I’m a bit grumpy this morning. I got up at 4:15AM to do my Wednesday medium long run. I felt sniffly and tired, but pushed myself out of the house. A mile and a half later, I was spent. I turned around, jogged slowly home, showered, and went back to bed for forty minutes. I feel lousy, but can’t afford to drop any more class time in fast-paced summer school. More importantly, I’m worried about the marathon on July 29. Training went splendidly in May and June, but has been woefully inconsistent the last two weeks. I’ll lower my expectations and run the darned thing anyway, I suppose, but I’m still feeling a bit frustrated this morning.
I have more to say about Villaraigosa and the connection that I argue ought to exist between private virtue and public justice, but I’ll save that for another day.
I was talking to a very conservative cousin of mine last week. He’s a staunch Republican, I’m a loyal Democrat. We’re very fond of each other, of course, and our mutual affection is not threatened in the least by radically divergent political views. My cousin hasn’t yet settled on a Republican candidate to support for president. He thinks Romney’s an obvious opportunist; he loathes McCain for his support for “amnesty”; he thinks Fred Thompson will be revealed, in the end, as a lightweight without sufficient fire in the belly; he likes Giuliani best of the available major choices but is disheartened by his stances on the social issues. I suspect that Mike Huckabee would come closest to my cousin’s ideal, but he and I both know that we’re not likely to ever see a second Arkansas governor in the White House. So my cousin is still open, and not happy about his choices.
I feel — as most of the liberal wing of my family feels — as if we’ve got the most astonishing abundance of good choices. Some of us are backing Edwards, some Obama, some Clinton; my mother is supporting Bill Richardson. I do have relatives supporting Kucinich, and one firmly in Joe Biden’s camp. But almost all of us say we’ll vote with great enthusiasm for whoever it is turns out to be the nominee. Perhaps this is all just false optimism brought on by Bush weariness, but I look at the Democratic pack and I see an outstandingly strong group. Though I’ll likely stay with John Edwards through the primary, my sense at this point is that come the general election, I’ll vote with enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate, rather than for the “lesser of two evils.”
My cousin, on the other hand, says he’ll be voting with one thing in mind next fall: stopping Hilary. He’s surer than I that Senator Clinton wil be the Democratic nominee, and though he has no liking for any of his GOP choices, he likes the wife of the 42nd president even less. I can’t help but feel it’s a positive sign that so many of us on the left regard our own candidates with such enthusiasm, while the right seems largely focused on picking whoever they can (no matter how compromised) whom they believe has a shot at beating Clinton. That “excitement gap” encourages me.
But then again, I’m a liberal Democrat whose political memory now goes back nearly 35 years. I’ve seen far too many defeats snatched from the jaws of victory. I know far too well how easy it is to blow for the left to blow a sure thing. Much can and will happen in the next sixteen months, but for now, I comfort myself with the sense that “our team” has a bench deeper and more talented than the USC Trojan backfield will be this fall. It’s a good time for optimism.
We’re very fond of each other, of course, and our mutual affection is not threatened in the least by radically divergent political views.
One of the perks of privilege.
Yes, in part. But I’ve known some families who don’t share my WASPy OKOPness in which it is possible to maintain civility and affection despite significant differences. I’d be loth to suggest otherwise.
Hugo,
I assume you’re aware that you are describing the classic symptoms of overtraining and that you know what to do in response.
Yes, I am aware. Sunday, I went out for my last really long run, and at the 14 mile mark, my heart rate shot up and I couldn’t get it back down. I knew right then I was overtrained. I’m taking the next few days off, and will let my body get very rested before the marathon.
But as you know well, rest is the hardest part of training.
one firmly in Joe Biden’s camp.
Either you’re related to my mother-in-law, or Biden has two supporters.
Am I the only liberal who’s not enchanted with the current selection of candidates? Some of them (Clinton, Richardson, Gravel) are bad, and the others are just lackluster. Obviously they’re several orders of magnitude better than the Republicans, but I just can’t get excited about any of them being president.
What’s so bad about Richardson, Stentor?
I don’t think any of the candidates are perfect, but I don’t think we’ve had this strong a line-up on the left since 1968, when we had BRFK and Eugene McCarthy going at it.
And this election will not be 1968 all over again — after all, we may be in another unpopular war, but this time, it’s not our party that’s torn about it, and not our president who’s in charge!
“One of the perks of privilege.”
How is it a perk of privilege to agree to disagree while still maintaining mutual affection? Aside from being educated, enlightened, tolerant, etc. they are family members. Family members! It seems like a matter of course that they will agree to disagree civilly without it affecting their relationship. Unless you are implying that less privileged people (less privileged how?) are unable to be tolerant with even their own family members in relation to something as relatively trivial as politics.
I think what Mythago means is that for the privileged, the stakes are lower. Whether or not welfare spending gets cut, whether or not a draft is reinstituted, whether or not abortion is outlawed — the well-to-do come out just fine.
No one in my family was drafted in the 1960s, though we had lots of young men of draft age. We don’t need AFDC. And if abortion were outlawed, we could simply put our daughters on a plane to Japan if need be. Thus, most issues — except for the environment/global warming — are issues in which we are not deeply personally invested except as compassionate bystanders.
In families who live closer to the margins, closer to the issues, it’s more difficult to separate the personal and the political. In my family, we joke that “liberal” and “conservative” are like “Stanford fan” and “Cal fan” — affinities that have to do with accidents of birth or education rather than deep-seated conviction.
I’m surprised that so many progressives are so sanguine about Hillary Clinton - as far as I can tell she combines Bush’s love of executive power and privilege with Joe Lieberman’s foreign policy. She certainly is the Dem least likely to push for an expedient withdrawal from Iraq.
Lee, there’s probably a perception — rightly or wrongly — that Hillary is more progressive than she lets on. That’s the right’s fear and the left’s hope, anyway.
I’ve got a longer post in the works about Richardson (and all the other candidates — I’m an equal-opportunity critic), so I don’t want to get into too much debate here. In brief, he’s a centrist DLC type who was a big war supporter before it became politically inconvenient. And he’s either a sexist or ignorant — he praised Byron White and has a history of inappropriate touching.
I do have to give him credit, though, for recognizing sprawl as an environmental issue and helping to get the Rail Runner (commuter rail in Albuquerque) built.
DEAR HUGO: YOUR MOTHER IS ON THE RIGHT TRACK TO SUPPORT RICHARDSON. Will you please forward this on to her? Please forward this to her and allow me also to share some thoughts with you and your readers….
I am glad to see websites like yours are warming to Richardson’s campaign. Richardson is my governor, and I have known him personally for 30 years. What Richardson has achieved vis-a-vis the New Mexico Legislature is remarkable, but I won’t recite the accomplishments. I do want to see him elected President, but I am in no way connected officially to his campaign.
The so called “top-tier” candidates together, all 3 of them, have a collective resume still lesser in quality to Bill Richardson’s! (Incidentally, Pollster.com determined very recently that Richardson henceforth shall be considered in the “top-tier,” based on his being the only candidate who has substantially risen in Iowa!) I am certain that Richardson’s real genius and his strongest suit is in international affairs, and that will be vital (and I don’t mean as just a future US Secretary of State!), if we are going to even attempt to rebuild the shattered US image internationally, after six years of Halliburton-driven corporate kleptocracy. His debate skills have not been as honed and polished as the 3 lawyers in so-called “top tier,” but that is fixable. His biography is great (Between Worlds: the Making of an American Life), and the new book on Energy Policy will be just as good.
Here is what I consider the bottom line: you don’t have to be a Marxian or Hegelian or a Ph.D Economist to comprehend that our domestic economy is suffering and going to get worse resulting from the on-going international implications of the screwed up foreign policy of this administration, so thoroughly based on corporate needs and demands; as long as we continue to see appointments like Bush’s trade negotiator Zoelick made over into President of the World Bank to replace “Wolfiewits,” don’t expect ANY major improvements in the last two years of Bush’s tenure, especially in the trickle down economic realms which would improve the lives of individual American consumers.
Richardson has repeatedly made it clear that Congress should deauthorize the
Iraq War, and that he personally would end it the first day of his Presidency.
My prediction: Richardson is going to win in Nevada, and he is going to do very very well in Iowa, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and California, I think winning in at least two of those states. May I suggest that you and your readers directly communicate to David Contarino and Amanda Cooper, his Campaign Manager, and Deputy CM, or to Richardson directly through the email function on his NM governor website? These people are very open to new ideas, questions, strategies, insights, etc., and I encourage anyone reading to take the time to contact them by phone or by email, even if you have just one question on a policy matter, or want to tell Bill Richardson what YOU think.
If you wish, please google the title of my most recent major article, RESOLVING THE WORSENING CRISIS AT THE FDA, published at many websites in many
nations.
Truly,
Stephen Fox
New Millennium Fine Art,
217 W. Water St.,
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501
505 983-2002
I don’t know that all that many liberals are wild about Hillary. They’re wild about getting some Democrat in office in place of a Republican, and some think Hillary is the best positioned to accomplish that. In that respect, they’re a mirror image of many Republicans who support Guiliani, the main difference being that Republicans are bored of being sort-of in power, while Democrats are sick and tired of being out of power.
So far as I can tell, Hillary Clinton likes power, but has a fairly decent human soul to go with her ambition. I don’t trust her ambition, but I can’t imagine that she’d be a patch on Bush in terms of maladministration once elected; she’s neither that stupid nor that careless. On the little things were Bush is so, so bad, I suspect that she’d have her husband’s deft administrative touch (mostly ’cause so many of her higher-ups in the neoClinton Administration would be retreads from paleoClinton).
I can live with that. I don’t like it as much as I like Edwards, but, frankly, I can respect it in the morning.
I don’t know what to make of Obama.
Clinton is a competent politician and has been a good senator for New York. I’m not thrilled with every last one of her positions–and will probably go with someone else in the primary, maybe Obama–but she’d make a fine president. Probably not a great president, but a competent, reasonable president, well into the middle of the pack as far as presidents go. Far better than any of the Republican options. Probably better than her husband was. And while everyone seems to think that her candidacy is doomed, doomed, doomed…that she’s too female, too liberal, not liberal enough, has too many people hate her already, etc, let me point out that any number of people hated her in the NY senatorial race and she won that. So I’m going to get wild and claim that the 44th president will be the wife of the 42nd. I’ll probably be wrong, but if I’m right I’ve got such a good “I told you so” on my conservative relatives…
It amazes me how if one person in the lefty blogosphere happens to briefly mention something even remotely good and positive in his or her life there will be cries of “privilege” in the comments section every time.
It’s probably a thought that isn’t original to him, but I once heard George Will point out that envy is the only one of the seven deadly sins that doesn’t give the sinner even a single moment of transitory pleasure. Wish more people understood this.
Calling people on their privilege is not about envy. It’s about asking them to recognize when they have it better than other people, and not treat their own lives as if everyone lived that way. And so far as I know, no chatecism has ever listed “self-awareness” or “seeing the bigger picture” as a deadly sin.
Indeed, Stentor. I find it helpful to be called on those areas where my privilege blinds me.
Hugo, I’d like to hear what you (as a male WASPy feminist ally) think about all the hatred directed at Senator Clinton. The virulence coming from the right always seemed irrational to me, considering that she’s a lot closer to center than many other Dems. But then, I was eight when her husband was elected, so it’s possible that some of the cultural context went straight over my head at the time.
I like her quite a bit– don’t agree with everything she says, but the non-cookie-baking, public-policy-planning, takes-a-village First Lady was a role model for the young proto-feminist me and I think she’ll make good decisions. I just don’t understand where the hatred comes from.
But I am with you on liking the whole field. Biden came off as really condescending at the forum at Howard, but I’d be reasonably happy with any of the 3 front-runners. Richardson and Kucinich are all right too.
Acer: US conservatives usually lose their minds when presented with successful liberal women. Pelosi gets it, too, along with any other female Democratic politician that crosses their line of fire. Combine that with her being Bill’s wife and that pretty much accounts for it, IMHO.
A lot of women on the right loathed Clinton, partly because they felt (wrongly, IMHO) that with her infamous “I”m not staying at home baking cookies” line in the even more infamous 1992 60 minutes interview that she was demeaning SAHMs.
What scares people about Clinton is what scares them about many strong women: competence and raw ambition. Everyone knew that the first serious female candidate for president would be excoriated and loathed, and she’s taking arrows now that future female candidates will, one hopes, not have to take.
She’s not my first choice for the nomination, but she’ll have all of my support should she get it.
If by “strong” you mean “power-hungry,” and by “woman” you mean “man or woman,” and by “on the right” you mean “anybody who isn’t far enough to the left to turn a blind eye to Hillary’s nasty streak,” then I suppose you are right. If not, who are we kidding? No one hates Hillary because she’s a woman running for President. Many people hate Hillary because she’s … well … Hillary. That shrew even manages to scare my pit bull, for chrissakes.
Xrlq: It’s funny how Hilary is ‘power-hungry’ and has a ‘nasty streak’ in an argument as to how it’s her and not her femaleness from someone that proceeds to use gendered insults like ’shrew’ to describe her.
How so? “Power-hungry” and “nasty” are about as gender-neutral as they come. “Shrew” is not, but it’s not as though the English language were lacking for equally unflattering (or worse) words to describe the same tendencies among men. Care to address the merits of my argument rather than persisting in the fantasy that Hillary’s detractors are really objecting to her sex rather than her unflattering attributes?
It’s the combination of descriptors that fit her rivals equally well with gendered insults such as ’shrew’ that I find revealing. How is Obama not ‘power-hungry’? And Hillary surely has nothing on Giuliani or McCain when it comes to ‘nasty’.
Continued from wrong thread.
Yes, gender can influence perception…..for some people at some times. Yes, sometimes women are condemed for things that men are praised for. Vice Versa BTW.
And sometimes there are cranky men and cranky women and this cranky man sees her as CRANKY!!!!!!!