Touchy subject

A college friend pointed this out: Bill Richardson's campaign is comparing its candidate to Appalachian State in a new fundraising e-mail. That hits a raw nerve for a lot of U-M alumni — which doesn't seem like a good idea, with Michigan holding the earliest primary this year. Then again, this is the candidate who always manages to piss off potential supporters for no apparent reason.

Off message

John Edwards's campaign is using "Throw the Bums Out" as the slogan for its petition demanding that federal candidates stop accepting money from lobbyists.

Unfortunate choice of words for someone running on an anti-poverty platform, don't you think?

David Boyle, fixture of the netroots

An American Spectator writer, in a roundup of embarrassing comments by lefty bloggers at the YearlyKos convention, found this gem by the always-bizarre David Boyle:

"St. Augustine's heavenly 'City of God' is not wholly different from the 'City of Kos' or the 'City of Blog' that the orange (not clockwork) cooperative 'we' blog Daily Kos is." Boyle writes. "The blog is just too progressive not to be redolent of something higher."

If you don't know Boyle, it's hard to describe how weird he is. The unofficial style at the Daily for describing him is "Ann Arbor gadfly." I think he's the only Arbor Update blogger ever to be kicked off the site. Check out his music video and mp3s (songs include "George W. Pussy" and "Arafat May Never Die" here.

What's wrong with young Republicans?

The recently elected chair of the Young Republican National Federation is under investigation for, uh, violating a sleeping male Young Republican after a house party for the group (via Michigan Conservative Dossier).

This comes a few weeks after Michael Flory, the former Michigan Young Republicans chair, pleaded guilty to raping a college student at a national YR convention. At least he was sorry:

The teary-eyed college student he overpowered in a downtown hotel room gasped and dabbed her eyes as Flory replied to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan's question, "Are you indeed guilty?"

"Sure - yeah," Flory said.

It's a little cliched to accuse the Republicans of hypocrisy for this stuff. But like with Justin Zatkoff -- who isn't a sexual predator, but is a loudmouthed idiot who is animated entirely by venom toward the left -- you have to wonder about the people who elected these guys. I can't help feeling that there's something a little off about the GOP's young activist base, or at least about the character traits they look for in their leaders.

Attn. national media: Nothing on Facebook means anything

There's been a lot of buzz today about how Rudy Giuliani's daughter Caroline, a Harvard pre-frosh, belonged to a pro-Barack Obama Facebook group. The national news outlets have taken this as an endorsement, and another sign that Rudy's kids hate him.

OK, maybe. But here's the thing: What people say in their Facebook profiles isn't necessarily true. Especially among neurotic, pseudo-intellectual East Coast types, it's common to select fake interests and groups, usually as an expression of irony or a reference to some inside joke. People who Facebook this way tend to dramatically change their interests and groups on a whim, which is another way to signal that they're to be taken with a grain of salt.

(The media usually portray Facebook and MySpace as signs that our generation's narcissism has obviated our sense of privacy, but the reality is that young people withold far more than they reveal about themselves on social networks. Irony is just one popular method. I'm reminded of an older guy who added me as a Facebook friend recently -- his profile was completely sincere and exhaustive. It was striking because it was nothing like any college student's profile I've seen.)

With Caroline Giuliani, it's sort of a toss-up. I don't doubt that she's actually a liberal, as she listed in her profile, or that she has problems with her dad. But if she does support Barack Obama, would she join his Facebook group in all sincerity, effectively flipping Rudy the middle finger and airing out her daddy issues in public? Especially for someone just starting college life -- a time when most are especially self-conscious about how they project their developing image -- that would be pretty emo, wouldn't it?

I'm not saying that's not what she did. But it's just as likely that she joined the group whimsically -- as an inside joke, say, or on a dare. You just can't take these things at face value.

"Progressives" and academia

On liberals and progressives, reader Chet makes a good point:

Interesting point about the difference between liberals and progressives - especially the part about demanding adherence to the party line. The "netroots" - coming from a more academic background to start - certainly has carried with it much of the authoritarian nature and theory of their academic peers.

I think it's probably a better distinction to suggest it's between libertarian liberals and their inverse.

Some of the biggest problems with the campus progressive movement (I'm torn on whether to use scare quotes here) stem from its reverence for trendy academic theories. And yes, in terms of their attitude and their approach to debate, the netroots and the campus left have a lot in common.

Obama vs. Clinton

Andrew Sullivan has a great post today on one of the biggest reasons Obama is so much more exciting than Hillary. Excerpt:

They are of different Democratic generations. Clinton is from the traumatized generation; Obama isn't. Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of Americans on their side. Hence the fact that she reeks of fear, of calculation, of focus groups, of triangulation. She might once have had ideals keenly felt; she might once have actually relished fighting for them and arguing in thier [sic] defense. But she has not been like that for a very long time. She has political post-traumatic stress disorder.

I also liked this evaluation of Obama's campaign, from Marc Ambinder:

Probably the best way to describe this campaign right now is that Clinton is going 75 mph; Obama is going 50 and has plenty of gas to spare. Obama looks like he can eventually go faster in his campaign car, but he's not doing it yet.

My impression is that Obama is content to let Hillary be the front-runner for most of the campaign, then he'll really turn it on when the time is right -- there's no sense in peaking early.

Republicans are wusses

The GOP front-runners are backing out of their CNN/YouTube debate. Why? The second point here is a good one. (via Dan Savage)

One more thing about the debates

The more I think about it, the more excited I get about these YouTube debates. It's one thing for a moderator to ask the Republican candidates to explain why they still support "don't ask, don't tell," but it would be quite another to have this guy ask them.

Liberal vs. progressive

Something else that bothered me from Monday night's debate was when Hillary Clinton pulled out this "I'm a progressive, not a liberal" deal. I don't know if this is new for her, but I don't like it.

Being a liberal means something -- it implies a set of values and a political philosophy going back to the Enlightenment. Saying you're a progressive, from what I've seen on campus and among progressive commentators, basically means you're willing to go along with whatever the left is into at the moment.

On Michigan's campus, at least, that's my main problem with the progressive movement: It seems to demand a kind of lock-step, uncritical way of thinking. People who call themselves progressives give the impression that they're part of a team, and they generally won't criticize the other members of their team, even if what they're saying doesn't make much sense or is actually objectionable.

Maybe I'm just sensitive to this because I've been a follower of campus politics for a few years, and I've seen how illiberal progressives on campus can be. The classic example is the United Coalition Against Racism, which pressured administrators into adopting hate-speech codes in the late '80s. Courts quickly struck down those policies, but the attitude behind them -- that in fighting racism, it's OK to ignore things like civil liberties and academic freedom -- is still pretty widespread on the campus left. And the tendency for demanding loyalty to the "movement" and discouraging self-criticism is one of the defining characteristics of the progressive blogosphere.

Is any of that relevant to Hillary Clinton? I don't know. More likely, she just thinks not calling herself "liberal" will play well in the general election. (Although, as a friend noted, this points to one of Hillary's annoying qualities: her tendency to accept conservative narratives -- in this case, "liberal = supporter of big, expensive, intrusive government" -- and use them to position herself as a moderate.) Either way, I'd prefer if we could just call ourselves liberals -- it's easier to keep ourselves honest that way.

The debate

Just watched the Democratic CNN/YouTube debate. A few thoughts:

• I expected this format to be worthless, especially after some hipster doofus opened the debate by lecturing the candidates on how to answer questions. It's actually not bad, though. This Reggie Longcrier guy, who called out the candidates for using religion to justify opposing gay marriage, was fantastic -- you'd never see a moderator ask a question like that.
• All of this talk about whether American soldiers died in vain in Vietnam or Iraq is pretty irritating, because it leads candidates to say inane things to avoid admitting that's the case. (That would be a Kinsley gaffe.) For example, does John Edwards really believe soldiers can't die in vain if they're following their commander in chief's orders? Does that mean there has never been a war that wasn't worth the human cost?
• Richardson had one good moment: his answer on gay marriage. By talking in terms of what is achievable, he at least seemed to acknowledge that full marriage rights should be an eventual goal. His actual position is the same as the others, but at least he's a little more honest about where he's coming from.
• Richardson also had one awful moment: his answer on pulling out of Iraq. I know he's trying to set himself apart from the other serious candidates by urging immediate withdrawal, but the formula he used -- that saving Bush's legacy isn't worth American soldiers' lives -- was pathetic. I hope he doesn't really think the fate of Iraq and the humanitarian crisis there are only important to Bush's legacy.