many Jewish voters from the state as they travel to be with families for Passover) will be a factor in this primary. In the very unlikely event that the race is as close as Missouri or New Mexico, this simple scheduling issue could tip the result.

Hidden in the discussion of those numbers, however, is the larger question: Why did Pennsylvania think it was ok to schedule a primary during Passover? I missed sedar with my family in California in order to volunteer for the Obama promote the vote effort in Pennsylvania, and I know I'm far from alone in making that sacrifice.

Day 2 in PA -- Voter Protection Training

Gary Shuster — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 18:23:32 EDT

I attended "promote the vote" training at Penn law school today. It took place in a huge classroom, and it was packed with so many lawyers and law students that it was standing room only. Obviously, it was not an event covered by the media, but I wish it had been. Indeed, I wish somebody would "leak" a tape of that meeting, because it would show the world that this campaign is not only hoping to make change by electing Obama, but is actually actively making change even today by changing the way campaigns are run. The overwhelming message to the Obama loyalists on the voter protection team: Our primary job is to facilitate voting. Help every voter count, regardless of who they intend to vote for.

Indeed, the Obama voter protection effort is exactly what the Justice Department should be doing: protecting all voters in a non-partisan way, and ensuring that our elections are truly free and fair. Please, somebody, leak that news on a barely audible audio tape to the press.

Put another way, the Obama campaign could have surely put the hundreds of lawyers to more effective, partisan, yet cynical uses. But for a candidate who believes in democracy and the constitution, protecting the vote is a mission not to be abandoned for partisan gain.

Thank you, Barack Obama, for setting the right tone.

First day in PA

Gary Shuster — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 01:00:47 EDT

After an exhausting, 21 hour travel day from Fresno (note to self: Never book a tight connection through SFO again), I got into Philadelphia early this morning.

I spent the afternoon going door to door for the campaign. While the polling swings back and forth, I can say that my subjective feeling is that Philadelphia voters are more receptive to the Obama message than were voters in Texas. Perhaps it is a realization that the negative campaigning and media focus on irrelevant issues will continue until the primary is over. Perhaps it is response to the disgraceful debate this week -- where on a day that the Supreme Court lifted a de facto moritorium on capital punishment, the most important issue was flag pins. Perhaps I simply canvassed a neighborhood that leaned his way.

My read of the latest polls, unfortunately, contradicts my on-the-ground experience here in PA. From the polling I've seen (check out http://www.realclearpolitics.com) there is some possible movement toward Clinton. All this means is that the get out the vote effort must be enormous. It will matter in November, and it matters now. The Obama campaign can out-organize anyone. And we need your help.

I would encourage my fellow Californians to join me in campaigning in Pennsylvania. I'm here in person, but phone banking works -- and you can help from California. Go to http://my.barackobama.com/call to get started.

In the meantime, I leave you with a conversation I had with a 55 year old Philadelphia voter today. Paraphrasing, he told me he was registered independent (so he can't vote in the Democratic primary), but if he could vote, he would vote for Clinton. But if Obama gets the nomination, he will vote for Obama. But he would really, really prefer Clinton. And by the way, his kids are probably voting Obama.

I'm not sure what to make of that voter's statement, but this much is clear: Rank and file Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are coming to believe that a continued brutish, negative and destructive primary benefits nobody. And they are reaching out to the campaigns in small ways like this, sending the message to the diehard supporters of their disfavored candidate that ultimately, we are all in this, as Americans, together. Barack Obama gets that message, and has repeatedly refused to attack Clinton in a way that would hand the general election to McCain. This simple truth, the "do unto others" rule, seems lost on Clinton.

I go to voter protection training tomorrow. Please, do some phone banking for us!

-- Gary

On my way to PA!

Gary Shuster — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:43:11 EDT

I'm sitting in the San Francisco Airport during an eight hour layover (connecting flight delayed, missed my 2:50 pm connection, flying out at 10:30 pm). I was supposed to arrive tonight, and hit the pavement for Obama tomorrow. I'll be working on the voter protection team on election day.

During this unbelievably long layover, I've had a lot of time to think (and pace, and look into no end of overpriced airport stores, etc). I am spending time away from my wife and kids. My one year old just started walking yesterday, and today I'm leaving town for 5 nights. Why am I doing this?

Because it matters.

Because this is possibly our one chance, in my lifetime, to transform our democracy. If the Obama campaign wins, it will not only give us a President we can believe in, but it will be the death knell for the politics of personal attacks and broken promises.

So I'm here. I'm here for my children. I'm here for my wife. I'm here -- like millions of other hard working volunteers -- for all Americans. We are, indeed, the change we have been waiting for. And what better gift can I give to my daughters.

-- Gary

Pennsylvania Voter Protection

Gary Shuster — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 13:27:36 EDT

I leave on Friday for Philadelphia to work on voter protection. I will travel 2,393 statute miles and it would be great if those of you who cannot travel to Pennsylvania to work on the primary would consider contributing to our campaign.

The easiest way, of course, is to fly there with me in spirit by contributing one penny per mile I travel, or $23.93. My fundraising page (all proceeds go to the Obama campaign, none to me) is at http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/garyshuster

Another very meaningful and effective way to support the campaign is to make some calls to Pennsylvania voters. Please visit http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/phonebankmap/, pick up the phone, and make a few calls. Obama's grassroots support is huge. If each of his supporters can phonebank and convince even a single voter in Pennsylvania to support Obama, we can swing the state into his win column. And hey, if I've inspired you to make some calls, let me know.

I'll see many of you at the CD19 caucus on Sunday, starting at 2:00 pm at the Fresno State Student Union building.

I haven't been this inspired by a candidate since, well, ever. Yes we can!

The Obama Troop Surge (its not what you think)

Gary Shuster — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 01:07:07 EDT

USA Today reported that "the percentage of recruits requiring a waiver to join the Army because of a criminal record or other past misconduct has more than doubled since 2004 to one for every eight new soldiers. The increase reflects the difficulties the Army faces in attracting young men and women into the military at a time of war. 'Each month is a struggle, for the Army in particular,' said Bill Carr, a top military personnel official."

The press and the public have assumed as a fact that need not be proven that it is tough to recruit in a time of war. They have it wrong. It is not tough to recruit because the nation is at war. Recruiting stations were mobbed right after September 11, 2001, and it was clear then that we were going to send troops abroad to fight. There was a "wave of interest immediately after" the attacks, and recruiting was "going well" even a year later.

It was not until the Iraq war became clear for what it was -- a war that should never have been waged -- that recruiting tanked.

The official press line, that recruiting is hard during war, implies that the United States is a nation of cowards afraid to fight at a time of war. Such a claim is not just wrong, but it flies in the face of history. This nation has had no shortage of volunteers willing to fight the good fight. But the United States of a nation of reason, a nation of laws. We are a country not afraid to fight an unjust war, but a country unwilling to fight an unjust war.

The next President will inherit a military that has been decimated by poor recruiting, overextended tours, "stop loss" provisions being used in a manner that keeps families split far beyond their expectations, inexplicable resistance to body armor and up-armored vehicles, poor veterans programs upon troops' return.... The list is long. But the list also exudes a theme: At every turn, the Bush administration has taken what it wanted from our troops and given them less than they expected and deserved in return. Soldiers who volunteer to fight expect and deserve to be treated with respect by their commander in chief.

In order to repair this damage, and bring the military back to where it must be, the next President must be trusted by potential recruits to treat them right. To not start wars without purpose.

John McCain clearly cannot make this promise. A war without end in Iraq, new preemptive wars against Iran and others, represent an emboldening of the Bush policy on troops.

But neither can Hillary Clinton make this promise. She authorized Bush not only to invade Iraq, but also to take military action against Iran. Preemptive wars both. She has closed the door on diplomacy, saying in essence that once somebody is our enemy, it would unjustly reward them to negotiate with them. This policy, unfortunately, may leave war -- even though otherwise avoidable -- as the inevitable outcome. With Hillary Clinton in office, potential soldiers -- soldiers who hope to bravely go to battle in a just war -- will still ask "can I trust you to treat me right?" "Can I trust that this war was truly necessary?"

Barack Obama, on the other hand, has made clear that war is not his first option. He is not afraid to talk to enemies. He knows, and says, as Kennedy did, that we must never negotiate from fear, but we must never fear to negotiate. And ultimately, he is the only candidate to have voted against authorizing Bush's war in Iraq and against authorizing preemptive action against Iran.

We need a recruitment surge to fill the ranks and, more importantly, to relieve the overextended national guard and other troops who are even today fighting well beyond their original terms of service. But we cannot achieve that surge unless the troops know that they are there to heroically fight wars that are unavoidable, just, and necessary. In short, if they fear the next President will send them to the next Iraq, they will stay home.

Only Barack Obama can make the promises our recruits need to hear. And for this reason, only Barack Obama can ensure a strong military emerges from the wake of Bush's folly.

Now I'm worried

Gary Shuster — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 01:48:19 EDT

The Obama campaign eliminated from its California delegate candidate lists anybody they did not know, with certainty, would be an Obama vote at the Convention.

I blogged earlier today about how that was a smart move. After all, I wrote, this campaign is not about our own egos, but about electing a President with the will and judgment to change this country for the better. Sure, running for delegate is an ego stroke, but if we were in it for the ego stroke, we would be in it for one of the old school candidates. The candidates who think that winning is all about paying back favors rather than paying it back with good, solid policy. Anybody who cares more about Obama's policy than their own ego would eagerly pass on the opportunity to go to Denver if it was part of an overall strategy to ensure Obama wins the nomination.

Quizzically, Obama today reversed course, leaving as delegate candidates hundreds of unknowns. Clinton-supporting "Trojan Horse" candidates? Probably not. But by this action he has taken a settled election where he earned 107 pledged delegates and turned it into a race where, once again, he must win those delegates.

His explanation, that it is being done on the principle that this is a nation of the people, and the people are to be trusted, is noble. In fact, if concerned only with the health of our democracy, it is the correct decision. It would be utterly brilliant in a race where I trusted the other candidate not to say things like "there is no such thing as a pledged delegate." But I saw the Clinton people trying to poach delegates at the precinct caucuses in Texas, and -- at least in Texas -- it was fair to say that that campaign's respect for democracy ends where her ego begins.

Granted, it is unlikely Obama will lose more than a few delegates, maybe 5 or 10, to poachers or "trojan horse" candidates. I just hope that he does not need those 5 or 10 when push comes to shove in Denver.

Why I am not running for delegate in my California Congressional District

Gary Shuster — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:11:29 EDT

I'm cross-posting this from http://www.metaobama.com/2008/04/why-i-am-not-running-for-delegate-in-my.html

I ran across a post that bemoaned the Obama campaign's decision to eliminate some people from the list of potential delegates to Denver. As the AP reports it, "Barack Obama's and Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaigns are purging potential California delegates to ensure that only their loyalists vote at the national convention that will crown one of them as the Democratic presidential nominee. Locked in a race with an uncertain outcome, representatives for both camps this week directed the California Democratic Party to remove dozens of names from the lists of more than 2,000 potential delegates. Party caucuses scheduled for Sunday will elect a slate of delegates for each candidate."

The poster complained that "The ostensible rationale for the cutting of delegate candidates is to prevent "Trojan horse" delegates from making their way to the Convention floor and then switching allegiances. The vetting and removal of delegate candidates is expressly allowed by party rules. But could the 30th District really have had 73 such turncoats, and was I really one of them? I was a Precinct Captain for the Obama campaign for the California primary; I've donated several hundred dollars to Senator Obama's campaign (the first politician I've ever supported financially); and I've boosted the campaign in numerous posts on this website." (I've included his links in the quote).

I tried to post my response in the comments section, but apparently I wrote too much (a common problem for me). Here is the full response, as I would like to have posted it:

Like you, I would love to be a delegate in Denver. I maxed out my campaign contribution to Obama. I flew across the country to volunteer on his behalf. Under the old school rules -- say if I did the same for Clinton -- I would have "earned" my space on the delegate list. Yet when the opportunity to run for Obama delegate arose in my California congressional district, I did what best serves the campaign: I volunteered to run ("convene") the caucus in my district where the delegates were chosen. In so doing, I made myself ineligible to run for delegate during that caucus. Why? Because this election is more important than my personal vanity or ambition. Because this is not some fun and games election, but rather one where we choose between war and peace; between misplaced priorities and prosperity; between a government that runs right, and one that doesn't run at all.

But to get there, we have to navigate the old system. A system where "superdelegates" cast votes worth more than entire states; where a nominee is selected not on the basis of popular vote, but on the basis of the few who convene in Denver; a system, in short, that is as tenuously tied to the will of the people as the electoral college. But we cannot change that system from the outside. So yes, the Obama campaign may have cut out many diehard supporters. But his supporters will come to understand his true message: This campaign isn't about any one person or group of people, but rather it is about all of the people.

They don't need me in Denver. They need me on the ground, here in my Congressional District, making sure that the delegates are selected according to the rules, and that the Clinton campaign cannot make good on its threat to subvert our democracy by poaching delegates. My only role at the convention would be to vote Obama. Others can do that role as well as I can.

I would urge you to find a way that you can make a unique contribution. Whether by convincing your friends to become active; by putting some unique skills to use; or by simply being part of the team that makes up the campaign. Corporate America did not buy this campaign. The Democratic Machine politics of the past do not fuel this campaign. And our individual egos must not derail this campaign.

You have a unique skill: You are a compelling and interesting writer. Recognize that you do more for the Obama campaign with a single blog comment than you would ever accomplish as a delegate in Denver.

I would close by quoting Barack Obama from one of the debates. This is the language that inspired me to put my skills to their best use not for my own vanity, but so that my children will enjoy the prosperity that an Obama presidency will leave in its wake: "You know, there is a vanity aspect and ambition aspect to politics. But when you spend as much time as Senator Clinton and I have spent around the country, and you hear heartbreaking story after heartbreaking story, and you realize that people's expectations are so modest. You know, they're not looking for government to solve all of their problems. They just want a little bit of a hand-up to keep them in their homes if they're about to be foreclosed upon, or to make sure their kids can go to college to live out the American dream. You know, it is absolutely critical that we change how business is done in Washington and we remind ourselves of what government is supposed to be about."

Now of course, if I can run for delegate some other way, I will. I'd love to do it. I an unshakable supporter. But nobody is owed this. And certainly, anybody with the skills to help the campaign in another way should choose to help the campaign first, and let the delegate seat take a, well, back seat.

So you're off the candidate list. You should still go to the caucus. You should still bring your friends and family into the picture. You should help organize it if you can.

Its not about me. Its not about you. It is about all of us.

Going to Pennsylvania

Gary Shuster — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:55:14 EDT

I just ticketed my flight to Pennsylvania to work on voter protection for April 22nd's primary.

It is a lot of time, and a lot of travel, but entirely worth it. Why? Most importantly, after Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, I don't know how much more voter distrust our democracy can withstand. It is more important than any candidate, any election, that the process be fair, that the rules be followed, and that our democracy grows stronger as it ages.

The other reason? People like Obama when they get to know him. They like his positions. They trust his judgment. And in a fairly administered election, he will win. Anything I can do to ensure that the vote is fair will help the better candidate -- our candidate -- give voice to our hopes.

James Carville and some unexpected nausea

Gary Shuster — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:39:33 EDT

As you may know, James Carville recently called New Mexico governor Richardson "Judas", adding that given that Mr. Richardson held positions in the Clinton administration, the endorsement constituted an “act of betrayal.

Reality check: Hillary Clinton is not Jesus.

Further reality check: The Presidency of the United States is not something that should be sold, traded for, or obtained via cashing in personal favors. It is not owed to anybody. It must be earned.

Carville's comments fed both anger and disappointment. But the true import of the kind of scorched earth politics, the do anything to get the nomination approach, the willingness in fact to equate Bill Richardson's endorsement of the likely Democratic Nominee over Hillary Clinton to a betrayal of Jesus -- well, that impact hit home for me today.

I have given money in the past to the DSCC. I get their emal solicitations almost every day. I had planned to give again during this cycle. Yet when an email from James Carville appeared in my inbox this morning, I had a shocking reaction. I was revolted that the DSCC should use such a divisive spokesman -- somebody willing to throw fellow democrats under the bus in order to further the political goals of his own personal Jesus -- in order to raise money. Doesn't the DSCC know that Carville now stands for, speaks for, only a small part of the party? A part of the party that favors division over victory?

I promptly unsubscribed from their email list, and called the DSCC and let them know why. I also told them that this cycle's donation will still be made for Democratic Party causes, just not through them.

They should apologize for this big error -- or they should fold up shop. The DSCC should bring us all together to build 60 vote Senate majority -- not remind us of how this Clinton surrogate is ripping us apart.

Clinton's 3 am phone call on the campaign trail was Michigan/Florida. And she failed.

Gary Shuster — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 13:17:17 EDT

Hillary Clinton said in a March 20 press release that "It is unacceptable to disenfranchise the voters who participated in January and if Senator Obama allows that to happen, there will be implications for Democrats in the general election." On May 12, the said "The nearly two and a half million Americans in those two states who participated in the primary elections are in danger of being excluded from our democratic process and I think that’s wrong." Her belief (now) about the importance of enforcing the right of voters in Michigan and Florida to have their votes counted: "That is why generations of brave men and women marched and protested, risked and gave their lives for this right."

Obviously, this threat to a fundamental right, this violation of the very right that our fellow citizens have fought and died for, at the very minimum counts as a "3 am phone call". And when that phone rang, what strong, decisive and well reasoned way did she show her good judgment? By agreeing to void this fundamental right in order to ingratiate herself to the very Superdelegates who decided to void this "fundamental right" and to the voters of New Hampshire and Iowa.

September 1, 2007 is when that red phone rang. When Hillary Clinton answered it, she agreed to void those votes. Her statement strongly defending this fundamental right: "We believe Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina play a unique and special role in the nominating process. And we believe the DNC’s rules and its calendar provide the necessary structure to respect and honor that role. Thus, we will be signing the pledge to adhere to the DNC approved nominating calendar." Whoops. Guess fundamental rights take a back seat to political expediency.

As a practical matter, there are many arguments as to why Michigan and Florida should not count -- not the least of which is that we can look forward to Iowa caucuses in the summer of 2011 if they are counted. A commentator I rarely agree with sums it up well, saying "what would it say about personal responsibility in this country if we allow the two states that broke all the rules to end up having the biggest say of all?"

But whether Florida and Michigan's votes should be counted is not the point. The point is that Hillary Clinton says counting those votes is a matter fundamental to the functioning and validity of our democracy. And when that phone rang back in September, when the voice on the other end of the line said "Hillary, your own party is ready to disenfranchise Florida and Michigan," what was her response? "Go for it." So is Hillary Clinton "tested and ready to lead?" Tested, yes. Ready to lead? Hardly.

This article was originally published to http://www.metaobama.com

Texas Voter Protection and Finally Understanding Edwards

Gary Shuster — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 13:34:52 EDT

Maybe the scenes that replay for me from Texas were too harsh to really process right away. Maybe I just wanted to focus on the (shocking, really, for somebody who believes that the democratic process is sacrosanct) disrespect for democracy I saw from the Clinton forces. But I think honestly it is simply too hard to believe, even when you see it with your own eyes. All the more power to Edwards for showcasing it: POVERTY.

Before being trained and dispatched for voter protection, I had the opportunity to canvass for Barack Obama in Nueces County, Texas. The first day I was assigned to walk a coastal area with nice (mid-$300,000) homes, many of which were actually vacant vacation homes. The next day, however, was different. I was assigned to an area that was crushingly poor. Not just a little badly off. Not just working class. A neighborhood where everybody was home on a Monday. Where steady employment is part hope, part dream, and wholly unavailable.

Let me be clear: If this is the relaxed, retiree-type lifestyle that welfare mothers were portrayed as seeking out, God help them. Nobody would willingly subject themselves to crushing, debilitating poverty like that. The inability to replace broken windows. To get a car that can take them to work -- or even afford bus fare to work. The inability to provide even a passably safe environment for your children. The need for bars on all the windows, and the jealosy of neighbors who can actually afford them.

John Edwards, self-made multi-millionaire, could have retired to a life of yachts and private jets. Instead, his "retirement" is tirelessly fighting to bring poverty into the public discourse.

So how could I have missed it? How could I have thought "yes, poverty, it is one of the important things, along with dozens of other things." The truth is, for those living in it, nothing else matters. Nothing. Again, how could I have missed it? Because we talk about it clinically. "Welfare reform". "The candidates are repeatedly mentioning poverty in order to get Edwards' endorsement". "Minimum Wage has finally been increased." None of the normal terms with which we address poverty properly conveys the depth of desperation that poverty entails.

Those of us who spend their lives with MSNBC and CNN on (not Fox, thank you) have seen ten part reports on life in Iraq. Biographies of evil criminals. Specials about all manner of minutia about modern life. How about sending a camera crew to document what poverty really means? How about a show like A&E's Biography where they document the lives of poor families? The struggle to find a job? The struggle to feed a family? Why? Because there are some things that people are simply unable to bear without being motivated to change them. And the entertainment industry, owned by the largest corporations in the world, simply has no incentive to upend the apple cart.

New Obama Blog

Gary Shuster — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 16:34:06 EDT

I've created a new blog, http://www.metaobama.com, to do some analysis of this race. I expect to make most of my future posts over there.

Reflecting on Texas

Gary Shuster — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:17:50 EDT

First, thank you to everybody who donated in support of my trip to Texas. I added at least 6 first time donors (not everybody donated through my fundraising page) as a result of this trip!

If I was not already an Obama supporter, my experience in Texas would have made me one. The instruction to the voter protection team, repeated over and over, was to make sure the process was a fair one. If there was a Clinton voter being denied a provisional ballot, we would protect that voter's right to vote. The message was clear: This is a new kind of campaign, where dirty tricks would not be tolerated, where we would win on the strength of our ideas, not on the creativity of our deceit.

To understand just how remarkable this is, compare it to the instructions the Clinton campaign gave to its voter protection team: Protect the candidate "at all costs". What exactly does that mean, "at all costs"? Well, it means apparently precinct judges telling Republicans "the Republican primary is basically over, why don't you vote the Democratic ticket for Clinton -- its the best way to help Republicans." It means signing people in for Clinton in the caucuses at the time they voted in the primary -- hours before it was legal to do so. It means moving the polling place and telling Clinton supporters, while canvassing, how to find the polling place and letting Obama supporters give up, unable to cast their votes. It means the Clinton precinct chairman telling newly elected Obama delegates that it is "really important that our precinct stand together, at the county convention, that I be able to stand up and say "our precicint casts all of its votes" for Clinton. It means a drunk Clinton supporter (yup, you heard that right -- early in the morning, too) harassing the Obama precinct captain all day while she tried to help voters with problems such as finding their correct precinct. It means precinct judges refusing to issue provisional ballots, even when required to do so by law. Instructing your supporters to win "at all costs" is a guarantee that democracy will be subverted. Shame on the Clinton campaign for doing that.

Honestly, up until I witnessed first hand the chaos in Texas, I always had a serious doubt about whether the Florida race (in 2000) or Ohio (in 2004) could really have been "fixed", because wouldn't all Americans value the integrity of our democratic system over any other consideration? After Texas, sadly, the answer is clearly "no".

But Texas also taught me about Obama's appeal. The campaign office in Corpus Christi was packed with volunteers from as far away as Paris. California was very well represented as well. While I could see lawyers flying in to work voter protection, there were lawyers and other professionals from across the country going door to door talking to voters. I personally knocked on my share of doors. As a side note, it was practically like lunchtime at the Harvard Law Coop at times -- you couldn't turn around without bumping into a Harvard Law grad or student, many (or all?) of them there as unpaid volunteers.

But on to the local faces of the Obama campaign. I went to numerous precincts during the election day, and spent time talking with the various precinct captains making sure that the playing field was level (partisans seeking a level playing field -- truly a new kind of campaign). No two precinct captains were remotely the similar. First I met an elderly African American couple. The woman who was the precinct captain was normally timid, she told me, but I saw none of that. Fiercely resilient as a couple of sunburned white teenagers screamed from their pickup truck "if obama wins, we're leaving the country", she rejoined "so go." Next was the hippy retired schoolteacher, watching the polls (which had moved, surprise surprise, from the prior election) and helping the voters find their polling station. The Obama precinct captain -- a former Hells Angel, looking like an extra from Oz, tatooed in sleeves, taking time to offer the Clinton supporters holding signs near him sodas. The young professional couple taking the day off to hold an Obama sign in front of a school polling place. The woman skipping college classes for the day, instead helping voters despite rauckus interference from a drunk Hillary supporter. The 70 year old Hispanic woman sitting under an umbrella, quietly holding a "Hope" sign. The older white woman who went out of her way to explain how she is a Republican but come hell or high water she wants to make sure she has the chance to vote for Obama in November.

Inspiring. His campaign is truly an American Campaign. The faces of America, the dreams and hopes, varied though they may be, have come together to say "Let our voices be heard". And that, truly, is how I believe Obama will govern. With a government open to input from the grass roots. More accurately, with a government run from the grassroots.

Does he have a plan? Yes. A plan that involves listening, learning, respecting, and ultimately reflecting the very American diversity that seeds his grass roots.

Is skill at the delegate race the best indicator of skill at the electoral vote race?

Gary Shuster — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:51:24 EST

Now that Clinton is basically in a spot where surpassing Obama in pledged delegates is a near-impossibility, Clinton is reduced to arguing that the rules are irrelevant -- her "momentum" should validate her winning the nomination. Momentum, of course, does not a President make. But the better argument, and the achievable goal, is claiming that the popular vote totals should dictate the outcome of the nominating process. However, this argument, too, does not work. Just ask Al Gore.

While many Americans, myself included, pull our hair out at the idea that the winning of the popular vote can lose in the Electoral College, that is the system we have. Al Gore's half a million vote victory in the 2000 election was meaningless to the outcome. So how do we best determine which candidate can put together an electoral vote victory? We use a delegate system.

Granted, the all-or-none delegate system in place in many republican primaries is probably a better test of ability to navigate the Electoral College, but the Democratic system is still useful in determining which candidate can run a campaign that understands the difference between a pyrrhic popular vote victory and a meaningful delegate/electoral vote victory.

Take Texas, for example. The Clinton team seemed to have spent a lot of time worrying about whether they obtained an electorally meaningless slight edge in the popular vote. Nice, but they trail (as of today) by around 10% in the caucus vote. This pattern has been true throughout. Clinton has focused on moving a few percentage points one way or the other in big states, wihle the Obama team has focused on racking up huge margins in smaller primaries and caucuses. Because of the way the proportional allocation system works, a crushing win in the tiny District of Columbia netted Obama 8 delegates. That is two more delegates than Clinton netted in New Mexico (2), the Texas primary (4), and New Hampshire (0) COMBINED. In fact, lets throw in the fact that her "win" in Nevada actually cost her a delegate, netting Obama 1.

The fact is that electoral math and delegate math are both complex, and both require a team of smart, strategic managers and thinkers. Obama has them. Clinton, apparently, does not. If she wins the Democratic nomination by convincing the superdelegates to ignore the results of the pledged delegate race, the superdelegates are not doing the Democratic party any favors. Just like in 2000, it might be fun to imagine a world where the Republicans would say "oh, you won the popular vote, so here, have the Presidency, we'll ignore the Electoral vote". They won't ignore the electoral vote system, and if we ignore our delegate analogue to that system, we do it at our peril.

Amazing Obama Video

Gary Shuster — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:40:39 EST

I know, I know, most of you have already seen this. But it is a terrific video, and it reminds me of how Bill Clinton can be such a compelling speaker. It is a video of Bill Clinton delivering a speech with this text:

"Now one of Clinton's laws of politics is this: If one candidate is trying to scare you, and the other one is trying to get you to think, if one candidate is appealing to your fears, and the other one is appealing to your hopes, you'd better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope."

Overlaid on that video is the new Clinton fear-based ad, and nice video of Barack Obama.

Of course, that Clinton speech was given in 2004, in support of John Kerry, but it is every bit as powerful as an advocacy piece in favor of Barack Obama. Yes, Bill, you had it right in 2004. Fear is no way to run a campaign. Go Obama!

Here is the link: http://youtube.com/watch?v=G-fkoctaB18

Today in San Antonio....

Gary Shuster — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 01:14:18 EST

I went to San Antonio for voter protection training in advance of the Tuesday primary and caucus.

First off, I was disgusted to learn that the Clinton campaign is instructing its volunteers to not let the Obama representative initially run the caucus, and to prevent it "at any cost" (its what the locals call the "jumpball", where the first person to grab the packet from the polling station after the polls close is the temporary caucus chair, until a permanent chair is selected). Since the only job of the person initially running the caucus is to make sure that everybody gets a chance to vote, it makes you wonder what their goal is here. To prevent people from voting? Come on Clinton. If you can't agree that all votes should be counted, why don't you just run for secretary of state of Florida? Really.

The most amazing part of the training was that the Obama team repeatedly instructed us that any impediments to voting -- regardless of which candidate is impacted -- must be escalated and resolved. They were very clear that priority #1 is making sure that there is a level playing field, where all of the rules are followed, and all of the votes are counted. It is an incredibly principled stand -- protecting the voting rights even of the supporters of your opponents. If I wasn't already supporting Barack Obama, that would have cemented my support.

The groundswell of support, the virtual army of dedicated supporters, here in Texas, is truly inspiring. Yes we can!

Update from Corpus Christi

Gary Shuster — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:53:48 EST

There are at least FIVE people from Fresno working on the Obama campaign here in Corpus Christi. We should be proud that our community is reaching out so strongly -- half a continent away to -- to help make things better in this country.

While it is impossible to tell how Texas will go, signs are good. Literally. I saw numerous Obama signs today, but I did not see a single Clinton or McCain sign. Lets say that again: Not a single Clinton or McCain sign. I'm sure they're out there, but the Obama signs are everywhere.

The voter protection orientation for legal volunteers is not until Sunday, so I made myself useful today going door to door to houses in the South Padre Island area. The campaign makes available pretty well organized canvassing packets, which made this work easy. There were more than a few Republicans who were supportive of Obama. There were also quite a few people who were effusively enthusiastic about the campaign. At one house, we were told that they didn't want us to leave any literature because they would have access to plenty of it when THEY went canvassing for Obama tomorrow.

Whether part of a well planned analysis matching people from like geographic areas, or just plain good luck, the placement of five Fresno people in Corpus Christi was brilliant. The parts of the city I went to today just felt like parts of Northeast Fresno and Clovis. It is hard to explain why, but there was a remarkable similarity (differences were present of course, such as the 100% humidity and hurricaine shutters on all the windows). Both Fresno and Corpus Christi are important cities in very large states, yet often outweighed in size and political influence by larger, megacities. The similarities are such that our experience in Fresno provides a headstart in understanding Corpus Christi.

The bizarre combination primary/caucus system here makes predicting the outcome difficult. Based on what I heard today, the Obama voters are fired up and well educated about both the primary and caucus system. I suspect the hightened motivation the Obama voters have will translate into a solid turnout (and hence competitive primary, probably going Obama's way). That motivation -- and the voter education efforts -- should translate into a crushing victory in the caucuses.

Anyhow, its late here. I'll post more as I see more!

Putting your money where my mouth is

Gary Shuster — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:02:23 EST

A week ago, I decided to put my mouth where my money is. Now, I am asking you to put your money where my mouth will be.

As many of you know, I will be leaving in a few hours to go to Texas
to campaign for Barack Obama. As you can surely figure out, this is
not only a sacrifice for me, but it involves asking and receiving
great patience from my wife and two children. They are all supportive
(well, other than Sara who at 10 months old simply says "gadabadoo"
when asked).

This is the first time that my generation can truly say that we have a
realistic hope of dramatic improvements to our future -- yes, we too
have a dream -- and we can take concrete steps to make it come true.
My parents' generation was able to say "give peace a chance". That
mantra, if uttered today by those who deride the politics of hope,
might sound more like "consider discussing motion in the direction of
peace, while governed by not fully abandoning our war position, and
while increasing war spending and posturing in a manner that makes
clear we continue to prosecute war, even while we give lip service to
peace." I think my parent's generation had it right the first time.

I will travel 1,416 miles from Fresno to Corpus Christi to help us
achieve a better tomorrow. It would be very meaningful to me,
symbolically, if some of my friends, family, and fellow Fresnans would
consider donating to the Obama campaign a symbolic ONE PENNY for every
mile I travel. To "fly with me", in spirit, to Texas, please donate
$14.16. To "fly with me" for the round trip, it would be $28.32.

My Obama fundraising page is on the Barack Obama website at
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/garyshuster (note
that none of these funds go to me, they're 100% for Obama).

Thank you for considering helping the cause!

I'm going to Texas!

Gary Shuster — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:28:25 EST

I'm heading out to Corpus Christi on Friday to help with the primary campaign efforts there. So far, I know of 3 people from Fresno, including me, who will be sent to Corpus Christi. Yes, I know 3 is not a scientifically valid sample size, but it still strikes me as a shockingly large contingent of people from a town Fresno's size willing to put their lives on hold for a week, and incur the travel costs, in order to help with the campaign.

So here is my question: Who else from Fresno is heading out of town to help with the primaries? I wonder if the 3 I know about are just the tip of the iceburg.

Obama winning the Texas and Ohio "google" primaries

Gary Shuster — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:20:33 EST

It looks like people in Texas and Ohio are taking a second look at Barack.

Google searches for "Barack Obama" and "Hillary Clinton" were basically tied until last month, when Barack Obama searches surged. In both states, double the number of "Barack Obama" searches were done in the past few days, compared to "Hillary Clinton" searches.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=barack+obama,+hillary+clinton&date=ytd&geo=usa.tx&ctab=0&sa=N

http://www.google.com/trends?q=barack+obama,+hillary+clinton&date=ytd&geo=usa.oh&ctab=0&sa=N

What does it mean? Nobody knows for sure, but my guess is that "leaning" voters are trying to decide, and they know much more about Clinton than Obama. So they are researching him. Another possibility is that people want to give money and are finding the legitimate donation page for the candidates by searching google. That fits the relative fundraising numbers, and augers well for the February fundraising numbers.

Reasons I support Obama

Gary Shuster — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 16:05:42 EST

Reasons I prefer Obama to Clinton:

(1) Obama supports letting the voters pick the nominee, whereas Clinton does not. Her position is win, regardless of democracy. His is let democracy defeat him if the people decide as much. I'm with former Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile on this one, her quote: "If 795 of my colleagues decide this election, I will quit the Democratic Party. I feel very strongly about this." If the Democratic Party sticks a finger in the eye of democratic voting,it will relegate the Democratic Party to minority status or worse for decades to come. I fear from appearances that
the Clintons are willing to risk the destruction of their own party in two in order to gain power. In fact, the news today that Clinton may try to steal elected, pledged delegates takes this anti-democratic approach to a new, even more scarier level. See http://politicalwire.com/archives/2008/02/19/clinton_plans_to_target_obamas_pledged_delegates.html. I am more a democracy fan than a Clinton or Obama fan, and if one of them turns their back on democracy, I turn my back on them.

(2) Clinton is far less likely to defeat McCain than is Obama: In an average of recent polls, Clinton loses a general election to McCain by 1.4%. Obama beats McCain by 3.7%. Since either Clinton or Obama would be far better in the white house than McCain, and a Clinton
nomination will likely result in a McCain presidency, Clinton is a bad choice for nominee. See
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/national.html

(3) Clinton has a smaller margin of error in the general election than does Obama. In all of 2007 and 2008, Hillary Clinton has never a national "unfavorable" rating lower than 44%. http://www.usatoday.com/news/polls/tables/live/2008-02-03-poll.htm. Indeed, the most recent unfavorable rating is 48%. Her highest favorable rating during that period was 53%, and her most recent favorable rating is 48%. What this means is that even using her best unfavorable rating (since that represents the floor of her support), 44% of Americans will never vote for her, so she is competing for only 56% of the electorate. If she makes one error that costs her that 6%,
she is unelectable and it will be President McCain, the 100 years war, and "bomb bomb Iran". During the same 2007-8 timeframe, McCain's best unfavorable rating was 26%, putting 74% of the electorate in play for him. During the same period, Obama's negatives ranged for 18% to 34%, the best of the group. With negatives that high against a well liked moderate like McCain, I think Clinton is maybe 25% to win a general election assuming the political climate remains as hostile to republicans as it is today. Obama, by contrast, could win even in a far more republican-oriented climate. I also note that Bill Clinton's negatives in 1992 were about comparable to Hillary's today -- and he won with only 43% of the popular vote (Ross Perot's gift to America and the world -- thank you Ross!).

(4) Even the most detailed plans will fail without the ability to get them through congress. Clinton cannot push things through congress. Put another way, she is a senator now. If she can accomplish health care legislation now, why not prove it and let bush veto it, setting up a terrific republican PR disaster. Yes, I suppose Hillary wants to get a mulligan on health care, but that should only remind America that the last time she got a shot at this, with the force and power of the Presidency behind her, she not only blew it, but set the cause back by at least 16 years. The President is actually institutionally rather powerless when it comes to creating legislation (vetoing is a whole other thing). The true power of the President to accomplish legislative change is the "bully pulpit". The ability to go out to Americans, inspire and rally them to a cause, and use the stage of the Presidency to so sway public opinion that Congress feels compelled to act. Jimmy Carter couldn't do that, and wasn't reelected. Ronald Reagan, as the great communicator, could do that with ease and was reelected in a landslide. Bush 41 couldn't do that, and wasn't reelected. Bill Clinton could do that, and was reelected. Bush 43 did that with fear, and barely got reelected. But if you look at the legislative accomplishments of those who could vs those who couldn't, it is clear that success as a president requires not 100 point plans, but the ability to convince Americans of the broad outlines of their destiny. Obama can do it well, McCain can do it with difficulty, and Hillary Clinton cannot do it. If elected, she will face a senate that fillibusters her every policy, and a congress that digs in its heels. No "great communicator" she.

All that said, should Clinton win the nomination after winning either the majority of elected delegates (without subverting democracy by stealing pledged delegates) or the popular vote in the primaries, I would of course support her. While she is unlikely to win a general election, she would be the legitimate choice of my party. If the Democratic party allows her to steal the nomination despite losing both the pledged delegate race and the popular vote, it would be my party no longer. The fact that Hillary Clinton may be willing to do this in order to gain power should be troubling at best.