I find it far more interesting to see how fractious Dems have become over “their” candidates of choice. I’ve heard various purported Dems state baldly that “I’ll vote for McCain before I vote for Hillary,” which I think is beyond ridiculous.

It’s that sort of thinking that’s given the White House free reign for the last 7 years. The Republicans march in lockstep in the Senate; their votes are always 45-0, 43-1, etc for or against a measure. Then the Dems go 22-26, and ta-da! We hand it right over because we can’t figure out what’s more important: opposition to idiocy, or sheer obstinacy.

I’ll concede that in many ways the Democratic party is (seemingly?) more diverse, and therefore must be more fractious than the Republican party. But there are times when it pays off to find common ground, rather than dissenting every chance you get.

Now a more fair criticism would be that he doesn’t talk about policy minutiae as much as, say, Hillary does, but that’s because he’s selling more than policy wonkishness. The rationale of his campaign is more than just policy details, it is about changing the way we approach politics and getting people more involved in our democracy. As he has said when asked about this, the reason we have not solved some of the major problems facing our society isn’t because we lack ideas on how to solve the problems — there are plenty of smart left-leaning policy types who think about these problems every day — it is because we’ve lacked the political will to address the issues. And that’s where Obama is trying to build a working majority that can actually address these problems rather than stay mired in partisan bickering. Of course he recognizes that there will always be disagreements, but all you have to do is pick off a few moderates to get legislation passed, and picking off moderates is a lot easier when you’re less polarizing and don’t start every debate by demonizing the other side. (For more on this issue of how best to achieve “change,” see this excellent column from the American Prospect, including the comments if you’re interested enough.)

Moreover, I’ve never really understood the fascination that people seem to have with analyzing the various policies set forth by the campaigns and seeking to draw contrasts where few exist. The reality is that for most issues, Congress decides the specifics of the legislation, so the final law will bear little resemblance to what is in the policy paper put out by the candidate. And yet, people who examine these things tend to spend lots of time and energy arguing over bullet point 5 on page 4 of the power point presentation, which one candidate has in their plan and the other doesn’t, or that one candidate proposes to spend x dollars on, say wind energy while the other candidate proposes spending 5x dollars. All of that is largely insignificant. Now policy positions do matter inasmuch as they provide evidence of a candidate’s priorities, and on that score, all the major Dems are pretty much aligned — they all want to address climate change, help our education system, make health care more affordable, etc. (If one were to contrast the Dem positions with the leading Republicans, for example, there are huge differences, and at that point policy positions definitely matter because the differences between the policy positions are far more fundamental.) There are some issues on which there are differences — Obama (and Edwards, I suppose) is more committed to reducing the role of special interests as well as other good governance issues, for example. (And I should note that one area in which policy positions matter quite a bit is foreign policy, since that is far more within the purview of the executive branch than domestic policy issues.)

Finally, getting back to the topic of this post, I take issue at some level with Abhi’s rationale for examining who the bundlers are — the rationale that people are always looking for something in return such as a job in the administration. Now I’m not naive enough to think that some fundraisers have such motives, and certainly one of the benefits of being a big fundraiser is increased access, so that people in power listen to you even if they don’t necessarily do what you ask. But I think the problem with looking at fundraising in this way is that it feeds the cynicism that afflicts our politics, the idea that everyone acts only if they are going to get something in return. Some people get involved simply because they believe that one candidate is better than the others, and that the country would be better served with their candidate in office. And part of what Obama says he is trying to change is the transactional approach to politics, where people will scratch your back only if you scratch theirs rather than work toward the greater good. Now changing this approach isn’t easy, and certainly Obama himself isn’t naive enough to think that there isn’t going to be some give-and-take, but even just changing the conversation to make it less transactional and less cynical is a start.

I’ll leave you with a relevant quote from Ryan Lizza’s excellent profile of Obama in GQ a few months back:

Politics is mostly a transactional business. At the end of the day, people like Anne Parks and the reverend and Mr. White all want something concrete. Sometimes Obama gives them exactly what they want. But at its core, his campaign is a rejection of strictly transactional politics. It has to be. Because the reality is that there are few truly substantive differences between the Democratic candidates. A remarkable degree of policy consensus has emerged: Get out of Iraq, achieve universal health care and energy independence, improve Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, and scrutinize trade deals. Even on the much hyped question of experience, Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are roughly equal, each having no more than a decade of legislative experience and no executive experience. Given the historic opportunity of an electorate desperate for change and disinclined to elect another Republican president, the Democratic contest is really about who will be the most transformational president. Obama’s case is that to change anything in America, we have to begin by changing our politics, and he offers the kind of campaign he’s running as evidence that he means it.

I do like the Democratic primaries this year though — since when has my (California) vote counted, and since when do you get to see the process so clearly? I feel like it’s a great public education in the voting process (and its craggy dirty undersides) that I normally have no clue about.

Also, I’m pretty sure Ted Kennedy has NOTHING to gain from endorsing Obama. Perhaps those who evaluate the big O only in the context of race are projecting their own neuroses onto the process?

Hillary has a lot of backers in the desi community. She skipped a Sikh fundraiser in Sacto when the Norman Hsu story broke. Of course all politicians need the bundlers and color is no bar, all they look

She also has a lot of PO’d Sikhs in California who are no longer voting for her because, when it is politically expedient, Hillary will buck a desi like nobody’s business. She bailed on a really expensive fundraiser in the Sikh community in Bakersfield that left the organizers out for the money with no possibility for a reschedule.

Obama has nothing to fear with desis not voting for him. If he emphasizes he is the child of immigrants he will get the lot of votes of naturalized citizens (Desi / African / Hispanic).

I have a more fundamental question – will Obama get the disinterested out on election day. It is rather sad that so many dont bother to vote.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachussets (supposed to have called Bill Clinton on the phone to make his displeasure known) Senator John Kerry of Massachussets Former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey Senator Tim Johnson of S. Dakota
Senator Kent Conrad of N. Dakota
Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri Former Senator and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of S. Dakota (now a national campaign chairperson of the Obama campaign) Governor Janet Napolitano of Arizona
Robert Reich, Labor Secretary in the Clinton administration Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina(Only Rep Clyburn is African American)

Are all these seasoned pols dazzled by Obama’s charm? Or are they on a suicide mission for their party? Does this say anything about Obama? Or to put it another way, does it say anything about the Clintons?

Tirumalai – Yup – maybe we should call him an Am-Af. Mothers take priority His mother must have been a rather liberal ( no quotes) lady to bear a child from a foreign man. I wonder if she faced a tough time from her family.

on the other hand, pat buchanan, who knows a thing about dirty trick, says billary really won in SC and a racially polarized party will give the nom to hillary on super tues. personally i think obama effectively counterpunched and the clintons overplayed their hand (that jessie slip by bill was the biggest blunder) and the race will be close making the edwards delegates important.

really interesting race, not idea wise, but for the pure political maneuvering.

oooh, intellectual home of the neocons, and more importantly, the constitution in exilers. One can dream…

He wasn’t going to distinguish himself against Billary with professorial lecturing (remember, he taught constitutional law at U Chicago for a while), hence the idealism thing — so far it’s worked pretty damn well. That all being said, please don’t fall for the lazy attitude, and Clinton talking point, that the campaign lacks substance. His health care plan may not carry an explicit mandate (and there is a specific reason for this), but it is concrete. It’s designed by Dave Cutler, a brilliant Harvard econ. prof who specializes in health care policy. Plus, he gets big props from me for having Samantha Power as a foreign policy advisor. The details are there, on the website and in the stump speeches, not necessarily the victory speeches.

The Harvard Law angle is perhaps a good one with desis He did graduate magna from HLS, which means he was in the top 5-10% academically (almost no one gets summa).

I’m still puzzled as to how Hillary’s experience is much superior to his. I guess it comes down to her being first lady, since he has an edge on legislative experience. But, how much experience did she really gain? After the healthcare debacle she backed off from doing any major thing policy-wise, so one wonders how the experience canard gets as much traction as it does. Prior to that, well they were both lawyers.

Can you hear the laughter. This president cleaning up anything is a joke. He is an abysmal failure in evry aspect and this is coming from me who will vote for a republican ven after this presidency