The End of the World as We Know It: I Agree With Robert Novak on Something

You know it’s the end of the world as we know it when I agree with Washington Post columnist Robert Novak about anything. But in his column today, he’s spot on in his analysis of why both Hollywood’s elite billionaire donors, like Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Stephen Spielberg, as well as rank and file Democratic activists around the country, are so wary of Hillary Clinton.

Here’s his astounding comparison of Clinton and one of her opponents, John Edwards:

“What's wrong with Clinton was demonstrated by the Feb. 4 performance on NBC's "Meet the Press" of a competitor, former senator John Edwards, who displayed the qualities she lacks. He took firm positions and admitted error, in contrast to Clinton's careful parsing. It followed his virtuoso performance at the Democratic National Committee meeting two days earlier that overshadowed Clinton's speech there. Comparing Clinton and Edwards, one longtime observer of the Democratic scene called it "caution versus courage."

His analysis of the difference in style and substance between Clinton and Edwards is spot on. Where Hillary cautiously parses every word, every action, and every position, Edwards has already come out with a bold plan for universal health care, admitted that it would mean raising taxes on the wealthy, and stated the plan’s costs. In addition, he declared that he was wrong on Iraq and his vote for the war was a mistake that he regretted.

To be sure, Novak isn’t completely kind to Edwards. He points out that in 2004, Edwards started out as a Southern centrist in the mold of Jimmy Carter. According to Novak, when Edwards saw that it wasn’t working, he recast himself as “a leftwing populist.”

Novak thinks that many Democrats are as uncomfortable with Edwards as they are with Clinton because they consider Edwards a shallow trial lawyer. Indeed Novak believes the true beneficiary of Clinton’s early stumbles and disappointments will be Barack Obama.

While this might be true – only time will tell – the most important point of Robert Novak’s column is the contrast between Edwards, the courageous, and Clinton, the cautious. That’s his characterization, not mine.

Still, it’s an accurate take on the difference between those two, and it deeply disturbs me that Hillary can’t just come out and admit she made a mistake.

Like Novak, and like the Democratic activists he cites, I’m seeing a politician who wants it both ways. She wants to neutralize the anti-war sentiment among voters by blaming the way Bush handled the war, but she doesn’t want to admit that the war, itself, was a mistake in the first place.

The most troubling aspect of this is that Hillary is a woman who doesn’t like to admit that she made an error at all. She’s got a stubborn streak. And that reminds me all too much of somebody else who would rather go it alone than say those magic words, “I made a mistake, I’m sorry. Now, how can we correct this together?”

An admission like that doesn’t make you weaker. Indeed, it’s requisite to being a strong and credible leader.

Since Barack Obama wasn’t wrong about Iraq and hasn’t been around long enough to have cast an embarrassing vote on anything (and trust me, if you stay in elective office long enough, you’ll have some vote or some statement you’d like to kick yourself around the block for), it’s hard to know how he’d handle a situation where he had to admit he was wrong. You can’t blame the guy for being right. Or for, so far, being on the side of angels and casting votes that most Democratic activists approve of.

But it’s hard to say if that’s because his judgment is uniformly sterling and prescient or just because he hasn’t been around the block yet.

Since I’m a bit of a contrarian, I believe that everybody screws up sometime. And I want to know how my candidate will handle it when he or she does. And that’s something I already know about John Edwards and also, unfortunately, about Hillary Clinton.

Sam Brownback's Strange Bedfellows and Opus Dei Connections

Note: This is being cross-posted on Raising Kaine. Also, I am not reviving AIAW on a regular basis. But Rob from Raising Kaine had suggested that I cross post back here when I do a diary for them. It seems like a good idea just to keep my domain from becoming public and being taken over by somebody hawking Viagra or Cialis. So, once in a while - very rarely - when something disturbs me enough, there will be a new post, probably in both places.

Kansas senator, Sam Brownback, formally threw his hat into the Republican presidential ring with yesterday's announcement. On the surface, he's the ideal candidate for the pro-life, religious values voters. But his real agenda goes far beyond what even a lot of them want to see for our government.

Indeed, over the years, Brownback has burrowed himself into the leadership role in a network of secretive cabals with a dangerous theocratic agenda that most Americans, even the so-called values voters, don't support. And in some cases, his view is extra-biblical, relying not simply on biblical principles but on the rule a religious elite who believe they know Christ's true plan for our nation and are dedicated to imposing it on the rest of us. Their goal is nothing short of the abolition of free will and individual conscience.

Most people don’t expect Brownback to actually win the Republican nomination, but as this Rolling Stone article points out:

"Brownback is unlikely to receive the Republican presidential nomination -- but as the candidate of the Christian right, he may well be in a position to determine who does, and what they include in their platform. 'What Sam could do very effectively,' says the Rev. Rob Schenck, an evangelical activist, is hold the nomination hostage until the Christian right "exacts the last pledge out of the more popular candidate."

But Brownback's role as the deal maker for the right is no where near the only threat posed by the softspoken Kansas senator who manages to carry a big stick with a great deal of political clout.

Brownback has managed to amass a movement that is nothing less than an old-fashioned tent revival meeting, composed of far right evangelicals and traditionalist Roman Catholics from the ultra-orthodox Opus Dei movement.

According to Terry Mattingly’s On Religion website: (please note, emphasis is mine)

"This latest ceremony at Catholic Information Center will not draw the attention of the Washington Post. But that happened last year when Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas entered the fold. Some of McCloskey's earlier converts also caused chatter inside the Beltway -- columnist Robert Novak, economist Lawrence Kudlow and former abortion activist Bernard Nathanson."

Father C. John McCloskey III, the priest referred to in the above article, is a brilliant Catholic apologist with an Ivy League education, who has worked for Merrill Lynch and Citibank on Wall Street before becoming a priest in the personal prelature of Opus Dei.

For all his brilliance, Fr. McCloskey certainly doesn’t win any points for religious tolerance. Again, from On Religion.

"In addition to winning prominent converts, McCloskey has bluntly criticized the American Catholic establishment's powerful progressive wing, tossing out quotations like this zinger: 'A liberal Catholic is oxymoronic. The definition of a person who disagrees with what the Catholic church is teaching is called a Protestant.'

"It is also crucial that McCloskey openly embraces evangelism and the conversion of adults from Judaism, Islam and other world religions. For many modern Catholics this implies coercion, manipulation, mind control and, thus, a kind of "proselytism" that preys on the weak.

" 'That's pure trash. That's a false ecumenism,' said McCloskey. 'That's simply not Catholic teaching. The Catholic church makes exclusive truth claims about itself and cannot deny them. It doesn't deny that there are other forms of religion. It doesn't deny that these other forms of religion have some elements of truth in them. ...

" 'But we are proclaiming Jesus Christ and where we believe he can be most fully found and that's the Catholic church. We cannot deny that.' This issue will become even more controversial as America grows more diverse. "

But what’s especially bothersome about Fr. McCloskey's narrow minded views is his cultivation of those in power:

"But words like 'conversion' and 'evangelism' draw attention when a priest's pulpit is located on K Street, only two blocks from the White House. The flock that flows into the center's 100-seat chapel for daily Mass includes scores of lobbyists, politicians, journalists, activists and executives"

However, Opus Dei is actually just the tip of the iceberg for Brownback. Much more troublesome is his long term association with a shadowy group in Congress called The Fellowship. Here’s a rather lengthy description of them, their goals, worldview, and influential members, taken from the Rolling Stone piece cited above:

"One of the little-known strengths of the Christian right lies in its adoption of the 'cell' -- the building block historically used by small but determined groups to impose their will on the majority. Seventy years ago, an evangelist named Abraham Vereide founded a network of 'God-led' cells comprising senators and generals, corporate executives and preachers. Vereide believed that the cells -- God's chosen, appointed to power -- could construct a Kingdom of God on earth with Washington as its capital. They would do so 'behind the scenes,' lest they be accused of pride or a hunger for power, and 'beyond the din of vox populi,' which is to say, outside the bounds of democracy. To insiders, the cells were known as the Family, or the Fellowship. To most outsiders, they were not known at all.

" 'Communists use cells as their basic structure,' declares a confidential Fellowship document titled 'Thoughts on a Core Group.' "The mafia operates like this, and the basic unit of the Marine Corps is the four-man squad. Hitler, Lenin and many others understood the power of a small group of people.' Under Reagan, Fellowship cells quietly arranged meetings between administration officials and leaders of Salvadoran death squads, and helped funnel military support to Siad Barre, the brutal dictator of Somalia, who belonged to a prayer cell of American senators and generals.

"Brownback got involved in the Fellowship in 1979, as a summer intern for Bob Dole, when he lived in a residence the group had organized in a sorority house at the University of Maryland. Four years later, fresh out of law school and looking for a political role model, Brownback sought out Frank Carlson, a former Republican senator from Kansas. It was Carlson who, at a 1955 meeting of the Fellowship, had declared the group's mission to be 'Worldwide Spiritual Offensive,' a vision of manly Christianity dedicated to the expansion of American power as a means of spreading the gospel.

"Over the years, Brownback became increasingly active in the Fellowship. But he wasn't invited to join a cell until 1994, when he went to Washington. 'I had been working with them for a number of years, so when I went into Congress I knew I wanted to get back into that,' he says. 'Washington -- power -- is very difficult to handle. I knew I needed people to keep me accountable in that system.'

"Brownback was placed in a weekly prayer cell by 'the shadow Billy Graham' -- Doug Coe, Vereide's successor as head of the Fellowship. The group was all male and all Republican. It was a 'safe relationship,' Brownback says. Conversation tended toward the personal. Brownback and the other men revealed the most intimate details of their desires, failings, ambitions. They talked about lust, anger and infidelities, the more shameful the better -- since the goal was to break one's own will. The abolition of self; to become nothing but a vessel so that one could be used by God.
They were striving, ultimately, for what Coe calls 'Jesus plus nothing' -- a government led by Christ's will alone. In the future envisioned by Coe, everything -- sex and taxes, war and the price of oil -- will be decided upon not according to democracy or the church or even Scripture. The Bible itself is for the masses; in the Fellowship, Christ reveals a higher set of commands to the anointed few. It's a good old boy's club blessed by God. Brownback even lived with other cell members in a million-dollar, red-brick former convent at 133 C Street that was subsidized and operated by the Fellowship. Monthly rent was $600 per man -- enough of a deal by Hill standards that some said it bordered on an ethical violation, but no charges were ever brought.

"Brownback still meets with the prayer cell every Tuesday evening. He and his 'brothers,' he says, are 'bonded together, faith and souls.' The rules forbid Brownback from revealing the names of his fellow members, but those in the cell likely include such conservative stalwarts as Rep. Zach Wamp of Tennessee, former Rep. Steve Largent of Oklahoma and Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma doctor who has advocated the death penalty for abortion providers. Fellowship documents suggest that some 30 senators and 200 congressmen occasionally attend the group's activities, but no more than a dozen are involved at Brownback's level.

"The men in Brownback's cell talk about politics, but the senator insists it's not political. 'It's about faith and action,' he says. According to 'Thoughts on a Core Group,' the primary purpose of the cell is to become an 'invisible 'believing' group.' Any action the cell takes is an outgrowth of belief, a natural extension of 'agreements reached in faith and in prayer.' Deals emerge not from a smoke-filled room but from a prayer-filled room. 'Typically,' says Brownback, 'one person grows desirous of pursuing an action' -- a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy -- 'and the others pull in behind.'

"In 1999, Brownback worked with Rep. Joe Pitts, a Fellowship brother, to pass the Silk Road Strategy Act, designed to block the growth of Islam in Central Asian nations by bribing them with lucrative trade deals. That same year, he teamed up with two Fellowship associates -- former Sen. Don Nickles and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond -- to demand a criminal investigation of a liberal group called Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Last year, several Fellowship brothers, including Sen. John Ensign, another resident of the C Street house, supported Brownback's broadcast decency bill. And Pitts and Coburn joined Brownback in stumping for the Houses of Worship Act to allow tax-free churches to endorse candidates.

"The most bluntly theocratic effort, however, is the Constitution Restoration Act, which Brownback co-sponsored with Jim DeMint, another former C Streeter who was then a congressman from South Carolina. If passed, it will strip the Supreme Court of the ability to even hear cases in which citizens protest faith-based abuses of power. Say the mayor of your town decides to declare Jesus lord and fire anyone who refuses to do so; or the principal of your local high school decides to read a fundamentalist prayer over the PA every morning; or the president declares the United States a Christian nation. Under the Constitution Restoration Act, that'll all be just fine.

Brownback points to his friend Ed Meese, who served as attorney general under Reagan, as an example of a man who wields power through backroom Fellowship connections. Meese has not held a government job for nearly two decades, but through the Fellowship he's more influential than ever, credited with brokering the recent nomination of John Roberts to head the Supreme Court. 'As a behind-the-scenes networker,' Brownback says, 'he's important.' In the senator's view, such hidden power is sanctioned by the Bible. 'Everybody knows Moses,' Brownback says. 'But who were the leaders of the Jewish people once they got to the promised land? It's a lot of people who are unknown.'

"Every Tuesday, before his evening meeting with his prayer brothers, Brownback chairs another small cell -- one explicitly dedicated to altering public policy. It is called the Values Action Team, and it is composed of representatives from leading organizations on the religious right. James Dobson's Focus on the Family sends an emissary, as does the Family Research Council, the Eagle Forum, the Christian Coalition, the Traditional Values Coalition, Concerned Women for America and many more. Like the Fellowship prayer cell, everything that is said is strictly off the record, and even the groups themselves are forbidden from discussing the proceedings. It's a little 'cloak-and-dagger,' says a Brownback press secretary. The VAT is a war council, and the enemy, says one participant, is 'secularism.'

"The VAT coordinates the efforts of fundamentalist pressure groups, unifying their message and arming congressional staffers with the data and language they need to pass legislation. Working almost entirely in secret, the group has directed the fights against gay marriage and for school vouchers, against hate-crime legislation and for 'abstinence only' education. The VAT helped win passage of Brownback's broadcast decency bill and made the president's tax cuts a top priority. When it comes to 'impacting policy,' says Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, 'day to day, the VAT is instrumental.'"

Sorry for the very long quote, but if I tried to paraphrase any of this, you wouldn’t believe me or would think that I was just being paranoid.

In addition to Opus Dei, The Fellowship, the Values Action Team and his other shadowy, undemocratic cells, Brownback announced that one of the major advisers to his presidential exploratory committee will be Thomas Monaghan,, the founder of the ultra-conservative and controversial Ave Maria University, which you can read about here. In addition to moving Ave Maria from Michigan to Collier County, Florida, Mohaghan is attempting to build his own theocratically governed private town, also named Ave Maria. The town will be set up and governed on orthodox Catholic principles such as banning pharmacies from distributing contraceptives

According to this report from the Media Transparancy website:

"Tom Monaghan 'is putting his money and influence' into making Brownback "the next president of the United States," McClatchy Newspapers' Matt Stearns recently reported. The extremely wealthy, and controversial conservative Catholic, 'is advising the 2008 presidential exploratory committee for Brownback, a longtime social conservative who converted to Catholicism a few years ago,' Stearns pointed out.

" 'In the Catholic community, he's looked upon as kind of on the fringes,' the Rev. Robert Drinan, a liberal Roman Catholic priest and former Democratic congressman who teaches at Georgetown University, told Stearns. 'The worldview is, "We have to get back to a Catholic civilization." They want to go back to a Christian society imposed from above...It's just another world they want to build.'"

If this all frightens you, it frightens me too. There are a lot of good, sincere people out there who oppose abortion, worry about the increasing crudeness that passes for culture in our society, and sincerely believe that religion has value in the public square. But what Sam Brownback is involved with goes way beyond that well-intentioned debate about societal reform.

Brownback is not just involved but is the leading force in groups whose goal is to remake America as an authoritarian theocracy, guided by biblical law as dictated by an annointed few. Incredibly, they believe that "the Bible is for the masses," and their vision is for an extra-biblical dictatorship, perhaps based on biblical principles, but ruled by a small cabal who impose their religious and social views on everybody else. These are people who have made alliance with the leaders of El Salvadoran death squads and brutal Somalian dictators. Theirs is a scary vision for America, indeed for the world.

Brownback, the Fellowship, and their fellow travelers like Jim DeMint, Ed Meese, Tom Coburn, and others mentioned above need to be taken seriously and watched carefully. Theirs would be a dangerous America indeed.

It's Another Door Opening

I believe things happen for a reason. Sometimes, there seems to be more irony than reason in the way events unfold, but I think that life has a purpose and there truly are explanations for why things occur even if we don’t’ always discover the answers in this lifetime.

But sometimes it seems that events do push you down a specific path.

I just discovered that since I switched to Blogger’s beta version my posts have not been getting picked up by Lefty Blogs. I had been wondering why there were so few comments on my blog. Surely my opinions hadn’t grown any less offensive to those readers who always found me disagreeable. Maybe I had gotten more boring – a distinct possibility that I can’t really discount.

I certainly have been less observant than usual because I didn’t notice until late yesterday that Lefty Blogs hadn’t picked up two things I had posted a couple of hours earlier. So, out of curiosity I went to their site to see if they had dropped me. After all, perhaps I’m not lefty enough. Another distinct possibility.

Nope, I’m still on their Virginia blogroll. I surfed around and to my surprise discovered that a lot of other bloggers who used Blogger and switched to the beta version were having the same problems with their feed.

In my case, it amused me because it’s just the shove in a direction I’ve wanted to take for a while. I’ve even mentioned it to a few friends and fellow bloggers.

I’m going to hang up my dancing slippers and slip away.

There are a few reasons for this, which actually have little to do with Lefty Blogs. That they aren’t getting my feed is just a fortuitous coincidence.

The main reason that I’m taking a break from blogging is lack of time. To really do it right, political blogging needs to be an on the spot, up to the minute response to breaking news. In today’s instant headline world, blogging is not the place for the leisurely, thoughtful in depth analysis that I like to write and read in others. The most relevant bloggers do short, choppy and timely posts, updating several time a day. And I just can’t do that anymore.

I think you can get away with updating just once a day. But when you go longer than two or three days, you really get less relevant. Or at least that’s my take on it.

And blogging is fairly time intensive. Unlike some other forms of writing, such as fiction, memoirs, and personal essays, it’s impossible to do political blogging without a lot of reading of other blogs, newspapers, and magazines. You can’t do the type of blogging that I was trying to do without being well informed and without being willing to do intensive research and linking. That more than the actual writing is what makes it so labor and time intensive.

I enjoyed every minute of doing it, almost to the point of addiction. Indeed, on any given night, long after I had researched, linked, and written my own blog entry, I’d still be up surfing the net and reading other people’s blogs, and writing comments on their sites too.

But I can’t keep doing that. As much fun as it’s been, I’ve been informed by those who love me that I need to take my life back. I need to stop neglecting family members. Having lost my mother nearly a year ago, it became very clear to me that the people I ignore today may not be here tomorrow and I may not ever get the chance to make it up to them.

Nor should any of us put off doing the things we want to do for that mythical tomorrow that may never come. And I’ve been putting off doing something that I’ve wanted to try for way too long.

I alluded to it in another post (no, I refuse to link this time, I’m tired of linking). In "No Republican Blogger Died In the Making of This Blog," I mentioned that I was getting interested in writing fiction. I gave you a brief snippet – but a sort of tongue in cheek sample.

The truth is I know I’m a decent enough writer of non-fiction and of doing the type of writing that works on a blog or even in an off-line op-ed piece. But I have no objective proof that I’d be a good fiction author. Still, I’d sure like to try.

I don’t expect my first efforts to be dazzling because the first essay I wrote back in fifth or sixth grade wasn’t brilliant either. It took work and practice to be an effective non-fiction writer. And it will probably take effort to be even a little bit good as a novelist or short story writer.

I’ve made my first effort and joined a writer’s workshop at my local library. When I read my short story it was very well received and that gave me encouragement to keep trying. It’s when I start sending work out to actual editors and publishers that I expect to taste a bit more humility. But that’s what having a support group like the one I joined is for. To get the feedback and validation to keep plugging away when the going gets tough.

So, I’m going to try my hand at writing fiction. And I’m going to take more time to savor my family and friends and rejoice while I’ve got them.

And next year, I’ll probably get so impassioned, once again, by the state of politics that I’ll be back. Or maybe not. I’m not closing the door on blogging. But for now, another door is opening.

Janet Oleszek Will Challenge Cuccinelli

Ben Tribbett has this up announcing that Janet Oleszek will take on Ken Cuccinelli in the state Senate race next year. Ben has changed this race from leans Republican to a toss up. I think he's right.

Some of those who posted comments to his article pointed out that voters in this district voted for Davis or Wolf (depending on which part of the district they live in) in the most recent election. But the district also has gone for Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Leslie, Byrne, Creigh Deeds, and Jim Webb. And both Davis and Wolf are viewed as moderates. Cuccinelli definitely isn't.

I like Ken a lot. Every election day when I work the polls at Fairview, he's also there and I can schmooze with him all day without getting frustrated. He's enormously personable and likeable. But I think he's way more conservative than the district he's representing.

So, despite his personal attributes and the power of incumbency, against a candidate as formidable as Oleszek, it's going to be close.

Right now this is going to be one of the races to watch. With Chap taking on Jeannemarie Devolites Davis and Janet Oleszek challenging Ken Cuccinelli, we're not going to get a dull 2007.

Two Fighting Scots-Irish Celebrate Victory

Photo courtesy of Bill Burke, Page One

The photo was taken at the AFL-CIO's Congressional reception in Washington, DC on Tuesday, November 13. The enthusiastic guy hugging Jim Webb is Dan Duncan, a fellow Scots-Irish descendant who hails from Tennessee. He's the nominee to be the next president of the Northern Virginia Central Labor Council and he led the successful Northern Virginia labor-to-labor GOTV effort.

He was also an early Webb supporter. In fact, he brought his copy of Born Fighting to his first meeting with Jim Webb back in March 2006 and got it autographed.

Oh yeah, he's also Mr. Anonymous. Am I a proud wife, or what?

Defining A Real Democrat Just Got Easier With Jim Webb

Defeated and somewhat demoralized Republicans, like Mason Conservative, are consoling themselves with a new narrative about Jim Webb. According to their new meme, Jim Webb is going to be a big disappointment to the Democrats who worked so hard for his election because Webb is really a "Pat Buchanan Conservative."

I think that's a stretch. They're misreading Webb and fooling themselves, probably because right now they need to in order to avoid admitting that Americans really did repudiate them for their handling of the war and the economy.

Their main argument, though, for comparing the two men is that Webb has an independent and sometimes conservative streak. Especially, they point out gleefully, where Second Amendment rights are concerned. Webb, like Buchanan, is against gun control and is comfortable around people who like guns. MC and other conservatives believe this will cause Democrats to become disillusioned with Webb.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that most Democrats knew Webb's position going in. In fact, one district chair said to me that although, as a part of leadership, he was publicly supporting Webb, his wife could never vote for Webb precisely because of Webb's stand on gun control. That was a minority reaction but it proves that Democrats knew exactly what they were getting in Jim Webb. And by the way, both Mark Warner and Tim Kaine also had "Sportsman for (Warner or Kaine)" bumper stickers, which was virtually an admission of being pro-gun ownership. However worthy their cause, most of the proponents of gun control have given up that fight in Virginia as unwinnable at this time.

But other than on the gun control issue, there are significant differences between Webb and Buchanan.

The most obvious is that Buchanan is a real wedge issue social conservative. Webb is not. Even during his Reagan years, Webb was considered moderate when it came to social issues like abortion. Webb is pro-choice, in favor of stem cell research, and opposed the so-called marriage amendment. So he's much more in step with Democrats than with Pat Buchanan Conservatives.
As for his opposition to Iraq, every Democrat who won last week was anti-Iraq. It's Buchanan who is marching in step with us on that one, not visa versa. Likewise, on the economy, Buchanan's populism puts him out of synch with free traders in his own party as well as Harris Miller style Democrats. But plenty of Democrats, including Brian Dorgan and Carl Levin, are also economic populists. If you're a Democrat, it's called being pro-union, something Buchanan actually isn't, but Jim Webb is.

And Webb showed his true colors today in this Wall Street Journal op-ed. Webb nails it in this piece, which is brilliantly written and literally hammers home the inequities that are bothering people.

There’s a popular misconception among the mainstream media and political pundits that populism doesn’t work in American elections because most voters don’t resent rich people. Indeed, they aspire to be rich themselves. No matter how far fetched the reality, most Americans appear to believe that the ability to achieve great wealth is within their grasp, so they support laws that favor the rich even if that appears contrary to their real economic interests.

That’s only a partial truth, though. Most Americans don’t resent the rich because most Americans are generous of spirit and kind of heart. As long as they are economically comfortable, prosperous, and secure, they are not envious. And as long as they perceive that the system is basically fair and provides equitable opportunity they are not resentful.

But too many people have been affected by downsizing, outsourcing and automation or have seen neighbors and family members affected by these forces to feel really secure. And too many have either experienced, seen, or read about the erosion of pensions and health benefits. At the same time, they’ve also read about golden parachutes, fabulous wealth and perks awarded to CEOs and corporate executives, even while their companies are performing poorly.

Most people are aware that “it’s not what you know but who you know” nowadays that determines economic well-being. Americans aren’t resentful and aren’t natural populists. But too many of them are getting fed up with the unfairness they are seeing around them. Indeed, inequity seems to run like a seam through the rock of the American economy and it's causing a crack in the surface of our civil society. Jim Webb just exposed the fault line and proved he’s a real Democrat who holds our core values. He's not a Pat Buchanan Conservative, as MC and others would have you think. Jim Webb is a Jefferson-Jackson-style Democrat.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

Ok, the most obvious fact is that it’s neither Monday nor morning. It’s actually two days after the elections. Nevertheless, it's time for me to give you my take on the results. Here's my pick for winners and losers in the 2006 elections.

Jim Webb was a very big winner. He came into this race a complete novice. And he was never supposed to win. To a lot of so-called hard headed pragmatists, if Webb had simply slowed down Allen's momentum to keep him from a cakewalk into the Republican presidential nomination, it would have been enough. But here was a guy who was a reluctant politician, introverted (I mean, he writes books for a living - that's 8 hours of sitting in a room all alone working at a solitary pursuit, not great preparation for glad handing the general public), and obviously uncomfortable asking strangers for the huge amounts of money it takes to run. Yet despite all that, he slayed a giant. If anybody deserves the hearty thanks of Democrats all over this country, it's Webb. Against all odds, this novice took back the Senate for Democrats.

The most obvious loser is George Bush. This was a referendum about him. His management style, his policies, his administration. People wanted change and they trusted the Democrats to deliver it.

Surprisingly, the biggest winner (other than the actual successful candidates) might also be George Bush. He showed immediately that he got it. His humble demeanor as he admitted at a press conference that Republicans had “taken a thumping” reminded Americans of what they had originally liked about him, back in 2000 when he still acted like a regular guy you’d want to have a beer with. It’s been a long time since anybody’s caught a glimpse of that humble side. He’s been all arrogance recently. Look for a return to the famous charm offensive of early 2001. Of course, it didn't work the first time and I'm not sure it will, with Democrats, this time either. It's not really meant to charm them anyway. It's meant to appeal the public, though, so he can blame Democratic obstructionists who will definitely oppose him on Iraq, social security privatization, and any number of judicial appointments.

The big losers, Democrats. Now they've got to govern. At some point, they have to agree upon a legislative agenda, including a plausible plan to extricate us from Iraq without appearing reckless or weak. That's a lot harder than it looks from the minority side of the aisle. Governing is more difficult than it appears, especially with a divided government. Both sides are going to do a lot of finger pointing and posturing and jockying for favorable position with the public leading up to the presidential elections in 2008.

But a big loser was Karl Rove whose strategy of exciting the base - independents and swing voters be damned - finally failed. Good politics always is about building coalitions, not depending on only one narrow segment of the electorate to win and govern.

So-called values voters were another big loser. For all their bragging after 2004, they couldn’t deliver the winning margins in state and local races when they were overtaken by events like the war in Iraq and the economic erosion of the middle class. Pragmatism trumped the culture wars when it came to candidates winning this year.

On the other hand, values didn’t lose. Voters were disgusted by Republican scandals from Abramoff to Foley. Voters proved that they didn’t define values as narrowly as the social conservatives did. Honesty, integrity, concern for economic fairness and social justice, and good environmental stewardship concerned them.

On the other hand, traditional moral values are hardly dead. In Virginia, the marriage amendment won and I am afraid that same sex marriage is a loser. Although I personally support anybody’s right to be married to whomever they want and to have the full legal protections of a marriage, for now laws to define marriage as between one man and one woman have a better track record than those that seek to expand the definition of marriage to give the right to same sex partners. That's true across the nation.

Right now, gay activists need to do the hard work of convincing the American public of the basic fairness of extending to same sex partners the same legal protections for their unions that straight people have, and not focus on whether its called marriage or something else. Sometimes incrementalism and pragmatism win.

The Republicans’ famous 72-Hour Project was a loser. Not that it failed. Just that Democrats don’t need to fear it. When they set their minds to it, Democrats can get out their votes too. The Democrats’ GOTV effort was a winner.

I’m prejudiced on this one, but another winner was Virginia’s organized labor, which was with Jim Webb from the beginning. Although a few unions backed his opponent in the primary, most of labor supported Webb, including the incoming president of the NoVa Central Labor Council, who met with Webb back in March and supported him immediately. The Northern Virginia CLC, by the way, knocked on 4,000 doors and made 2400 phone calls in one day in their labor to labor GOTV effort, probably the most they've ever logged in an election. In a squeaker like this, that's got to give them some credit for turning out labor voters for Webb that helped put him over the top. Good job!

Other very big winners were Larry and Leslie Byrne, who took Webb around to Democrats and labor. Chap Peterson was also right there lending his name and considerable credibility to Webb’s run. And the fact that both Leslie Byrne and Peterson could put the 2005 Lt Governor’s primary behind them to unite behind Webb's candidacy can teach a lesson in graciousness, pragmatisim, and party loyalty to some of the leadership of the Fairfax County Democratic Committee. Enough said about that.

A big winner was the Virginia blogosphere.

Without them Allen’s maccacca moment would have been relegated to the last page of the metro section of the Washington Post without much coverage anyplace else. In the past, the press thought of themselves as the gatekeepers who decided which news the public should get. Those days have ended. For better or worse, the general public now knows what’s whispered in the halls of Richmond and Washington the same as the reporters and the legislators do. Nobody was better at up to the minute coverage, gossip, rumor, innuendo, and spot on analysis of polls than Not Larry Sabato. Ben Tribbett is the must read blog for all Virginia bloggers, regardless of party or ideology.

Another big winner was Raising Kaine's Josh Chernila and Lowell Feld . They were the first Webb supporters. In fact, without their encouragement, there might not have been a Webb candidacy. They helped to persuade him to run. And the rest of the RK gang provided coverage, support, enthusiasm, and great YouTube footage to readers. We probably have to thank the Indian-American college student, Siddarth, who first put YouTube and maccacca on the map - or at least the late night comedy shows. Congrats to all!

Finally, a special mention has to go to Mason Conservative who has been incredibly gracious on his blog and over at NLS. He is a true Virginia gentleman and he makes me proud to be a Virginia blogger. We will lock horns again, my friend. But for now you have all my admiration and you are one of the true winners for showing style and class. And good luck to your Redskins. You deserve some victory joy.

Finis!

Well, it's all over but the shouting. And hopefully the celebrating.

Like most of the political bloggers, regardless of which party, I had a busy day. It actually began with a doctor's appointment, then I headed to my polling place to vote. I stayed to work the polls for a few hours. Then I was supposed to make get out the vote calls. When I got to the precinct where my contact was supposed to give me the phone list, she hadn't shown up yet so I stayed to pass out some more literature. She had a lot of people working the polls. We had three Democrats to one Republican passing out lit.

When she showed up, she said she had the phone calls covered so I stayed a while longer. Then, because they seemed to have enough people, with more coming in later, I headed back to my own precinct. They had about four or five people too, with the promise of more to cover the all important 5 to 7 shift. Meanwhile, four of us passed out literature for a couple of hours while there were no Allen people at all. We basically had the playing field to ourselves.

Finally, an Allen supporter showed up, spent some time on the phone - no doubt to call for reinforcements - and began passing out his literature.

For me, the best moment, one where I wished I had a camera, was when one of our supporters, a young man who wore a Firefighters For Webb tee shirt over his turtleneck sweater helped an elderly disabled lady out of a car and escorted her to the polls. He did the same for another elderly woman who was having difficulty walking. It was all very chivelrous and touching.

I saw Ben Tribbett at Fairview Precinct, which is my precint, and the place I spent the most time. Ben also introduced me to Too Conservative's little sister. A nice young woman, even if she laughed when I went back to the left side. Honestly, the Dems in Fairview always seem to take the left side and Repubs the right. Has been that way for the 12 years that I've worked there. And they've always gotten along well. In previous years, there were Republicans who would hug me in greeting. And I'd return the hugs enthusiastically. They were fellow Burke residents who I saw around the stores and restaurants and we had real relationships beyond election day.

Politics has gotten so nasty lately that we forget that human touch. But when you see somebody else who feels just as passionate about his beliefs standing beside you in the rain on a chilly November day, there is a common bond, even if it's just that your both shivering and huddled under umbrellas.

I have to admit that I've met some of the nicest people among Republicans while working the Fairview Precinct. I miss some of the ones who have moved on and aren't there anymore.

Meanwhile, I hope our side wins. But even more, I hope someday we find a better, more fair, kinder way to do politics.

As Mason Conservative said yesterday, it's not personal. It's politics. And because it's Virginia, we'll all be back in six months for the next race. So, rest up.

Vote For Jim Webb And Andy Hurst Tuesday

And if you’re in the 10th Congressional District, vote for Judy Feder.

I’m going to make my plea to those who live in my own 11th CD to please vote for Andy Hurst as well as for Jim Webb for U.S. Senate this Tuesday, November 7.

It is long past time for some oversight in our government. The problem with the one party rule that we’ve experienced for six years is that there has not been adequate checks and balances.

That’s not the way to run a government. It’s not even the way you run a good business. In business, there are accounting standards that demand checks and balances and even audits to ensure accountability and honesty. If that’s how a private business is run, then surely a government, which is responsible to its citizens, should have even more transparency and accountability. The citizens, after all, foot the bill for the government.

And those citizen-taxpayers are dissatisfied on a number of fronts.

They want a solution to the war in Iraq that gets our soldiers out of harms way without compromising national security. Yet reports have shown that our presence in Iraq has actually made us more vulnerable to terrorist threats rather than safer. And in a stunning blow to the current administration, all the branches of our armed forces have called for Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s ouster.

Basically our people in uniform have voted no confidence in the Secretary of Defense. Yet President Bush has vowed to “stay the course” on keeping him. You can’t credibly say that our military leaders simply have a partisan gripe with their civilian leader. Everybody can see how badly things are going in Iraq, just as they can see how badly its going in the rest of the Middle East, North Korea, and around the world. The military is merely echoing the no confidence that civilians feel with the course we are being urged to stay.

Democrats certainly don’t have all the answers. Democrats, if you will recall, have been systematically excluded from leadership and marginalized by this administration and by Republican congressional leaders. Without access to meaningful intelligence reports it’s difficult to say what to do differently with any certainty.

But Democrats do agree on some alternatives including sending the National Guard troops home, moving Special Forces troops to friendly countries so they can monitor conditions in Iraq and contain terrorism in that country. They also favor seeking a diplomatic solution to the civil war there, which would bring Iraq’s neighbors and our European allies into the solution. Democrats want to ensure that our security needs are met, contrary to Republican claims, and find a way out of the morass that we are in, in Iraq.

On the economic front, Republicans are baffled that the country is not overjoyed at the economy they’ve created. We’ve had years of solid growth, high productivity and low unemployment, although growth has slowed dramatically this quarter and productivity is also on a downward spiral. Only the unemployment rate has dipped even lower. Now, investors fear the combination of a tight employment market and low productivity might drive wages up and spike inflation.

For ordinary workers, it’s a no win situation. When business growth was sizzling and profits were shooting sky high, high productivity kept their wages low. In fact, that was a favorable condition to economists, who always fear higher wages as a sign of inflationary pressure.

So, if workers cannot share the gravy in the good times, and any advance they make is a threat to the good of the economy (whereas astronomical salaries, generous bonuses and stock options, and munificent perks for CEOs are all considered justifiable expenses), what stake do employees have in the economy?

That’s what explains the sourness the ordinary voter feels for the economy. It’s why good economic conditions have not given Republicans any traction and why voters trust Democrats more with the economy.

And they’re right. Democrats understand the difference between greed, which contrary to Gordon Gekko, the character in the movie Wall Street, is not good. Rational self-interest is very good. Encouraging businesses to share the good times with workers, instead of resenting them as a necessary but evil expense that cuts into business profits and bonuses, is rational self-interest.

Democrats would raise the minimum wage and work with businesses to find ways to make healthcare more affordable and to encourage secure pensions. And they would do it in ways that would strengthen business because nobody wants to see business hurt; that’s killing the goose that lays the golden egg. And that, by the way, is the difference between rational self-interest and greed. Most workers don't want to gain benefits that hurt business in the long run. They want good salaries and good benefits only to the degree that it helps business not hurts it.

Republicans fear that Democrats would repeal Bush’s tax cuts. They probably would.

Instead, they would encourage targeted tax cuts that benefit the middle class and working people because economists have shown that when you give tax cuts to wealthy people, they do not spend it in ways that stimulate the economy. They stick it in savings or investment. But with the economic slowdown now a fact, we are going to need to stimulate the economy again and the fastest way to encourage people to spend is to give them money in their pocket as a tax cut does. The people who actually spend tax cuts in ways that stimulate the retail sector are poorer people. That’s because they’re the ones who have to put off purchases and if you give them an extra dollar, there’s stuff they actually need but couldn’t afford. So they’ll buy.

Tax cuts could also go to businesses that provide decent health coverage to employees to help offset the expense. There are other ways to use tax cuts to reward businesses for helping employees with healthcare, pensions, and even daycare for workers.

Because Democrats have different priorities than Republicans they will use tax cuts differently than Republicans. Not just to benefit the top one percent of the wealthiest members of society, but to benefit the middle class and working people.

Jim Webb and Andy Hurst have both demonstrated that they understand the needs of the middle class. Both of them want to find a solution to the mess in Iraq and realize staying the course isn’t it. Both men have demonstrated integrity and independence.

This country needs a change and both of them can help find it. They would represent Virginia with an integrity that is sadly lacking in Washington right now and Virginians could be proud to call them respectively Senator and Representative.

Vote Tuesday, and vote for Jim Webb for Senate and Andy Hurst for the House of Representatives.

And vote for Judy Feder in the 10, because everything I’ve said above applies to her too. And she would bring tremendous intelligence and experience to Congress.

On The Marriage Amendment Vote NO

Most of the liberal/Democratic blogs are urging a no vote on ballot issue #1, the so-called marriage amendment to the Virginia Constitution. Opponents of this amendment, also known as the Marshall-Newman amendment, cite its unanticipated consequences as one of the major reasons to vote it down. The language is so vague that it could encourage costly lawsuits.

For the best coverage of the Marshall-Newman Amendment, Vivian Paige has been doing a masterful job over at her blog. Go here , here, and here

What's striking is a number of Republicans and Republican/conservative leaning blogs are also urging a no vote. Bearing Drift gives the reasons why its contributors are urging readers to vote the Marshall-Newman Amendment down.

And in the Burke Connection, Delegate Steve Shanon, a moderate Democrat, who was originally a strong supporter of laws to define marriage as between one man and one woman, and who, indeed, was one of only two Democrats, Chap Peterson was the other one, to vote in favor of this law in the Virginia House of Delegates in 2004 (I yelled at him for it, at the time) has now come out against the Marshall-Newman amendment.

And finally Rick Sincere has a good post on prominent Republicans voting No to the amendment.

I don't usually cut and paste others work, but there's enough out there about how bad this amendment is that I don't need to repeat what others have done better than me. Let it suffice to say that I urge you to vote No on Tuesday.

George Allen's Real Record of Support for Women

There used to be a joke that the classic example of chutzpah was the man who killed both his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan. By that light, the definition of a dishonest political hack is a candidate who distorts his opponent's record while boosting himself as the true champion of women's issues when he has never voted in favor of anything that real women considered important to their interests and well being.

By any definition, George Allen and his campaign staff qualify for that label. Let’s compare the records on women's issues of the two candidates vying to represent Virginia in the U.S. Senate.

First, to make Jim Webb look bad to women, the Allen campaign went on a real dredging operation, digging through the mud to find inflammatory quotes that Jim Webb made 25 years ago about women's fitness to attend the U.S. Naval Academy. Admittedly the remarks were brash and offensive. And Webb promptly apologized for them. He didn’t try to deny them, as Allen did with his “Macaca” quotes, or try to make excuses. He simply and publicly said he was sorry and he regretted making those statements because they no longer represented his beliefs about women's fitness to serve in the military.

But what matters more than Webb’s remarks of 25 years ago, is Allen’s more recent voting record and his positions on a variety of women's issues during his time in the House of Representatives in the early 1990s to his current positions in the Senate today.

No candidate can claim the mantel of support for women’s issues if he is against a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. It’s a tragic choice and few people are in favor of abortion. But the majority of Virginians believe that this agonizing decision must be left to women and their doctors, not legislated by strangers.

But George Allen doesn't agree with the majority of Virginia's women on this. In fact, he even voted against an amendment to the 2006 Fiscal Year Budget that would have provided military women access to abortion services at military hospitals, at the women's own expense. This bill would not have made the taxpayer pick up the medical expenses for any abortion. It simply would have ensured that women who serve in our armed forces would have access to safe abortions, at their own expense, whether they are at home or overseas.

George Allen does not support reproductive rights for women. And not just a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate a pregnancy. Incredibly, he voted against another amendment to a different bill that would have reduced unintended pregnancies by allocating funds for increased access to family planning services and providing funds to ensure that health insurance plans cover birth control prescriptions. In addition, this amendment would have provided funding for prevention of teenage pregnancies. Ironically, the main purpose of the amendment was to reduce the number of abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancies.

But not only did Allen vote no for that piece of legislation, he also voted against allowing the Plan B, or “morning after” pill, to be sold over the counter (although voting against it in the Senate didn’t stop him from owning stock in the company that manufactures the pill).

Jim Webb, on the other hand, has stated clearly that he is in favor of reproductive freedom for women, including a woman’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy. Webb also favors stem cell research, which Allen doesn’t.

But on another important issue, one that affects countless more women than even reproductive rights, the two candidates couldn’t be further apart. George Allen,while serving in the House of Representatives, voted against the Family Medical and Leave Act, which was signed into law by President Clinton in 1993.

More than any of the so-called social wedge issues, this piece of legislation has improved women’s lives immeasurably. It has provided them with job security while also giving them the ability to care for family members in need. No longer does a woman have to choose between her job and a sick child or dying parent. Now, when a woman must face the daunting task of caring for a sick family member, she can at least focus on her task, knowing that she will have a job to return to. And even more important, she won't have to worry about losing her company provided health benefits just when she may need them the most.

Even more telling, George Allen, while he was a congressman, voted for a measure to rescind the Labor Department's ergonomics regulations, also during the Clinton Administration. That measure stripped the Labor Department of any enforcement authority to make companies provide education to workers in how to prevent repetitive stress injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, from typing, lifting, and other repetitive activities. It also prevented the federal government from enforcing regulations requiring businesses to take steps to minimize carpal tunnel syndrome and other repetitive stress injuries in employees.

The majority of those who get repetitive stress injuries are women who work on computers typing all day or in factories. So Representative Allen was hardly a the champion of women's rights that he is now pretending to be.

Jim Webb, with his emphasis on economic fairness for the middle class, would never have voted against the Family Medical and Leave Act. He wouldn't have voted for a measure that strips basic workplace safety and health protections from employees. Nor would he have voted against a raise in the minimum wage law, as George Allen has done, while also voting to raise his own salary in the Senate ten times.

Since women comprise so much of the low-paying service sector of our economy, those votes to raise the minimum wage affect the welfare of women struggling to support their families.

And in another sorry example of how the Allen camp has distorted both candidates’ records, consider this.

While Allen’s campaign ads have taken potshots at Jim Webb’s opposition to women in the U.S. Naval Academy in 1979, it was Allen, while he was Virginia’s governor, who opposed the admission of women to Virginia Military Institute. Indeed, George Allen called the government "nannies and pests on a mission to destroy VMI." And that was in 1996, a full 16 years after Annapolis had already successfully integrated women into its program. And years after Webb, as Ronald Reagan's Secretary of the Navy, had changed his mind about women’s fitness for military service and opened 18,000 assignments for women, the most career opportunities for them in Navy history.

Finally, you can tell a lot about a person by the people he hires for key spots on his staff. As the Washington Post noted, Allen has 14 women out of 50 employees in his Washington office and as campaign staff but they mostly work in lower and mid-level jobs in administrative positions that are traditionally held by women. Only two women hold top spots on Allen's staff. In contrast, the five top operatives in Jim Webb’s campaign are strong, outspoken women. No man who opposes women’s rights or who thinks that women are unfit or incompetent would trust his campaign in their hands the way Jim Webb has done.

The contrast between these two men is telling. If you put the attack ads aside and take a true measure of both men, it becomes clear that Jim Webb is more in touch with the needs of Virginia women than George Allen is. And he has far more respect for women's talents and competence. You just can't judge a person by a few brash statements he made 25 years ago while ignoring his opponent's past and current history. George Allen has a voting record from the U.S. House of Representatives, the Governor's Office, and the U.S. Senate. Unfortunately, when it comes to support for the things important to women, he can't run successfully on that record so he has to resort to attack and smear tactics. Sadly, it's par for the course with this candidate.

George Allen doesn't care about women's safety on the job. He doesn't care about their economic plight or their work-life balance. And he certainly doesn't care about their physical health or their reproductive rights. In fact, George Allen plain doesn't care about women or appeciate them. And it's time for women to reciprocate that lack of appreciation come election day.

No Republican Blogger Died in the Making of This Blog

To look at Seth Stone you would not know that he was one of Argonne County’s most powerful, influential bloggers. His build is slight and his shoulders somewhat stooped He’s pale and his skin shows signs of the teenage acne that he still, at age 23, was outgrowing. His sandy colored shoulder length hair is shaggy, not in a fashionable way, but just unkempt.

But his blue eyes give away his sharp intelligence and wit. Right now, they were focused on Brad Jones, the sleek aide to Ron Mancuso, the Speaker of Virginia’s State House of Delegates. Although both young men were the same age, Brad, in contrast to Seth, was dressed in sharply pressed khaki slacks, a pale blue Oxford shirt and penny loafers. His light brown hair grazed his neck and fell in an expensive haircut. Brad stood taller than Seth, a difference in height exaggerated by Brad’s erect posture.

“Seth you can’t put this on your blog,” Brad was arguing.

“Of course I can,” Seth said sharply. “I can put anything I want on it.”

The blog in question was Throwing Stones: For People Who Don’t Live In Glass Houses. And it was read by the entire Virginia political establishment, both Republican and Democratic. Activists quoted it and newspaper reporters cited it for their stories. Throwing Stones was equal parts political humor, expose, and spot on analysis of electoral trends around the state.

Brad said, “But this is false. It’ll kill Ron’s chances to run for the Senate.”

“So, you don’t want it to run because it’s false or because it hurts Ron?” Seth asked. “I mean, enquiring minds want to know.”

“Seth, you say you’re a Republican. Why on earth do you want to hurt your own party?” Brad countered.

“It’s not about my personal beliefs. It’s about the truth. I’m a blogger and I have a responsibility to my readers just like any journalist. And by the way, it is true!”

“Oh bag it, Seth. You’re not a journalist, except in the Enquirer sense.”

“And Ron’s not a leader or a good Republican, except in the Tom DeLay sense,” Seth retorted.

Just at that moment, a gunshot rang out. Brad’s eyes widened in shock. “Oh my God,” he muttered under his breath as he backed away. He watched Seth crumble, a look of pained surprise in his eyes as he fell onto the ground. Brad looked up into the killer’s eyes. “Why.”

“You weren’t getting anywhere.” The person snapped. He then turned the gun on Brad.

Ok, the above passage is not the stuff of great literature. It needs work – lots of work – to make it even as commercial, genre fiction. But it’s a start and it’s something I want to work on.

But that’s not the reason I’m posting it here on my blog.

I hadn’t wanted to announce this just yet, but after this election cycle, I’m probably going to stop writing AIAW. My blogging is probably my most important contribution to politics. It’s not that I think blogs are more important than GOTV efforts. I actually think it’s more important to knock on every door and make every phone call, especially if you are at all a people person and can actually hold a normal human conversation.

I’m better at writing.

Seriously, when I phone bank, I pray that the people at the other end of the line won’t be home so I can just leave a message. I’m also better at – and more comfortable with – talking to answering machines than to live people, who tend to fluster me.

My friends don’t realize it because I can be pretty talkative with them, but I’m actually shy. Approaching strangers to ask for something, even a vote for somebody I feel truly passionate about, is way out of my comfort zone. So, while I’ll probably never win a Pulitzer Prize, I’m more comfortable with, and better at, writing than true political campaigning. And at blogging.

So, when I say I’m giving it up, I announce that with great guilt.

But there’s something else that’s pulling me in another direction. It’s the desire to write fiction. I’ve got a couple of short story ideas and one story written that I need to revise and then I’d like to send it out to an old fashion print venue. It would also be nice to be paid for some of my writing. I don’t know if anybody would be willing to pay to publish me, but I’d sure like to fine out.

And one of the projects I’m working on is a full length novel, still very much in the pre-planning stage. That means, still a dream. But ideas, characters, and plot points are starting to dance like holiday sugarplums in my mind. I’m as excited as a kid at Christmas by the idea that I could write a novel someday.

And that brings me to the reason that I’ve decided to announce it now.

I know something about fiction.

It’s the obvious point. Fiction is not necessarily true or factual. It involves acts of imagination as well as craft and hard work.

I read a work in progress to a writing workshop that I occasionally attend. It was a story that involved a death of somebody close to the main characer. Because it was in the first person, the group was hesitant to say anything. I quickly realized that their silence was because they thought it was a memoir and they were waiting to make sure I wasn't about to burst into tears after completing the reading. I quickly assured them that it was a made up story.

There was a collective sigh of relief and then the dam burst and I got some really excellent feedback. The best was that everybody agreed it was so realistically written that they couldn’t tell that it was fiction. While the group gave me really good suggestions to tighten and improve my writing, the consensus was that it was already a thoroughly believable work of fiction. And I had made them care about the protagonist. I felt tremendously gratified and encouraged by their feedback.

After the workshop ended, I lingered on the steps of the Pohick Library to chat with some of the other workshop attendees. One person wanted to call me Donna, the name of the protagonist. He laughed and said it was because he still thought she was so real.

“Are you sure it’s not true?” He asked again.

“Not a word,” I assured him.

The reason I’m telling you all this is because of the absurd brouhaha the Allen campaign has been making over Jim Webb’s so-called sexually explicit writing in his fiction. Besides the Allen campaign, which apparently has been shopping this non-story to all the major media (only the Drudge Report bought their premise and ran with a story about it), bloggers like Mason Conserative are questioning whether Webb has the integrity and moral fiber to serve in the Senate because of his fictional writing.

But other conservative bloggers (here, here, and here), who are a bit more sophisticated than Mason Conservative, and who haven't drunk the Allen Kool-Aid, have condemned the Allen campaign for their cheap tactic of trying to impugn Webb's character because of his fiction writing.

Just as I’m not Donna from my story, or even the killer from the above fictional passage that I've posted on this site, Webb is not the sexually predatory characters in his work.

Webb is a far better writer than I’ll ever be. That’s not false modesty on my part. I don’t aspire to write serious literature as he already has done successfully. Repeat: He writes literature. Not genre stories.

That George Allen has bragged that he doesn’t read fiction, by the way, is a badge of shame. It’s also the mark of an uneducated boob. Lots of conservative Republicans proudly read works of fiction, including John McCain, Lynn Cheney (who even writes some pretty hot stories herself), and Newt Gingrich, another novelist with some sexually explicit scenes in his historical novel . Even George W. Bush admits to reading novels. Note to Senator Allen: Reading good fiction is not a partisan activity; it’s merely the mark of an educated and civilized human being.

And anybody who reads fiction will tell you that you can’t judge an author’s moral fitness by taking one of his fictional passages out of context. Webb, in his work, is not in favor of all the actions that he has his characters commit. In the same way, the writer of a thriller or mystery might write a very convincing scene depicting a murder. But that doesn’t make that writer a murderer himself.

I hope, someday, to be one of those people who successfully write a murder mystery. However, since the premise of my novel is the murder of a popular blogger, I do promise all of my readers, no actual Republican bloggers will be killed in the making of my work of fiction.

And let me hasten to assure you, no Republican blogger or legislative aide was killed in the writing of this blog despite the opening paragraph. Because that was – well – fiction.

More Economic Assault and Battery on the Middle Class

Yesterday’s Washington Post had this article about how more and more businesses are saving money on health costs by switching from traditional low deductible healthcare plans with high premiums to new “consumer-directed plans” with low premium plans and high deductibles. This saves the businesses money by shifting the financial burden onto their employees.

Unlike traditional healthcare plans, these plans require the consumer to pay large deductibles, sometimes as high as $2,000 to $4,000 for a family instead of the traditional $220 deductible, while the premium, which is paid by the company, is considerably lower than the premiums of traditional health plans, including even HMOs.

The new health plans are working; they’re saving companies lots of money. But the main reason they seem to work, according to this story, is because the high price of the deductible discourages people from going for routine treatment and even preventive care. And that’s exactly what these plans are designed to do.

Indeed, the Bush administration and its business supporters have lauded these plans precisely because they shift the burden of the cost onto the consumer and so encourage people to “shop around” for the best, most efficient and cost effective health care. They also encourage people to be more frugal – meaning get less care.

The problem is that’s often a penny wise and pound-foolish solution that leads to health complications and higher medical costs down the road. For example, by not seeking routine care for a cold or flu, a patient with asthma could end up with life threatening pneumonia instead. That could mean a costlier hospital stay with longer and more expensive treatment and serious physical complications for the patient that can’t be measured in just dollars and cents. After all, how can you put monetary value on one’s life and health if it’s your loved one?

And, let me tell you, most of the dazzling advances and life-saving techniques that have helped more people to become cancer survivors boil down to early detection. We don’t have a cure for cancer. Those whose cancer is in advanced stages often still die of their disease. It’s because of better diagnostic tests and public health campaigns, which have made Americans aware of the need to get regular mammograms, ultra sounds, and other routine screening tests, that we’ve been able to save lives.

But with high deductibles, how many mothers and fathers will go without those tests and routine checkups so they can have the money for their children’s healthcare? How many older people on fixed incomes will forego necessary testing and routine care?

Now, today’s Washington Post has an article that Bush has been talking about reviving his dead on arrival Social Security reform.

With the erosion of secure pensions and health benefits, a strapped middle class may lose the last of its retirement security at a time when it’s being pushed from all directions and economic insecurity is epidemic.

In fact, that’s why the so-called good economy is not benefiting Republicans. Although people tell pollsters that this is a strong, healthy economy, they also say they are not personally benefiting from it. They are very aware that how good the economy actually is depends on which side of the boardroom you sit on.

Meanwhile, Republicans in tight races are running away in droves from Bush’s happy talk about reviving Social Security reform. But make no mistake about it. Bush is stubborn. He doesn’t like defeat. He’s a spoiled preppy at heart and he sulks when he doesn’t get his way. And then he comes back, and back until he wears you down. If the Republicans keep Congress, he’ll make one last putsch to get his Social Security reform. He and his new Treasury secretary from Goldman Sachs want one final gift to give to their friends in the boardrooms and on Wall Street.

And if Republicans aren’t defeated this time, they’ll know they can do anything. Hide stock options, launder funds, take bribes from lobbyists, hit on teenagers, send sexually explicit messages to pages, and gut Social Security and finally drive their stake through the heart of the middle class.

In An Alternate Reality

In an alternate reality, Iraq is doing well and we are helping to bring peace and freedom to the people of that country. That is the reality of President Bush and Republicans.

But the reality on the ground - the one that actually exists - is just the opposite. By now, most people who bother to read newspapers or blogs or who watch television or listen to radio know that the National Intelligence Estimate has said that our invasion of Iraq has increased terrorism. We've destabilized Iraq and turned it into a successful recruiting station for international terrorists who are offended to have non-Muslim Westerners occupying that country.

Most people are also familiar with Bob Woodward's book State of Denial, which says that the Bush Administration has consistently painted an overly optimistic picture of progress in Iraq.

Nobody, however, has yet to state the obvious. Overthrowing Saddam Hussein was the dumbest, worst strategic blunder that could have been made in the region. The trouble is that Hussein was such a genuinely bad man that it's hard to conceive that no good could come from his being ousted.

But as bad as he was, those now running wild in the streets of Bagdahd are so much worse.

I've harped for months about the difference in the situation of women. Under Hussein, women enjoyed relative freedom. They dressed in Western fashion, styled their hair, went to beauty shops, wore makeup, held down jobs, traveled, were educated. In short, they lived what we would call normal lives.

Since the invasion and the overthrow of Saddam, women are veiled. They are afraid to walk the streets, they seldom go places unchaperoned. In short, the fanatic Shiite leaders with whom we have replaced Saddam, have turned Iraq from a modern country into one as backward as Afghanistan under the Taliban, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. One more sad place where women's freedom does not thrive. Does not even exist.

But the latest casualty of Iraqi Muslim extremism is Christianity. As this article in today's New York Times shows, Muslims have seized upon the recent remarks by Pope Benedict as an excuse to throw still another temper tantrum against anyone not Islamic enough by their fanatic standards.

I'm not going to defend Benedict's remarks. They were insulting. But Pope Benedict is the same man who engineered a document, Domine Iesus, that declared the Protestant faith deficient. Lots of Protestants were offended. But you didn't see Baptists and Episcopalians rioting in the streets and burning down their neighbors' churches. They wrote letters to the editor like sensible people.

I don't know if anybody else on the left is getting as damned tired of Muslim rage as I am. But this quote from the Times about sums up the intolerance of the situation:

Muslim fury over Pope Benedict XVI’s public reflections on Islam in Germany a month ago — when he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as calling Islam “evil and inhuman” — has subsided elsewhere, but repercussions continue to reverberate in Iraq, bringing a new level of threat to an already shrinking Christian population.

Several extremist groups threatened to kill all Christians unless the pope apologized. Sunni and Shiite clerics united in the condemnation, calling the comments an insult to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad. In Baghdad, many churches canceled services after receiving threats. Some have not met since.

“After the pope’s statement, people began to fear much more than before,” said the Rev. Zayya Edward Khossaba, the pastor of the Church of the Virgin Mary. “The actions by fanatics have increased against Christians.”

Christianity took root here near the dawn of the faith 2,000 years ago, making Iraq home to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities. The country is rich in biblical significance: scholars believe the Garden of Eden described in Genesis was in Iraq; Abraham came from Ur of the Chaldees, a city in Iraq; the city of Nineveh that the prophet Jonah visited after being spit out by a giant fish was in Iraq.
Both Chaldean Catholics and Assyrian Christians, the country’s largest Christian sects, still pray in Aramaic, the language of Jesus.

They have long been a tiny minority amid a sea of Islamic faith. But under Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s million or so Christians for the most part coexisted peacefully with Muslims, both the dominant Sunnis and the majority Shiites.

But since Mr. Hussein’s ouster, their status here has become increasingly uncertain, first because many Muslim Iraqis framed the American-led invasion as a modern crusade against Islam, and second because Christians traditionally run the country’s liquor stories, anathema to many religious Muslims.

Over the past three and a half years, Christians have been subjected to a steady stream of church bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and threatening letters slipped under their doors.

Estimates of the resulting Christian exodus vary from the tens of thousands to more than 100,000, with most heading for Syria, Jordan and Turkey.

I know that was a long quote. And I'm not one to usually cut and paste without commentary. But it's so important to get back from the alternate reality of Republican ideology to the accurate reality on the ground over there. It's time to state the obvious.

No, we are not better off with Saddam out of power. The world is worse off with the fanatics that we have put in his place. Bush's father and Brent Scowcroft and James Baker III all understood this. That's why when they invade Iraq in 1990, they left Saddam in power. They left him in charge but severely constrained. The first Bush Administration understood the power vaccum in Iraq and they didn't dare leave that country with extremist Shiites in charge.

We are not better off now. And certainly the Christians of Iraq, some of whom are descendents of the earliest Christians, are far less well off. And that's not wishful thinking or an alternate reality.

It's the only reality we actually have. The true one.

Being A Republican Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry Part II

Coming home tonight, I heard on NPR that the Republicans and the Bush Administration want to blame Bill Clinton for the failures of policy and diplomacy with North Korea. After Democrats accused the Bush Administration of being so distracted by Iraq that they failed to prevent North Korea from nuclear testing, the Bushies want to lay the blame at Clinton's feet.

Excuse me but didn't that tactic fail when Republicans tried to shift the blame for 9-11 to Clinton? Clinton hit back and Bob Woodward and others validated Clinton's own claims that it was the Bush Administration that actually dropped the ball and failed to heed CIA and FBI warnings on bin Laden? Do the Republicans now want to go for 0 and 2?

Two terms - six years into an administration - these guys have got to begin to take some responsibility for their inaction and incompetence. They might as well, generals and diplomats who are normally sympathetic to the Republicans are pointing fingers at them. That includes some members of Bush, Sr.'s Cabinet such as Brent Scowcroft and James Baker III.

For a party that came to power preaching the need for individuals to take responsibility for their actions, nobody in this party seems to be able to practice what they preach.

Accountability - it's not just for poor inner city kids anymore. Rich white people, perhaps, need to also be responsible for their failures and misdeeds too.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Forrest Gump's mother had it right. Go figure.

What about Mark Foley being a pedophile didn't the Republican House leadership get? And what about the House leadership's personal moral responsibility for the protection of minors did the party of family values and personal responsibility also not understand?

The Republicans have been frantically looking for excuses and targets so they can deflect blame from themselves for this scandal. They've been spinning this faster than my head spins after too much Pinot Noir.

According to this report from David Corn, Republican strategists were divided over whether to blame Democrats for leaking it as an "October Surprise," which Newt Gingrich suggested last week on NPR, or to go after gay Republican Hill staffers, the so-called “Velvet Mafia,” for protecting Foley and then engineering his downfall. In fact, a list of gay House staffers has been going around Washington, DC and Corn claims to have a copy. He also refused to divulge it.

But here's what he does say about the list:

"What's interesting about The List--which includes nine chiefs of staffs, two press secretaries, and two directors of communications--is that (if it's acucurate) it shows that some of the religious right's favorite representatives and senators have gay staffers helping them advance their political careers and agendas. These include Representative Katherine Harris and Henry Hyde and Senators Bill Frist, George Allen, Mitch McConnell and Rick Santorum. Should we salute these legislators for being open-minded enough to have such tolerant hiring practices? After all, Santorum in a 2003 AP interview compared homosexuality to bestiality, incest and polygamy. It would be rather big of Santorum to employ a fellow who engages in activity akin to such horrors. That is, if Santorum knows about his orientation. "

Corn then goes on to claim that Republicans are afraid that if they harp too much on how many family values candidates have gay staffers in their employ they run the risk of angering their values voting constituents. Besides this constituency's ideological revulsion for gays anyway, it already hasn't escaped their notice that despite all the politically correct rhetoric coming from their representatives, few of their pet issues have ever actually become the law of the land. The Republican Congress has been better at bringing home the bacon to their corporate donors and big bucks contributors than they've been at delivering to the religious right. They've managed to give tax breaks, laws protecting off shoring, perks for oil companies all gift wrapped with nice little bows. But they failed to give the religious right the federal Constitutional amendment that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman. They haven't made much of a dent on pro-life issues (though that could change with the new Supreme Court). But over the years, religious conservatives have expressed dissatisfaction and threatened to desert the Republican Party because of the party's lack of success at getting the social issues legislation so important to them passed.

So, if those values voters see how many of their congressmen's staffers are actually gay they may begin to wonder if that may be the reason for their lack of success at advancing their social agenda. And they may also begin to wonder how many of these politicians whom they've supported with their money, their time, and their votes are true believers and how many have just been talking the talk while taking them for a ride.

So, the narrative that a cabal of gay Hill staffers knew and protected Foley is not a good target. The boomerang's too dangerous.

Unfortunately, venal Democrats who knew about Foley's behavior all along and hid it until it was strategically valuable to them also won't work. And it's their own fault. This group of Republicans has been so partisan and has marginalized their Democratic colleagues for so many years that it's legendary how out of the loop the Democrats are in this Congress. They've gleefully kept Democrats out of every loop on every issue for so long that they just don't have any plausible deniability on this one.

Nope. The public gets it that on this one they can't claim Democrats share their guilt for a cover up. This is a Republican scandal through and through. And it's not about the sex, not about the gay issue. It's the cover up.

Foley is gone. But Hastert is not only still around but he's still refusing to take any responsibility and the rest of them are still in denial. And that's the Republicans' real problem. That and, of course, protecting a pedophile and sexual predator.

Yes, Jim Webb Is A Democrat - And He Won Tonight.

Back in the spring, when Jim Webb was running in the primary, his opponents’ supporters hit me with a lot of questions about his authenticity. These were fair questions too. In fact, after the Northern Virginia Central Labor Council’s COPE Dinner, I was sitting in the bar of the Hilton Hotel where the dinner had taken place. I was with a group of Democrats and one of them told me that she opposed Webb because she didn’t trust his claim that he was a Democrat. She said that she did not want to witness the next Zell Miller in 2008 – that is a Democrat supporting a Republican presidential candidate and trashing his own party, which had happened at the 2004 Republican Convention.

Fair point. And it did give me a queasy moment. How could I guarantee that it wouldn’t happen? At that point, Webb was more of an unknown quantity. I liked his resume. I liked what he had to say about economic fairness and economic justice and I certainly liked what he was saying about the Iraqi war. Also his experience in the military and as a former secretary of the Navy gave legitimacy to his criticism of this Administration’s handling of the fight against terrorism. He was the one Democrat, I thought, who could make Virginians feel safe on national security issues.

But was he actually a Democrat?

Tonight’s debate laid that question to rest. While Allen spoke in tired platitudes and tried to raise fears about tax increases (in a state that has one of the lowest tax rates in the nation and that also has been voted one of the best run in fiscal managment while under a Democratic governor), Webb time and again showed his commitment to economic justice for ordinary middle class citizens.

Allen constantly tried to link Webb to Hillary Clinton and to tax increases. Webb meanwhile spoke eloquently about issues of fairness, the problem of the deficit, and the need for genuine economic fairness. When Allen tried to use the typical Republican claim about how good the economy is, Webb bluntly said how good it looks depends on where you sit.

Businesses are making record profits. The stock market is healthy and is benefiting wealthy investors. But the wages of the average worker are flat. And their wages are not keeping up with inflation. And Allen voted against raising the minimum wage.

Allen has voted with the Administration 97% of the time and 100% of the time on foreign policy issues.

Webb said that he favors targeted tax credits that would help the middle class. He stressed that under the current Administration's tax structure some of the largest, wealthiest and most successful corporations pay no taxes. And he said that we can't keep spending at the current rate without a source of revenue. It was clear that he was not in favor of raising taxes for working people but simply making large and rich corporations pay their fair share.

He also favors the U.S. making an unequivocal statement that it does not want to occupy Iraq indefinitely. He also would like to see Iraq’s neighbors in the Middle East get involved in the peace process while the U.S. withdraws to bases outside of Iraq, close enough to monitor dangers in that region but without appearing to be an occupying force. He pointed out that in recent days James Baker III and John Warner have both said that the Administration needs to take a new course in that region because we are failing there.

Webb, of course, has been saying that for three years.

Webb also spoke up, without equivocating, and expressed his opposition to the so-called marriage amendment. He said clearly that he was a Christian and believed that marriage was between a man and a woman. But he said that he, like Governor Tim Kaine, would vote against the marriage amendment because it was too broad and would take rights away from both gays and hetrosexuals. Webb showed the courage of his convictions and spoke up to take a stand that is unpopular in Virginia but is the right thing to do. And that is oppose an amendment that takes rights away from citizens.

But the most important thing Webb did was invite others like him to come home to the Democratic Party. As he said, those like him – the so-called Reagan Democrats – who left the party because of their concern over national security issues but who never felt at home with the Republicans’ economic policies, can come back to the party that now has a better solution than the Republicans. These are the working class and middle class people who care about economic justice. Tonight, Webb reassured them that the Democrats get it. The Democrats can be strong on defense, fighting terrorism, national security and foreign policy without sacrificing economic fairness.

Oh yeah. Webb also won the debate!

Update on Women For Jim Webb

By the way go here on Raising Kaine to see how real women feel about Jim Webb. And the first picture is Webb with Leslie Byrne, who was the first woman to be elected to Congress from Virginia. She's a femininist, a trail blazer and a straight shooter who wouldn't support somebody whose principles she disagreed with if her life depended on it.

George Allen's Bad Body Language

I once read a book about how to – well – how to read people like a book. Actually, that was the title of the book. It was about how to read peoples’ body language. Another tome in that genre is David Lieberman’s Never Be Lied to Again. The advice of books like this is to not trust peoples’ words but to trust their body language. Especially to observe whether there ‘s a disconnect between what they say with their words what their body language says.

Here’s a couple of obvious examples. Somebody saying a too hearty “yes, yes, yes,” to something while their heads are shaking “no, no, no.” Or telling you how good a friend you are while their hands are clenched into balled fists and their smiles are frozen on their faces. In fact, when they smile, their smiles don’t reach their eyes because it’s not sincere.

Well George Allen’s campaign has a metaphorical disconnect between its words and what it actually does that reminds me of all that talk about trusting body language. As a rule of thumb, always trust what people do not what they say. Here’s a perfect example.

George Allen just spent a lot of money to go on TV to implore journalists, the Webb campaign, and the voters to be concerned about issues rather than character attacks. His campaign has been saying for days that it wants to get off “character assassination” and discuss the issues that Virginia voters care about.

But for the past two days, his campaign has continued to run that ad with the female Naval Academy graduates who attacked Jim Webb for an article he wrote 27 years ago. That’s over a quarter of a century ago.

In fact, even Michael Shear noticed this disconnect today in this article in today's Washington Post. Here's a quote:

“A day after paying for a two-minute TV commercial calling for the campaign to focus on political issues instead of character issues, Allen said at the Fredericksburg luncheon that his Webb commercials are about ‘respect for women.’ His campaign vowed to continue attacking what they say is the Democrat's biggest vulnerability.

Dick Wadhams vowed that they will continue to run the ad because it’s important to Virginians to know that Jim Webb was against women fighting in the military or attending the military academies (a position, by the way, that is similar to Allen’s position on the subject).

Let me see, Jim Webb was negative about women in the military over a quarter of a century ago and has since changed his mind and grown as a human being. George Allen, on the other hand, made a racial slur about a month ago. And it’s part of a continuing pattern that appears to have gone on unabated since he was in high school but Jim Webb should stop the character assassination but George Allen is right to continue playing that ad because it’s different.

There’s a definition for what this is. It’s called hypocrisy. You could look it up in a dictionary.

Or you could trust your eyes about the bad faith and bad body language here.