So which differences between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama caused Boren to endorse her in the primary, but refuse to endorse him in the general election?

Is it the fact that Hillary Clinton voted to give the authorization for the President to invade Iraq, but Obama had come out against that move? I wonder if Boren still believes that the US should have gone to war against Iraq — but in any case, both Clinton and Obama had campaign positions that the troops should be brought home, so that can’t be it.

Maybe the issue is guns — Oklahoma is a big Second Amendment state. But the only time Obama and Clinton differed on a gun issue was when there was a vote for an amendment to stop the confiscation of legally-owned guns during natural disasters — but Obama took the pro-Second Amendment position of preventing confiscations while Clinton voted to keep those confiscations legal. So that can’t be Boren’s problem with “liberal” Obama.

Another difference in the way they voted was when Obama actually voted to allow a Republican Senator from Oklahoma, Tom Coburn, to still practice not-for-profit medicine while being a Senator. So Obama took the free-enterprise position and Clinton took the more restrictive position — but I doubt that Boren would have voted against allowing Coburn to be a pro-bono physician so that doesn’t seem to be an issue.

Maybe it is their health care plans. But Clinton’s health care plan is considered larger with greater government involvement than Obama’s plan, so if you had to label them, Clinton’s plan would be described as the more liberal proposal.

So I would like someone to ask Congressman Boren what are these liberal votes that Obama made in which Hillary Clinton took the opposite position? What is so egregious exactly about an Obama candidacy?

Maybe Boren was attracted by the fact that Hillary Clinton’s husband had been President and thus could use her name and political connections to run for office, just like Boren did by running on the coattails of his father, the great former Democratic Senator Dave Boren who is now President of the University of Oklahoma. (Dad, by the way, endorsed Obama back in April.) Obama took the hard way and actually had to build his own support and political organization. Maybe Boren believes that Obama should have found an easier way to Congress.

But maybe there is a bigger difference that Boren just doesn’t want to talk about — race. His comment about his district was:

“We’re much more conservative,” Boren said of district. “I’ve got to reflect my district. No one means more to me than the people who elected me. I have to listen them.” He called Obama “the most liberal senator in the U.S. Senate.”

But as shown — the voting records of Clinton and Obama are not much different, and in places where they differed, Obama often took the more conservative position. But maybe the “I’ve got to reflect my district” explanation means that his district just isn’t ready for an African-American President, because we have yet to hear a substantive problem Boren has with Obama.

Of course Boren does not say that race is a problem. He says that he will vote for Obama as a delegate and as a voter in November and thinks it will be an important historic moment, explaining, “It’s a testament to the Democratic Party.” But Boren does not seem to be a brave enough man to be part of that celebration.

But again, if it isn’t race — what is the policy difference between Obama and Clinton that has caused Congressman Boren to turn his back on his party and his party’s presidential nominee? What vote did Obama cast differently from Clinton that has led to Boren’s visceral reaction? Would someone please ask him?

UPDATE: Howie Klein at Down With Tyranny has a good piece on both Dan Boren’s DINO record, as well as how Obama isn’t even close to the “most liberal” member of the Senate.

An anti-example of this open-mindedness is found in the reaction of many U.S. citizens’ to suicide bombers. Rather than try to understand the life circumstances of these desperate individuals — exploring the role poverty, political repression and foreign intervention played in their decisions– closed-minded individuals attribute it to a religion and culture which they do not understand, and do not attempt to understand. Dismissive terms like “satanic,” “barbaric” and “bloodthirsty” are attached to Islam and that, for many people, is explanation enough; suicide bombers = evil believers in an evil ideology.

That sort of thinking, most often displayed by the right in U.S. politics, extends beyond the “War on Terror,” and pervades issues both domestic and international. In its zeal to defend America against its “enemies,” both internal and external, it latches onto the quickest, easiest interpretation. A recent comment made by Harvard Law alumnus and model U.S. citizen Michelle Obama, and the subsequent reaction to it, offers a domestic example of this closed-minded approach, substituting political opportunism and jingoism for rational thinking.

The comment from Michelle: “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”

The reaction was hostile, with many right-wing pundits denouncing Michelle, and by extension her husband, as unpatriotic. The implication is that no true America-loving, God-fearing individual could ever be anything less than proud of America.

Cindy McCain affirmed that when she stood before the cameras and said “I have, and always will be, proud of my country.”

Cindy McCain, born into affluence, helped finance her husband’s first successful bid for congress, in 1982, with money from her trust fund. In other words, she was born into the (white) world of power and has rested comfortably within it since her birth.

Michelle Obama is an African American female, and based on that alone her relationship to her country is a more complex one. Without a doubt, the roots of Michelle’s comment went far beyond the government’s treatment of African Americans, but that alone would be grounds for righteous indignation. Should she be incessantly and automatically proud of a government that only in the last 40 years has begun to move towards the self-evident truth that all men are created equal?

The obvious answer is “absolutely not,” and that extends to any individual, regardless of their heritage. Those who unquestioningly accept that “U.S. government = Good” not only show an inability to open their minds beyond a narrow world view, they reveal the incompetence of their mental processes.

If Cindy McCain has always been proud of the country, it’s because she doesn’t know the country. She knows the U.S. that George Bush knows, or that Ted Kennedy knows. The difference between her and Ted, however, is that she is unable, or unwilling, to put herself in the position of others who may not have enjoyed the same privileges. Her life’s trajectory has presented her with one side of America, the sunny side, and she either A) hasn’t thought to look around the corner, or B) looked around the corner and processed nothing of what she saw.

Anyone who deals in absolutes is either naive, or lying. With Cindy’s recent statement “I have always been proud of my country,” , and John’s promise “I will never, ever let you down,” we know that they both fall into one, or both, of those categories.

What I want in a leader, a first lady, and in each and every citizen, is a critical mind, one that does not accept party lines and national mythologies. I want someone who is able to transcend their race, their religion, their political ideologies, if only briefly, in order to get a better understanding of the situation at hand. Our misguided foreign policy over the last 8 (last 150?) years shows the need for exactly that.

I suppose I could have told you that from a fairly early age. But at the age of nineteen, Dead Prez’s album Let’s Get Free brought the lesson home to me with a renewed urgency.

Never before had I experienced a musical world so full of political anger and passion. Nor had I ever felt so keenly that for some people, I as an individual was part of the white power structure: a cracker, in Dead Prez’s eyes. For these neo-Marxist activists, America split along both racial and class lines, and it seemed I was not on their side.

Who shot Biggie Smalls? If we don’t get them, they gon get us all/

I’m down for runnin up on them crackers in they city hall…

The word cracker, which they use frequently throughout the album and which seems sometimes to include all white people in its scope, was somewhat of a shock to my ears. For once, I was on the other end of a stereotype, trying to make out how I felt about it.

Now, for me cracker does not parallel the n-word in intensity or offensiveness. It’s not the first thing I’d choose to be called, but it doesn’t automatically drive me away from the conversation either. And I came to see why someone whose experiences in dealing with the white power structure had been entirely negative would choose a word like that to convey their emotions. So I listened to Dead Prez, obsessively, despite my discomfort with some of their language. And working through that discomfort turned out to be an invaluable stage in my political development.

Let me give an example to illustrate how different the perspective was from other inputs I was getting. That same year, I took a sociology class called “Race, Class, and Inequality” that took on some of the same themes, especially white privilege and male privilege. But somehow I didn’t connect with the class in the same way I connected with what Dead Prez said. It didn’t help that the white woman who taught the class, despite our difference in gender, came from basically the same educational, class, and status background that I did. So despite her efforts to “overturn assumptions,” her class challenged me on an intellectual, but not emotional or personal level. Reading Nickel and Dimed just wasn’t the same as listening to “They Schools.”

In contrast to the stale sociology of the classroom, Let’s Get Free laid out an entire political world view, from race to education to violence to food and exercise. Updating the message of the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, KRS-ONE, Public Enemy, and NWA, the album aggressively argues that black people are oppressed on all fronts by a corrupt, racist capitalist police state, and that revolutionary action is the proper response. In lyrics that are never timid or dumbed down, Dead Prez continually question the intersection of race, class, privilege, and power in a way that no class ever could.

I didn’t necessarily agree with their world view, but I couldn’t help but grapple with what my role might be in the system they described.

I guess a lot of white liberals/progressives/radicals have faced the question before, but at that time it hit me harder than ever: what does it mean to be against systems of racism when, in certain senses, I am a part of them? Does it even matter what views I have, given that my actions almost inevitably propagate the power structure? Through every step of my life, from brushes with the police to job interviews to loan applications, it is likely that my race and class will play to my advantage. Can I really claim solidarity with people who don’t have those advantages?

I would pose these questions somewhat differently five years later, but I still don’t think they have easy answers. I as a white middle-class male am implicated in systems that privilege me even if I don’t want them to. The normal course of my life, the path of least resistance, would carry me far from anything but superficial contact with other social classes, and even to a certain extent with other racial groups, if I allowed it to. True, I can seek out opportunities to engage with other communities through volunteering, community activism, or simply being open-minded and outgoing, but even in those situations it’s difficult to break out of what sometimes feels like a script we are all acting out. A good deal of segregation, both physical and psychological, still exists in our society, and you don’t need to live in Chicago or DC to know the truth of that. It’s pretty hard to break through some of the barriers.

I think listening to something like Dead Prez, though, can help us break out of those scripts. It matters, of course, whether you eventually take off the headphones and get up off the armchair or not. But in my case, I feel like all the listening and thinking I did eventually prepared me for entering the Chicago hip hop scene and working with people from many different backgrounds. Those experiences in turn prepared me for living in Senegal, where one of the strongest bonds between me and other people my own age, despite differences of race and privilege, was a shared love of hip hop. Having done some critical thinking about my own race prepares me to be more aware of my relationships with other people, from Dakar to DC. It helps me even in majority white, majority middle-class (and upper-class) environments like Georgetown, where I am now. It helps me remember that what may seem politically neutral to some, such as clothing choices, speech styles, and other markers of identity, may be profoundly charged symbols of political power and exclusion for others. Perhaps that’s even the greatest benefit of some soul-searching about identity - developing a different perspective on your own community.

Listening to Dead Prez also reinforced my understanding of street-level politics. As I said in the beginning, for a lot of people in this country, politics means struggling with the police for control of your community, struggling with the courts for the freedom of your young men, and struggling with landlords and bosses for your economic rights. Too often we equate politics with voting, but in reality voting is a small part of the political process. In many ways, politics is the struggle to define and control our lives and communities. The fact that for many white people, this struggle is more muted is a testament to the continued existence of white privilege and power.

This is not a plug for a particular album, though Let’s Get Free is excellent music. What I’m trying to say rather is that race and racial difference, and their political implications, still have the power to shock - and that privileged white people still need to feel that shock. It doesn’t have to be music that accomplishes that, though music by its nature is designed to provoke. The point is, amidst the furor of the supposed “identity politics” that some have claimed is going on in America right now, we need to remember that we still have a lot of thinking to do as a society about race, class, and power - and about how to bridge those divides. Race and politics is an issue that goes beyond legislation and campaigning to touch on how the fabric of society is woven, and how each of us participates in that process. More than many other issues, it brings us back to daily life and its problems, which is after all what politics tries to address. Those problems, challenges, opportunities endure whatever macro changes take place, good or bad.

And if I, a cracker from Ohio, can make some progress on these issues, then I have hope for others too.

Last month, the NY Times reported that Indiana’s strict voter identification law, requiring state-issued photo ID in order to vote, is being challenged at the Supreme Court:

Opponents of the law, most of them Democrats, view voter identification requirements as a deterrent that disproportionately affects poor, minority and elderly voters, who more often than other people lack the required forms of identification and who also tend to back Democrats.

A 2007 study found that 13% of registered voters in Indiana lacked sufficient ID under the state’s law, highlighting what voter advocates have known for years: strict ID requirements deter voters, and voter suppression is an infinitely bigger problem than voter impersonation, the problem the laws claim to solve.

Nevertheless, over half the states in the country have proposed legislation to tighten ID requirements so they look more like Indiana’s. These efforts, nearly universally spearheaded by Republicans, are fervently backed by the Bush administration, which has also filed a brief with the Supreme Court encouraging it to uphold Indiana’s law.

Though they seem to be the highest profile means of disenfranchising specific groups this election season, ID laws are just one way votes have been suppressed in recent elections.

For instance, language remains a means by which minority voters, especially newly-naturalized citizens, are at risk for voter suppression. In the 2000 presidential election, Spanish-speaking voters reported being denied bilingual voting assistance in districts where it is required by law in central Florida. In 2006, in a disturbing throwback to Jim Crow, Congressman John Carter (R-TX) suggested that voters pass literacy and English tests in order to vote.

However, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 specifically outlaws any voting laws that create discrimination, especially on the basis of race, language, or disability, a provision that also requires polls to provide qualified staff assistance for language-minorities and people with disabilities. Voter advocates say Section 2 is frequently ignored.

In another twist on voter suppression, blacks face disenfranchisement in the form of ex-felon voting laws. Florida is one of several states that prohibit ex-felons — individuals who have been convicted of a felony but have fully served their sentence — from voting for the rest of their lives, a law that has repeatedly been shown to disproportionately disenfranchise black males. Ten years ago, Human Rights Watch reported that 13% of the American black male population is currently disenfranchised due to ex-felon voting bans, and the number is closer to 20% in states like Florida.

Given current rates of incarceration, three in ten of the next generation of black men will be disenfranchised at some point in their lifetime. In states with the most restrictive voting laws, 40 percent of African American men are likely to be permanently disenfranchised.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, seven former offenders filed suit on behalf of the estimated 600,000 predominately black ex-felons in Florida who cannot vote, claiming they were entitled to have their voting rights reinstated under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. (Note: Blacks in Florida overwhelmingly vote Democratic, and Democratic nominee Al Gore lost Florida by approximately 500 votes that year.)

The lawsuit failed, and the ban was upheld both in 2002 and again in 2005, in rulings that drew public praise from Florida’s Republican governor at the time, Jeb Bush. The ACLU of Florida, which has been at the forefront of the movement to get ex-felon’s voting rights reinstated, reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the ex-felons’ case.

Further exacerbating Florida’s heinous record of voter suppression and manipulation is the story of the notorious “Purge.” In the build-up to the 2004 presidential election, the state attempted to clean up its voting registry by “purging” it of all the ex-felons who weren’t supposed to be there. However, the list of approximately 48,000 registered ex-felons included a mere 61 Hispanics and over 22,000 black felons, figures that did not reflect reality.

As a result of a flawed means of identifying felons, Hispanics were kept almost entirely off the “to be purged” list, a move that raised eyebrows around the country because Hispanics in Florida traditionally vote Republican. Moreover, in 2000 Florida had attempted a similar purge, but that list was found highly problematic as well because it included many people who turned out not to be ex-felons.

All of this is to say nothing of the myriad of cases of registration and voting shenanigans that have come out of the past decade’s presidential elections. Reports from all over the country (though perhaps most blatantly in Florida, as shown in the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election) indicate widespread minority disenfranchisement at the hands of campaigns and election officials — from collecting but never filing registration forms from African Americans, to understaffing polls in black and low-income neighborhoods, to blatantly turning minorities away from the polls.

The “good news” in all of this is that minority-targeted voter suppression seems to be less motivated by racism and more by pure partisan politics. But the bad news, obviously, is that partisan politics stifles racial equality at all in America.

Black and Hispanic voters join low-income and elderly voters as easy victims of disenfranchisement and manipulation, because they are least likely to mobilize in their own defense against unfair voting practices. They fight an ongoing battle with the legislators, judges, and election officials who are meant to protect their right to vote, but who instead seek to legally obstruct them from voting through such insidious practices as strict ID laws, purge lists, and discriminatory resource allocation.

Fortunately for those at risk of disenfranchisement, voter advocacy and election integrity is an increasingly-well organized and funded movement, endowed with considerable legal power. But despite the admirable efforts of organizations like the ACLU and NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice, voter suppression remains among the easiest, stealthiest, and most prolific means of undermining our democracy.

With the 2008 presidential race so heated, you can be sure it will be happening in a district near you.

Last week, we asked you if you thought Obama’s race would play a role in the primary or general election. 50% of you said yes. While 21% weren’t sure, almost one third (29%) said Obama’s race would not play a role. Personally, it’s hard to tell. The media will certainly try to make it an issue, but whether that will really effect voters or not is an open question. Lately I’ve been of the mind that the media plays less of a role in determining people’s voting habits than we may think.

Speaking of the media, this week we want to know what your most trusted source for news and information is. Voting begins in the sidebar on the left.

Indeed, he was right. Starting in the 1960s, African Americans have been overwhelmingly Democratic. And while the idea of the Republican South shows signs of crumbling as Democrats like Jim Webb get elected, African Americans still support Democrats by a 2-1 margin. While Johnson may have lost the South for a generation, he may have won the black vote for a longer period of time.

Tactically, Johnson’s endorsement of the Civil Rights movement was genius. It allowed Democrats to simultaneously win a coveted voter block and reaffirm that the Democratic party was the party of the people, as JFK once proclaimed:

“The Rights of Man”–the civil and economic rights essential to the human dignity of all men–are indeed our goal and our first principles. This is a Platform on which I can run with enthusiasm and conviction.

Johnson strengthened the Democratic brand while winning a ton of votes. And Democrats have a chance to do the same thing now with the Hispanic vote.

Hispanics are the fastest growing minority group in America [pdf], with the number eligible voters increasing by about 13% every cycle. And they care about Democratic issues, ranking education, health care, the economy, and immigration among their top concerns. More importantly, Latinos are already anti-Republican, favoring Democrats 57% to 23% in terms of party affiliation, and agreeing that Democrats have more concern for Latino voters than Republicans and can be trusted to handle immigration better as well.

This should point Democratic strategists towards a new policy platform. If Democrats can accomplish comprehensive immigration reform that is fair to all, we can win the Hispanic vote for a generation. And we can do this without compromising our core values. In fact, comprehensive immigration reform goes right to the heart of what Democrats are supposed to stand for.

As Amy Traub at the Drum Major Institute points out, progressive immigration reform would be good for the middle class.

Since the American middle class relies on the economic contributions of immigrants both legal and undocumented, a pro-middle-class immigration policy must not include mass deportation or aim to shut down future immigration arbitrarily.

…

When immigrants lack rights in the workplace, labor standards are driven down and all working people have less opportunity to enter or remain part of the middle class. A pro-middle-class immigration policy must therefore guarantee immigrants full labor rights so that employers cannot use deportation as a coercive tool in the labor market.

By advocating for a legal path to citizenship, naturalizing those people already here, repealing or reworking free trade agreements, and building in labor rights for immigrants, the Democratic party can fulfill its core goals while proving to Hispanics once and for all that we are on their side.

Of course, the immigration problem is going to be a lot harder to solve than civil rights. The arguments against civil rights, even in the 1960s, were exceedingly weak, and the solution was simple: Give everyone equal rights. Immigration is a complex social and economic problem with many possible facets and solutions. That said, the solution to immigration, like civil rights, won’t please everyone. It may involve the same kind of trade-off LBJ faced. By enacting comprehensive immigration reform, Democrats may indeed lose a certain segment of their base - though most people vehemently opposed to immigration reform don’t vote Democrat anyway. That trade-off is worth it.

Race and politics interact in complex ways, but defining moments do exist. I believe African Americans didn’t flock to the Democratic party because of civil rights, that was simply a powerful signal. By signing that law, LBJ declared the the Democratic party stood for a certain set of values, values that African Americans held too.

Hispanics can be made to feel welcome in exactly the same way. It would be a gross generalization to say the Latino vote swings on the immigration issue. People are more complex in their politics than that. But immigration reform directly affects Hispanics much more than it affects the white suburban populace passing local anti-immigration laws. By dealing fairly with a problem that directly affects such an important population, Democrats can once again prove they are the party of the people.

Here’s my overarching point: That a large majority of African Americans exhibit an affinity for candidate Barack Obama, or that a majority of White women exhibit an affinity for candidate Hillary Clinton, is not exactly the same thing as and does not justify the assumption that African Americans overwhelmingly voted for Obama because he is African American, or White women by-and-large voted for Clinton because she is a White woman.

Think about the never-exactly-asked-but-often-alluded-to question meant to gauge a prospective president’s “likeability”: Is this candidate the kind of person you would want to have a beer with? What I am trying to point out is that we all, to some extent, want candidates with which we share something—an experience, a proclivity, a history, a worldview. . . in short, an identity.

Do we usually advocate for someone exactly like us? I don’t think so. Do we assume that one common factor ensures that every other variable falls in line? Doubtful. Race and sex can be bound up with our aspirations and fears, but they are not the definitions of them. Rather, race and sex, in elections like in so many evaluative processes, are a kind of shorthand for a broad spectrum of factors—economics, education, outlook, etc. We search out candidates with whom we can identify on one or many of these levels, and we look for clues to help us make that evaluation—but that is not the same thing, to my mind, as practicing naked identity politics.

It is not an easy distinction (as I have just proven to myself over the previous three paragraphs), but that doesn’t mean it is a negligible one. It is, however, probably one far beyond the institutional interests of the establishment media.

For a broadcast journalism format, it has already taken me too long to explain this distinction. For the general interest press, it practically begs for an editor’s red pencil. The unfortunate demands of a profit-driven media catering to an audience that, to far too great an extent, is the product of an underfunded public education system does not work in the service of nuance. What was a kind of shorthand—a complex, multifaceted interaction—becomes simply an all-encompassing, zero-sum shorthand. The establishment media shorthands the shorthand—and as a result, we are all shortchanged.

The swing through South Carolina and the results from that primary have done little to improve this reductio ad absurdum that passes for campaign analysis. Alas, its afterglow—or collateral damage—will likely make things worse (at least in the short term—the lead-in to Thursday’s CNN Democratic debate hyped the event as if it were a cage match—the long term remains an open question).

I have, to this point, been talking about race and sex (and if the establishment media were given to more sophisticated reporting, I would wish that they might, too), but it is race that seems to have seized the imaginations, such as they are, of most of the panting scribe class (Chris Matthews excepted, of course). The reasons for this owe in part, I figure, to America’s tragic history of openly violent racial oppression, and to the raw demographics of the population, but this part of the discussion is likely beyond my expertise, and beyond the scope of this post. For the moment, let me focus on what has increasingly been characterized as a nasty fight over race.

I don’t want to point fingers at any campaign—I think that fingers can be pointed, but not as clearly as many would think. I don’t want to say that there is plenty of blame to go around because that assumes, on the one hand, that there is plenty of blame, and, on the other, that it should somehow be distributed evenly—I’m not sure I feel secure in accepting either of those hands. I am not going to say it is all a wash, even if (and I am saying “if” because the polling data I’ve seen is not conclusive) the battle over race, such as it is, hasn’t really pushed voters in one direction or the other so far, because, at the end of the day, I do worry greatly about a fight that is characterized as revolving around what has been filed under the charged rubric of “identity politics.”

But, for right now, at this point in the primary season, the worst thing about this tussle is that it gives the establishment media yet another story on which to focus at the expense of the issues.

Honestly, in the history of American identity politics, what has transpired in the last month is quite tepid (I’m not saying that I like or endorse these “strategies” to mobilize or divide voters—I don’t—I’m just taking the long view). But, through the fisheye lens of the establishment media, suddenly it’s human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! And it’s practically all we hear about. Just watch the nightly news, the Sunday talkies, or supposedly erudite shows like Washington Week—for Republicans, they talk about how the economic downturn has affected the horserace, but for the Democrats, all I hear is “it’s so nasty.” (Or, as if to prove this hypothesis by counterpoint, today’s post-debate coverage can’t keep from reporting—repeatedly, and with a high degree of amazement—that the candidates were “downright chummy,” and trying to “outnice” each other.)

Where is Iraq? Where is national security? Where is healthcare, or education, or veterans’ affairs? Where is climate change or energy independence? Where are the indignities done to our Constitution? The embrace of torture? The assault on privacy? Indeed, where is the failure of the entire GWOT â„¢?

And where is information on what the candidates will do to address these issues? Sure, the establishment doesn’t like having to sell the meat, but it is the responsibility of the candidates to work overtime to keep the media from having access to easy sizzle.

The problems with the establishment media are manifold. There are national laws, federal regulations, and individual reporters—all in dire need of reform. We should keep pressing for that reform, but it is a heavy lift, as they say. We won’t likely fix this one before we elect our next president.

So, this is a call to the candidates—both of them. If you truly do not want this race to be about race, don’t allow it to be. Don’t give the media anything that might play into their narrative. No allusions, no accusations, no counter-accusations. Actively contradict any reporter that poses a question framed by identity politics. Instruct all of your surrogates to do the same.

Steer all questions to talk about policy, to talk about proposals, to talk about the problem at hand and then suggest solutions. Be as specific as you dare. Be relentlessly on message. Give the press as little room as possible to reframe your campaign, or any part of your campaign, as an identity campaign.

Steer the conversation to President Bush. Talk about how united we all are in our disregard for him and our disgust with what his administration has done to our country. Mention Bush by name. Make the Republicans run with him or run from him. It’s a win-win.

Do not give in to the easy frame, no matter how advantageous it might seem at the moment. Come the summer, you will want to—have to—run a campaign that mobilizes voters of all stripes (and I’m not just talking about their external ones). Come next January, you will have to govern a country with numerous identities, many all mixed up in any given individual.

You will want to govern with a mandate. The more specific you can be about what you want to do and how you are going to do it, the more valid your claim to that mandate will be.

The Republicans will try to deny your mandate, chip away at it, characterize it as the agenda of special interests. The establishment media will no doubt play along because their operating principle is that people love a good fight, and every fight is as bloody and illicit as a cockfight, as bi-polar as a magnet, and as simple as. . . well, as simple as black and white.

That’s the way the media wants to see race—and that’s the way they want to see this race. If you want to win it—and I mean really win it—don’t give your opponents—and I mean your real opponents—a head start.

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(other versions of this essay have been cross-posted on capitoilette and Daily Kos)

I’m sure there will be plenty of material in there to stir up discussion. Enjoy!

Last week we asked you what you thought the best thing our government could do to stave off recession was. 47% of you felt cutting of foreign spending while at the same time decreasing domestic spending was the way to go. 24% of you thought cutting spending across the board was a better option. Interestingly, nobody thought cutting taxes would do the job.

A lot of ink has been spilled on Barack Obama’s race. First he disproved the Bradley effect by winning in white Iowa, then we might have been hurt by it in white New Hampshire. Oprah and Ted Kennedy have endorsed him, while Jesse Jackson has complained that he’s too white. It’s a muddled picture. With that in mind, do you think Barack Obama’s race will play a sizable role in affecting voter’s choices, both in the primary and possibly in the general election? Voting begins in the sidebar on the left.

Stay tuned for more!