It looks obvious

It was only natural that a lot of the blame, for Hillary Clinton’s defeat, will be laid on laps of former President Bill Clinton. As the Guardian article mention he was:

delivering one of the most damaging comments of the Clinton campaign, describing Obama’s presidential chances as “a fairytale”. It was seen by many in the African-American community as patronising.

[...]

He made race an issue, fighting a negative campaign. The decision proved to be disastrous. He not only alienated African-Americans at a time when Hillary Clinton was still taking a sizeable share of their votes, but also white Democrats throughout the US, including veteran party figures such as senator Ted Kennedy, who subsequently backed Obama.

This is all true, but unlike the common concept I think that this tactic is what kept Clinton campaign a live. What most people tend to forget is that Bill Clinton used these controversial comments when Hillary’s numbers seems to be in sharp decline. I was in NH just before the Primaries and I remember that the general opinion was that this is the end for her campaign. And while the Clinton campaign used an ugly tactic it was much more beneficial than they get the credit for - it stopped Obama rise, it helped drafting voters for Clinton and create the distinction she needed desperately.

Like many other people, including Clinton herself, I thought that the nomination is her to take. I was wrong because I didn’t realize the Obama phenomena. Obama amazing rising changed the entire game, and I think that the fact that Clinton was able to stay in the race as long as she did, and have a valid claim for the Vice Presidency is due to masterfully campaigning. Some of the credit for it should, no doubt, be given to Bill Clinton.

A should be simple upgrade of the blog’s platform become a rather hectic mess today, but with the assistant of my hosting service everything seems to be in order now. In the meantime here are some links I collected today: 

A new research that checked people cooperations in different cultures had rather interesting finding:

Researchers use economic games to investigate how people cooperate in real-life. Now a team led by Benedikt Herrmann, at the University of Nottingham, have identified striking differences in the way university students from different countries play one such game known as The Public Goods Game. Compared with students from developed Western nations, students from less democratic countries like Saudi Arabia, Oman and Belarus tended to punish not only free-loaders, but also cooperative players, with the result that cooperation in their groups plummeted.

[...]

When players had the option to punish, the groups tended to display more cooperation, which is consistent with past research showing that the ability to punish can help foster cooperative behaviour. However, in some countries, ’selfish’ players also punished cooperative players, perhaps as a means of revenge for punishments they had suffered, or maybe as a way of punishing do-gooders for showing them up. The researchers called this ‘anti-social punishment’, and the groups where this occurred tended to cooperate less.

Anti-social punishment occurred more in those countries, including Belarus and Saudi Arabia, shown by surveys to have less faith in the rule of law and less belief in civic cooperation. In a commentary on the findings, published in the same journal, Herbert Gintis of the Sante Fe Institute, said the results challenge the way people have tended to view capitalist democracies. "The success of democratic market societies may depend critically upon moral virtues as well as material interests, so the depiction of civil society as the sphere of ‘naked self-interest’ is radically incorrect," he wrote.

I saw two interesting stories related to Clinton’s campaign today. The first, how ironic, discuss the fact that Clinton’s campaign is failing to pay its share in its employees healthcare insurance:

Among the debts reported this month by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, the $292,000 in unpaid health insurance premiums for her campaign staff stands out.

Clinton, who is being pressured to end her campaign against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, has made her plan for universal health care a centerpiece of her agenda.

[...]

But the unpaid bills to Aetna were at least two months old, according to FEC filings.

They show the campaign ended last year owing Aetna more than $213,000 for “employee benefits.”

During the first two months of the year, the campaign did not pay down any of that debt. In fact, it accrued another $16,000 in unpaid bills last month, and it finished the month owing Aetna $229,000.

The second story is about Clinton’s campaign manager involvement with the same sub-prime mortgages Clinton now attacking so fiercely:

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign manager, Maggie Williams, earned about $200,000 on the board of a Long Island subprime lender that charged prepayment penalties - a practice that Clinton, a critic of the subprime industry, now seeks to eliminate.

Williams, who took over the reins of Clinton’s campaign in early February, served as a director on the board of the Woodbury-based Delta Financial Corp. from April 2000 until the firm declared bankruptcy in December, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records. 

[...]

Williams, 53, isn’t the only Clinton insider who made money from an industry the candidate has demonized. A month ago, The Wall Street Journal reported that Clinton ally and former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros grossed more than $5 million in stock sales and board compensation from Countrywide Financial, one of the nation’s largest subprime lenders. 

The truth is that both stories aren’t, in by themselves, important at all. The importance of these stories, for me, is to demonstrate how during political campaign we are being distracted by flood of unimportant information that aim in creating images that have very little with the reality. We are being told that Clinton is amazing executive, which she might or might not be - her struggling campaign isn’t the best demonstration of high quality management. And we are being bombarded with guilt by association which is many times completely irrelevant.

One comment about the sub-prime mortgage is due here. The fact that Clinton, and many other politician, choose to attack the practices of lending for minorities is noting but typical hypocrisy. Well into the crisis, lender were encouraged to use easier criteria when lending to minorities and poor families, a practice that is now being called predatory and irresponsible. I’m not arguing that those lenders aren’t guilty of being horrible bankers, but the involvement of other , political, motivations played major role in the creation of those lending practices - as we can see from the occupations of those Clinton’s aides.

When discussing political campaign, and campaign rhetoric - I find this story, which I scanned from William F. Buckley book - The Unmaking of a Mayor - hilarious:

How can one reconcile this statement:

“We need a president who can restore our confidence,” she said. “We need a president who is ready on Day 1 to be commander in chief of our economy.”

with this:

When asked why she’d appoint Alan Greenspan to a working group of financial leaders to design a response to the housing crisis, Clinton told the Philadelphia Daily News:

"Not only that, but the Fed didn’t act while he was there. But he has a calming influence still to this day on Wall Street — don’t ask me why because I never understand what he’s saying – but nevertheless people respond to that Delphic oracle approach. I think it would be wise to include him. And recently he’s come out and vert smartly so [sic] that we have to deal with housing and maybe we need to have some kind of buyout mechanism for mortgages. So he’s moved on his understanding and depth of the problem — but you know you could pick three others.

I guess that commanding the economy has nothing to do with actually understanding the monetary policies the central bank implements….

As a side note, and it isn’t only semantic - someone should explain the entire cadre of candidates that the President is not the commander in chief of the economy, nor the commander in chief of the country. The President is mere commander in chief of the Army, which is a lot of responsibility by itself. The country, its citizens and the economy have no commanders.

I am reading the stories, about Clinton and McCain, involvement with different lobbies with certain level of amusement. After all, what did we really thought that will happen after we built a system that make lobbying not only beneficial, but crucial? Every time that we added regulatory layer of protection we shifted the focus of corporations from the consumers to those who make difference - the regulators. On the one hand it is easier to effect few regulators than mass of consumers. But is become also necessary - because those regulations effect your corporation survival. Now instead of fighting for our money by offering us a valuable exchange of services and products, companies fighting over regulations that will protect their market share.

We also went through rounds of solutions that dealt with the symptoms instead of the actual problems. Attempts to limits the freedom of speech of lobbies and interest group to argue their cases and to protect their interest are very popular. One of the famous attempts was championed by no other than McCain himself. But the motive behind those attempts was not to limit the access of lobbies, but to limit the competition of those the lobbies needed. And instead of limiting the regulations dire effect on the consumer interest we are keep adding more, making the incentive to sell access very hard to resist.

And yet, we are surprise to find out about the ties between our politicians and lobbies.

Who in his or her right mind would choose to elect a tyrant that, when in office, will start dictating things like:

…government programs to help people “quit smoking, to get more exercise, to eat right, to take their vitamins.” 

The only parental tyranny acceptable is my mother’s, and even she knew at some point to lay off and let me make my own decision. The believe that the government’s proper role is to be a Paternal Tyrant combined with well documented approach of “The goal justifies the means” should be a major factor in a decision not to vote for such candidate.

It is interesting to note Clinton’s criticism on Obama naiveté, particularly when it comes to special interests. After all Clinton know very well about special interests, her ties to some of them are well documented… 

As a side note I have to say that the repeat mention of limiting access of special interest to decision making every election season is more than annoying. We build a government that is over involved and with extreme ability to influence almost every aspect of our life, but we want to somehow protect its innocence by limiting the freedom of speech of interested parties? It is rather peculiar that the limits are mostly set on those who might petition the government instead of the politicians. One damn good solution is to limits the areas which the government, and politicians, can award favors. But this is much to much to ask, mostly during election.

You could see them in every street corner in downtown Manchester and Concord. They put aside their duties and drafted themselves to Clinton’s campaign. They didn’t care about Clinton Ideology, nor her experience, they came to help because they are sick and tiered of being second class citizens. I saw them attending the rally before the ABC debate, they came with full buses in the cold night standing in the snow chanting their support. But it was more than that, it was cold determination to put an end for generations of mistreatment.

I don’t know why the polls missed this shift, I would guess that it because polls has some delay in identifying trends. However people on the ground could have see, that something is happening. Many women decided to change their vote in the few days between the Iowa caucuses after they were convinced that big portion of the media attack on Clinton is because she is a women. They recognized the attacks on Clinton’s character as another way of attacking her for being a women - and they had enough of that. It wasn’t only that many of them felt that this is historic moment, a first real chance to have a women president, but they felt that all they achieved in years of struggle is being challenged.

They are sick and tired from being dismissed. They are sick and tired that all the male candidates are being called by their last name but the woman is being called by her first name. They are sick and tired from being marginalized and they want their fair share. When Obama and Edwards talked about change but lead the attack on Clinton, attack that many of these women seeing as gender attack, they are wondering what will be their place in the “change”.

We went up to New Hampshire to see how history is being made. It didn’t happened the way I hoped for, but I am still very happy with what I saw. I’m sure that big part of this was manipulated by the Clinton campaign, I’m sure they exploited every drop of anger and frustration to their benefit. But the anger and determination were there and the soccer moms determine to take their rightful place around the table.