I was challenged to do my own version of Sorenson’s hypothetical acceptance speech. Here’s my (quickly drafted) version:

My fellow Democrats: Thank you – I think – for the opportunity to represent our party in the upcoming contest to decide what the next chapter in our shared will look like.
This campaign will be one of the hardest and most expensive ever. It is the political equivalent of putting a man on the moon, and like that effort will rely on everyone from the janitor who sweeps the floor to the generals who set strategy. I’m happy and proud to have been selected here, and congratulate my Democratic opponents, and reach out to them humbly for their guidance, assistance, and work in the coming months.This is a campaign that must reach out to all Americans, because the future we want to lead this country toward is a future for everyone – Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and conservatives, all of us. We may disagree on the small stuff – important stuff to be sure, but small in the overall scheme of things. But we must agree on the need for America – for these United States – to be the city on the hill for those of us who live in it – ALL of us that live in it – as well as a beacon of hope and example for the rest of the world.

The country deserves to understand where my opponent and I hope to lead it.

I want to try and clearly set out where my opponent and his party and this party and I differ and where we agree, because I’m comfortable that when people taste our cooking, they will choose to sit down and eat with us.

To that end, I have arranged to buy six 60-minute blocks of time on Sunday nights on CNN and Fox. I want to propose to my opponent that we use them to debate – one on one, with no moderators, journalists, or people to frame our discussion – on topics each of us chooses. I’ll choose three, and invite my opponent to pick three, and they will be the themes of each discussion.

My three will be:

* Securing the United States – military and diplomatic policy for a dangerous world.

* Securing a Middle-Class Future – responding to the narrowing availability of a traditional middle-class life for the average American.

* Securing Our Health – making decisions on how we will provide healthcare in the coming decade.

And I’m just dying to know what my opponent will pick.

It’s not like I’ve been silent on where I stand on the issues of the day. I wouldn’t be standing here is many of you hadn’t heard what I have to say and if it hadn’t meant something to you.

But let me recap, just so that there are no questions.

In my view of the world, we face three major challenges which the United States must lead the rest of the world in solving.

The first, and most acute, is the rise of transnational movements – the largest of which is based in a form of radical Islam – which intend to weaken and overthrow existing governments in much of the world.

The second, and closest to home here in the US, is the hollowing of the economic future for the middle-class. Globalization, technology, and regulatory change have combined to create a ‘perfect storm’ in which many families are drowning.

The last is the continued burden economic growth throughout the world places on the natural systems on which we all depend for life.

Pushing solutions forward on all three of those problems will be the strategic center of my Presidency. We may not solve them, but I will commit that we’ll work damn hard on them and that we’ll leave things better than we found them.

Liberals are often accused of being soft on crime or soft on terror because we are concerned about the conditions that cause people to turn to crime or to terrorism. It’s a mistake to believe that, and to dismiss looking at causes.

The issue, in both cases is that we have to stop growing criminals and terrorists just as much as we have to be very good at catching and where necessary killing them. Think of it as a supply-side solution. And one where alliances and cooperation are absolutely vital.

There are a number of things we need to do and this is not a speech on terrorism policy. But let me make two points, clearly and separately, so no one misses them.

I’m very concerned about nuclear attacks – especially one that can’t be readily traced back – on U.S. soil, or on the soil of one of our Western allies.

Let me be very clear. There are two states today who have unregulated nuclear programs, and have engaged in efforts which might lead to a terror group obtaining a nuclear weapon.

North Korea and Iran.

I want to make it clear that any detonation or attempt to detonate a nuclear weapon on the soil of the US or any NATO or SEATO ally which involves a weapon whose origin we cannot readily trace will be considered to have come from North Korea or Iran. This is potentially an existential matter for the leadership of those countries.

We would welcome clear and total cooperation by those countries in understanding their nuclear programs, and understanding who – if anyone – they have shared nuclear weapons technology with. And obviously that cooperation would change our policies.

I intend to send emissaries to sit and talk with the leaders of both countries and see what we can do to stop the slow slide toward confrontation that we seem to be on today.

Many countries have an interest in limiting transnational terrorism. Many countries have seen it as a tool to extend the reach of their power. I would talk to both, and see what we can do to convince them to help solve the problem, rather than be a part of it.

Today, the conflict between Israel and Palestine is the most well-publicized point of friction in the world today. I am unqualifiedly in support of a U.S. guaranty of the survival of Israel and the Israeli people. Period. Full stop. But…Israel is going to have to do some things to earn that guaranty.

Settlements in the West Bank made sense when Israel was worried about tank columns from Jordan. That’s not a concern any more, and the bulk of the settlements should be handed over to Palestine. The right of free access to the holy places in Jerusalem must be guaranteed to all faiths.

The misery of the Palestinian people is well-known. But we have spent billions and the EU and Arab nations have spent billions, and the Palestinian people have been robbed, time and again, by thugs with guns who have stolen their money, their hope, and their future. The United States will commit to fair and secure borders for Palestine, and to continued assistance for the Palestinian people. But Palestine is going to have to do some things to earn that commitment and that assistance.

Let’s start with two:

The education system in Palestine will be taken over and supervised by a new agency, supervised by the Quartet. No longer will Palestinian children be raised believing that hate and murder are the only future they can aspire to.

The books for the State of Palestine will be absolutely and totally transparent. No longer will we support a state that pays militias with suitcases full of cash, and where duffels of cash somehow wind up in secret banks in the names of rulers and their families.

These are concrete steps that we can and will take on our own. Once these are under way, we believe that the time wil be right for the governments of Israel and Palestine to sit down and start what will be a long and difficult talk. It’s a talk we think – given the right conditions – can and will work.

Talking will work in some cases, but it won’t work everywhere.

For those places, we need a bigger, more capable military.

We don’t need as many air superiority fighters as we do covert operatives; we don’t need as many nuclear warheads as we do civil affairs troops; we don’t need a military as focused to fight China or Russia (although we need to maintain capabilities there and capabilities to ramp aggressively and fast) as we do need a military that can fight guerillas and terrorists, protect local governments while they introduce stability, and do it without wearing the troops into the ground.

I want to remind the world that my objective is peace. I understand that peace may not give us everything we want, and I’m prepared to lead the American people toward accepting that.

I want America to be working alongside other countries, and for our goal to be the best ally that any nation could have.

But I also want to remind the other nations whose interests may not align with that they need to compromise too. And for people worldwide to realize that cheap Anti-Americanism isn’t free.

And to remind those who think they have a free hand to attack us because we are a helpless giant: We are the furthest thing from a helpless giant today, and that we will be even further from there at the end of my Presidency. We are a giant who is hard to make angry, and that is as it should be. Because you won’t like it when we get angry.

Speaking of things that make me personally angry, America has led the way for much of the world in economic and class mobility – until recently.

When I started my campaign, I asked a simple question: “What have we done for the single mom with two kids – the one who works in an office in a big city and makes $40,000 a year? What have we done for the family in a small town that makes $30,000 a year?” How do me make the basics of the American dream – a white picket fence and a better future for our kids – available to people who don’t have advanced degrees or trust funds?

There are a lot of things we should be doing.

We need to make sure that she doesn’t pay as much in childcare as she earns from her job.

We need to make sure that a child’s illness or accident won’t make that mom homeless.

We need to make sure that the school she sends her kids to prepares them to take a real shot at getting into Harvard.

We need to make sure that she has the tools available to her – continuing education, professional development – to compete for her boss’ job if she wants to.

That family needs to know that their retirement fund isn’t going to get closed down if the factory does.

They need to be in communities connected to the Internet so that their kids can have the opportunity to compete for ‘insourced’ jobs in information work.

Their local schools need to prepare their kids for those kinds of jobs.

They need a farm policy that doesn’t tip the tables in favor of huge industrial agriculture – one that really bypasses the local towns and hollows out farm states.

They all need an economy that makes it easier, rather than harder for small business and entrepreneurs. The cost of regulation can be split in two – the cost of doing what the regulation requires, and the cost of complying with the paperwork. I have no problem with regulation that advances the public good. I have a huge problem with regulation where the paperwork to prove you comply is more complex than doing what is needed to comply, and that is going to change.

Many of the regulations we talk about are aimed at improving the environment, so let me talk about that.

Improving the environment – or better, not destroying it more – is a matter of life and death for many people on this planet. Environmental degradation is killing people in China and in Africa, it is shortening lifespans in the U.S. and Europe, and the risks and burdens it presents are simply unacceptable.

Kyoto was well-intentioned, but deeply flawed.

We need to take steps to reduce our carbon footprint and to do it in a way that lessens our dependence on imported energy.

Much of this can be done with efficiency. Even painless efficiency – if every SUV sold since 200 had been replaced with a minivan, we would have saved 3% of our national energy budget. At what sacrifice? Ask yourself – what would it really cost to have had soccer parents driving their kids in minivans instead of Suburbans or Expeditions?

But not all of it can.

We need to be the world leader in increasing our dollar of GDP per BTU used – in improving the efficiency of our economy. This doesn’t mean we have to all live in sod huts and burn buffalo chips.

It means that we can’t be wasteful. We have to price energy according to its real cost, and move as much efficiency into the system as we can. Yes, gas and diesel are expensive at the pump. But by raising the taxes on them, we can pressure the producers – moving the dollars you spend into new roads, transit, and infrastructure rather than cash to support terrorism.

It means that we need to make sure that what we have, works. I will impose a Federal requirement that all states implement biannual inspections, and that starting in four years, cars – and trucks – that are gross polluters will not be allowed to drive out of the inspection station. Nearly half the pollution comes from 10 percent of the vehicles. Let’s get them off the road and clear the air.

But there’s more to it than that. We have built a massively centralized series of systems that are becoming so complex that they are extraordinarily vulnerable to human error or happenstance as well as deliberate acts of sabotage.

Under my Presidency, we will begin to move as much as we can to the edges of the network; moving generation closer to consumption, reducing the scale of utility plants and taking advantage of the latest technology to leapfrog our existing utility networks. We have to do this, in no small part because the networks are aging and we are facing a huge national investment in infrastructure regardless of what we do.

All politicians say that they are going to “build a 21st century country.” Well, we’re going to spend money building that country in concrete, steel, copper and glass fiber.
A stronger, safer country where opportunity isn’t just something that the majority gets to watch on television and where there will be power for the lights and clean water to drink and air that doesn’t put you in the hospital.

Those have been Democratic accomplishments through the 20th Century, and we can make them Democratic accomplishments for the 21st.

It’s clear the President Bush is officially in the “Don’t Give A F**k” zone. And yes, I thought the sentence that Libby got was excessive.

But commuting the sentence of someone who was convicted under due process is just a lame waste of what little political capital Bush has left. There are important issues we will be dealing with for the next two years, and I’ll bet that he’s gonna miss it between now and Jan 19, 2009.

Sometimes people get sacrificed to the political process – think Breaker Morant – and guess what, that’s part of the political process. Bush did Libby a small favor and the rest of us no favor at all.

My 4th of July piece is up at the Examiner.

Sparklers, motorcycles, and Abraham Lincoln are involved.

And, in the title, Exene Cervenka…

The Isle of Man Tourist Trophy (the “TT”) is a motorcycle race – a time trial, actually – held on the public roads of the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea. It is phenomenally dangerous and wonderful, and in this month’s print edition of Roadracing World magazine, columnist Mat Oxley uses the TT as a window into modern life.

The TT is pretty impossible to defend. Some years ago I argued that it should be shut down. I’m no longer of that opinion. The TT is as insanely dangerous as it ever was, so perhaps it’s me who has changed, or the world itself.

…

The TT is a relic from an age when most racetracks were similarly lethal, roped-off public roads. But while dozens of other street venues have been shut down, the TT survives because it sits on a self-governed island which is very fond of the millions generated by the race. If anyone else was in charge – the British government in Westminster or the European Union in Brussels – it would be just another piece of bike racing history.

And perhaps this is where the world and I have changed (please excuse me while I enter Grumpy Old Man mode). It seems to me that the world has been taken over by puritan megalomaniacs and I don’t like it.

These crusading cretins pretend they care about people but they don’t, they want us to stop riding motorcycles (why else would the British government keep tightening the bike test?) and quit doing all kinds of other fun stuff, but they start wars. The TT is a wild anachronism in an increasingly controlled society, it’s barking at the moon, a big fingers up to those who want us all to lead safe, decent, mortgaged lives under the all-seeing eye of the CCTV camera, obeying the command of a dayglo-clad security gorilla with an IQ of 50 and tranquilized by the government’s mantra of “your safety is our primary concern.” Bollocks to the lot of them.

I had a similar moment of changing my mind when I watched “Thank You For Smoking”; I’ve always hated smoking – seen it ruin my father’s health – and was always happy to see it restricted in any way possible.

But as I watched the film, I realized that freedom was meaningless if other people aren’t free to do things I hate and things that are “pretty impossible to defend”…

Theodore Sorenson has a draft acceptance speech up for the next Democratic presidential candidate:

To meet the threats we face and restore our place of leadership in the free world, I pledge to do the following:

First, working with a representative Iraqi parliament, I shall set a timetable for an orderly, systematic redeployment and withdrawal of all our troops in Iraq, including the recall of all members of the National Guard to their primary responsibility of guarding our nation and its individual states.

Second, this redeployment shall be only the first step in a comprehensive regional economic and diplomatic stabilization plan for the entire Middle East, building a just and enduring peace between Israel and Palestine, halting the killing and maiming of innocent civilians on both sides, and establishing two independent sovereign states, each behind peacefully negotiated and mutually recognized borders.

Third, I shall as soon as possible transfer all inmates out of the Guantanamo Bay prison and close down that hideous symbol of injustice.

Fourth, I shall fly to New York City to pledge in person to the United Nations, in the September 2009 General Assembly, that the United States is returning to its role as a leader in international law, as a supporter of international tribunals, and as a full-fledged member of the United Nations which will pay its dues in full, on time, and without conditions, renouncing any American empire; that we shall work more intensively with other countries to eliminate global scourges, including AIDS, malaria, and other contagious diseases, massive refugee flows, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and that we will support the early dispatch of United Nations peacekeepers to halt the atrocities in Darfur. I shall make it clear that we do not covet the land of other countries for our military bases or the control of their natural resources for our factories. I shall make it clear that our country is not bound by any policies or pronouncements of my predecessor that violate international law or threaten international peace.

Fifth, I shall personally sign the Kyoto Protocol, and seek its ratification by the United States Senate, in order to stop global warming before it endangers all species on earth, including our own; and I shall call upon the Congress to take action dramatically reducing our nation’s reliance on the carbon fuels that are steadily contributing to the degradation of our environment.

Sixth, I shall demonstrate sufficient confidence in the strength of our values and the wisdom and skill of our diplomats to favor communications, negotiations, and full relations with every country on earth, including Cuba, North Korea, Palestine, and Iran.

Finally, I shall restore the constitutional right of habeas corpus, abolish the unconstitutional tapping of private phones, and once again show the world the traditional American values that distinguish us from those who attacked us on 9/11.

Wow. I’m not quite sure what to say. Actually, I am. He says the candidate should commit to “building a just and enduring peace between Israel and Palestine, halting the killing and maiming of innocent civilians on both sides“.

Well from my point of view, I’d like to commit just as strongly to having a wonderfully romantic date with Uma Thurman. I’ll take her to my favorite New York City bistro, Devin Tavern on Greenwich in Tribeca, and we’ll have a wonderful and romantic conversation that will sweep her off her feet, and leave her desperate for my attention and affection. Oh wait, I don’t know her, am not likely to meet her, and I’m married.

Both of these look nice as words on the page. Words are not deeds, however … and I’d feel a lot better if the winning Democratic nominee was willing to think in terms of deeds rather than empty words like this.

I’ve never understood the Administration’s love for the truly lame and useless fights they seem to want to pick with Congress. Someone help me understand what – in the wide world of sports – Cheny intends to gain from this doomed, grandstanding bureaucratic move?

There are things worth fighting over, and things which it makes no sense to fight over. Or it does make a certain kind of sense…

I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.

Sadly, when they do lame stuff like this, we’re the somebody.

I was sitting at the desk I’m using at my client’s, looking out, and realized how interesting it is that I’m sitting here doing work that has grown in no small part from my blog – and looking down on the site of the World Trade Center, which is a big part of why I started blogging.

Yeah, I know, it’s probably no big deal, but it feels odd.

Over at Blackfive, Grim posts a request from Marine Col. Simcock:

COL. SIMCOCK: (Chuckles.) I’ll tell you what, the one thing that all Marines want to know about — and that includes me and everyone within Regimental Combat Team 6 — we want to know that the American public are behind us. We believe that the actions that we’re taking over here are very, very important to America. We’re fighting a group of people that, if they could, would take away the freedoms that America enjoys.

If anyone — you know, just sit down, jot us — throw us an e- mail, write us a letter, let us know that the American public are behind us. Because we watch the news just like everyone else. It’s broadcast over here in our chow halls and the weight rooms, and we watch that stuff, and we’re a little bit concerned sometimes that America really doesn’t know what’s going on over here, and we get sometimes concerns that the American public isn’t behind us and doesn’t see the importance of what’s going on. So that’s something I think that all Marines, soldiers and sailors would like to hear from back home, that in fact, yes, they think what we’re doing over here is important and they are in fact behind us.

The address is RCT-6lettersfromh@gcemnf-wiraq.usmc.mil.

Someone will read and vet the emails, and then hand them out.

Say something nice…

He had his interns call the offices of all the Members of the House and ask for copies of their earmark requests.

Go take a look at the results…

He’s the guy who also did the great coverage in Beirut.

That’s journalism.

Over at Netroots powerhouse MyDD, Jerome Armstrong railed in frustration as the juggernaut that is mainstream politics pushes the Netroots away from the levers of power that they so closely crave.

I don’t have a dog in the race, and voted “other” in the MyDD poll. But I gotta tell you, this race is Hillary Clinton’s to lose at this point. I wish to be wrong, and see Obama or Edwards get the nomination, but I honestly don’t see it happening from this vantage point, and it’s very frustrating. The Edwards candidacy was a longshot to begin with, and that he is still in it points toward how sound a strategy (combined with the luck of having Fiengold & Warner drop out), that he laid out; the frustration is more directed at Obama because he has the opportunity to lay claim with what’s grown in the netroots this decade and hasn’t grasped it at all, and it shows.

Then Chris Bowers announced that he and Matt are leaving MyDD and partisan politics – to start a new, unnamed site that will instead focus on building a progressive movement.

So, why am I moving on? I hinted at the reason in yesterday’s post, Expanding Beyond Just Partisanship. As much as I have enjoyed writing about politics and elections from a partisan Democratic viewpoint, my political background is in the social justice movement and decidedly on the left. I want to write about more than just elections and political infrastructure, and I want to explicitly work toward building a progressive governing majority. However, to do so would be to take MyDD too far away from its longstanding purpose. I have always argued that successful blogging is focused blogging, and MyDD won’t succeed if it loses its niche and its brand. Also, I want to do much more extended writing on single campaigns, ala Googlebomb the Elections, Use It Or Lose It, or The Inflated Clinton Poll Theory, and join in discussions with a wider variety of individuals and organizations in the progressive movement. Structurally speaking, that means moving somewhat away from the rapid, chronologically backward scrolling format of traditional blogs.

I ought to be filled with schadenfreude, but I’m actually kind of interested and impressed.

I’ve been harshly critical of the Netroots before there was a formally identified Netroots, and of the thinking of those who went on to become the Netroots – criticizing them as “the suicidal lemming branch of the Democratic Party”. But shockingly enough, I share many of their perceptions and some of their values.

Modern politics has become ossified; you need look no further than the ways in which elected offices – from local government to the White House seem to have become dynastic, which power handed down in families from parent to child. That is – forgive me, David Blue – fucking absurd, and antithetical to everything this nation was founded for.

An aristocracy has grown up, exploiting the nexus of social connection, governmental power (and spending) and private greed to perpetuate itself and the increasingly brittle web of allies, sycophants, courtiers, and bagmen who both serve as farm clubs for that aristocracy and as its enablers. One huge strike in the Netroots’ favor is that they saw this and when they did, they called a spade a spade. They gave voice to the frustration that the average American feels when they look at our political class.

That class ossification is – in my mind – a far greater long-term risk to this country (and by extension the values of liberal human society worldwide insofar as we are their primary defender) than any Islamist movement. They are a less acute risk (which is my rationalization for the balance of attention I spend on this blog), but a chronic one that saps our ability to do everything from educate our children to build infrastructure to defend our country and values.

That aristocracy is increasingly detaching itself from the interests of the modern proletariat – those who sell their labor a day or month at a time in a cubicle or restaurant uniform. The modern proletariat is the richest in the world – but in a flattening world, that can’t and won’t persist. To those who ride in Town Cars, that’s not a horrible thing – the help gets cheaper, after all, and more docile as it realizes how close it is to the edge and how their island of social and economic stability is shrinking. That detachment – the realization that an industrial and administrative elite can do just fine while everyone else sees their prospects narrowing – is what I call the Lizzie Grubman factor.

The elites blind themselves to their comfortable detachment by maintaining an overwhelming interest in identity politics – politics that center around every distinction except class. Race, sex, sexual orientation, language and culture – all are groupings the defense and interests of which the new aristocracy is happy to promote. Why not? Middle-class Marxism costs them almost nothing. And middle-class Mexican American Princes (the title of a great article in the LA Weekly) can suddenly ride racial and identity politics to a seat at the Big Table and all the goodies that brings with it.

So let me make a few suggestions to the disillusioned Netroots folks out there.

First, understand that you’re being used. You’re a moderately successful fundraising channel, and a dedicated but small and uncoordinated pool of volunteers and campaign workers – kind of the equivalent of a small labor union. You are blessed because of the information reach of the Net, and more, because your peers who went and got jobs in the media are fascinated with you and so will feature you and your thoughts in the frame of Big Media.

Sometimes (Amanda Marcotte) that spotlight makes you look like you have a bad complexion, and you get tossed under the bus.

But your belief – that there is a big pool of other people pissed off at Politics As It Is and just losing interest in playing – is absolutely right. Have the levels of disillusionment been higher at any time in our lives? Have as many people felt like standing in their windows and shouting “I’m mad as hell and I can’t take it any more!!” ? You’re 100% right about that, you’re just looking in the wrong place for the people who ought to join your movement.

You’re looking in the wrong place because you’re arrogant jerks (hey, I read all your stuff – trust me, you’re arrogant jerks) and instead of looking out your window at the American people and thinking about their dreams and hopes and how you can advance them, you persist in looking in the mirror (or looking on your computer screen and reading all the blogs that make you go “Yeah!” (new acronym: BTMYGY!) and believing that Of Course everyone thinks that Catholics are repressive assholes, and Of Course the average Rethuglican is a gender criminal, and Of Course typical Americans who worry about people who cut other people’s throats on video on the Internet are bedwetters.

You believed that if you swore undying loyalty to the Party – and ignored Democratic beams while criticizing Republican motes – you’d be recognized and rewarded.

Some of you will be – you’ll be the next generation of direct mail wizards – but for the most part, you’re going to get kicked to the curb as soon as the NRE is over. So why declare loyalty? Why wait for a magic figure – black, white or female – to embody your movement for you?

Why not build a movement?

But you’ve got a choice. You can build a movement of the soy-latte drinkers who know tats, startups, and hip underground bands and represent a highly visible 15% of the country and consider themselves madly progressive. Or you can accept the challenge laid out years ago by John Schaar, who wrote of the failure of the early New Left in America:

“Finally, if political education is to effective it must grow from a spirit of humility on the part of the teachers, and they must overcome the tendencies toward self-righteousness and self-pity which set the tone of youth and student politics in the 1960’s. The teachers must acknowledge common origins and common burdens with the taught, stressing connection and membership, rather than distance and superiority. Only from these roots can trust and hopeful common action grow.”

So here’s the suggestion. Move to the suburbs. Buy a minivan. Reach out and understand the hopes and fears of the average American. Help them reclaim our country.

Can it be done?

We’ve had three notable electoral successes where the political walls were scaled in this country. Wellstone, Ventura, and Schwartzenegger. What can you learn from that, and what can you learn from their struggle to craft an effective platform from which to govern once elected?

There’s a task for people who would build a movement.