I have to be honest. I did not change my mind about Obama ONLY after seeing the debates instead of just reading the transcript. I also was so annoyed at Obama, that I wrote to a friend of mine from Chicago who is an enormous Obama-backer. I will present that discussion here, so you can see more of what has changed my mind. My simplistic thinking is actually a little embarassing to me, but also don't agree with everything my friend said. Obama is not the greatest candidate ever, but after hearing him speak again and discussing some issues he does appear to be the best of those who have a chance. My friend's response to Obama's war stance is especially helpful.
My orignial questions followed by his responses:
John: 1) He claims that he has opposed the war from the start. He was,however, not in the United States government in order to register hisobjection. As a state senator, though, he did oppose the war.However, he did represent Chicago within Illinois. Was he reallygoing to support the war? It seems to me he's just playing on theignorance of the masses, attempting to win points, when he wasn't eventhere.
Peter: 1) When Obama opposed the war, he was already a candidate for the United States Senate. But he made a number of appearances at anti-war rallies, gave speeches against the war, and he was the only candidate for Senate to do so in the Democratic primary (he was the underdog against a wealthy self-funded businessman on the one hand and the son of an old school Chicago machine-politician on the other)... Remember this was when the war was at 80% popularity and Democratic politicians like Edwards and Clinton were loathe to speak against it. Illinois was also just in the process of turning into a blue state. The governor was Republican and the seat for which Obama was running was an open Republican seat. He had reasonably good reason to believe he could be burying his political career by speaking out against the war at a time when it was so popular. Here's a solid video mash-up of various statements on the Iraq war: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhpKmQCCwB8. Now when Obama arrived in the US Senate in 2004, he at first voted for appropriations bills, on the grounds that he thought that no matter how bad an idea the war was, the cost of failure was too great. He said that he would give the situation six months to see if there was any improvement, and when there wasn't any, he came out in favor of withdrawing the troops. (This can be controversial on the left but it happens to match up with my own position and I think it's the most responsible one. I was against the war, participated in protests, but in 2003/2004 I also had no idea what should happen next --- withdrawing immediately after we had already committed the mistake and plunged the country into chaos seemed silly. I've come around to withdrawal basically because it seems to me that our presence there only exacerbates the situation.) And I beg you to read his speech from 2002 here: http://www.barackobama.com/2002/10/02/remarks_of_illinois_state_sen.php. It's a flaming speech.
John: 2) This immigration plan is absolutely ludicrous, yet he supports it. He also voted on a bill last year to build a wall on the US/Mexicanborder. I find that disgusting. However, I realize that leaves me with just Kucinich who didn't.
Peter: 2) He supported the wall with Mexico bill as part of the compromise to get a full immigration bill, as did many Democratic senators, including Biden, Clinton, Kennedy, etc. The idea is that in order to get any Republican votes, there needed to be an "effort" to seal the border. And keep in mind, the wall is to be 700-odd miles in total but certainly not contiguous. The idea was for snippets of fenceline in various urban areas. (None of this fence has yet to be constructed, and the funds may be cut off now that there's a Democratic majority.) As far as the new version of the immigration bill this year, Obama has criticized certain aspects of it sharply and he hasn't come out in favor of its current form. (Democrats are unhappy particularly with the portion that rewrites future immigration policy to focus on education/skill level rather than family relations.) Obama is a pragmatist on this. There are certain Democrats and certain Republicans in the Senate that won't support any immigration bill at all. It's such a controversial issue that you need 60 votes to pass anything since it will almost certainly be filibustered. With Tim Johnson in the hospital, the Dems have 50 votes, and then they lose all the senators with strong union backing who oppose any temporary worker program on the grounds that it lowers wages. The only way they can pass anything at all is by picking up a substantial number of Republican votes from conservative border-state people like Jon Cornyn of Texas and your own dear John Kyl of Arizona. Otherwise nothing will ever be passed. And those votes can be bought if you provide them at least with the pretense that in the future illegal immigration will be cracked down upon. Obviously some sort of way of legalizing the twelve million illegal immigrants already in the country needs to take place. And this is the democratic system that we have, it's how the Senate works: there are a tremendous number of compromises that are necessary to get us there.
John: 3) He advocated the assassination of Osama Bin Laden even if thatmeant collateral damage.
Peter: 3) As far as the assassination of Osama bin Laden, I'm not so sure it counts as an assassination. American troops are in constant conflict with Taliban and al Qaeda forces. How is bombing a camp in which bin Laden is present any different? And obviously in the course of the CNN debate yesterday, all the candidates argued that it depended on the number of causalities. I would point out that Obama was the only candidate answering the question about a hypothetical terrorist attack who emphasized, first, the emergency response, then ensuring there would be no further attacks, third, figuring out who had committed the attack, and only then launch a response --- the other candidates tripped over themselves to talk about how swiftly they would retaliate. Obama, on the other hand, emphasized due process --- and was criticized soundly for it.
John: 4) His health-care plan, while not even being universal, keeps in lace much of the apparatus of the insurance companies and their money-grubbing practices and will be more expensive.
Peter: 4) On health care, Obama chose, like Edwards, not to go with single payer. He instead decided to focus on saving health care costs through expanding preventative care. He also proposed mandatory health care for minors. To quote the New Yorker article, in which he was asked why he didn't go for single payer:
"If you're starting from scratch," he says, "then a single-payer system"—a government-managed system like Canada's, which disconnects health insurance from employment—"would probably make sense. But we've got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that's not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they've known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside." I think this is a fair position. It's certainly the most realistic position, and one around which there is a growing consensus. States like Massachusetts and California (both under Republican governors) are already experimenting with it. The idea is to make health insurance like car insurance, to phase in making it mandatory for all, with the idea that a broader health system in which illness is treated preventatively is actually cheaper than one in which the uninsured develop catastrophic illnesses and require surgery. Keep in mind, switching to single payer would be essentially eliminating the entire health care industry (companies in the hundreds of billions of dollars and with hundreds of thousands of employees) today and building it from scratch. It isn't realistic on a national level. You run into the same problem of partly of simply not having the votes in the Senate --- if you can't find more than 51 votes to end the Iraq war now, when it's almost political suicide (proven by '06) for Republicans to continue to vote to support it, how will you ever get 60 to move to single payer? There was a great editorial in the New York Times about this move towards something like Obama's plan:
"And if what you care about is which candidate can one-up the others, it is rather disappointing. But if what you care about is whether, after the 2008 election, we'll be in a position to finally stop the health systems' downward spiral, the similarity of the emerging proposals is exactly what's interesting. I don't think you can call it a consensus, but there is nonetheless a road forward being paved and a growing number of people from across the political spectrum are on it — not just presidential candidates, but governors from California to Pennsylvania, unions and businesses like Safeway, ATT and Pepsi.
This is what that road looks like. It is not single-payer. It instead follows the lead of European countries ranging from the Netherlands to Switzerland to Germany that provide universal coverage (and more doctors, hospitals and access to primary care) through multiple private insurers while spending less money than we do. The proposals all define basic benefits that insurers must offer without penalty for pre-existing conditions. They cover not just expensive sickness care, but also preventive care and cost-saving programs to give patients better control of chronic illnesses like diabetes and asthma.
We'd have a choice of competing private plans, and, with Edwards and Obama, a Medicare-like public option, too. An income-related federal subsidy or voucher would help individuals pay for that coverage. And the proposals also embrace what's been called shared responsibility — requiring that individuals buy health insurance (at minimum for their children) and that employers bigger than 10 or 15 employees either provide health benefits or pay into a subsidy fund."
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/opinion/31gawande.html
To my mind, to propose any other plan is to simply propose doing nothing. It's not like Obama doesn't like the idea of a single payer plan, or that he hasn't considered it. It's that he just doesn't think it's feasible to implement it. Now, the major difference between Edwards and Obama on the plan is that Edwards mandates that all individuals buy the plan. Obama feels that the government should stick to putting together the plan, making it affordable, and helping people purchase it --- and only then when after a trial period, there are still significant gaps, would he talk about making it mandatory.
Obviously there is no such thing as a universal health care plan... Even Massachusetts only reaches in theory 97-98 percent. Edwards plan is no different. The idea is to make the gap as small as possible, and to do it by making health care as cheap as possible --- through requiring plans to cover preventative care, through allowing the importation of cheaper prescription drugs (via canada for example), and through subsidizing technology/better record-keeping to reduce medical error and make it more efficient.
John: 5) He seems to have no ability to be exciting in any way. He standsthere saying almost exactly what Hillary Clinton says, biding his timefor when it's clear it's down to the two of them.
Peter: 5) It's not his style to pound the podium. He's a thoughtful guy and has a subdued style. It's not that he can't give a rousing speech: obviously he did in 2004 at the convention.
Obama's background is in community organizing. He's spent his entire career as a civil rights attorney and an urban community organizer. Obviously he cares about the poor and is motivated by ameliorating it. It's what he does. I think, frankly, that Obama is the only candidate in the Democratic field who would have the ability to be a transformational figure in American politics and to produce movement on health care and global warming. Clinton or Edwards would get into office and be immediately stymied by Congress. He is the best public speaker the party has produced in years. He isn't great at televised debates yet --- but in what sense is that skill important exactly? --- especially as it has so little impact on the outcome of a race? He can captivate crowds. He generates enthusiasm. In Illinois, there are countless examples where he led efforts on the hot button issues of the day and broke logjams to produce legislation: he eliminated racial profiling, set up required video-taping of police interrogations of murder suspects, set up death penalty reform, and pushed forward the first campaign finance reform in two decades. With the example of the mandantory video-taping, he produced a bill that the police officer's union opposed and the then-Democratic governor threatened with a veto, and he not only passed it, but he passed it unanimously. When I worked for the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, co-workers would drive down to the state capital in Springfield and would come back beaming about a certain young state senator.It is a radical and audacious prospect: To elect a president who has spent his life as a community organizer, civil rights attorney, and constitutional law professor, who has a record on behalf of the poor and in producing consensus, instead of electing one who has spent a couple decades in Congress (and probably has too many enemies in Congress, and is too caught up in old battles, to produce any movement on the things I care about). Anyway, those are some thoughts. See what you think, Peter p.s. If you still need some convincing, I absolutely love Obama's stump speech during the 2006 campaign on behalf of other candidates. My favorite speech of his is here on video: http://home.ourfuture.org/videos/take-back-america-2006/senator-barack-obama.html
THANKS PETER!
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