No Money for Obama, No Sausages For Me

(A dear friend of mine is holding a fund-raising BBQ for Barack Obama's campaign next week. I was looking forward to attending, but have now thought better of it after learning of Obama's willingness to support the FISA compromise, a major reversal of position from less than four months ago. Here is the message I sent to my friend this morning...)

Hey, Man --

Much as I love you (and sausages), I'm afraid that, in the wake of Obama's apparent flip-flop on the FISA bill, I must now decline the invitation to your weinerfest next week. While I know that no candidate who perfectly matches my poltical outlook would ever get elected President in this country, I am really appalled that Obama seems to be about to support the very encroachment upon our civil liberties — and the blanket immunity for law-breaking telecommunications companies — that he spoke so forcefully against less than four months ago. He made the following statement on Feb 12 (it's still up on his US Senate website):

"I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty. There is no reason why telephone companies should be given blanket immunity to cover violations of the rights of the American people - we must reaffirm that no one in this country is above the law.

"We can give our intelligence and law enforcement community the powers they need to track down and take out terrorists without undermining our commitment to the rule of law, or our basic rights and liberties. That is why I am proud to cosponsor several amendments that protect our privacy while making sure we have the power to track down and take out terrorists.

"This Administration continues to use a politics of fear to advance a political agenda. It is time for this politics of fear to end. We are trying to protect the American people, not special interests like the telecommunications industry. We are trying to ensure that we don't sacrifice our liberty in pursuit of security, and it is past time for the Administration to join us in that effort."

But now, apparently, Obama is going to align himself with the Bush Administration in their effort to put special interests ahead of our security and liberty, and is happy to reinforce the notion that the Bush administration and their corporate cronies are indeed above the law. I know that the FISA bill will probably pass with or without his vote, and he's probably doing this so he can appear "strong on security," but that's not exactly the "change" Obama told us he stood for. As he himself has pointed out many times, that sort of pandering to fear and ignorance actually makes us weaker and less secure as a country.

I will still vote for Obama in November — because the prospect of President McCain is just too fucking frightening for words — but it would be perverse for me to donate money to someone who would willingly sell me (and you) out to special interests. If he's more concerned about immunity for telecom corporations than the civil liberties of American citizens, then let him get his campaign funds from those corporations, not from me.

Fight the Power,
Dan

Comments

[Vinnie Park]

Excellent response. Well done.

[Stu]

what'd your friend say?

[Dan E]

My friend totally understood, and actually passed my email on to the Obama campaign dude who was helping him organize the fundraiser. The guy wrote back with a lengthy response that included the following paragraph:

"Some "fallout" is to be expected i suppose from the campaign in general as positions come under closer scrutiny, and the reality of the candidates' positions rubs up against the expected, hoped for, or projected positions of the candidates. all in all, one must ask: will the country be better off with Barack Obama and the Democrats in the white house, or with John McCain and the republicans in the white house? and then, along the way, some compromises will be made. politics, some have said, is the art of the possible."

Some compromises will be made, indeed.

[Stu]

Yeah, I've never bought that "will the country be better off..." argument. By that standard, we'd be better off with a bucket of hot wings and a 40-ouncer in the White House.

[Dan E]

Agreed. Would you rather eat horse shit or dog shit?

[Michael]

I was withholding a hefty mid-two-figures donation to the Obama campaign until they sounded the all-clear that they weren't going to bail out the debt from the Clintons' profligate, hubristic, misguided and destructive campaign. But this spineless pander has convinced me the money would be better spent on the ACLU. I'm under no illusions about pols, even Obama, but the whiplash from his reversal on FISA must have left the junior senator from Illinois sporting a neck brace.

The response from the Obama campaign person was downright slimy. So every time Obama caves to the clueless, reactionary beliefs of the slack-jawed yokels in flyover country, we're supposed to sit back and go, Well, he's still better than McCain? Obama has started down a slippery slope. To quote the great Ian Curtis, where will it end?

[Jason]

A somewhat dissenting opinion, given that I mostly agree on the underlying principle:

a. Withholding the cash is well and good, if you feel this election is in the bag. Despite all the favorable signs at the moment, it's not. McCain is exploiting major loopholes in the "public" financing system (which Obama rightly opted out of), and actually raised more money than Obama in May, and has considerably more cash on hand. He is outspending Obama on TV already in some important markets. And if you advertise shit-flavored ice cream on TV enough times, people will end up buying it.

b. Obama still has exactly one vote in the Senate. The FISA cloture vote lost 80 - 15. So would we have preferred that it lost 80 - 16? This shit is political poison, and you don't give the other side ammunition unless absolutely necessary. To date it has not been necessary. If we came within one vote, then I could see the outrage. Blame Pelosi and Hoyer.

c. Instead of withholding support, let's try to push our man in a progressive direction and hold him accountable. It looks like you have managed to do both, by sending a message back through channels - that's good. But I hope we all get past this soon, because warrantless surveillance is about 1% of what needs to be fixed in this country, and we need an Obama in there to get it started.

And for the record, I felt stung by this too.

[Dan E]

All good points, Jason — especially the part about the majority of Democratic senators being spineless pieces of shit, and the need to "keep on pushing" as Curtis Mayfield once said.

My big worry, however, is that these sort of "compromises" in the name of being elected will be made in exponential fashion as November approaches, until "I'm Not McCain" becomes his only real selling point.

I gave money to the Kerry campaign, I worked for the Kerry campaign, and I watched in slo-mo horror as Kerry contorted himself into ever more conservative positions, none of which ultimately helped his cause — and probably actually hurt him, because so many independents and left-wingers were turned off by a guy who appeared to offer little beyond "I'm Not Bush".

Obama SEEMS smart enough to have learned from his party's past mistakes. Hopefully this is the case.
I will still vote for him, but I'm not giving any money or man-hours to his campaign until I can be a little more certain that this isn't Kerry, Part 2.