As You Were

Getting pretty sick of the ugly plaid shorts that people have decided are in this summer. A word of advice -- don't wear them; they make you look like an asshole.

During NPR fundraisers they sometimes mention "driveway moments" -- those times when you are so engrossed in an interview or story that even after arriving home, you stay in your car, idling, waiting for the story to end.

There is a similar phenomenon with TiVo, where instead of waiting to see how the plot unfolds, you rewind the same scene over and over and over again, absorbing its magnificence.

Last night, I had a TiVo moment watching a scene from Grey's Anatomy. It was poignant and tender and totally hot -- a reminder that at its best, television is a machine for transmitting raw emotion. Due to the miracle of YouTube, you can see the scene too.

I had another TiVo moment with Pushing Daisies last fall. This short clip is just so treacle, and wacky and wonderful. It pretty much sums up the whole show.

Finally, here's a clip from the the season finale of Mad Men (don't worry, it doesn't spoil anything) that reminds me that a few words, carefully chosen and softly spoken, can be more powerful than anything else we can imagine.

Today was Commencement at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where I work for the Law School and where I'll start as a graduate student in Computer Science in the fall. Today, too, marks the beginning of a Research Assistantship in CS where I'm working with students and professors I admire on projects that are exciting and worthwhile.

Watching students run around in their gowns with families in tow (I've never seen so many cowboy hats and sportscoats this side of a wedding) brought back regrets about my own Commencement at Stanford five years ago.

I didn't attend. I told my family they were welcome to go, but that I wouldn't be there. I remember walking by the quad, where the ceremony was being held, to pick up the last of my mail, hoping to god I didn't see anyone I knew and wondering what the fuck I was going to do with the rest of my life. I saw my roommate from freshman year, whom I hated for no other reason than because he was there (and perhaps because he was overly fond of Crosby, Nash, Stills & Young). We didn't say hello, or even nod in the awkward way that two shy people sometimes do. It was the perfect bookend to four awful years.

I still cringe when I think of the time, money, brain cells, and (especially) opportunity I lost at Stanford. But, five years after I left, I think maybe I've gained the perspective and self-awareness needed to not fuck it up again.

So look out world, I'm still here.

In New Hampshire and Florida, Obama won the 18-24 year-old vote and the 29-39 year-old vote, but Hillary won soundly in the donut-hole from 25-29.

As a 27 year-old Hillary supporter (especially now that Edwards is definitely dropping out), I find it pretty interesting.

What is it about people in that range that makes them less likely to support Obama and more sympathetic to Clinton?

My opinion: the 25-29 cohort came of political age during the Clinton impeachment and the Bush v. Gore era. (These were certainly the defining moments of my political life). We learned early on that 1) the Republicans could and would subscribe to a total war political philosophy and that 2) the media is only too happy to play along. Because of this, I think we are less likely to buy Obama's "new kind of politics" schtick -- because if one side brings Kumbaya (see, e.g. Joe Lieberman) and the other brings a machine gun, it's pretty easy to guess who's going to win. We also, I think, tend to feel that the Clintons did not get a fair shake the first time around and therefore might deserve a second chance.

Compare this to the older cohort -- they were politically aware in Bill Clinton's first term, and thus remember all of his missteps: don't ask, don't tell, universal healthcare, Somalia. Their sense is less that the Clintons didn't get a fair shake, but that rather that they screwed up royally. It seems to me that these folks would be more likely to support Obama because Obama has similar policies to Hillary Clinton (for the most part) but is not Hillary Clinton.

The younger cohort came of age during the build up to the Iraq war and thus saw most of the Democratic establishment kowtow to Bush on almost everything. Their impression of the Clintons is as weak, pathetic figures who couldn't stand up on the most important issue of the time. It's no wonder they're susceptible to a "change, or bust" argument. (Although, honestly, I don't understand why kids these days buy into the bipartisan argument -- all the big mistakes of the last 8 years have been bipartisan in nature. The lesson, to me, would be that we need more partisanship, not less, but, again, I grew up in the Clinton impeachment.)

It's also worth noting that I have not observed an excess of Hillary support in my own friends and acquaintances -- they all seem to be supporting Obama. I should probably ask them why, but I suspect I won't like the answers. (I heard someone say, un-ironically, that they were going to vote for Obama because "he's for hope.") Gaaaah. Count me squarely in the donut-hole.

For the last two memorial services for my grandparents, I have scanned in photos of them taken throughout their lives, arranged them in chronological order, and put them on running on a loop during the reception.

I really like this, because it gives me something to do in the days leading up to a funeral and because it gives everyone something structured to do and talk about during during the reception. There's something very comforting and hypnotic about seeing the person go from very young to very old in the photos. It's also good for people my age to see them as they were before we knew them.

Here are the two sets I have made so far, one for my mother's mother, Ethel Langworthy Devine Chase who died in 2006, and one for my father's father, Barring Hesse Coughlin, who died on 2 January 2008.

He's bad on Universal Healthcare

Obama is afraid to push true universal healthcare because he's worried that the Republicans won't go along with it -- that they'll run ads saying "The Democrats want to force you to get healthcare" -- and that this will doom a universal healthcare plan. He's so worried about this that he's runnning around saying "Edwards and Hillary want to force you to get healthcare."

But this has two problems. 1) The Republicans are going to fight healthcare reform *no matter what*. Even Obama's watered-down plan is dead on arrival as far as they're concerned, so why make concessions with them before the fight has even begun? and 2) If you have universal healthcare, then everyone has to pay for it -- you can't just start paying when you get sick. This so-called "adverse selection" would make it impossible to actually fund universal healthcare. When Paul Krugman pointed this out in a column, the Obama folks starting doing opposition research on him. Yes, really, opposition research on Paul Krugman.

He's bad on Social Security

Obama has embraced the Republican talking point that there is a Social Security Crisis and that only he is "brave enough" to confront Democratic orthodoxy to fix it. This plays well with the press, but it is a lie, and a republican one at that. There is no social security crisis. The republicans say this because they think that a safetey net is a bad idea and that everyone one should invest their money in the stock market (and pay fees to wall street) instead.

He's bad on gay rights

Barack Obama thinks Democrats don't respect religion and that it is OK to embrace bigots if they're anti-gay because of their deeply held faith. But seriously, have you ever heard of a democratic candidate who wasn't religious? Repeating the right-wing talking point that gays and Democrats are "hermetically sealed" from religious people is deeply stupid because it reinforces the false notions that 1) religious people have to be conservative, otherwise they're nor really religious and 2) Democrats (except Obama, of course) aren't religious.

He's just as bad on the war as everyone else.

Like Clinton and Edwards, he won't commit to fully leaving Iraq. Like Clinton and Edwards, he wouldn't concede the notion that going to war with Iran would be a bad idea.

He's gotten a lot of mileage out of the fact that he didn't vote for the war in Iraq, but that's because he wasn't in the Senate at the time. I have no doubt, given his need to be perceived as a serious, bipartisan person, that he would have caved to media pressure to vote for the war, just like Clinton and Edwards.

Obama, did, after all, campaign for Joe Lieberman (ex-Democrat, war supporter extraordinare and McCain endorser) in the 2006 election instead of supporting Ned Lamont, the Democratic nominee who ran on what was basically a single-issue anti-war platform.

There's nothing to suggest that Obama has a spine on this issue at all -- he's just very lucky he wasn't around when it came up.

His bipartisan fetish is naive.

His craving for the respect of the establishment. His bizarre need to be seen as a serious person (he *is* a serious person, so why does he need the talking heads to realize it?). His constant embracement of right-wing frames on the most important issues our time. It makes me wonder why anyone, outside of the punditocracy, supports him.

So What's Obama good on?

He's good at running against Democrats. Has Obama *ever* had a serious Republican opponent? No. This is why he's so good at adopting republican talking points -- his real opponents have always been other Democrats. I have my doubts about how well he can run a general election campaign with his problem of embracing the other side's talking points.

Some have said that maybe he's really not so bad on healthcare, social security, gay rights, etc. and that he's just lying to win the media primary. This may be true (although I doubt it) -- but suppose it is: then, what else is he lying about and what does this say about his "new kind of politics" schtick?

And that's what *really* pisses me off. What about all his supporters, who actually think that you can get things done in politics by not engaging in politics. Anyone who thinks electing Obama will overthrow the system is deluding themselves (this is shades of Nader, I think, in the giddy naivity I see in people who really should know better). If Obama gets elected, we'll be up to our ears in bipartisan commissions on X, Y, and Z and we won't actually get anything done.

I worry about the backlash when people realize that Obama is just another politician who's scared of his shadow.