I wrote this in a dialogue with several other people about being satisfied or dissatisfied with Barack Obama as Democratic nominee for president v. voting for Ralph Nader or another third-party candidate with a platform more to a progressive's liking:

I support Barack Obama in the field of two major Democratic candidates that remain standing.  What we desperately need now, in my opinion, is a president who understands the need to lead the country into a new post-carbon, sustainable economic paradigm which is what we need to do anyway to abate global warming from greenhouse gas emissions, even if we were not past the Hubbert Peak of fossil fuel availability. To accomplish this requires a leader whose instinct is to unite people behind a hopeful, superordinate vision. Obama appears to both have that vision and a clear ability to articulate it, and the instinct to overcome partisan divisions and reframe the national debate. If we do not think and act "outside the box" of the industrial growth paradigm and partisan politics we risk suffocating inside it.

Although the media ignore the issue (of 1700 questions asked of presidential candidates by the 5 major TV reporters, only 3 concerned global warming), Obama has clearly stated that we need to pursue vigorous national action, on a Manhattan Project or Marshall Plan scale, to switch to renewable energy sources and abate greenhouse gas production to head off global warming.

If Hillary Clinton ends up as the Democratic presidential nominee, she is likely to lose the presidency.  Polls show her losing by a wide margin to John McCain.  The reason lies in her uniquely high negatives in polling: about 50% of all voters (independents, Democrats and Republicans) say they would not vote for her no matter who or what her opponent(s) were.

As to support of third-party candidates if one is dissatisfied with the major party candidates, I have followed the "Ivins rule" articulated by the late, great Molly Ivins: if polls show that either the Democratic or Republican candidate for president will carry your state by a wide margin, then vote for a third-party candidate who is more to your liking than the major party candidates.  If polls show that the race between Republican and Democratic candidate in your state is close, then vote for the Democrat to lower the probability that the Republican candidate might capture your state's electoral college votes.  In Utah since the 1964 election, the Ivins rule gives us Utoids latitude to vote for the third-party candidate of our choice without handing the Republicans any electoral college votes they don't already have in the bag.

One must always walk the razor's edge between the cowardice of abetting and legitimizing an electoral choice between a firing squad and a hanging on the one hand, and the arrogance of being holier than thou in a closet made for only a few.

The superordinate issue of our times, in my view, is that the iron-hulled, weapons-bristling, fossil-fuel-powered U.S.S. ship of state is steaming full tilt towards a collision with the iceberg of natural limits.  At the EcoFarm Conference I just attended, Fred Kirschenmann pointed out that our current food production system developed in a time when it was assumed there were no limits to the amount of energy we could input into growing food, and no limits to the sinks in nature that could accommodate our wastes.  Clearly, neither assumption is true.  It isn't a matter of how we arrange the deck chairs on that ship, nor do we have the option of electing a captain who can steer the ship away from that collision.  The iron-hulled, fossil-fueled vessel is doomed to sink for want of the natural resources required to keep it afloat.  We need to build a composite-hulled, renewables-powered vessel next to the existing one and then move onto it before the old ship sinks.  If the leadership we elect understands this situation, and has the skills and will to build that alternative vessel for our polity and inspire people to move onto it, I don't care what party label that leadership chooses to wear: Republican, Democrat, Green, or Whig.  Our species and the biodiversity of our planet are in for decimation and a dark age of chaos if we don't "get it" and do what needs to be done to avoid going down with the industrial growth culture's ship.

Because of the superordinate nature of this challenge of our times, I will vote for a third party candidate who "gets it" if the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates do not "get it," Ivins rule or not.  However, at this point we have the opportunity to choose as the Democratic candidate Barack Obama, who does "get it," and we should focus our efforts on seeing he becomes the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008.

A skill which a successful president must have is the ability to "change the narrative."  In his essay, "Debunking the Reagan Myth" in the New York Times, Paul Krugman detailed how Ronald Reagan was effective in changing the national political narrative, but was not responsible for achieving the economic and social gains for which he is now given credit.  Krugman says, "I'd say that the great failure of the Clinton administration - more important even that its failure to achieve health care reform, through the two failures were closely related - was the fact that it didn't change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan."

Krugman says that Reaganomics failed.  "Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession.  But while the rich got richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans.  By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade earlier - and the poverty rate had actually risen.

When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed - a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House."  Productivity growth did not take off during or immediately after the Reagan administration; Bush's Council of Economic Advisers says the beginning of the productivity takeoff occurred in 1995.  The Reagan tax cut occurred in 1981.  If the Reagan tax cut is responsible for productivity gains and restoration of American business prestige (which also revived in the 1990's with productivity), then Richard Nixon is responsible for the economic improvements that occurred in the Reagan administration.

The difference between the political myth created by Reagan's skills as the "great communicator" and the reality of his policy achievements illustrates the importance of electing a president with equivalent oratory powers to Reagan's - to capture the imagination of the people with his positive vision and convince them that they are working together to restore America as that "shining city on the hill."  Barack Obama is the only candidate I see who seems to have that oratorical gift.

 

I wrote this in a dialogue with several other people about being satisfied or dissatisfied with Barack Obama as Democratic nominee for president v. voting for Ralph Nader or another third-party candidate with a platform more to a progressive's liking:

I support Barack Obama in the field of two major Democratic candidates that remain standing.  What we desperately need now, in my opinion, is a president who understands the need to lead the country into a new post-carbon, sustainable economic paradigm which is what we need to do anyway to abate global warming from greenhouse gas emissions, even if we were not past the Hubbert Peak of fossil fuel availability. To accomplish this requires a leader whose instinct is to unite people behind a hopeful, superordinate vision. Obama appears to both have that vision and a clear ability to articulate it, and the instinct to overcome partisan divisions and reframe the national debate. If we do not think and act "outside the box" of the industrial growth paradigm and partisan politics we risk suffocating inside it.

Although the media ignore the issue (of 1700 questions asked of presidential candidates by the 5 major TV reporters, only 3 concerned global warming), Obama has clearly stated that we need to pursue vigorous national action, on a Manhattan Project or Marshall Plan scale, to switch to renewable energy sources and abate greenhouse gas production to head off global warming.

If Hillary Clinton ends up as the Democratic presidential nominee, she is likely to lose the presidency.  Polls show her losing by a wide margin to John McCain.  The reason lies in her uniquely high negatives in polling: about 50% of all voters (independents, Democrats and Republicans) say they would not vote for her no matter who or what her opponent(s) were.

As to support of third-party candidates if one is dissatisfied with the major party candidates, I have followed the "Ivins rule" articulated by the late, great Molly Ivins: if polls show that either the Democratic or Republican candidate for president will carry your state by a wide margin, then vote for a third-party candidate who is more to your liking than the major party candidates.  If polls show that the race between Republican and Democratic candidate in your state is close, then vote for the Democrat to lower the probability that the Republican candidate might capture your state's electoral college votes.  In Utah since the 1964 election, the Ivins rule gives us Utoids latitude to vote for the third-party candidate of our choice without handing the Republicans any electoral college votes they don't already have in the bag.

One must always walk the razor's edge between the cowardice of abetting and legitimizing an electoral choice between a firing squad and a hanging on the one hand, and the arrogance of being holier than thou in a closet made for only a few.

The superordinate issue of our times, in my view, is that the iron-hulled, weapons-bristling, fossil-fuel-powered U.S.S. ship of state is steaming full tilt towards a collision with the iceberg of natural limits.  At the EcoFarm Conference I just attended, Fred Kirschenmann pointed out that our current food production system developed in a time when it was assumed there were no limits to the amount of energy we could input into growing food, and no limits to the sinks in nature that could accommodate our wastes.  Clearly, neither assumption is true.  It isn't a matter of how we arrange the deck chairs on that ship, nor do we have the option of electing a captain who can steer the ship away from that collision.  The iron-hulled, fossil-fueled vessel is doomed to sink for want of the natural resources required to keep it afloat.  We need to build a composite-hulled, renewables-powered vessel next to the existing one and then move onto it before the old ship sinks.  If the leadership we elect understands this situation, and has the skills and will to build that alternative vessel for our polity and inspire people to move onto it, I don't care what party label that leadership chooses to wear: Republican, Democrat, Green, or Whig.  Our species and the biodiversity of our planet are in for decimation and a dark age of chaos if we don't "get it" and do what needs to be done to avoid going down with the industrial growth culture's ship.

Because of the superordinate nature of this challenge of our times, I will vote for a third party candidate who "gets it" if the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates do not "get it," Ivins rule or not.  However, at this point we have the opportunity to choose as the Democratic candidate Barack Obama, who does "get it," and we should focus our efforts on seeing he becomes the Democratic presidential candidate in 2008.

A skill which a successful president must have is the ability to "change the narrative."  In his essay, "Debunking the Reagan Myth" in the New York Times, Paul Krugman detailed how Ronald Reagan was effective in changing the national political narrative, but was not responsible for achieving the economic and social gains for which he is now given credit.  Krugman says, "I'd say that the great failure of the Clinton administration - more important even that its failure to achieve health care reform, through the two failures were closely related - was the fact that it didn't change the narrative, a fact demonstrated by the way Republicans are still claiming to be the next Ronald Reagan."

Krugman says that Reaganomics failed.  "Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession.  But while the rich got richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans.  By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade earlier - and the poverty rate had actually risen.

When the inevitable recession arrived, people felt betrayed - a sense of betrayal that Mr. Clinton was able to ride into the White House."  Productivity growth did not take off during or immediately after the Reagan administration; Bush's Council of Economic Advisers says the beginning of the productivity takeoff occurred in 1995.  The Reagan tax cut occurred in 1981.  If the Reagan tax cut is responsible for productivity gains and restoration of American business prestige (which also revived in the 1990's with productivity), then Richard Nixon is responsible for the economic improvements that occurred in the Reagan administration.

The difference between the political myth created by Reagan's skills as the "great communicator" and the reality of his policy achievements illustrates the importance of electing a president with equivalent oratory powers to Reagan's - to capture the imagination of the people with his positive vision and convince them that they are working together to restore America as that "shining city on the hill."  Barack Obama is the only candidate I see who seems to have that oratorical gift.